Issue 11 - 2005
Prompt Corner 
Every so often I find myself grateful to have seen a play, not because of its inherent excellence or otherwise, but because this is the one that pins down in my mind an individual's shtick - be they writer, director, performer, whatever - to the extent that I don't feel obliged to keep so close an eye on them in future. It's a rebuttable presumption, of course - no critic should ever consider any of their subjects as definitively pigeonholed - but none the less useful: since there's always too much for one to see it all, every opportunity to turn to fresher pastures is welcome.
One such epiphany for me this month has been Douglas Maxwell's Mancub. (You thought I was going to talk about Neil LaBute's plays, didn't you?) Maxwell specialises in rites of passage of maladjusted boys and those around them: from his first hit Decky Does A Bronco, through Our Bad Magnet and Helmet, all his central characters (though this is not the same as "viewpoint characters") are male youths with a view of the world that is never less than idiosyncratic, and their difference of viewpoint is the direct or indirect cause of the play's climactic event. Even in his recent If Destroyed True, it can be argued that the characters of Vincent, Ty and Michael have simply carried their adolescent traits on into adulthood for belated resolution, and in its other plot strand, Norman falls squarely into the usual young constituency without any gerrymandering.
So, even though Mancub is not Maxwell-originated material - being an adaptation of John LeVert's 1986 children's novel The Flight Of The Cassowary, with the action transposed from the US to Scotland - it provided that moment of clarity as regards this particular playwright's preoccupations. Fine performances, certainly, from all three actors: Paul J Corrigan as protagonist Paul (and there's interesting in itself: John LeVert's protagonist is John) steps in and out of the action to narrate, Sandy Grierson relishes morphing between characters, and Claire Lamont is probably a few years too young to appreciate that the voice she uses as girlfriend Karen is uncannily like that of film critic Mark Cousins. But the delights of the moment pale in the knowledge that Maxwell has offered pretty much the same bill of fare several times before, and is unlikely to stop doing so now. It's not that he's bad at it - far from it; I just wish he'd break fresh ground. Indeed, on looking back over my own old reviews, I find I'd already said almost exactly the same thing as far back as Our Bad Magnet's 2001 Edinburgh Fringe run.
Smug
A similar feeling arose watching the two latest openings from Neil LaBute. (Ah, I couldn't let it lie after all!) My Financial Times review of This Is How It Goes is contained in the body of this issue, so normally I wouldn't rehash the same material in this column, but it's difficult to avoid in this instance. In both that play and Some Girl(s), LaBute seems to be consciously ringing the changes on what is perceived as his dramatic approach - distanced, astringent, regarding the extremities of human thought and behaviour with dispassion but perhaps some subconscious misogyny - yet in both plays the superficial differences serve inadvertently to highlight the same fundamental approach, which is this: he never damn well commits himself. He neither resolves his intellectual games nor offers a standpoint of his own. That, of course, is part of the point of This Is How It Goes, but it gets taken to altogether smug lengths. The play is dedicated to Harold Pinter, who, although he may not have explained all his dramatic situations, left little doubt what he thought of the goings-on he depicted. With LaBute it's hard to see past the figure of the author. even more so in these two plays, as the unnamed male protagonist is in each case a writer.
I kept imagining Man (yawn) in This Is How. played, as he was in its New York première, by Ben Stiller. It would, I think, have been a significantly different evening. I like Ben Chaplin as an actor, but here he came across as too stolid, a little uneasy and altogether easier for us to suspect his word; when the is-it-the-truth-or-isn't-it games become explicit, it's not that much of a shock to find Chaplin in an ambiguous position, whereas I imagine that Stiller's charm would have posed more of a challenge to an audience in this respect. It's a perverse tribute to Moisés Kaufman's direction that he adheres scrupulously to the author's ambivalent, almost mocking tone.
Formulaic
One thing, though: there's no mileage in arguing that the
differences between the UK and US in the historical background
to the race issue mean that it's irrelevant to this country. Even
anyone in denial of the continuing reality of racism in
As for Some Girl(s), there's really not that much to say. It's moderately amusing, not especially enlightening, pretty formulaic. David Schwimmer acts exactly as you'd expect David Schwimmer to act; Lesley Manville continues her bid to overtake Frances Barber in the ice-queen stakes; and it's nice to see Catherine Tate back in the West End for what I think, though I'm not sure, is the first time since the RSC's A Servant Of Two Masters in 2000 - she's becoming famous as a comedian, but her character comedy is always based on an actor's skills of sharp observation and precise reproduction. Apart from that, it almost seems a limbering-up exercise for the Donmar's piece.
