Issue 10 - 2006
Prompt Corner 
We're not at all keen any more (and rightly not) to give succour to the view that theatre is part of an imagined citadel of high culture which can be perceived in contradistinction to a more lumpen mass culture. However, it continues to be the case that the vast majority of critics are middle-class, in culture if not in family background. In particular, a high number of English critics went to university at either Oxford or Cambridge. (For no readily apparent reason, most of the fifty- and sixtysomethings went to Oxford, the thirty- and fortysomethings to Cambridge.) I think this says more about joumalistic recruitment channels than about theatre reviewing per se, but occasionally it shows through in our writing.
Cast an anthropologically curious eye, for instance, over the reviews of Donkeys' Years. Michael Frayn's comedy is set in "one of the lesser colleges, at one of the older universities" - in practice, clearly Oxbridge. (Frayn, as it happens, went to Cambridge.) Note that the two reviewers who employ the specifically Oxford term "gaudy", which does not occur in the play - Charles Spence and Paul Taylor - are both products of Oxford. But then the cosy assumptions begin to go awry. Almost every reviewer, when describing the play's setting, sticks to the unspecific portmanteau term "Oxbridge". However, Nicholas de Jongh (University College, London) opts for "Cambridge", whilst Alastair Macaulay (Cambridge) goes for "Oxford", as does Patrick Marmion (whose university background I don't know). Does this tell us anything? Only that some of us (by which I mean me), although protesting egalitarianism, still try to draw conclusions from a person's university.
Assiduous
I've been reminded of my own time at Cambridge (there!) by a number of productions during these weeks, but not usually in so dramatically direct a way as in the case of Donkeys' Years. For instance, during my time as a rather muddled postgraduate I did a term's work supervising some undergrads in Practical Criticism. (The mind boggles, doesn't it?) My tutees included a young Jonathan Cake. Now, I have to admit that almost all of Jonathan's acting performances that I've seen since then have struck me as very much in the vein of his criticism essays: competent, solid but unspectacular and with the effort showing a little. I think "assiduous" sums it up quite nicely.
It was a pleasant surprise and a considerable relief, then, to see him in Coriolanus at the Globe, in a piece of casting and characterisation which meshes excellently with his natural predilections. Kate Bassett (who, as it happens, was at the same college at roughly the same time as Cake) describes this Caius Martius well in her Independent on Sunday review: like "a public-school rugger champ" and an "overgrown adolescent". This is the point, and it can be easy to overlook. Coriolanus is often played as an overgrown child, but adolescent is rather more complex. There is a strong element of peer-bonding, such as makes Martius want the approval of Rome even as he is unable to submit to the prescribed civic rituals, in a display of petulance which is more that of a caricature teenager than a big infant. His homosociality with Aufidius is also a teen-like trait, as - most tellingly, in Dominic Dromgoole's production - is his response to his family's embassy: he does not capitulate at once, but holds out as long as he can, trying to prove that he is his own man, all grown-up, before conceding in effect that he isn't quite, not yet, after all. A number of reviewers see this production as an unpromising start to Dromgoole's tenure at the Globe; I'm much more upbeat about its auguries.
Micro-management
An example of sub-editors at work: my Financial Times review of The Changeling, as published, ends by speaking of a performance style "that at times makes the narrative itself hard to follow." The FT subs cut the words which had followed that observation: it originally read "...hard to follow, even for those of us who have acted in it." I understand absolutely why the cut was made: it looks like a piece of rather precious showing-off or a spurious claim to authority. My point, though, was that through the Cheek By Jowl presentation I kept remembering lines from the student production I'd been in twenty years earlier, to a far greater extent than I'd expected (I don't think I've read the play at all, and have seen it on stage only once in the interim period), and yet even with such a close knowledge, I still couldn't entirely keep tabs on what was going on in the final scenes of Declan Donnellan's staging.
And yes, the student version in question took place at Cambridge, and for some unambiguously precious showing off, it was directed by Sam Mendes. As with my supervising Jonathan Cake, that early experience of being directed by Sam gave me some insight into his skills as a director. The opening speech of The Changeling is far knottier than it looks, a real devil to make sense of in speech. (Donnellan trimmed it judiciously.) Our student Alsemero was not a great acting talent. But Sam explained that speech phrase by phrase, not simply telling the actor how to deliver it but illuminating each separate element, hanging shifts of intentionality on a comma or a fractional pause, in a way that made its delivery crystal clear. Through his early years as a professional director, it continued to strike me that Sam was unparalleled in his micro-management of actors and text, but that sometimes he left the big picture to fend for itself somewhat. (It was his first years of work at the Donmar, in particular Assassins and The Glass Menagerie, that persuaded me to drop those reservations at last) And it was Sam's micro-lucidity that I missed in the Barbican production; instead, Donnellan once again makes psychological space manifest in the physical space of the stage, but in ways that often make a nonsense of any sense of actual location, and while also disdaining obvious cues in the text for physical business (at least two such moments with Beatrice-Joanna's glove in the opening scene alone being muffed).
