Issue 10 - 2005
Prompt Corner 
Several times a year in these columns I find myself musing on what it is that we do as critics, and how and why we do it. For once, though, I'm taking my cue from other people's thoughts in the same area. The stage adaptation of Theatre Of Blood has a curious and complex relationship with its reviewers. only natural, you might think, when it concerns a mad actor-manager bumping off those scribes who gave him bad notices. But it goes far beyond that.
The show really allows us to both have our cake and eat it. Look at the number of reviews that both indulgently chortle along with the idea of us getting our (possibly) just critical deserts and yet at the same time note that the reviewers portrayed onstage are hugely different from those sitting in the stalls. (Absolutely: I've no idea where they may have got the idea of a fat, hirsute critic with a dubious predilection for student actresses.) The original 1973 film version was even more wildly inaccurate, portraying critics with names like Solomon Psaltery living in South Bank riverside penthouses or Chelsea townhouses with servants. Would it were so, he wrote from his rented basement flat in Ladbroke Grove.
Archaic
It's the distancing effect of that thirty-odd-year gap that enables the play to face both ways at once. It can blast away at its caricature reviewers whilst pretending that they're from another age and so don't bear such close relation to those watching it: same species, more archaic specimens, perhaps. (Although the Improbable Theatre boys did discuss their approach with one of the major reviewers at an early stage in the production process. And, on the press night, the line "A critic begins to resent an actor [to whom] he has to keep giving bad reviews" was fervently clapped by one individual in a critic's aisle seat; I was on the other side of the auditorium, so I couldn't see who it was, but I have my suspicions.) Above all, the play can pretend that actors and critics are in the same business; as I keep saying, we're not. But the play can engage in lengthy debate about the purpose and function of criticism as if it weren't now simply a very subordinate part of the business of selling papers.
Of course, the chronology allows us to look not just at a different kind of criticism, but a different kind of theatre. At the climax of the second act, with the last surviving reviewer in his clutches, the crazed Edward Lionheart suddenly goes into what would seem to be a parody of that movie convention, the "Since you're about to die, I shall explain everything to you." speech. What would seem such a parody, that is, if it didn't veer off into a debate about the alleged conflict between the old-style actor-laddies and the new-fangled graduates in polonecks as to who should be steering theatre and whither. The narrative catalyst for this torrent is that the aforementioned reviewer has been offered a job as literary associate at the new National Theatre then (in the story) being built, and institutionally in transition between the Olivier and the Peter Hall eras. And, lo and behold, the auditorium lights come up, so that suddenly we're not in the crumbling, derelict Victorian playhouse of Rae Smith's design any more, but in the grey concrete citadel itself. The debate is immediate.
Immediate, my bum. Several reviews have responded to this episode firstly by ignoring the fact that it just cocks the dramatic pace up - no onscreen villain's final gloating would go on for a fraction as long as this does - but more surprisingly by claiming that it shows the National Theatre can poke fun at itself, can take criticism even on its own stage. I'm astounded that this idea has even been given the time of day. To me it seems obvious that, far from a spirit of Maoist self-criticism, this is pre-emptive stuff: pretend to criticise yourself in order that you can control the critical agenda and forestall any serious, savage moves from outside. It's classic repressive tolerance, with an unhealthy dollop of "see what good sports we are" smugness. Most bizarrely, it's fundamentally at odds with what has hitherto seemed the spirit of the National under Nick Hytner. I enjoyed much of the rest of the evening, but the implicit self-congratulation of that segment simply stuck in my craw.
Phoney
The production will enjoy such success as it does with general audiences largely because they will recognise the stereotypes of actor and critic. No matter that that type of wildly over-the-top actor-manager (who, in Jim Broadbent's excessive performance, is not just a prime ham but the whole piggery, from downwind) was extinct even at the time in which the play is set, never mind today; there's enough in common with the current cliché of the self-regarding "luvvie". And no matter, either, that the portrayals of critics are just as radically at odds with reality.
