Issue 1 / 2 - 2006
Prompt Corner 
As ever, a warm welcome to old and new readers alike of Theatre Record as we enter our twenty-fourth year. Well, not quite “as ever”. In last year’s Issue 1-2, Ian Herbert mused in this column on matters of longevity and continuity. In the interim, however, he’s taken the decision to become discontinuous and less prolonged, at least in terms of column inches. I’m both grateful and honoured to have been given the opportunity to take the helm of this magazine which Ian founded and built into the essential work of reference on contemporary British theatrical productions and the critical responses to them. I hope that I can do justice to his achievement, and perhaps add something of my own. Ian’s friendly guidance will continue, both to me as I settle my botty into the editor’s seat and to you as he takes up a horribly liberated column of his own, beginning in Issue 3.
This issue also marks the farewell of Verena Winter as Contributing Editor. Over the last three years Verena’s energy and dedication have been Olympian, as she managed to cram reviewing, production and administrative work for Theatre Record in alongside her continuing duties with Konzertdirektion Landgraf in the German-speaking countries. She and her Opposite Prompt column will be much missed hereafter.
Large number of opinions
And as for me, and as for me... I remember one of my early colleagues on the Independent’s Edinburgh Fringe review team (ah, those heady days when London papers thought it worth sending sizeable teams up for the full season of the world’s biggest group of arts festivals!) saying that, however hard he tried to sound cerebral and chin-stroking, his first couple of reviews every year effectively did little more than burble inanely, “Well, I’m delighted to be here once again, and I expect shortly to be having a large number of opinions for you.” Nice chap; I often wonder what became of him. Lanky, and a little languid. Slight air of the English eccentric about him. Tom something. Big hair. Morris, that was it, Tom Morris. Where is he now, eh?
In any case, I’m delighted to be here for the first time, and I expect shortly to be having a large number of opinions for you. I’m aware, though, that I shall also be continuing to appear in the main body of the magazine, in my capacity as one of the Financial Times reviewing team. I hope you’ll bear with me as I try to avoid the twin traps of, on the one hand, excessively pummelling my own agendas and preferences in Prompt Corner as well as elsewhere and, on the other, undue diffidence and self-effacement... absurd and fantastical as that may seem in a critic.
One worthwhile idea has already been proposed by a member of the critical tribe (who shall remain nameless, but it was the same one who greeted me in my new role with a cry of, “Ah, here’s the Invigilator!”) – namely, that these couple of pages be opened up to correspondence. Sounds good to me. Obviously, the first place to address points in individual reviews reprinted here would be the letters page of the publication in question, but as for more general critical issues or matters arising from TR’s original content, then bring it on. After all, one function of Prompt Corner is to pick up such issues and run with them, and why should the editor have all the fun?
Reporting
Here’s one to kick off. At the presentation of the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2003 (whose winners you can find listed at the bottom of Opposite Prompt), Michael Coveney fired off en passant a battlefield WMD at the New Statesman and the Spectator for downgrading their theatre review coverage. He singled out a Spectator piece by Lloyd Evans that purported to lay into critics and criticism as a whole, and rightly picked out one damning sentence, in which Lloyd imagines he’s justifying himself against accusations that it’s wrong to leave a show before the end when you’re reviewing it: “Fundamentally this is a reporting job,” he wrote, “and once I’ve gathered enough facts to write an entertaining piece I race home and get started.”
How can I put this temperately? If your job is reporting, then your job is to get ALL THE BLEEDING FACTS, not just as many as will help you fill your allotted space. If entertainment is your priority, then you’re not being a reporter, you’re being a clown. Britain is at the moment in the middle of a profound three-way crisis of distrust between politicians, the media and the public, and what catalysed it was one man who settled for writing a piece based on only as many of the facts as he needed to make it entertaining. OK, so it was a piece about weapons of mass destruction, not about a play in Hammersmith. The principle is the same. Reviewing that exalts being a transient, jolly read over trying to get all the important stuff down in print is reviewing that colludes with editorial decisions to demote it. And if you’re annoyed that nobody takes you seriously as a critic, then why not try being serious as a critic? It might just work.