Mid-whelmed
Almost a page into the column and no mention yet of the biggest opening in an age, and the issue's cover story? (Sorry about that rather static cover image, by the way: for some reason, no actual production shots were offered to us.) Well, that's because I'm afraid I can't be particularly fervent one way or the other about Michael Grandage's revival of Guys And Dolls. I kept feeling. well, not exactly underwhelmed, but not overwhelmed either: just sort of mid-whelmed. My strong impression was that it was a case of a magnificent show - I'm with Charles Spence in considering it "the greatest of all the great Broadway musicals" - carrying the main performances rather than the other way round.
I wonder whether my response might have anything to do with
being seated almost at the back of the Piccadilly's stalls. This
isn't an oblique gripe about not getting good seats, because
it may contrarily have given me a better impression of the
production: if the oomph and pizzazz discerned by a number
of other reviewers didn't penetrate back to row R, then that
surely says something about the staging. Certainly, I wouldn't
have heard a musical peep out of Ewan McGregor without a
mike; he has a smooth, reasonably sweet voice, as he showed
at the end of the 2003 movie Down With Love (although,
to be frank, that's not likely to stick in the memory), but
without amplification he'd be hard pressed to project it
past the pit. Jenna Russell's Miss Sarah seemed to be a
collection of convenient responses: surely we should see
her slowly unwinding through the
Extremes
What unsettled me most about The Home Place, however, was neither Brian Friel's laboured writing, from his ostentatious Chekhov allusions to the downright ogrishness of cousin Richard's anthropometrics (far from the outré preoccupation it's assumed in many reviews to be: pre-1914 Winston Churchill was a vigorous advocate of eugenics, a different aspect of the same nexus of notions about human bloodstock), nor Tom Courtenay's performance which seems to have irked so many (his phrasing, with its odd breaks in mid-sentence, struck me as no more odd than Michael Foot's), but the possible political allegory of its ending.
The play concludes by showing the villagers of the fictional Ballybeg of 1878 (under pressure from nationalist extremists) and the Brits in the big house more or less severing ties with each other, as even the moderate characters of landlord Christopher and his chatelaine Margaret are pulled towards their respective extremes. Now, Friel has always been keenly aware of the dual traditions of the people of the island of Ireland; in many ways he embodies them himself, as a Northern Ireland-born man who lives in the Republic, albeit just over the border. This ambivalence and liminality is in his blood, and in much of his drama. An ending such as that of The Home Place, coming at a time when Northern Irish politics have polarised with a flight of voters from the centre ground to the extremes of Paisleyite Unionism on the one hand and Sinn Féin on the other, strikes me as a counsel of despair. More than the Chekhovian passing of an age of gentry and their large estates, I felt Friel hinting at the passing of my own age, one in which there was any hope of meaningful common ground, in my homeland or the wider world.
Ian Shuttleworth : ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me By the Danube?
Some years ago, as Yugoslavia was continuing its bloody break-up into spitting component states, I met some of the members of this ethnic diaspora at the festival of New Plays from Europe in Bonn. At the accompanying colloquium, they all introduced themselves: "We are from Bosnia", "We are from Croatia". murmurs of sympathy, then an awkward pause when the Serbs stood up: "Hi, we're the bad guys!" All hostility immediately melted - not that theatre often provokes it among its practitioners.
This May the "bad guys" celebrated fifty years of their national theatre festival, Sterijino Pozorje, and made it an opportunity for the splinters of ex-Yugoslav theatre to reassemble by the Danube. The 2005 festival had two main components: the usual competitive section of "National Drama" featuring plays by Serbian writers, though not all performed by Serbian companies, and a parallel group, "Circles", looking at recent new writing in ex-Yugoslav republics.
