Issue 15 - 2005
Prompt Corner 
It's something of an intellectual exercise writing this column when immersed in the radically different performance-going culture of the Edinburgh Fringe. Up here, even contemplating a show that lasts more than 90 minutes - whether as a spectator or a practitioner - is widely regarded as a sign of derangement. A number of recent think-pieces, not the least of them by Michael Billington, have argued the pros and cons of such a durational shift in top-flight theatregoing. The assumption seems to be that its a matter of cultural demographics: as audiences get younger, they are more used to the notion of consuming their art in smaller doses (see also the argument that the !pod has returned music to a condition of being based on the individual piece rather than the album), and also more inclined to schedule a theatre visit as part of a larger evening out rather than as the central purpose of the evening.
They're plausible points, given further weight in my current environment by the tendency to see more than one show each day. (I'm typing this at the end of a seven-show day, but then again, I have no life.) And yet the International Festival here shows few signs of accommodating such a climate. Last year's (admittedly purgatorial) eleven-hour production of Le Soulier de Satin is followed this year by eight and a half hours of the complete plays of J M Synge. (Once again, though, the Fringe comes up trumps, with a 36'4-hour comedy show by Mark Watson.)
As regards the commercial West End, though, one of the most compelling arguments remains that of brute economics. The running costs of a theatre per evening remain the same whether the show being presented runs for 90 minutes straight through or for three and a half hours with two intervals: there is no economy of brevity. Quite the reverse, as theatre management will be extremely keen for an interval in which they can generate additional income from drinks sold in their bars. Behind The Iron Mask (see Quote of the Fortnight; reviews to be reprinted next issue) would have mn for barely 90 minutes if its interval had been excised, but even its brevity couldn't entice audiences.
Ropiness
Who's The Daddy? at the King's Head was of similar duration, and similar ropiness. I don't know to what extent it was charity towards the memory of the recently departed Dan Crawford that prompted so many gentle reviews of Toby Young and Lloyd Evans' piece on bed-hopping at the Spectator. It may have been an unconscious critical freemasonry: I've noticed on my own occasions as a performer, here on the Edinburgh Fringe several years ago, that the tribe has been gentle to one of its own number. But the former point is plainly inapplicable - neither Young nor Evans is in fact dead - and the latter moot. So let's talk frankly about what's wrong with the play.
It isn't funny. All right, it gets a number of sniggers, but they're very much of the schoolboy kind. The play grew out of a sketch written for the Spectate(s summer party, and it has that air of fifth-formers taking the rise out of their teachers in an end-of-term revue. I can't think of any gags that one would cross the room, never mind the street, to hear... not even the oft-quoted one-liner about David Blunkett being the only man who can't see through Kimberly Quinn.
It doesn't work as a farce. That genre tends to observe the Aristotelian unities, so that the comic tension can be most effectively escalated through continuous action. Who's the Daddy? is constructed in a number of shortish scenes which by and large squander the impetus of events. Also, director Tamara Harvey and the majority of the actors treat it as panto rather than farce. As with most comedy only more so, the key to performing farce is to play it as if you believe it 100%, ai if you really have virtually everything to lose. Harvey's cast are more concerned with cartooning their real-life originals than with playing the narrative. Indeed, it may be significant that (with the exception of an honourable mention for Paul Prescott's David Blunkett), the only actor to inhabit his role with an awareness of what's at risk for his character is the one playing the only entirely fabricated figure, Jot Davies as Renaldo the gay chef. (And see last issue's Prompt Comer re. the dubious taste of including someone with Renaldo's most conspicuous traits at this particular moment in London's life.) Possibly the most amusing thing about the production was the bizarre press-night spectacle of a phalanx of hopeful paparazzi outside a shabby Islington pub.