Silly season
Mind you, that’s all a bit rich given that our most serious theatrical minds have in the past month been principally exercised over a mere silly season confection. (And the season’s arriving sooner every year. Forget the first cuckoo or crocus: the first Evening Standard “West End in crisis” story was spotted in the second week of January, a good three or four months earlier than usual.) The Musicians’ Union prepares to strike against live musos being replaced by the latest hi-tech son-of-synth (plus ça change...); the Hampstead Theatre is in managerial upheaval after an impatient Arts Council assumes it should have bedded down into its new premises and artistic régime immediately; in Scotland, another sneaky funding depredation threatens that country’s major young people’s theatre company. So naturally, the big debate is about star ratings on reviews.
After an initial volley in the Guardian by David Hare, who should know better than to sound so earnest about such a piddling matter, and Michael Billington’s attempt at a voice-of-reason reply, the two pages(!) of readers’ correspondence subsequently printed on the topic followed exactly the same trajectory as most middle-class debates about censorship or law ’n’ order.
People advanced the argument that unspecified others – but implicitly rather dimmer folk, to whom the likes of us owe a patronising duty of care – might benefit from, or contrariwise might be confused or misled by, star ratings on reviews; but as for the letter-writers themselves, no, they bridled with genteel offence at the thought that they might be so influenced. One single hardy soul admitted that star ratings might occasionally sway him as to reading the full review, an admission so hedged about with qualifiers as to be easily missed. And that was it. So if none of those voicing concern are doing so on their own accounts, then can we perhaps leave the poor benighted hypotheticals to speak up for themselves whilst we get on with the business of caring about the actual shows and theatres, not to say the content of reviews?
At which point I should perhaps take my own advice and stop coming over like a strange luvvie version of Tony Parsons.
Glorious
The trouble is that, after all that defiant outspokenness, there are no significant axes to grind about January’s shows. I mean, “His Dark Materials: rest of critical world entirely right” won’t set the earth, or any parallel dimension, alight. Yes, Nick Hytner has staged the piece wonderfully, and finally made decent use of the Olivier’s drum revolve. Nicholas Wright’s adaptation deserves a little more praise than it received, not least for a remarkably astute approach to editing the trilogy of novels down: one doesn’t miss an entire world and a major supporting character that have been cut. (Interesting, too, how very televisual the catch-up montage is at the beginning of Part Two of the diptych drama; it really needs a voiceover announcing, “Previously in His Dark Materials...”) Anna Maxwell Martin is simply magnificent in the mammoth central rite-of-passage role of Lyra, and deserves to be hymned at far greater length than this. And yet, Philip Pullman’s books are so rich and detailed that, especially in Part One, one wishes Wright and Hytner could find two minutes together for exposition-free drama. Nevertheless, it comes as no surprise that the plays are to be revived again at the end of the year; you can’t afford to put on a production like this and then pack it away in tissue paper like a wedding dress, a glorious memento and no more.
I was a little disconcerted by the reticent audience response on the press night of The Riot Group’s Pugilist Specialist, wondering if perhaps its historical moment had now passed with the capture (and strange disappearance from the news) of Saddam Hussein. Benedict Nightingale reckons so, albeit due less to news on the march than to the Edinburgh bends. But what seemed so sharp and vibrant up there last August still does to most of us, to the extent that a return visit has been booked in at the end of the show’s current tour: any Londoners who missed it this time round can catch it at the Riverside Studios in late April/early May.
By then Richard Dormer will be in rehearsal for his new show, to be unveiled in Belfast in May. But Hurricane will be long remembered by those who saw it. Dormer’s physical resemblance to former snooker champion Alex Higgins is close enough; his vocal precision is amazing, reproducing the bizarre gumbo of Belfast, Berkshire and Blackburn in the Hurricane’s accent. But his energy in that solo portrayal is breathtaking. It’s the only way to do justice to such a character – the George Best of snooker, in effect – and I was glad of the reassurance that my fervent response to the show first time around hadn’t simply been due to my being a Belfast boy of the right generation.