Novi Sad, where the festival takes place, is itself in a part of Serbia where minorities flourish - Slovak, Romanian, Hungarian - and it was probably easier to hold this potentially inflammatory event here than in the capital, Belgrade. There were no ugly incidents in what turned out to be a very friendly, bridge-rebuilding occasion, yet in the town one might have a request to order a Croatian book turned down by the local bookshop with a curt "We don't deal with Croatia."
Abnormalities
It will be a while before true normality returns to ex-Yugoslavia. Meanwhile its theatre continues to celebrate the abnormalities. The names British theatregoers know from the area - Biljana Srbljanovic, Dejan Dukovski - are often associated with "in-yer-face", but with the justification (not afforded to Sarah Kane) that theirs has sadly been the epicentre of the meaningless violence and ensuing desolation that the movement reflects. Both were represented here by new work, along with other names that may be faintly familiar - Dusan Kovacevic, Haris Pasovic - and some that are not even familiar to the present generation of Serbian playgoers.
I have to preface this report by stressing that it will be much more reportage than criticism, because this locally-oriented event was not primarily intended for foreign visitors, and I found myself struggling to make sense of some very text-based theatre, let alone understand its minutely nuanced political context. Not that it didn't bring pleasure.
Underclass
In any event, I arrived after the opening productions, a Slovenian staging of Dusan Kovacevic's modern (1973) classic Marathon Men Running The Lap Of Honour, and a sombre new comedy from Serbia's partner state, Montenegro Blues by Radmila Vojdovic. My opening treat was a play by Alexander Popovic, a prolific writer now being rescued from a period of neglect by his friend the director Egon Savin. Popovic's absurdist side was evident in The Fatal Motorist, a tale of love and jealousy on the urban fringe: he abandons his girl for a tight-rope walker, she is taken up by a teacher, they get together again. The play's curious switches of style were unduly emphasised by one or two actors with an eye on a prize who put the delivery of a "star turn" ahead of ensemble work - and, shamefully, the worst offender succeeded.
Another, more realistic side of Popovic was revealed the next night, when Savin (again) directed one of his 300 TV plays, Pig's Father. Its TV origins were neatly overcome by Marija Kalabic's clever triptych of a set, using horrendously kitsch backcloths emphasising its 60s setting, on which two contrasting mothers-in-law sat on either side of their children as they stumbled into marriage and out, following the wife's claim to have killed their child. Both plays served to remind us that the underclass has had its stage presence in ex-Yugoslavia for quite a while. Of the modern examples, one of the more successful was Ivica Buljan's production for the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka of Jazz, by Filip Sovagevic. Buljan took a fairly straightforward series of linked monologues from an extended, highly dysfunctional family and literally orchestrated them, bringing a large but rather ineffectual group of musicians on stage and adding cheesy '80s-ish songs to the proceedings. The whole cast remained active on stage throughout, providing much likable distraction - more in the messy manner of Jerome Deschamps than of Christoph Marthaler, whose disciplined anarchy was suggested as a model for this show.
Bored Rutting
Disciplined anarchy is a more suitable description for Other Side, the new show by Dejan (Powderkeg) Dukovski, directed by Slobodan Unkovski for the Macedonian Drama Theatre in Skopje. I'm told that this is a step forward for Dukovski, who uses a Schnitzler-like sequence of confrontations between four actors to examine, not the state of the Balkans, but contemporary sexuality. Without language (the surtitles were from Macedonian into Serbian) it seemed a long two hours of dialectic, punctuated by pistol-shots and episodes of bored rutting in the two toilets which were practically the show's only scenery. Some impressive acting, but to the mere observer the anarchy could have done with still more discipline, and the text with severe cutting.
Ugljesa Sajtinac's Huddersfield was seen and admired last year in Leeds, and here its English director Alex Chisholm's Serb version won praise, and the award for best contemporary play, although her style was considered too precise by admirers of the looser work of Unkovski and Buljan. The play is a Look Back In Anger for Serbia today, and it's easy to find parallels between post-war Britain's disillusioned graduate bums and Serbia's alienated thirty-somethings, adrift in a society whose values they detest. Goran Suslik shone as the central Jimmy Porter figure who alienates everyone, but it was Nebojsa Glogovac as his mentally damaged poet friend who literally stopped the show.