Externals
The same point about farce acting afflicts David Grindley 's Hampstead revival of What The Butler Saw. I'm fonder of this production than most reviewers, but largely on policy grounds: it's my favourite Joe Orton and I relish the chance to see it again. In terms of actual execution, the two younger actors are at a loss to find the appropriate farcical register, with Joanna Page opting for exaggeration and Geoff Breton for underplaying. Even the estimable Belinda Lang turns Mrs Prentice into a pervier version of Lady Bracknell. The central male duo of Jonathan Coy and (especially) Malcolm Sinclair are first-rate, but they can't complete the whole picture themselves. It's worth querying, too, Jonathan Fensom's design, which makes the psychiatric consulting room look authentically 1960s when it would be better as the hub of an imagined Victorian panopticonlike arrangement. The review which notes similarities with the Hampstead's earlier revival of Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party doesn't spot that that was also a Grindley production, perhaps more concerned with getting the externals amusingly spot-on than with working from the core of the play.
At the Back
No "At the Back" this issue
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ALBERT'S BOY New play by James Graham |
Finborough |
21 Jul |
13Aug |
1012 |
CIRCUS OZ Return of circusshow |
Queen Elizabeth Hall |
28 Jul |
21 Aug |
1014 |
DANCING IN THE STREETS Motown tribute musical devised by Keith Strachan |
Cambridge |
19 Jul |
|
976 |
ETHER FROLICS New piece by Shunt /Sound & Fury |
Shunt Vaults |
19 Jul |
30 Jul |
979 |
THE FEVER Revival of play by Wallace Shawn |
Theatre 503 |
27 Jul |
7 Aug |
986 |
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE Revival of play by Terrence McNally |
Sound |
22 Jul |
13Aug |
1013 |
GOBLIN MARKET New play by Abigail Dochedy based on poem by Christina Rossetti |
Southwark Playhouse |
21 Jul |
6Aug |
997 |
THE GRUFFALO Return of adaptation from book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Schefller |
Criterion |
19 Jul |
21 Aug |
982 |
H M S PINAFORE Revival of operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan, in a new version by Herbert Appleman |
Open Air |
21 Jul |
10 Sep |
1008 |
KATHERINE New play by Tom Green |
Finborough |
24 Jul |
8Aug |
978 |
MARY STUART Revival of play by Friedrich Schiller in nevicersion by Peter Oswald |
Donmar Warehouse |
20 Jul |
3Sept |
991 |
PLAY I NOT I Revival of two plays by Samuel Beckett |
BAC |
19 Jul |
7 Aug |
988 |
THE PROMETHEUS EXPERIMENT New piece |
Hoxton Hall |
18 Jul |
11 Aug |
984 |
THE SUPPLIANTS Revival of play by Aeschylus, translated by James Kerr |
BAC |
21 Jul |
7 Aug |
985 |
WHAT THE BUTLER SAW Revival of play by Joe Orton |
Hampstead |
21 Jul |
20 Aug |
998 |
WHO'S THE DADDY? New play by Toby Young and Lloyd Evans with additional material by Jeremy Lloyd |
King's Head |
25 Jul |
28 Aug |
1003 |
THE WOMAN WHO COOKED HER HUSBAND Revival of play by Debbie Isitt |
Jermyn Street |
18 Jul |
6Aug |
1002 |
Regions |
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THE BABY AND FLY PIE New adaptation by Lavinia Murray from the novel by Melvin Burgess |
Manchester, R Exchange Studio |
15 Jul |
30 Jul |
1018 |
THE BAT (DIE FLEDERMAUS) Opera by Johann Strauss with new libretto by Chris Monks |
Newcastle-under-Lyme, New Vic |
22 Jul |
13 Aug |
1020 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Stratford, Royal Shakespeare |
27 Jul |
29 Oct |
1024 |
DRACULA (THE BLOOD COUNT) New play based on the novel by Bram Stoker |
Manchester, Heaton Park |
22 Jul |
7Aug |
1021 |
MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Oxford, Wadham College |
27 Jul |
19 Aug |
102G |
SEJANUS: HIS FALL Revival of play by Ben Jonson |
Stratford, Swan |
26 Jul |
5 Nov |
1023 |
THE SUNFLOWER PLOT New piece by Cartoon de Salvo |
Farnham, West SI Allotments |
18 Jul |
|
1018 |
THIEVES' CARNIVAL revival of play by Jean Anouilh, translated by Lucienne Hill |
Newbury, Watermill |
25 Jul |
10 Sep |
1019 |
A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS New play by Mercedes Kemp |
Hayle Harbour, South Quay |
27 Jul |
7 Aug |
1021 |