Issue 18 - 2005
Prompt Corner 
This is probably the smallest issue of Theatre Record since I took over its editorship. Part of this apparent paucity is due to minor changes in layout, part simply to the time of year: this issue, as ever, carries all reviews from major London and national newspapers and magazines of plays opening in the fortnight in question. And in any case, there may be fewer pages, but all the usual features are still included.
Prancing
There's the traditional dodgy musical. Jonathan Gibbs puts his finger on one of the main problems with Into Thin Air!: it could work thoroughly amiably as period pastiche, but once it brings wacky ideas into play it simply doesn't go far enough with them. Never mind the cheap 'n' cheerful staging, with eerie lights and a door in the backdrop serving as the main evidence of extraterrestrial weirdness - this is principally a failing in Robert Gray's script. And perhaps I saw the show on an off night, but either Wayne Sleep is putting some altogether too subtle notes into his characterization of the merely modestly-talented camp adjutant, or else he is indeed beginning to run out of terpsichorean steam: I saw a Sleep that was on top prancing form for his solo spotlight sequences but oddly tentative when dancing with partners, especially during the first act.
There's Michael Billington's preoccupation with the supposed tyranny of the 90-minute play, cropping up again in his review of Harvest. Lately this has almost overtaken socio-political engagement as Michael's most frequently voiced theatrical concern; it's only to be expected that he would find a kindred perspective in the first significant play to emerge from the Monsterist school of writing since its "foundation".
Decent
There's the major West End production that divides opinion. Roderic Dunnett and Georgina Brown captain the cheerleading squad for A Few Good Men; Kate Bassett and old faithful Nicholas de Jongh lead the catcalls. Myself, I fall somewhere between the two camps (let's call them Delta and X-Ray). Like Charlie Spencer, I continue to be as much of a sap as the next man for any halfway decent courtroom drama, and this is halfway decent at the very least. What disappointed me was in part that Aaron Sorkin didn't examine some of his issues closely enough. Granted, this was Sorkin's first play, and one shouldn't judge it by the subsequent standards he set himself with The West Wing. Nevertheless, when sidekick lawyer Sam protests that "any decent human being" would have protested the illegal orders in question, Sorkin leaves the remark unchallenged; the play is all about the particular instance of the US Marines' code of honour, and doesn't address the point that the training programme of pretty much every armed fighting force in the world is geared precisely towards extinguishing all "decent human being" impulses, since individuality and compassion are considered damaging to the cohesion of such a force. And as regards avoiding toc much of a critical tone, David Esbjornson's staging waves the flag rather too literally, even at one point invoking the classic image of Marines raising the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. "You'll think you were there," opines Roderic; well, only if you believe that a US Marine would execute his rifle drill moves with all the fluidity of a dancer and none of the crisp precision of a soldier.
There's the worryingly misjudged throwaway comment. Zubin Varla as Brutus in Julius Caesar "wears a kebab shop owner's T-shirt", says Quentin Letts. True, it was a hot night when David Farr's production opened in Hammersmith, but I noticed no signs of sweat, stains or any discoloration on Varla's shirt. The only other possible meaning I can see in the phrase is that he is wearing a T-shirt and happens to have a certain kind of complexion. Why not comment on Varla's overly musical delivery (which put me strongly in mind of his portrayal of Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar several years ago, in that he sang his Shakespearean lines almost as much), which is surely rather more germane than his dress and/orithnic heritage?
There are the first couple of Edinburgh transfers, most notably Switch Triptych. Adriano Shaplin's play suffered dreadfully last month from being presented in the huge Ballroom space of the Assembly Rooms, whose acoustics worked directly against Shaplin's style (as both writer and director) of high-speed declamation. It also didn't particularly seem to say anything that Shaplin hasn't said a handful of times before. On its transfer to Soho, the venerable Aleks Sierz raves, "Older audiences might find it overheated but that's because it's young, young, young", whereas Brian Logan, some 20 years younger than Aleks, finds it anything but overheated.
Absence
Two things, however, are notable for their absence from this issue. The first is any Financial Times review other than Sarah Hemming's piece on The Women Of Lockerbie. Quite simply, no others have been printed. Actually, that's not quite true: Alastair Macaulay has had reviews of A Few Good Men, Julious Caesar, Harvest and Huis C/os published in the FT, but only in weekly roundups in the international edition, which (although available on the paper's subscription-based Web site) are outside TR's reproduction remit since the reviews were not printed in the UK. It's rather dispiriting that the three biggest openings of the fortnight didn't seem to be worth space in the pink 'un for the relevant country.
The other absence - the now grimly familiar phenomenon of the major West End production which closes before we can reprint its reviews - is rectified in the next issue, with coverage of Nigel Planer's Sistine Chapel comedy On The Ceiling.
At the Back
Are you a member of TaPRA? I am, apparently, by virtue of having attended their inaugural conference in Manchester last week, and I'm rather glad about it.