Or are they? When reading one response to the show (which didn't take the form of a review and so isn't reprinted here), I think I finally glimpsed a curious truth. Those who regularly devour Theatre Record from cover to cover will have realised that a few of us critics take a certain pride in contrariety. And when those writers choose to foreground this supposed rebelliousness, they usually do so by setting up a straw man of the liberal, chattering-class type, which they then stand against. No such cosy cabalising for them, they claim. And it's precisely this kind of ivory-tower, out-of-touch Olympianism and self-indulgence that's portrayed in Theatre Of Blood, and which utterly fails to stand comparison with reality. In fact, the self-regard and the blithe ex cathedra pronouncements of most of these contrarians conform far more closely to this stereotype than anything in the perspective or manner of those they claim to be nobly opposing. In short, it's those who think they're kicking against the pricks who are in fact inadvertently doing most to reinforce the false and outdated image of the critic. It might also be argued that a number of these phoney rebels are not by either trade or vocation arts writers, but have taken on the gig for a while, faute de mieux or for a bit of a lark, and consequently that when they move on, as they will, their reactionism and trivialism may leave the well poisoned for those of us who remain.
Commitment
Here's an example of the difference between the image and the reality of critics: Billy Elliot The Musical has been rapturously received (the quotation on the cover of this issue is from Charles Spencer's review), but although everyone acknowledges its political content, not one of us supposed lefties explicitly praises it. Well, then, I will. It strikes me that a significant part of the success of Lee Hall's stage script is that it changes focus from his screenplay. Where the film used the 1984-5 miners' strike as a grim, poignant backdrop to the individual story of Billy's quest for self-expression, the musical juxtaposes the two equally in the foreground. This makes the show more affecting, as it allows the script to carry a broader message about change as a whole, about moving on from long-ingrained attitudes, conventions and assumptions. But "moving on" isn't synonymous with "progress". Sometimes, as with the Thatcher government's premeditated destruction of the mining industry, such change is malicious, callous and utterly devastating. Sometimes, as with Billy showing that there can be life beyond the pit, and that ballet isn't just for upper-class poofs, it can be warm, welcome and affirming. But neither view obscures or dominates the other.
To be honest, I was unsure for much of the first half whether Hall had indeed adopted such a twin-focus strategy, or whether I was indulging in wishful thinking. What convinced me was precisely the bit that some others are most sniffy about: it's not that the show includes a number looking forward with joy (as many of us still do) to Thatcher's death - it's that I think Hall and Elton John set out quite deliberately to make it one of, if not the most memorable number, the one you come out of the theatre singing. That's exactly the sort of cheek we need. Indeed, I think this may in time be seen as a successor, a generation on, to Willy Russell's Blood Brothers, as a musical that successfully combines entertainment and feelgood with a moving sense of social and class commitment to particular ideals. Its sexual politics are a different matter: both dead mum and best-friend Michael the winsome pre-pubescent drag diva are disappointingly facile figures. But this is a show to be proud of. even in a nationalistic sense: it's not simply the storyline that makes it British to the marrow, but the fact that its effing and blinding moppets will surely never be allowed on to Broadway unless their mouths are scrubbed out with Swarfega.
Jungian
Elsewhere, in brief: Rufus Norris's Almeida Blood Wedding has divided opinion. I'm firmly in the positive camp, because I think he's found a way of transcending what for Anglo-Saxon productions (and audiences) is the problem of Spanishness. He uses his international cast (pretty much every one of whom at some point or other hum or sings snatches of song from their own individual heritage) and an abstract stage design to set the play outside any location in this world. He universalises it, setting it in some kind of realm of the Jungian collective unconscious, in which events may not always follow logically, but none the less unfold with the unsettling inevitability of that particular kind of disturbing dream. In many ways it's probably the finest Lorca I've ever seen. Compare and contrast with Tim Carroll's Jungian mess of a three-man Tempest at the Globe: yet another instance of approaching the play in a spirit of "let's see whether it'll bear this approach", the ill-advised experimentation of seeing what it does to rather than for the piece. It's often an interesting essay on the play, but you need an intimate familiarity with text and story in order to be able to follow what's going on.
David Eldridge, who adapted Festen for Norris's stage production, has finally turned me into an unambiguous admirer with his Incomplete And Random Acts Of Kindness. Close reading of the reviews reveals a few of us who discreetly write with experience of clinical depression, and a few who seem quite uncomprehending of it - the latter being, I suspect, those who look for a specific cause for protagonist Joey's breakdown, as if the inner universe of the mind were a Newtonian one.
