Issue 06 - 2006
Prompt Corner 
Another shortie this issue, since as I write I am in Scarborough at the National Student Drama Festival; full report to follow next issue (to compensate for what will no doubt be another truncated Prompt Corner). As testimony to the loyalty and dedication this event inspires, let me note that this afternoon (on my emergence from the fourth version of The Government Inspector I've seen in the past twelve months), I saw that Timothy West had travelled half the length of England to watch plays and take workshops on his day off from The Old Country in the West End.
There's little to say about this production that has not already been said in its reviews. The notion of using espionage as a metaphor for homosexuality, and the examination of how each fits within the fabric of the nation in general and the Establishment in particular, is an interesting one which is explored more fully in Alan Bennett's subsequent plays now known as the Single Spies diptych. Bennett's view of what is, after all, his own sexuality continues to be deeply ambivalent: even in The History Boys, he on the one hand upholds it to an extent and in a manifestation that would normally be condemned as heretical in this age of quote-paedophile-unquote witch-hunting, yet on the other allows none of his gay characters to end happily. An armchair psychologist might make much of such an apparent conflict.
Word for word
Open sexuality is not just encouraged but mandatory in Peter Morris's Gaudeamus, in which an American liberal arts college amends its statutes to prohibit any of its members refusing another member's solicitation of sex. When I wrote about Peter's play Guardians in issue 20 of last year, on the strength of my viewing of it in Edinburgh but on the occasion of its London transfer, he chid me that there had in fact been substantial changes in the version that travelled south and which I hadn't re-seen. However, I'm afraid that with Gaudeamus I can repeat my earlier opinion virtually word for word: "Although often compelling in itself, [it] is fundamentally no different from any Morris play I have seen. He advances his social/ideological agenda not under its own colours but by denigrating other modes of thought around it, and he simply shows no interest in people as people. His characters almost invariably turn out just to be more articulate, slightly more complex versions of standard stereotypes [...] whom he uses as tools of his dramatic dialectic rather than letting them appear or interact in a natural human light." Once again, we have a series of intercut monologues rather than a drama of onstage interaction; once again, one character who's a little too self-satisfied with their intellect, breadth of allusion and predilection for punning (which is, I think, a trait these characters have in common with their author), and once again an over-eagerness to épater les bourgeois that doesn't quite come off. The radical difference is that this time, there's also an oddly affirmative, almost sentimental outcome which suggests to the cynic in me that Gaudeamus may be the play to take Peter to a new level of prominence in his native United States.
Strangulated
One can't accuse the trio of plays about teenagerdom at the Cottesloe of being sentimental, although as some reviewers have noted Deborah Gearing's Bum is overwritten and self-conscious in a way that the other two pieces are not; personally, I wouldn't have given it space beside them (although, since last year was one of the few when I managed to miss the National's Connections mini-festival, I can't suggest another play to put in its place). I'm similarly with the thumbs-down brigade on Tennessee Williams' Period Of Adjustment at the Almeida. Bless him and save him, but Williams simply could not write comedy of the kind this was intended to be. And I should defer to Rhoda Koenig's American ear for American accents, but I cannot for the life of me understand her praise for Lisa Dillon's strangulated efforts which turn even "wedding" into a four-syllable "weyadeeyin", making her nuptials sound more like a band of Islamic resistance fighters.
To the first double-bill in the Beckett Centenary Festival at the Barbican: as has been noted elsewhere, the plays in question allow little latitude of interpretation, yet there is a particular astringent perfection in Sian Phillips' performance - both physically and on tape - in Rockaby, and in Harry Towb's washed-out narration in Ohio Impromptu.
Canter
All Beckett's plays are in one form or another about endings or non-endings, continuations of privation or of nothingness. In its way, so is Sophie Tucker's One Night Stand, transferred to the King's Head after a run at the New End late last year. It's clear from the opening lines - "Have you seen the paper? It says I'm dead" - that the evening will incline far more towards divertissement than drama. Sue Kelvin gets through two dozen numbers in under 90 minutes of playing time, linked together by a canter through Tucker's life: birth in Russia in 1884, upbringing in the family restaurant in Connecticut, early vaudeville career in blackface as a "coon shouter" before she established her own personality as a sassy Yiddishe woman of generous build and appetites to match. There's little insight on offer: the son (from the first of three brief marriages) whom she all but abandoned in his infancy is periodically deployed to generate a few token minor-key moments in the first act, but after the interval he vanishes save for a couple of mentions as a figure of fun. It's all, as so many of these affairs are, thoroughly agreeable but scarcely more; I knew little about Tucker when I went into the theatre and I came out, like the judge in the old joke, better informed but none the wiser. And now, if you'll forgive me, I must dash off to see a (mercifully) one-hour-long adaptation of Moby-Dick. Forget Ishmael; call me a taxi.