Elegance
Suslik showed his versatility by appearing the following night, almost unrecognisably smartened, in Unredeemable, a previously unperformed work by the poet Momcilo Nastasijevic. He and the rest of a fine cast revelled in the Thirties decadence of the play, pitched somewhere between TS Eliot and Noel Coward, and impeccably staged by Jovan Cirilov (known worldwide as the long-standing artistic director of Belgrade's BITEF festival but here making his directing debut) in Angelina Atlagic's simply elegant sets and divinely luxurious costumes, a combination which deservedly won her this festival's design award. Again, young Serbs seemed unimpressed by this period piece: perhaps they did not notice that it was describing sexual shenanigans every bit as unconventional as those in Other Side.
I welcomed its sheer style amidst so much deliberate grunge (let us pass hurriedly over a ghastly debut play about the death of Kurt Cobain), which is probably why I warmed so much to the Croatian playwright Tena Stivicic's The Two Of Us, an unashamedly trivial treatment of what might have been an episode of Sex And The City. What stood out In it were the tremendously engaging, precise performances of the two so-fashionable young Zagreb girls at its centre (one is having an affair with the other's father), from Jelena Dokic and Aleksandra Jankovic. Both are Croatian-born, like the play's director, but the production is from Belgrade's Atelier 212, which supplied three of the festival's shows. Stivicic obviously writes great dialogue and will probably soon be lost to TV, but you might note that she has written a play in English, about sex trafficking, called Fragile - it might be well worth a look.
Optimism
I had to leave before Vienna's Burgtheater presented their version of Biljana Srbljanovic's latest, God Save America, which won Karin Beier the festival's best director award and took the critics' prize for best production. My final night saw a play more important for its searing topical relevance than its actual dramatic achievement. I remember thinking the same a dozen years ago, when LIFT brought us Sarajevo, by Goran Stefanovksi from an original idea by Haris Pasevic. Here was Pasevic again, directing the National Theatre of Sarajevo in his piece Rebellion In The National Theatre.
It takes the idea of a dance marathon from They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, adds the sleazy trappings of a TV reality show, and uses it as a fairly obvious but increasingly disturbing metaphor for the agonies inflicted on Bosnia. On the very day when Serbian TV showed horrific footage of Serb Scorpions executing civilians in Srebrenica, the piece could not have had more impact - yet Srebrenica is far enough away in the memory for some of the young Novi Sad audience to appear to miss the parallels completely. Pasevic's piece (which I personally think could be even more powerful given the wordless treatment of Tattoo Theatre's Mladen Materic) manages an ending which is optimistic to the point of naiveté, but in Serbia today such optimism is more than welcome.
Ian Herbert : ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
BASHMENT New play by Rikki Beadle-Blair |
TR Stratford EiS |
25 May |
18 Jun |
714 |
THE BIG LIFE Transfer of new musical by Paul Sirett and Paul Joseph |
Apollo |
23 May |
|
698 |
BLOWING WHISTLES New play by Matthew Todd |
Warehouse Croydon |
27 May |
26 Jun |
703 |
EFFIE MAY New play by Allister Bain |
Oval House |
26 May |
11 Jun |
715 |
GUYS AND DOLLS Revival of musical by Frank Loesser |
Piccadilly |
1 Jun |
|
733 |
HEDDA GABLER Transfer of revival of play by Henrik Ibsen |
Duke Of York's |
23 May |
|
702 |
THE HOME PLACE New play by Brian Friel (Gate, Dublin) |
Comedy |
25 May |
|
716 |
HORTENSIA AND THE MUSEUM OF DREAMS New play by Nilo Cruz |
Finborough |
24 May |
10 Jun |
704 |
KISSING WITH TONGUES New play by Melanie Branton (Painted Tyrant) |
Etcetera |
25 May |
12 Jun |
747 |