Everyone is taking the opportunity afforded by The Philadelphia Story to give an end-of-term report on Kevin Spacey's first season at the helm of The Old Vic, and the consensus is that, well, there's no need to institute special measures quite yet. Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Woman Before seems often to be on the brink of saying some interesting things about human attachments and obligations, until a final ten minutes or so that retrospectively turn the whole business into a modern urban Medea told in a cut-up non-linear style, and all the more ho-hum for it. At Chichester, David Warner's Lear is immensely impressive in his ruination, but doesn't establish himself as an unreasonable bellower in the first place; John Ramm, meanwhile, is unobtrusively becoming something of a treasure in classical roles such as the Fool here. And, odd though it seems to say so, I fervently hope that we've overlooked a number of reviews for Song Of The Goat Theatre's remarkable Chronicles -A Lamentation at the Pit. Sure, it's only 40 minutes long, and inhabits that interdisciplinary no-man's-land, but for only one newspaper to review such a mesmeric piece is shameful and heartbreaking.
Ian Shuttleworth ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
This issue's two huge hits, Billy Elliott and Death of a Salesman (neither of which I've yet seen) are glorious confirmations of a vintage period in the West End. The London musical scene has been revitalised by the last few new entries, and it's years since such a strong slate of drama new and old was available in the commercial sector. May it thrive.
What is equally interesting, at a time when the NT's self-regarding house panto Theatre of Blood has opened, is the question of how much or how little the critics now influence that sector. Look at this issue's reviews for The Philadelphia Story and you'll find the same half-hearted welcome that has greeted all of Mr Spacey's efforts at the Old Vic so far. Yet we are told The Philadelphia Story has the biggest advance in Old Vic history, while its predecessor, National Anthems, played to 70%, a figure that most other West End managements would envy. Over at the Shaftesbury, The Far Pavilions isn't doing too badly in the light of its critical reception, either. (I'd have taken a little space in this column to defend Far Pavilions, which struck me as much more than an honourable failure, but my foreign affairs have prevented it).
Brand image
What we're witnessing, I think, in the case of the Old Vic, is a new kind of theatregoing for London; the theatre itself, with its glamorous movie associations (thank you, Mr Spacey) can be marketed as an "in" place to be. The same applies to the Almeida and the Donmar, where bookings are made on the premise that whatever's on, there will be a certain star quality about them. You could argue, too, that the two smaller venues have also built a reputation for design, particularly in the work of Paul Brown with the previous Almeida team, which adds to the brand image. The critics can still take the shine off this carefully nurtured charisma (I hear that Cosmonaut fell off from a biggish advance), but these houses are, it would appear, becoming less critic-dependent.
But it's a tricky area. My theatregoing for this issue included visits to three houses which could benefit from the same "branded" image, yet haven't quite cracked it yet. There was a time when the Royal Court would have seemed very much part of the "brand" culture, with its busy seasons in West End "exile" pulling the in crowd, and its leather seats in the expensive new auditorium satisfactorily full. But fame is fickle, and the sense of lessened energy in Sloane Square is making itself felt in smaller audiences. That Downstairs was half-empty for The Woman Before may have had something to do with the play, yet the production had many of the ingredients for trendy success: cool design from Mark Thompson, known TV stars in Helen Baxendale and Nigel Lindsay, modishly short (time for a meal afterwards in the Court's fashionable restaurant).
Production values
As for the play, well, I was full of admiration for the unfettered storytelling of Roland Schimmelpfennig's Arabian Night, but here he goes in for arid exercises - much loved by those who find late Caryl Churchill to their taste, but tedious to me in their banal repetitions, their short, bitty scenes and their glossy unreality. The Woman Before posits a good idea - what if the girl you once promised eternal devotion should turn up and expect delivery - but dissipates it in its shallow characterisation, in its curious juxtaposition of soaring imagery and dull, flat understatement, and in a horrific climax echoing Medea that has simply not been earned.
Where the Downstairs show relied for much of its impact on production values, a better candidate for the main house was on show upstairs on an almost bare stage. David Eldridge's Incomplete And Random Acts Of Kindness is not an easy play, with its thirty-nine short scenes dodging about in the manner of its title, but with patience you can be drawn deeply into this story of a young man on the brink of self-destruction, as its focus shifts in and out, taking in another young man who actually is destroyed - and by a random act. There is poetry, anger, pathos and a rich regard for our human frailty in these scenes, given an extra dimension by the appearance of a succession of churchmen who can at first seem like mere figures of fun, but whose collective presence suggests something more.