Special
Few felt quite as warmly as me about Honeymoon Suite at the Royal Court, however. I thought it really rather special, notwithstanding Richard Bean’s recent success with Under The Whaleback. Bean has always struck me as being at his best when he allows social comment to grow organically out of his characters, and here he delivers an unobtrusive sense of the 1950s, the Eighties and the present day through the personal and social standing of the three couples who inhabit the same hotel room. Plus, of course, in having them weave through the space simultaneously, he pulls off a formal coup worth of Alan Ayckbourn, whose Scarborough base is just a few miles from the Bridlington setting here.
When Dominic Cavendish asked me to take part in a panel discussion for his excellent (if Flash-heavy) Web site www.theatrevoice.com on Gregory Doran’s RSC revivals of The Taming Of The Shrew and John Fletcher’s sequel The Tamer Tamed, I expected to be the ghost at the feast; instead, I found myself often the most favourable of the four reviewers around the mic. The transfer from Stratford has not been kind, in particular to Fletcher’s play; it’s not surprising, either commercially or in terms of the material, that it’s only being staged twice a week in rep with the main Shakespeare piece.
It would be advisable to draw a discreet veil over Raymond Gubbay’s Savoy revival of The Pirates Of Penzance to partner the disappointing Peter Pan already running. No, it would be advisable to weight its ankles and chuck it overboard into an ocean trench. Let me simply say this: if musical director John Rigby thinks the way to make Sir Arthur Sullivan’s score more digestible to a modern stage-musical audience is to whack a leaden drum kit behind it and make it sound like Ronnie Hazlehurst’s big band in a 1970s TV seaside variety show, he might care to think again.
Now, where was I? Oh yes, being welcoming...
Ian Shuttleworth
At the Back
Can You Hear Me In Vilnius?
In March the European Theatre Prize, the Premio Europa, will be presented, in Turin, to Harold Pinter. The prize is worth €50,000, rather less than his Nobel winnings, but it can at least be said that the Premio judges got there before the Nobel committee – it's just taken them rather a long time to find the right place for the ceremony. Alongside the big award is a smaller prize, for New European Theatre Realities, a nod to the most promising directors in Europe, which this year will be shared between Josef Nadj, a Hungarian working in France (he is the selector for this year's Avignon Festival) who has shown exciting productions at LIFT, and the Lithuanian Oskaras Korsunovas, whose wooden-plank Midsummer Night's Dream has toured successfully in Britain and whose latest pizza-parlour Romeo And Juliet has been hailed as equally ground-breaking. Korsunovas's compatriot Eimuntas Nekrosius is a past winner of the New Realities prize, and has won a high reputation for his powerfully imagistic productions, not least a Hamlet which saturated Shakespeare's Elsinore in elemental metaphor, with fire and ice to the fore.
Starved
What is remarkable in world theatre is that a country the size of Lithuania can produce directors of such quality from a small population base and a theatre scene starved of facilities. Some of the credit must go to Big Brother Russia, where its stars received their training. Now Vilnius has its own theatre academy, where their star directors teach and recruit their companies – actors in work complain that even the twenty who graduate each year will overcrowd an already very limited market.
The third big international name among Lithuanian directors is Rimas Tuminas, who taught Korsunovas and studied in Moscow at the same time as Nekrosius. He came to international prominence a decade ago with a production of Lermontov's Maskerade which is still in the repertoire of the National Theatre in Vilnius, and was seen in Oxford only last autumn. He also directed a memorable Seagull for Dundee Rep a couple of years back. Tuminas is the man of the moment in Lithuania, viewed no doubt with some envy by his illustrious colleagues, because after a fifteen-year wait he has just opened the beautiful Small Theatre of Vilnius, becoming the only one of the "big three" with a permanent home.