At the Back
Can You hear Me In Tokyo?
A short week in Tokyo yields some probably very lopsided impressions of Japanese theatre. In spite of their being preserved to the point of mummification, the traditional forms still attract large and knowledgeable audiences, but there is also a willingness to embrace Western theatre and its more fashionable names, often filtered through the movement-conscious sensibility that is second nature to Japanese actors. The most encouraging sign is that there is a lively and well informed young audience for new work, local and foreign.
My vantage point was a visit to the Tokyo International Arts Festival, an event which, it must be confessed, is not quite as grand as it sounds. Over five weeks, it presented three visiting productions, Lessing's Emilia Galotti from the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, a dance piece from Israel and its own co-production of A Mirror for Princes, devised by Kuwait's Sulayman Al-Bassam with a largely English team and due to be seen soon at the Barbican Pit in BITE. There were readings of four modern American plays, and half a dozen Japanese companies presented mostly home-grown works. Most performances were given in the festival's headquarters, a former school whose gymnasium had been converted into a serviceable space reminiscent of one of the larger Riverside Studios. There, too, I took part in a symposium with some international and Japanese colleagues on What's the Use of Theatre Criticism? This slightly baffled account may still leave you wondering about that.
Attempts
Of the Japanese shows in the festival I saw only two, both attempts on Westem plays. Director Hatsumi Abe had a go at 4.48 Psychosis, using a large cast - well, five of them - and a complex, hospital ward setting to explore Sarah Kane's suicide diary. Her prop-ridden production went against the minimalism one associates with Japanese taste, imposing frantic action, hysterical outbursts and rather a lot of barnstorming on what is essentially a spare, intense piece that benefits from letting the text speak for itself.
Similarly, the Lecoq-trained actress Rieko Suzuki was not content to let the late Beckett monologue Ill Seen III Said offer its sombre verbal music unadorned. She added projections, props, frequent adjustments of her costume and musical accompaniment, the latter admittedly rather good. All of this served to distract from the fact that the actress's voice, which has to be the central mode of transmitting Beckett, was not as varied or melodious as the text deserved.
Middle Eastern Parallels
Nor was the festival's centrepiece any more satisfying. Sulayman Al-Bassam had a deserved hit in Edinburgh in 2002 with The AI-Hamlet Summit, an adaptation owing something to the Wooster Group, but finding Middle Eastern parallels very much his own in Shakespeare's story of court corruption. The piece went on to achieve fame around the world in various forms, and the Arabic version was a sensation at this Tokyo festival two years ago. His new work, based on the twelfth-century classic Kalila Wa Dimna (A Mirror for Princes) has had the equally bright idea of looking for modem parallels in this Baghdad-based tale of power-hungry religious factions seeking their ends through intrigue and murder. Julia Bardsley's costumes are suitably exotic, and Chahine Yavroyan's lighting gives the production a subtlety that is lacking in most of its other aspects. Al-Bassam's high-flying language comes across as more pretentious than poetic, and his hard-working cast, doubling for all they're worth, have little success in putting across the complicated plot, even allowing for one of them wandering around writing helpful notes on the movable screens which are the play's principal setting. If the piece is not to be laughed off the stage by the London critics, it will need a lot of rehearsal and some serious rewriting before it reaches the Barbican. (Sharia footnote: the Japanese production of this highly Islamic story was sponsored by the local brewery)
Kabuki
No visit to Japanese theatre would be complete without a Kabuki, and Ichikawa Ennosuke would seem a particularly interesting interpreter of this hallowed form. He has in recent years offered 'super-kabuki', bringing in modem technology and even borrowing from Beijing Opera and Indian dance. At the National Theatre, a low-slung version of our own National overlooking the Imperial Garden, he respected the venue's dedication to 'pure' kabuki with his production of Toryu Oguri Hangan, a more traditional adaptation of a neglected classic whose authors include the great Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Its two three-hour parts (the first starting at 1.30, which may account for the predominantly female audience) have all the trademarks: fantastic costumes and make-up; stylised, slow-motion fights; elaborate sets; varying kinds of musical accompaniment on and off stage. To these are added a horse that flies.