There ought to be the same rewards for the audience's patience in Jane Bodie's A Single Act. On paper its idea is a clever one, taking two very different couples through twelve months, one forward, one back, both affected by a nameless, 9/11ish act of terror that begins the year. The overshadowing presence of that moment lends a spurious here-and-now resonance to the play, which is really no more than two stories of disintegrating relationships; they cross at mid-point in the play's bi-directional path, but one's hopes of a strong subtext or a flash of insight into life in general are not fulfilled, because the characters and their miserable lives simply aren't interesting enough. Maybe the companion piece, Osama the Hero, brought A Single Act into sharper focus, but while one can admire Anthony Clark for offering two new plays in repertory one can't bank on audiences wanting to see both. Perhaps he could have turned his back on the now-let's-eat crowd and played both on the same night? Hampstead, a lovely space in a smart setting, should have been able to find an identity by now. It's still searching.
Second productions
At the Bush you can all too regularly expect to meet more or less appealing low-lifes in situations which, on good nights, reach out across the class divide, on bad ones stay firmly in their own gutter. Lin Coghlan's Kingfisher Blue doesn't offer a good night, being far too flimsy and weakly constructed (I hate plays which have five endings), yet it does offer some fine acting, especially from the two youngsters at its hapless centre. The Bush has its "brand" identity as a new writing house, not a trendy or a fashionable one like Soho but perhaps the most honestly writer-centred of them all. Its small capacity gives it room for failure, too.
Aleks Sierz in this week's Stage (at the time of writing) complains about the lack of second productions for new plays. Is it time to raise the heretical idea that we might get more of them if there were fewer first productions? We've come through a period where new writing has been sacred, with the result that many indifferent plays are reaching the stage just because they are new writing. (Mind you, I was surprised that this year's Verity Bargate winner, Matt Charman's splendid A Night At The Dogs, was given such a hard time: "poor second half" was the verdict all round, yet in that second half a great deal of learning went on among its well drawn characters - this was a play that really did send you out knowing, and feeling, more than when you went in.)
The (small) subsidised houses have taken up the search to such an extent that the non-funded Fringe, no longer the testing ground for fledgling work, has gone over to classic revivals. If we're looking for variety in London theatre, this may not be such a bad thing. I had great fun at the recent Finborough revival of Trelawny Of The "Wells", and some pleasure at the Union's over-ambitious but far from foolhardy attempt to offer Barnum without a high wire or a single stiltwalker. Is there enough critical influence being brought to bear on these venues? How many reviews are there in this issue for the latest terrific opera update from Music Theatre London, Falstaff at the Drill Hall? We should be aware by now that Nick Britten, adapter, director and oh-so-clever musical arranger, is a national treasure, and anything he does is well worth watching - especially here, where a highly experienced nonet is assembled to deliver Verdi's warmest and funniest musical offering.
Territorial overlap
There is of course this little problem of territorial overlap - no theatre critic seems to have written about Lorin Maazel's remarkable version of 1984 at Covent Garden, in spite of it having Robert Lepage to direct it and Carl Fillion to do its sets. Perhaps Maazel's determination to restrict his main characters to "difficult" music and leave the tunes to the proles would have registered even more harshly with the theatre critics than with the opera boys, most of whom hated it, but there might have been more recognition of its very powerful staging by a master director.
The one theatre critic whose 1984 review I have seen is Philip Fisher on the British Theatre Guide website, and a good, theatre-centred review it is too. Go, too, to BTG for a generous review by Peter Lathan of Sister Josephine Kicks The Habit, a flimsy but endearing musical by the poet Ian McMillan based around the songs of the late, great Jake Thackray. Apparently Thackray was once dubbed "the Yorkshire Noel Coward". He's not. He's the Yorkshire Jacques Brel if anything, but a terrific poet in his own very individual right, and McMillan's little show needs a harder edge to its plotting (and some more of the satirical, wickedly funny songs of which Thackray was capable) if it is to progress beyond its present Yorkshire tour. Still, as a lifelong Thackray fan, I found the trip north highly rewarding, not least for the excellent work of the show's actor-musician cast.