Glass ceiling
The Small Theatre is a two-hundred-seater of great style, part of a building on Vilnius' main street which was originally home to a cultural organisation that played quite a role in the early twentieth century as a centre for the blossoming local nationalism. Its steeply raked auditorium (rather too steeply raked, like Trafalgar Studio 1) sits beneath a remarkable glass ceiling, one of only two to survive in Europe, which like the rest of the building has been lovingly restored. The foyer is the size of the theatre, with magnificent plasterwork and real parquet flooring, supporting the impression of opulence that pervades the building, even in the cosy basement bar that doubles as a green room. It has to be said that the theatre itself, while a joy to behold, must be a beast to work. The famous glass ceiling precludes flying, there is little wingspace on one side and less on the other, and the comfortable raked seating is fixed permanently, offering no innovative spatial escape from this constricted end-stage format. Tuminas's celebrated Maskerade will continue to play in the National Theatre down the road, because its large scale simply could not fit into the new space.
Nevertheless, the haut monde of Vilnius has already taken the theatre to its heart, and when I visited it in December, a month after its grand opening, local businesses were using it for elegant Christmas outings. These were no knees-ups at the panto, for the Small Theatre's
repertoire is a demanding one. Of the three productions I saw, one was a première, Tuminas's reading of Three Sisters. Its pleasantly décor-light, gently realistic staging flattered to deceive, for the production took what for me were unforgivable liberties with Chekhov – not playful interventions like those of Wadji Mouawad, nor the downright sacrilege of Radu Afrim: it was simply that none of the characters seemed to read right, so that the sisters' multiple tensions of unrequited love, the surrounding social dimensions of master-servant, commandant-garrison, the creeping menace of Natasha, the disintegration of Andrey just did not register. The garrison left, and we hardly noticed, let alone cared.
Utopians
Much more interesting was Tuminas' production of a new play, Marius Ivaskevicius's Madagascar. It treats of a crazy but apparently real part of Lithuanian history, when one of their politicians proposed that the entire country move to that island. At first no more an amusingly wacky tale of young people growing into their sexuality, with a parallel look at Lithuania's growth into nationhood, the play moves gradually into delicate pathos as the dream fades and a plane-load of would-be utopians disappears into the sea. Many of the same actors who seemed rather uncomfortable in Three Sisters were much more at ease here, including its Irina, still a student of Tuminas at the Academy and an actress with a huge future.
The final production, Woman In The Dunes, was a stage adaptation of Kobo Abe's novel that was far removed from the famous film version. Without the possibilities of close-up – indeed without much possibility of showing unending sand in long-shot – adapter-director Laima Adomaitiene was forced to rely on some powerful choreography for both the sadistic villagers who watch the central drama and its protagonists, the trapped entomologist and his unwilling hostess, the woman of the title. Ms Adomaitiene made her reputation in youth theatre, and certainly seized this opportunity to develop her skills with professionals: yet the end product, while undoubtedly beautiful to watch, remained as barren as the dunes.
Dinosaur
It's good to see the Small Theatre putting on new work: there are interesting Lithuanian playwrights around, but they suffer from the overall lack of theatre spaces. Apart from the Small Theatre, the National (eyes are raised to heaven when this dinosaur is mentioned) and the Youth Theatre, there are hardly any performance spaces in Vilnius, or elsewhere in the count for that matter. Much hope is placed in the Arts Printing House, a cultural complex being developed in the derelict works where the country's Russian-language newspaper was once printed. Already, Nekrosius's Meno Fortas company has it headquarters there, and there is a small studio theatre (about the size of London's Etcetera, or the Hen and Chickens) which companies can hire. When the grants come through, a space the size of a Riverside Studio should come on line there.