The acronym stands for the Theatre and Performance Research Association. It has been founded "in order to foster and sustain research in all theatre, performance and related areas in British and Irish Universities and allied institutions." Apparently, our academic theatre tutors and researchers are suffering from various state acts of interference in their activity, most notably a thing called the Research Assessment Exercise, which seeks to grade universities in a league table based on fairly arbitrary points-scoring: How many books has your faculty published? How many articles? Who's running your campus theatre and when did Peter Brook last tour there? The result has been an atmosphere of much mutual suspicion, with star lecturers being poached (usually just as they are about to publish something seminal), spurious "research centres" being set up, and cut-throat competition for the few grants available. TaPRA is a brave attempt to reassert the unity of the academic theatre research community in the face of this antagonistic situation.
Shambolic
The good news is that if such an antagonistic atmosphere exists it wasn't in the least apparent in Manchester, where a hundred researchers, about a tenth of the total target population, had a very sociable, very productive time. I've written at the back here about the conference held last year in St Petersburg by what can be seen as the international wing of TaPRA, the International Federation for Theatre Research, which was a much drier affair, and a great deal more shambolic. Folk in St Petersburg seemed to cluster together for comfort in small cliques, with little attempt at outreach or a welcome for those not "in". In Manchester, while everyone seemed to know one another, they made outsiders like myself feel quickly at home.
Panoply
For a first-time event, it was remarkably well organised. Working groups had met over the year to select and programme some sixty papers in a number of strands - History and Historiography (which I think probably means writing it), Scenography, Philosophy, Documentation, Directors and Collectives, Performance and the Body, New Technologies, that sort of thing. Of course there was a fair quota of the jargon-loaded exercises in bafflement that one can expect from a certain type of academic, but there was also a much more generous ration of well-argued, thoroughly researched papers that made you want to go out and read more about their subject - or see their work. Some speakers simply relied on good delivery, others had the full panoply of Powerpoint slide shows and videoclips. One splendid presenter offered her paper in the form of a danced performance, commenting perceptively as she did on the rehearsal process and her approach to dance composition. Another had reconstructed the stage music for a Charles Kean production and played it to us to the visual accompaniment of its designer's sketches. Only a few poor souls mumbled into a sheaf of closely-typed notes for rather more than their allotted time:
What was particularly impressive was the democratic nature of the event. Distinguished professors of theatre and drama were willing to confess themselves stuck in a particular line of enquiry, as they listened to graduate students who had fully worked out theirs. What interested the conference's delegates was not who you were, but what you had to say.
I couldn't stay for the elections for the new body, but I hope the TaPRA board will include people like the warm and tireless Maggie Gale and Viv Gardner who hosted this Manchester try-out, or the urbane Jim Davis and the pugnacious Jackie Bratton who put the history strand together - but perhaps I name too many names already. What seems likely is that for the next conference there will be more exchange of papers beforehand, to allow the maximum opportunity for developing discussion, and also that there will be more space for a second tier of short contributions on "work in progress", where researchers can bounce the projects that are arousing their enthusiasm off their peers before they are fully worked out. As well as this coal-face activity, there will, I hope, be opportunities for the researchers to discuss what some of them will want to call meta-questions, but what you and I would describe as the questions behind the papers, such as how best research may be conducted and disseminated. All these possibilities were evident in Manchester, and the most exciting aspect of it was the willingness of a large number of subject specialists to work hard together, without financial reward, to demonstrate their love of their material.
Rival
I was there as the Chairman of the Society for Theatre Research, which you might think of as a rival body, but it is clear that there is more than enough room for TaPRA, which addresses the needs of academic theatre research, and the STR, which while concentrating on British theatre opens its doors wide to practitioners and sheer enthusiasts as well as academics. I'm hoping that STR will be able to work with TaPRA in many ways in the future. I'd love us to run a conference as good as theirs.
Meanwhile, you might like to know a little more about what STR does, too. Its annual public lecture programme, which anyone may attend, is about to start with a talk commemorating the centenary of Henry Irving. Its scholarly journal Theatre Notebook is even older than the Society itself, and comes free to members. (For academics who need to know that sort of thing, it is peer-reviewed, and thus qualifies its contributors for points in the Research Assessment I mentioned.) Also free to members are its annual publications: the last was a history of the Open Space and the Round House. We administer the annual Theatre Book Prize, and the William Poel Festival, a non-competitive day where students from the major drama schools deliver duologues from the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre to commemorate the man who most influenced our thinking about the staging - and speaking - of Shakespeare. And our research awards, totalling some £5,000 a year, are open to both amateur and professional researchers.