Ian Herbert - ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
THE ALCHEMIST Adaptation of Paulo Coelho novel (Cornish Theatre Collective) |
Pleasance |
9 May |
19 Jun |
637 |
BARNUM Revival of Cy Coleman / Michael Stewart / Mark Bramble musical |
Union SE1 |
10 May |
4 Jun |
672 |
BEST FRIENDS New play by Anat Gov (Wisepart Prods) |
New End |
18 May |
25 Jun |
643 |
BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL New musical by Lee Hall and Elton John, based on screenplay by Hall |
Victoria Palace |
11 May |
631 |
|
BLOOD WEDDING Revival of play by Federico Garcia Lorca |
Almeida |
12 May |
18 Jun |
644 |
CHRONICLES - A LAMENTATION New piece based on Epic of Gilgamesh (Song Of The Goat Theatre) |
The Pit |
17 May |
28 May |
671 |
COLD HANDS New play by Christina Katic |
Theatre 503 |
19 May |
11 Jun |
652 |
CROSSINGS New play by Clare Duffy (Sgript Cymru) |
Arcola |
12 May |
4 Jun |
621 |
DAZZLING MEDUSA New children's play by Geraldine McCaughrean |
Polka |
10 May |
11 Jun |
677 |
DEATH OF A SALESMAN Revival of play by Arthur Miller |
Lyric |
16 May |
653 |
|
THE DEATH OF GOGOL AND THE 1969 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST New play by Tim Luscombe |
Drill Hall |
12 May |
5 Jun |
638 |
THE END OF THE MOON New performance piece by Laurie Anderson |
Barbican |
18 May |
21 May |
664 |
HOSPITALWORKS Site-specific piece by Theatre-Rites |
Mayday Univ Hospital, Croydon |
7 May |
28 May |
641 |
INCARCERATOR Revival of play by Torben Betts (Anagallis Prods) |
Old Red Lion |
12 May |
28 May |
638 |
INCOMPLETE AND RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS New play by David Eldridge |
Royal Court Upstairs |
13 May |
28 May |
639 |
KINGFISHER BLUE New play by Lin Coghlan |
Bush |
20 May |
18 Jun |
673 |
LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR AND GRILL Revival of play by Lanie Robertson |
New Players |
10 May |
23 Jul |
663 |
THE MASTER'S BOY New play by Phil Willmott, loosely based on Miss Julie by August Strindberg |
Oval House |
19 May |
4 Jun |
672 |
ON THE TOWN Revival of musical by L Bernstein, B Comden, A Green |
Prince Of Wales |
12 May |
12 May |
298 |
OSAMA THE HERO New play by Dennis Kelly |
Hampstead |
9 May |
11 Jun |
617 |
PATTI BOULAYE'S SUN DANCE New musical by Patti Boulaye |
Hackney Empire |
18 May |
25 Jun |
628 |
PHALLACY Transfer of new play by Carl Djerassi |
King's Head |
18 May |
19 Jun |
517 |
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY Revival of play by Philip Barry |
Old Vic |
10 May |
23 Jul |
622 |
A SINGLE ACT New play by Jane Bodie |
Hampstead |
16 May |
11 Jun |
620 |
THE TEMPEST Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Globe |
18 May |
2 Oct |
659 |
THEATER OF THE NEW EAR New plays by Joel& Ethan Coen and Charlie Kaufman |
Royal Festival Hall |
13 May |
13 May |
642 |
THEATRE OF BLOOD Film adaptation by Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson (NT/Improbable) |
Lyttelton |
19 May |
27 Aug |
666 |
THE WOMAN BEFORE New play by Roland Schimmelpfennig |
Royal Court |
17 May |
18 Jun |
648 |
Regions |
||||
BLUE/ORANGE Revival of play by Joe Penhall (Rapture Th) |
Glasgow, Citizens |
10 May |
14 May |
678 |
COLD COMFORT New play by Owen McCafferty |
Belfast, Old Museum Arts Centre |
5 May |
14 May |
685 |
DRACULA New adaptation by Bryony Lavery from novel by Bram Stoker |
Guildford, Yvonne Arnaud |
17 May |
21 May |
685 |
THE EMPEROR'S OPERA New play by Michael Duke (Benchtours) |
Glasgow, Tron |
13 May |
14 May |
679 |
THE GRADUATE Revival of adaptation by Terry Johnson from novel by Charles Webb and screenplay |
Dundee Rep |
18 May |
4 Jun |
680 |
IN THE SHADE New piece by David Leddy |
Glasgow, tron |
18 May |
28 May |
677 |
KING LEAR Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Chichester Festival Th |
17 May |
10 Sep |
682 |
THE MORRIS New play by Helen Blakeman |
Liverpool Everyman |
11 May |
28 May |
684 |
ONCE UPON A TIME IN WIGAN Revival of play by Mick Martin (Urban Expansions) |
Glasgow, Citizens |
17 May |
21 May |
679 |
LE SALON New piece by Peeping Tom Collective |
Glasgow, Tramway |
12 May |
14 May |
681 |