Meanwhile, it seems surprising that such enterprising companies as those of Nekrosius and Korsunovas have not been able to find spaces of their own – Vilnius is an old town, which has developed remarkably since independence into a fashion-conscious tourist magnet, but it should still contain unused halls like the ones which appear out of nothing in Edinburgh at Festival time. Vilnius has its impressive festivals, too: Korsunovas's Sirenos festival last year attracted work by Luk Perceval, Arpad Schilling, Lies Pauwels and Rodrigo Garcia as well as productions from local talent like Jonas Vaitkus and Gintaras Varnas. Small country, Small Theatre – big ambitions.
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
ALEGRIA Return of circus piece by Cirque du Soleil |
Royal Albert Hall |
5 Jan |
12 Feb |
13 |
AMATO SALTONE Newiece devised by Shunt |
Shunt Vaults |
25 Jan |
26 Mar |
65 |
THE ANDERSEN PROJECT New piece by Robert Lepage (Ex Machina) |
Barbican |
27 Jan |
18 Feb |
75 |
THE ARK, THE BRIDE AND THE COFFIN Triptych of new plays by Andrew Neil (fluff prods) |
Old Red Lion |
11 Jan |
28 Jan |
41 |
BEAUTIFUL THING Revival of play by Jonathan Harvey |
Sound |
12 Jan |
11 Feb |
46 |
BEDLAMB SHORTS New plays by Val Zdyb, Wendy Metcalf and Martin Cooper (Bedlamb Co) |
Barons Court |
17 Jan |
28 Jan |
64 |
THE BELLS Revival of play by Leopold Lewis |
Rosemary Branch |
3 Jan |
19 Jan |
22 |
THE BROKEN HEART Revival of play by John Ford (Secret Centre Th) |
White Bear |
10 Jan |
5 Feb |
20 |
CAESAR TWINS AND FRIENDS Acrobatic show |
Comedy |
25 Jan |
11 Feb |
70 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Novello |
10 Jan |
28 Jan |
23 |
DISCIPLINARY ACTION New play by Len Emmerson (FLIP) |
Greenwich Playhouse |
10 Jan |
5 Feb |
57 |
EXTRA TIME New play bby Barry Fantoni |
Landor |
11 Jan |
28 Jan |
30 |
THE FACTORY GIRLS Revival of play by Frank McGuinness |
Arcola |
20 Jan |
18 Feb |
61 |
A FINE BALANCE New adaptation from novel by Rohinton Mistry (Tamasha) |
Hampstead |
16 Jan |
28 Jan |
39 |
FLORODORA Revival of musical comedy by Leslie Stuart and Edward Burne-Jones |
Finborough |
8 Jan |
22 Jan |
15 |
THE GABRIELS New play by Van Badham |
Finborough |
5 Jan |
28 Jan |
16 |
GEM OF THE OCEAN UK première of play by August Wilson |
Tricycle |
10 Jan |
4 Feb |
26 |
GHOSTS Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen |
New Wimbledon Studio |
16 Jan |
4 Feb |
71 |
GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL! New musical by Anthony King and Scott Brown |
Jermyn Street |
9 Jan |
28 Jan |
21 |
HOME New play by Gblahan Obisesan, Cressida Brown and Emily Randall (Offstage TC) |
St Catherine's Tower |
18 Jan |
4 Feb |
52 |
IMOGEN Return of play by Toby Clarke |
Oval House |
25 Jan |
11 Feb |
62 |
IMPOSTORS New play by Justin Warner |
Union |
10 Jan |
28 Jan |
25 |
THE LATE HENRY MOSS New play by Sam Shepard |
Almeida |
19 Jan |
4 Mar |
53 |
LIES HAVE BEEN TOLD Return of revival of play by Rod Beacham |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
11 Jan |
28 Jan |
31 |
LITTLE EYOLF Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen (Dale Teater Kompani) |
Riverside |
17 Jan |
12 Feb |
49 |
London International Mime Festival 2006 , including |
various |
11 Jan |
29 Jan |
79 |
Le Chemin Se Fait En Marchant — Claire Heggen |