LIVE FROM PARADISE New piece by Julian Maynard Smith (Station House Opera) |
Toynbee Studios/ B'ham / Colch'r |
25 May |
4 Jun |
713 |
MANCUB New adaptation by Douglas Maxwell, from John LeVert (SohoNanishing Point) |
Soho |
2 Jun |
10 Jun |
741 |
THE MUSICAL MEDIUM New musical by Stuart Wood |
Landor |
31 May |
18 Jun |
727 |
MY LIFE AS A 10-YEAR-OLD BOY Solo show by Nancy Cartwright |
Riverside |
24 May |
29 May |
748 |
ON THE SHORE OF THE WIDE WORLD New play by Simon Stephens (NT/Manchester Royal Exchange) |
Cottesloe |
26 May |
23 Aug |
723 |
OTHER ROOMS I OPEN GROUND Double bill by Debbie Kent I Sarah Grochala(Dirly Market TC) |
Theatro Technis |
31May |
19 Jun |
743 |
PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Globe |
2 Jun |
1 Oct |
744 |
THE QUARE FELLOW Return of revival of play by Brendan Behan (Oxford Stage) |
Tricycle |
27 May |
2 Jul |
721 |
SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM Revival of compilation musical |
Upstairs at the Gatehouse |
28 May |
3 Jul |
720 |
SILK STOCKINGS UK première of 1957 musical by Cole Porter (Lost Musicals) |
Lilian Baylis |
22 May |
12 Jun |
697 |
THE SOCIABLE PLOVER New play by Tim Whitnall |
Old Red Lion |
2 Jon |
18 Jun |
748 |
SOME GIRLS) New play by Neil LaBute |
Gielgud |
24 May |
|
705 |
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES New illusionism/mentalism show by Darren Brown |
Cambridge |
2 Jun |
18 Jun |
726 |
STRANGE LANDS New play by Philip Goulding |
Courtyard |
2 Jun |
26 Jun |
722 |
SWEETHEART Revival of play by Nick Grosso (H ld9fie Title) |
Etcetera |
31May |
12 Jun |
727 |
THIS IS HOW IT GOES New play by Neil LaBute |
Donmar Warehouse |
31 May |
9 Jul |
728 |
UNCLE VANYA Revival of play by Anton Chekhov (Maly Theatre) |
Barbican |
24 May |
28 May |
749 |
Regions |
||||
ALFIE New musical by John Cameron, bookllyrics Eden Phillips. based on novel by Bill Naughton |
Watford Palace |
31 May |
18 Jun |
758 |
BELIEVE WHAT YOU WILL Revival of play by Philip Massinger, additional material by Ian McHugh |
Strafford upon Avon, Swan |
26 May |
4 Nov |
760 |
CHIMPS Revival of play by Simon Block |
Liverpool Playhouse |
1 Jun |
18 Jun |
760 |
COME BLOW YOUR HORN Revival of play by Neil Simon |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
23 May |
25 Jun |
756 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Sheffield Crucible |
24 May |
11 Jun |
757 |
DIRTY WONDERLAND New piece by Michael Wynne and Frantic Assembly |
Brighton, Grand Ocean Hotel |
19 May |
29 May |
751 |
THE FALSE CORPSE New play by Shaun Prendergast |
Brighton, Theatre Royal |
20 May |
21 May |
751 |
THE FENCE New play by Howard Barker |
Birmingham Rep |
3 Jun |
4 Jun |
759 |
HAY FEVER Revival of play by Noël Coward |
York, Theatre Royal |
25 may |
11 Jun |
758 |
IMPROBABLE FICTION New play by Alan Ayckbourn |
Scarborough, Stephen Joseph |
26 May |
17 Sep |
757 |
_JULIA PASTRANA, THE UGLIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD Revival of play by Shaun Prendergast (Zygo) |
Brighton, Theatre Royal |
20 May |
21 May |
751 |
KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS Revival of play by Giles Croft, from screenplay |
Pillochry Festival |
25 May |
19 Oct |
765 |
MACK AND MABEL Revival of musical by Jerry Herman. based on book by Michael Stewart |
Newbury, Watermill |
23 May |
9 Jul |
755 |
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS Revival of play by Robert Bolt |
Plllochry Festival |
24 May |
21 Oct |
764 |
SCAPINO, or THE TRICKSTER Revival of play by Molière in new translation by Jeremy Sams |
Chichester Festival |
26 May |
9 Sep |
763 |
3600" New piece by Paul Pinson and Pascal Dores (Boiilerhouse / Metalovoice) |
Brghton |
13 May |
13 May |
752 |
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Revival of play by Christopher Serge!, from novel by Harper Lee |
PAlochry Festival |
26 May |
20 Oct |
764 |
UNDERGROUND New piece by dreamthinkspeak |
Brighton, Th. Royal Stage Door |
26 May |
20 May |
755 |