Issue 24 - 2005
Prompt Corner 
I've used "contrarian" as a term of mild disapprobation here before. Ah, but it's different when it's me that's being contrary.
Sorry. I noticed, when proofreading this issue (contrary to appearances, it does in fact happen), that my reprinted reviews are often at odds with the predominant currents on this batch of shows: underwhelmed by The Emperor Jones, more enthusiastic about The Rubenstein Kiss and Cyprus, not to say the very space of Trafalgar Studio 2. (I walked in and thought, "This is Pleasance Upstairs from the Edinburgh Fringe"; nothing wrong with Pleasance Upstairs- I've performed there myself.) Individual instances are part of the territory, but when a consistent trend appears to emerge, it gives pause for thought: in the words of J. Edgar Hoover, "Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action." I know that one of the aims of these columns is to try to provoke a second thought - the other Ian, for instance, is not infrequently given to defending otherwise comprehensively mauled musicals - but that's within the context of the totality of critical discourse between these covers. A stand-alone newspaper review is a different matter; when one is repeatedly in the minority, is it time to reassess one's views?
By and large, no. While stopping this side of Olympian pronouncements, a reviewer ought to be confident in the validity of his or her opinion: confident that it's based on accrued knowledge and experience which tempers and informs personal taste (by the time you read this column, I shall have seen my 350th show of the year), confident that one's viewpoint is informed and considered.
Judgement
Note, though, that I spoke of the validity of opinion, not the rightness. In matters of opinion, "right" is as subjective as anything else, unless it can be borne out by specific facts. There are those who believe that this can be done in the field of theatre reviewing: that critics, say, who sneer at a musical which goes on to run for ages and coin it in are by definition wrong in their judgement. This is, of course, tosh. If quality and success were the same thing, the Big Mac would be the greatest haute cuisine in history, The Mousetrap would be the acme of the dramatic art, Barbara Cartland would have been a multiple Nobel laureate, and Tony Blair would have ushered in a new golden age outside his own head as well as inside.
To put it bluntly, reviewing isn't about whether people will go to see a show, but whether they ought to. Even the most scholarly criticism of a play, which might anatomise its textual and subtextual allusions, place it in a social, political and/or historical context or even subject the script to minute linguistic analysis to determine a question of authorship, is implicitly evaluating its worth as a piece of drama which justifies and repays such attention. Indeed, reviews should periodically challenge their readers by including the unknown or unexpected. Look at it from first principles: you want to know whether you should go to a play, then you need information that doesn't chime with your own tastes and predilections, otherwise you've already made up your mind. Cybernetics, the science of communication, defines "information" as the amount of unpredictability in a message. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense: if it doesn't tell you something new, it's not being informative.
That, in turn, abuts on to the question of why people go to the theatre, what they want to get out of the experience. A look at the blockbusters' box office receipts might suggest that principally they look to be entertained, impressed, dazzled, challenged a little bit but not too much: that they don't necessarily look for "information" in that sense from a play. But that strikes me as a patronising interpretation, one that implies that "real", "difficult" plays are inherently "better" than musicals. Of course, this isn't the case: food for thought may or may not be rich, but there are also the matters of how it's prepared and how digestible it proves to be. Surely the one part of the experience in common across the spectrum is the basic aspect of live performance: of feeling oneself in the same time and place as these other living beings whose travails are being played out on the stage, of being in a community with the rest of the audience, with the performers, and ultimately with the characters themselves. (Hence, for instance, my profound problems with the design of The Woman In White, which both in its concept and in the visual grammar it emplys seems to me to run directly counter to this basic tenet of theatre.)
Terms
A reviewer can't judge a play on the terms of its audience as a whole, because that audience as a whole hasn't seen the show yet (or hasn't yet had the full range of opportunities to stay away). One must therefore judge it on its own terms and those of theatre and society. If my vague recollection is correct, Robert Hewison claims once to have closed a play (I can't remember what it was) by remarking in his review that, for a piece which positioned itself as intimately bound up with issues of the Jewish experience, it was more than a little tactless to open on Yom Kippur. Such things do matter; they indicate whether a production is really engaging with the world as it may claim to do.
So, am I more right or more wrong to have been uncertain what The Emperor Jones means in 2005 as much as welcoming a beautifully acted, directed and designed production of it? Or to see Cyprus not just as a play with a rather hackneyed structure but also as one of the more articulate dramatic comments to date on the climate and uses of intelligence-gathering in this brave new world? I'm neither, of course: I give my opinion, and my reasons for it, and it's up to the reader how they read it.