And once you have absorbed the beauty of it all, which is considerable, the play itself is revealed as being as tedious as it is long, and one begins to dread the customary breaks for the audience to applaud a particularly well executed gesture or grimace (signalled by clappers worthy of a sitcom studio). The fabled horse turns out to be two actors in a pantomime horse costume that would not go down all that well in Dick Whittington, and the fights are so mechanical, with only the tiniest touches of acrobatics, that one can only draw unfavourable comparisons with the thrilling antics of Beijing Opera. Over it all floats an embarrassing air of self-congratulation: if audiences are trained to applaud technique rather than totality, it creates limelight-hugging, complacent actors.
Butoh
After this disappointment I was not looking forward to the latest piece from Sankai Juku, Toki. The group work out of the Théâtre de Ville in Paris these days, but their season at the Setagaya Public Theatre, a splendid modem 600-seater house like a hi-tech version of the Stratford Swan, brings their Butoh dance home to a loyal audience.
A bunch of half-naked bald blokes covered in chalk, doing nothing, very solemnly, for a very long time, is my jaundiced memory of Sankai Juku. Slow they are, but totally concentrated and not without humour as they conduct their rituals in subtle lighting to the gently persuasive accompaniment of a sequence of solo instruments. Appearing and re-appearing from behind an arc of screens, now alone, now ensemble, they draw you into their world of dedicated precision. Above them, a burnished rod descends and rises through a brass ring, offering muted phallic commentary. Utter magic!
Postmainstream
A side-trip to another festival, 'Postmainstream' (inevitably featuring our own Forced Entertainment) brought a final gem: Toshiki Okada's Chelfisch (Selfish) company performed his Five Days in March in a steamy Fringe basement, the ironically named Super De Luxe Theatre. An example of what the Japanese call 'whispered' or 'quiet' theatre, where the actors barely raise their voices above a conversational tone, it also highlights Okada's own remarkable choreography of the gestures of urban adolescents, whose tortured, gangling movement illustrates a tale of two youngsters, completely absorbed in a one-night stand that turns into five days' continuous sex; thus they are blissfully unaware of the invasion of Iraq being launched outside. Highly 'postdramatic', in that the actors bear no direct relation to the story's characters, it is also strangely effective.
Broader Church
All this ignores the latest Ninagawa (Titus Andronicus, coming to Stratford this summer), the Western (Lez Miz still running at the Imperial) and Eastern (Takarazuka's girls reviving La Rose de Versailles yet again) musicals, and much else - Japanese theatre is a broader church than most, and well worth more exploration. IH
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
BEDTIME STORY/THE END OF THE BEGINNING Sean O'Casey revivals (Young Vic Direct Action) |
Union |
17 Mar |
1 Apr |
312 |
BEING OLIVIA new play by George Parsons |
Warehouse, Croydon |
12 Mar |
2 Apr |
317 |
BIG IN JAPAN or Three Steves and a Bob written and performed by Bob Karper |
Oval House |
22 Mar |
8 Apr . |
322 |
BURN/CHATROOM/CITIZENSHIP REVIVAL OF PLAYS BY Deborah Gearing/ Enda Walsh/ Mark Ravenhill Cottesloe |
15 Mar |
3 Jun |
297 |
|
BY PARTIES UNKNOWN: The Crypt Project devised by Sincera Productions |
St Andrew's Crypt |
13 Mar |
1 Apr |
318 |
DARWIN'S DREAM music by Graham Treacher, libretto by Stephen Webster |
Royal Albert Hall |
30 Mar |
30 Mar |
321 |
DIVORCED, BEHEADED, DIED new play by Graham Billing and Frederica Dunstan (Sweet FA) |
Jermyn Street |
14 Mar |
1 Apr |
308 |
DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS adapted by Mark OThomas from Jorge Amado novel (Dende) |