Purcell Room |
23 Jan |
24 Jan |
84 |
Convergence — Compagnie Adrien M |
Purcell Room |
19 Jan |
22 Jan |
83 |
La Cucina dell'Arte — Circus Ronaldo |
The Pit |
17 Jan |
21 Jan |
82 |
Erection — Compagnie Dernière Minute |
ICA |
23 Jan |
25 Jan |
85 |
Horsehead — Faulty Optic |
ICA |
15 Jan |
19 Jan |
81 |
Line, Point, Plane — Matilda Leyser |
Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio |
20 Jan |
21 Jan |
83 |
Lowlife — Blind Summit |
BAC Studio 2 |
17 Jan |
5 Feb |
82 |
More Or Less Infinity — Compagnie 111 |
Queen Elizabeth Hall |
11 Jan |
13 Jan |
79 |
Ristorante Immortale — Familie Flöz |
Purcell Room |
25 Jan |
29 Jan |
85 |
Twin Houses — Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté |
Purcell Room |
14 Jan |
17 Jan |
80 |
MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Southwark Playhouse |
24 Jan |
11 Feb |
78 |
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS Revival of play by Robert Bolt . |
Haymarket |
3 Jan |
1 Apr |
5 |
MARY POPPINS New cast for Sherman Bros musical based on P L Travers I Disney |
Prince Edward |
11 Jan |
|
34 |
MONSIEUR IBRAHIM AND THE FLOWERS OF THE QUR'AN New play by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt |
Bush |
18 Jan |
11 Feb |
47 |
NIGHTINGALE New play by Lynn Redgrave |
New End |
20 Jan |
18 Feb |
63 |
NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS New adaptation by Tom Morris and Emma Rice from Angela Carter (Kneehigh) |
Lyric Hammersmith |
26 Jan |
18 Feb |
72 |
0 GO MY MAN New play by Stella Feehily (Royal Court/Out Of Joint) |
Royal Court |
17 Jan |
11 Feb |
42 |
SEJANUS: HIS FALL Revival of play by Ben Jonson (RSC) |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
18 Jan |
28 Jan |
50 |
STALLERHOF Revival of play by Franz Xaver Kroetz |
Southwark Playhouse |
5 Jan |
21 Jan |
19 |
THE SUGAR WIFE New play by Elizabeth Kuti (Rough Magic) |
Soho |
19 Jan |
11 Feb |
58 |
THOMAS MORE Revival of play by Anthony Munday, William Shakespeare and others (RSC) |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
5 Jan |
14 Jan |
10 |
TRAINSPOTTING Revival of Harry Gibson adaptation from novel by Irvine Welsh |
Artsdepot |
19 Jan |
21 Jan |
60 |
Regions |
||||
AIR GUITAR New play by Peter Kesterton |
Bristol Old Vic Studio |
26 Jan |
11 Feb |
92 |
THE ESCAPOLOGIST New piece with text by Simon Bent (Suspect Culture)) |
Glasgow, Tramway |
17 Jan |
28 Jan |
93 |
HERE'S WHAT I DID WITH MY BODY ONE DAY Revival of piece by Dan Rebellato (Lightwork) |
Birmingham Rep, Door / touring |
26 Jan |
28 Jan |
92 |
IMPROBABLE FICTION Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn |
Guildford, Yvonne Amaud I tounng |
18 Jan |
28 Jan |
89 |
MAMMALS Revival of play by Amelia Bullmore (Bush) |
Oxford Playhouse I touring |
24 Jan |
28 Jan |
90 |
TARTUFFE Revival of play by Molière in adaptation by Liz Lochhead |
Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum |
14 Jan |
11 Feb |
95 |
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Revival of play by Arthur Miller |
Bolton, Octagon |
27 Jan |
25 Feb |
93 |
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS Revival of play by J M Barrie |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
16 Jan |
25 Feb |
86 |
THE WHITE DEVIL Revival of play by John Webster |
Brighton, Pavilion |
18 Jan |
4 Feb |
86 |