Object-lesson
Information, in the cybernetic sense, is at the heart both of the content of On Ego and of the approach of Mick Gordon's new company On Theatre. Gordon and neurologist Paul Broks contend in this piece that the self is a fiction, an illusion created and re-created by the brain from instant to instant as it processes and shapes the bundles of stimuli it receives - the information. As regards the company, Gordon's vision is to follow up the pieces he fashioned during his time running the Gate, Intimate Death and Love's Work (the latter of which he subsequently remade in Tashkent with new Uzbek vox-pop testimonies), with a series of dramatised essays. On this showing it's an approach that could be very fertile indeed. He succeeds in not simply putting a debate in characters' mouths or moving them around as obvious metaphors for the conflicting viewpoints, but rather of presenting a kind of object-lesson as to what the whole business can mean in practice. Well, in slightly fantastical practice, since the action involves a teleportation experiment. but this also offers a passing sidelight on a question which has bedevilled science-fiction writers and cognitive philosophers alike for some decades: if one were to be atomised in a teleporter, where would the "I" go?
Indeed, one of the more interesting things in what's already a mighty interesting piece of work is the fact that, ultimately, it doesn't in fact dramatise the debate at all. As I say, it takes one particular viewpoint and illustrates that; the debate occurs entirely within us as we watch it, because this "bundle theory" conflicts so radically with out ingrained instincts that we do indeed each have a continuous self, an "I" - the play's final moments only attain the poignancy they aim for and require because at heart we are all "go"-ists. But Gordon neither patronises on the one hand nor lectures on the other. In some ways it reminds me of the infectious enthusiasm of Phelim McDermott in a number of Improbable Theatre productions, but here involving a readiness to play around with big ideas rather than with ways of staging.
Nappy
And now, my opening gambit in a round of the parlour game of Humiliation, in which the aim is to cite an example of one's own ignorance regarding something that every other player knows. I've never really got Ubu. (I've been mistaken for David Thomas of the rock group Pere Ubu, but that's another matter altogether.) I've never seen a production that successfully enacted what is claimed to be the continuing relevance or universal applicability of Jarry's character's thuggish tyranny. apart, that is, from John Clancy's Fatboy on last year's Edinburgh Fringe, but that so tailored its material to a specific analogy (Fatboy/Ubu = the worst aspects of contemporary America) that it can be discounted here. So, the darkness of the play has never in practice come across to me. What's left? Filth and smut, portrayed with vast exuberance but not, to my mind, actually much flair. It's the difference between, say, comedian Jerry Sadowitz and someone on the terraces at Millwall FC. David Greig's version and Dominic Hill's production didn't do anything to change my mind. The moment in the evening that most surprised me was seeing the shoulders of John Peter, two rows in front of me, shaking with mirth as an incontinence nappy freighted with chocolate mousse landed at some velocity in his lap. For the rest, I'm inclined to agree with Michael Billington as regards the play being "kept alive through artificial respiration"; whilst I wouldn't go nearly as far as Nicholas de Jongh in his Standard review, I fear I rather understand his perspective.
When seeing shows with my Theatre Record hat on, I tend not to make full review notes. More fool me: I know I came up with a snappy (and not unkind) epigrammatic description of Almost Blue while watching it at the Riverside, but now it come time to trot it out, I can't for the life of me recall it. Maybe I shall do so at some point during the four weeks before the double issue which will bring Theatre Record's 2005 to a close.
At the Back
Reus to Romania
Those nice people at Ryanair will tell you that Reus is the airport for Barcelona. It's not, it's the airport for Reus, a delightful town a hundred kilometres away whose ancient centre has not changed for centuries. That is not to say that Reus is run down: its narrow streets are elegantly maintained, and hide two magnificently restored all'Italiana theatres, the Fortuny and the Bartrina. Hardly have the good people of the town recovered from a season of Ayckbourn's House and Garden alternating in these two houses than the Cos Festival arrives, a hectic five days of "mime and gestural theatre" that takes over not only these historic houses but venues throughout the town, including a magnificent plaza for open air commedia.
It would be unfair to claim that this is a top-flight festival of physical theatre, but it does present an opportunity both for new groups to make their mark and for at least some of the better-known international companies to be seen in Catalonia. This year, in October, these included France's Fiat Lux, with what might be seen as the Breton version of Monsieur Hulot's Hoilday, the very clever Nouvelles Folies, perhaps not so fresh as when it was seen in Edinburgh and London but still highly entertaining wordless humour. Another hit for the London Mime Festival, Hugo and Inez from Peru , has lost none of its freshness. In spite of the name, this is in fact one incredible puppeteer, Hugo Suarez, who transforms a succession of everyday objects into quirky little living figures in a masterful display of close-up work, using not just his hands but some most unlikely parts of his body to create them.