London Base
Our most recent innovation is to offer STR members a London base: we have arranged associate membership for them in The Agency, a cosy private members' club in the heart of the West End, in fact opposite the Coliseum, where they can drop in for a drink or a meal, or simply to leave their coat and thumb through the latest copy of The Stage on their way to another appointment. Individual membership of The Agency costs rather a lot. For STR members it comes as part of their subscription, at present £30 for members in the UK. Quite a bargain.
You can find out more about TaPRA on their website www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/drama/events/tapra, and about the Society for Theatre Research on www.str.org.uk
Ian Herbert - ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ANTIGONE Revival of play by Sophocles, in a new version by Jacquelyn Honess-Martin (InSite) |
Walworth Council Chambers |
8 Sep |
23 Sep |
1112 |
THE CURE AT TORY Revival of Seamus Heaney's version of Philoctetes by Sophocles (Floodtide Prods) |
Cockpit |
8 Sep |
24 Sep |
1109 |
DANCING WITH THE ANGELS New play by Michael Toumey (Be Lucky Prods) |
Union |
1 Sep |
17 Sep |
1102 |
DO I HEAR A WALTZ? Revival of musical by Richard Rodgers/Stephen Sondheim/Arthur Laurents |
Landor |
7 Sep |
1 Oct |
1106 |
ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE: MOTHER OF THE PRIDE Revival of play by Catherine Muschamp |
Jermyn Street |
30 Aug |
17 Sep |
1096 |
A FEW GOOD MEN UK premiere of play by Aaron Sorkin |
T R Haymarket |
6 Sep |
1114 |
|
A FOREST New devised piece, conceived by Robert Pacitti |
Camden People's |
7 Sep |
24 Sep |
1128 |
HARVEST New play by Richard Bean |
Royal Court |
8 Sep |
1 Oct |
1123 |
HUIS CLOS (NO WAY OUT) Revival of play by Jean-Paul Sartre |
King's Head |
5 Sep |
25 Sep |
1098 |
INTO THIN AIR! New musical by Robert A Gray |
New Players |
1 Sep |
24 Sep |
1105 |
JULIUS CAESAR Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Lyric Hammersmith |
7 Sep |
15 Oct |
1120 |
LACTIC ACID Return of piece by The Generating Company |
UCL Bloomsbury |
8 Sep |
17 Sep |
1131 |
THE LIFEBLOOD Revival of play by Glyn Maxwell |
Riverside |
7 Sep |
2 Oct |
1132 |
LODGERS New play by Alastair Trevill (Mauve Prods) |
White Bear |
8 Sep |
25 Sep |
1128 |
MARC SALEM'S MIND GAMES Return of solo mentalism show |
Tricycle |
31 Aug |
17 Sep |
1101 |
THE NIGHT SHIFT New play by Mark Murphy |
BAC |
31 Aug |
25 Sep |
1099 |
RADIOPLAY Return of solo piece by Ed Gaughan (Flywheel Prods) |
BAC |
7 Sep |
25 Sep |
1127 |
SHAKERS RE-STIRRED Revival of play by John Godber and Jane Thornton (Blue Bud Stage Co) |
Upstairs at the Gatehouse |
1 Sep |
17 Sep |
1113 |
SWANSONG New play by Conor McDermottroe (Benrae Prods) |
Finborough |
8 Sep |
24 Sep |
1097 |
SWITCH TRIPTYCH New play by Adriano Shaplin (Riot Group) |
Soho |
6 Sep |
8 Oct |
1113 |
THE TIMEKEEPERS Revival of the play by Dan Clancy |
New End |
31 Aug |
10 Sep |
1100 |
TRAVELS WITH MY VIRGINITY New solo piece by Guy Dartnell |
BAC |
2 Sep |
4 Sep |
1101 |
WHO KILLED MR DRUM? New play by Fraser Grace and Sylvester Stein, based on book by Stein |
Riverside |
1 Sep |
8 Oct |
1107 |
THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE New play by Deborah Brevoort |
Orange Tree |
2 Sep |
1 Oct |
1110 |
Regions |
||||
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN Revival of musical by Irving Berlin |
Bromley, Churchill |
26 Aug |
3 Sep |
1132 |
AS YOU LIKE IT Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Newcastle-under-Lyme, New Vic |
2 Sep |
24 Sep |
1136 |
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Revival of play by Tennessee Williams |
Nottingham Playhouse |
6 Sep |
24 Sep |
1134 |
THE HAUNTED HOTEL New adaptation by Philip Dart and Val May from novella by Wilkie Collins |
Coventry, Belgrade |
1 Sep |
10 Sep |
1136 |
LOOT Revival of play by Joe Orton |
St Andrews, Byre |
2 Sep |
17 Sep |
1137 |
THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT Revival of stage adaptation by Philip Goulding from screenplay by TEB Clarke |
Hornchurch, Queen's |
30 Aug |
17 Sep |
1133 |
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Revival of Christopher Serge! adaptation from Harper Lee novel |
Salisbury Playhouse |
9 Sep |
1 Oct |
1135 |