Lyric Studio |
16 Mar |
1 Apr |
303 |
GAUDEAMUS orA Very Liberal Education new play by Peter Moms |
Arcola |
24 Mar |
15 Apr |
323 |
I CAN CRY documentary play by Miri Ben-Shalom |
Pentameters |
17 Mar |
18 Apr |
324 |
THE LENINGRAD SIEGE Jose Sanchez Sinisterra play trs Catalina Botello, Rod Wooden (Out of the Box) |
Wilton's Music Hall |
15 Mar |
25 Mar |
301 |
LIFE IMITATES ART : love trilogy part 1 play by Zoe Lewis |
Camden Peoples' |
16 Mar |
26 Mar |
311 |
MY HOME peripatetic promenade performance devised by London Bubble Theatre |
Various |
16 Mar |
13 Apr |
318 |
NOWHERE TO BELONG: Tales of an Extravagant Stranger return of Yasmin Alibhai Brown solo (RSC) |
Soho |
21 Mar |
25 Mar |
311 |
THE OLD COUNTRY Alan Bennett revival (English Touring Theatre) |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
20 Mar |
16 May |
313 |
PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT revival of play by Tennessee Williams |
Almeida |
16 Mar |
239 Apr |
304 |
ROCKABYE/OHIO IMPROMPTU revival of short plays by Samuel Beckett (BITE 06/Gate, Dublin) |
Pit |
22Mar |
28 Mar |
319 |
Royal Court 50 readings of fifty plays from 1956-2005 by Royal Court authors |
Royal Court |
16 Jan |
24 Mar |
325 |
SOPHIE TUCKER'S ONE NIGHT STAND transfer of play by Chris Burgess |
Kings Head |
22 Mar |
30 Apr |
322 |
TRADE return of play by Debbie Tucker Green (RSC New Work Festival) |
Soho |
15 Mar |
25 Mar |
302 |
WE MUST PERFORM A QUIRKAFLEEG! solo by Chris Goode |
Your Home |
7 Mar |
20 May |
300 |
Regions |
||||
APOCALYPSE ... THE SEVEN ANGELS music and electronic sound by Anthea Haddow (Theatre Cryptic) Glasgow, Tron |
23 Mar |
23 Mar |
346 |
|
ASSASSINS revival of the musical by Stephen Sondheim, book by John Weidman |
Crucible, Sheffield |
14 Mar |
1 Apr |
329 |
CALLAS revival of the solo play by Jean-Yves Picq |
Southampton, Nuffield |
16 Mar |
18 Mar |
332 |
THE CLEAN HOUSE new play by Sarah Ruhl |
Sheffield, Crucible Studio |
21 Mar |
8 Apr |
333 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS revival of the play by William Shakespeare (Bell Shakespeare, Australia) |
Bath, Theatre Royal |
7 Mar |
11 Mar |
338 |
DANTE'S INFERNO devised and adapted by Andy Arnold |
Glasgow, Arches |
13 Mar |
24 Mar |
339 |
FALLING site-specific promenade performance by Poorboy and NTS Workshop |
Glasgow, Arches |
14 Mar |
15 Apr |
341 |
THE FLAGS new play by Bridget O'Connor |
Manchester R Exchange Studio |
13 Mar |
25 Mar |
329 |
LONGLINE:THE CARNIVAL OPERA written by John Fox, music by Tim Fleming |
Ulkverstone, Lantemhouse |
14 Mar |
18 Mar |
332 |
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST revival of the play by William Shakespeare |
Bristol, Tobacco Factory |
23 Mar |
29 Apr |
337 |
MASTER CLASS revival of the play by David Pownall |
Derby Playhouse |
16 Mar |
8 Apr |
337 |
MELODY new play by Douglas Maxwell |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
14 Mar |
1 Apr |
342 |
MRS PAT new play by Pam Gems |
York, Theatre Royal |
15 Mar |
1 Apr |
331 |
PERFECT PIE new play by Judith Thompson (Stellar Quines) |
Glasgow, Tron |
16 Mar |
18 Mar |
343 |
PHEDRE revival of the play by Racine, in the translation by Ted Hughes |
Perth |
16 Mar |
1 Apr |
345 |
SCUFFER new play by Mark Catley |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
15 Mar |
1 Apr |
332 |
SPENDING FRANK new play by Alistair Hewitt (Borderline TC) |
Glasgow, Citizens |
14 Mar |
18 Mar |
344 |
TWELFTH NIGHT Shakespeare revival translated by Mihnea Georghiu (NT Marin Sorescu, Craiova) |
Bath, Theatre Royal |
14 Mar |
18 Mar |
339 |
UNPROTECTED new play by Esther WiØn,John Fay, Tony Green and Lizzie Nunnery |
Liverpool Everyman |
10 Mar |
1 Apr |
328 |
THE WHITE ALBUM new play by Michael Pinchbeck from a concept by Giles Croft |
Nottingham Playhouse |
22 Mar |
8 Apr |
334 |