The Spanish group Bamballina Titelles, whom I recall as the hands behind a very moving puppet Don Quixote, bit off more than they could chew with their Smile Of Federico Garcia Lorca. You would have to be very well acquainted with Lorca's life to find much in it to stir you, beyond some skilful manipulation of half-sized figures by the two actors. Even less on form were Théâtre du Mouvement, who have done some good work in the past but came a heavy cropper with Blanc. sous le masque, a heavy-footed history of mime from its origins to the present day, interspersed with film clips of the likes of Barrault and Marceau, with the company then trying fatally to replicate their routines.
Embarrassment
Widely travelled but new to me were the Israeli Clipa Theater, with attractive modern dance in the form of both small-scale studies and a fully choreographed Rite Of Spring. Catalan physical theatre to most people means big expressive companies like Comediants and Fura dels Baus, but there is also an unfortunate strain of clowning - the kind that tells you a weak non-verbal joke and then repeats it until you want to hide under your seat. Such were Spasmo Teatro, with Extracelestes, a painful tale of three crooks accidentally admitted to heaven, whose embarrassment factor narrowly exceeded that of an Italian group, Erbamile & Ambaradan. Their Symfonia started promisingly with displays of both singing and instrumental skills, but quickly degenerated into a succession of lame gags, mostly based on the varying body shapes of the four performers. Even locals Nats Nus, who had some success at Aurora Nova in Edinburgh, had little to offer in the over-ploughed field of simple slapstick. Surprise discovery of the festival were an English contemporary dance company, Stopgap, following in the path of CanDoCo but mixing two able-bodied with two disabled dancers to offer a modest but very touching and well thought out programme. They're at The Place this month and well worth catching.
Cos is in its eighth year now, and has had considerable impact on what is otherwise rather a sleepy little town, one that has not been afraid to spend its taxpayers' money on the arts. Many of its performances are free, and the locals (including mime students from the local university) pack them out, with noisy audience participation in the children's shows.
Standstill
Romania 's Caragiale festival is even more crowded, with theatre students storming the doors of Bucharest's theatres to see a collection of the year's best productions. This year's selector, Marina Constantinescu, assembled a starry group of Romanian directors with mostly classic plays in what seemed something of a standstill year. Pirandello was the man of the moment, with no less than three productions, including an extremely elegant Six Characters from Liviu Ciulei at the Bulandra, with Ion Caramitru exuding steely charm in the role of the director - not inappropriate, since he has just been appointed director of the city's National Theatre. Ciulei also offered a Henry IV, with Marcel Iures. This was Pirandello's Henry, not Shakespeare's, but the bard was well represented, with a German-speaking Cymbeline directed by Alexander Hausvater, and a much curtailed Twelfth Night from Silviu Purcarete. Or you could try the Alexandrus, Dabije and Darie, the former with Beckett and Chekhov, the latter with Marivaux.
Mihai Manutiu offered two adaptations with different theatre companies, both very intense. His Woyzeck came close enough to Bűchner's fragmented agony, with a well-drilled cast emphasising the military setting with some somewhat over-extended routines. This tendency to elaborate beyond the audience's needs was even more apparent in his Electra, a conflation of Euripides and Sophocles with some unwelcome additions of his own like a strolling gypsy band and some highly non-classical on-stage violence. Manutiu's decision to make his chorus a bunch of rag-picking undesirables didn't make a lot of sense, either, though in both Electra and Woyzeck he did present us with some strikingly effective lighting. The festival's other Greek offering, Gabor Tompa's almost wordless Medea-Circles, which I saw earlier in the year, was much more to my perhaps over-purist taste.
The younger generation of Romanian directors (apart from Victor Ioan Frunza, who continued his exploration of Ionesco with a German-language production of The Chairs) were showing lesser known pieces. Quite why Felix Alexa should choose to mount Leonid Andreev's Thought, a highly conventional pre-revolution Russian play of intrigues in a scientific institution, still eludes me, though the production was at least graced with some fluent performances and a good set from Diana Ruxandra Ion. Wild child Radu Afrim chose a comedy by Swedish writer Jonas Gardell, Cheek to Cheek (in which - get this - a lady undertaker falls in love with a transvestite cabaret artiste) as a vehicle for some typical fireworks, set off with great charm by the Nottara company. Gardell is also a stand-up comic in his native country, and Afrim's witty and colourful staging, while giving rein to this element, added plenty of its own wacky interventions to make a light, but very amusing evening.
Allusion
Even on the verge of entry into the European Union, it would seem that Romanian theatre still prefers to address the country's current problems by allusion rather than direct examination, as was the way in Ceausescu's repression. Thus, Alexandru Tocilescu commissioned A Day in the Life of Nicolai Ceausescu from Th. Denis Dinolescu in 1997, but it took until now for it to be presented. A sprawling, revue-style look at the dictator's rise and fall, its (very) rough theatre approach will endear it more to local than outside audiences. The one play I saw by a young author, mady-baby.edu, seemed at first sight to be no more than a trendy, pan-European treatment of the serious enough subject of trafficking, with its brittle young people in their usual world of drink, drugs and easy sex. But author-director Gianina Carbonariu has a distinct - and Romanian - style of her own, and is able to go beyond cliché in her touching study of the cocky but innocent Mady and her two men - the pimp who tricks her into prostitution and the young film student who becomes her unlikely client. The result is like a twenty-first century take on The Knack, its moments of brutality balanced by a growing, if ultimately unachievable tenderness between the three participants. This growth is echoed in Carbonariu's direction, which cleverly builds what looks like a most unpromising collection of boxes into ever more credible settings as the play develops. The actors made a great contribution, too, especially Madalina Ghitescu in the title role. The play was my introduction to a delightful small theatre space, the Foarte Mic (Very Little) theatre, squeezed into what looks like a very elegant old ballroom. Bucharest's fringe, indeed, has plenty more to explore, from the Green Hours bar, where Carbonariu first appeared, to the basement ACT, whose programme includes the usual suspects of new writing: Bukowski, Crimp, Kane and Labute.
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ALMOST BLUE New adaptation by Christopher Dunkley from novel by Carlo Lucarelli |
Riverside |
24 Nov |
11 Dec |
1567 |
CARIAD New play by Sophie Stanton |
Tristan Bates |
23 Nov |
17 Dec |
1568 |
CELEBRATION Revival (staged reading) of play by Harold Pinter (Gate Theatre, Dublin) |
Albery |
1 Dec |
3 Dec |
1594 |
THE CRIME OF THE OLD VILLAGE New adaptation by Alice de Sousa from Bernardo Santareno (Galleon TC) |
Greenwich Playhouse |
24 Nov |
18 Dec |
1566 |
CYPRUS New play by Peter Arnott (Mull Theatre) |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
22 Nov |
17 Dec |
1556 |
DEAD MAN'S COAT New play by Hajdana Baletic |
Blue Elephant |
17 Nov |
3 Dec |
1565 |
THE DERANGED MARRIAGE Return of new play by Pravesh Kumar (Rifco TC) |
Riverside |
1 Dec |
24 Dec |
1583 |
EDWARD SCISSORHANDS Matthew Bourne ballet (Adventures in Motion Pictures) |
Sadler's Wells |
30 Nov |
5 Feb |
1578 |
THE EMPEROR JONES Revival of play by Eugene O'Neill |
Gate |
21 Nov |
17 Dec |
1553 |
FEEDING TIME New piece by Liquid Theatre |
BAC |
24 Nov |
11 Dec |
1591 |
THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY Revival of play by Brian Friel |
Finborough |
1 Dec |
23 Dec |
1577 |
JACK THE RIPPER Revival of musical by Ron Pember and Denis de Marne |
Jermyn Street |
1 Dec |
22 Dec |
1593 |
LAST TUESDAY New play by Donald Margulies |
Theatre 503 |
23 Nov |
3 Dec |
1558 |
LOVE LOYALTY New play by Ben Claude |
Union |
29 Nov |
10 Dec |
1566 |
A MOBILE THRILLER / BROKEN ROAD Plays by Renato Gabrielli / Ryan Craig respectively (Hush) |
BAC |
22 Nov |
11 Dec |
1576 |
ON EGO New play by Mick Gordon and Paul Broks, inspired by the book Into The Silent Land by Broks |
Soho |
2 Dec |
7 Jan |
1592 |
THE RUBENSTEIN KISS New play by James Phillips |
Hampstead |
23 Nov |
17 Dec |
1559 |
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE Revival of musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine |
Chocolate Factory |
29 Nov |
19 Feb |
1572 |
TOM'S MIDNIGHT GARDEN Revival of David Wood version of Philippa Pearce story |
Unicorn (Weston) |
30 Nov |
29 Jan |
1584 |
UBU THE KING New adaptation by David Greig of play by Alfred Jarry |
The Pit |
30 Nov |
10 Dec |
1586 |
WALK HARD - TALK LOUD UK première of play by Abram Hill |
Tricycle |
28 Nov |
24 Dec |
1569 |
WEIGHTS New solo piece by Lynn Manning |
Oval House |
29 Nov |
10 Dec |
1577 |
Regions |
||||
HARVEY Revival of play by Mary Chase |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
28 Nov |
7 Jan |
1595 |
MOLLY SWEENEY Revival of play by Brian Friel |
Glasgow, Citizens Circle Studio |
1 Dec |
23 Dec |
1596 |