Liar
That completes this issue's bout of Varsity nostalgia. I must, however, share one delicious moment from the second-night performance of Donkey's Years: when two characters onstage reminisce about a third who had been sent to prison, both editorial assistant Hannah and I heroically avoided glancing to our immediate right to see how the line had been taken by our neighbour, Jeffrey Archer. He didn't seem to laugh a lot during the evening; but then, his Oxford experience had its own complexities.
At the Back
The XII Symposium of Theatre Critics and Scholars (the Roman numerals tell you it must be important) has just finished in Novi Sad, the university town by the Danube in Serbia's last remaining autonomous region. The Voivodina has welcomed minorities over the centuries and there are serious quantities of Hungarians, Slovaks, Romanians and of course Roma living there. This, and the fact that Montenegro put an end to its links with Serbia only a week ago, made it the perfect venue for a discussion on National Theatres and Nationalist Theatres, organised by the local festival, Sterijino Pozorje (which I reviewed last year) and the International Association of Theatre Critics.
Eclectic
These symposia happen every three years - the 2003 one paid almost embarrassing homage to the in-yer-facers in its discussion of New European Drama. The likes of David Edgar and Anne Ubersfeld came to that one, and this new edition saw a similarly eclectic mix of scholars, critics and theatre people. As a result you get a real mix of style and content: warmth and humour blend well with careful research, philosophical and political musings and even poetry.
A number of speakers opined that national theatres were no longer of value in a global-thinking age. The repertory smorgasbord of classics should give place to topic-led programmes addressing issues of the day, opined Dragan Klaic, while Swiss and Italian speakers had no problem with the absence of a national theatre in their countries. The national theatres described had differing repertories and motives, in the best cases truly reflecting national needs. Useful overviews showed how the movement built up in Habsburg times, particularly in the countries around Novi Sad. Later developments may have been less successful, especially as architecture, with one Hungarian speaker eager to demolish his country's ghastly new national theatre as an example to others.
Minority culture
A national theatre need not be a building: nationality may be expressed in a country's literature, dramatic or otherwise, while in Quebec and Catalonia a lively, non-literary theatre has been successful enough to overshadow the theatre of the larger national community that surrounds them, drawing attention to their thriving minority culture. Several papers addressed the use of theatre to support such cultural groupings in bigger communities - Slovaks in Voivodina, Swedes in Finland.
And when majorities suppress minorities it is often in the name of nationalism, the colloquium's other strand. It is of course a very live issue in ex-Yugoslavia, and the changing view was highlighted by speakers from both Serbia and Croatia, who were now prepared to describe the great damage done to the theatres of their countries by government-dictated nationalist programming a decade ago and less. More pessimistically, Thomas Irmer described the hounding of certain German directors after reunification for their suspected activities, another example of politics taking precedence over art. But theatre's role can be a more positive one, as in the case described of the recent Slovak play (visiting the festival) that explored the actions of Slovakia's quisling leader, the catholic priest Jozef Tiso, a subject long buried in national shame.
It became clear from a number of papers that the role of a national theatre will depend very much on a country's relative stability. The perfectly acceptable need to establish cultural identity seen among the nations that grew in 19th-century Europe may have been met, but there are new states, new immigrants who must go through the same
often painful process. Todd London from the USA reminded us that one of the first to use theatre for social purposes was Theodore Roosevelt, whose employment programmes provided a model for state subsidy that may not have caught on in America but now thrived elsewhere. He wanted such funding to reach artists more directly today.
Institutions
Michael Coveney strongly defended the institution of national theatre with the example of Britain's. Its strong structure gave it the flexibility both to address current needs, be it to attack a government or to defend minorities, and also to encourage artists. He also drew attention to the role of private patronage, with the example of Annie Horniman, the tea heiress behind Ireland's national theatre and England's repertory movement.
Another speaker demonstrating that national theatres could move with the times was Jan Goossens of the Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) in Brussels. As Belgium's two communities drift apart, he is still trying to build links, and to reach beyond to the immigrant groups mistrusted by both. Such well-meaning "outreach", beloved of arts administrators, can be dangerous: he was generous enough to tell the story against himself of the festival of Arab theatre KVS organised for their neighbouring immigrant community, only to discover that they were Berbers, with no interest at all in things Arab.
Communities
From this arose much discussion of the role of theatre not only in nations, but in varying communities - urban, rural, regional - and the different national responses to this problem. At the other extreme, Hans Pasevic, the Bosnian director, wanted theatre to drop nationalism and embrace internationalism, while Serbia's Jovan Cirilov added that living national theatre cultures need to be measured against those of other countries, by means of festivals such as the BITEF he has run for forty years.
Some contributors made us look up from our navels by suggesting that the idea of a national theatre might now lie elsewhere altogether. In terms of impact, Michael Coveney pointed out that the musical was for some countries the national theatre, while Italy's Carmelita Celi wondered whether television was not now the real national theatre. Sebastian-Vlad Popa from Romania felt that the focus in his country had shifted with the generations, and that the alternative theatre preferred by the young and the creative had replaced dead institutional ideas.
These diverse views of a controversial subject are incapable of synthesis, and at times it seemed as if some speakers were living, as Belgrade's Zeljko Hubac put it, in parallel universes, yet it is possible that by the end of an intensive weekend those who declared themselves as global village citizens were more aware of the benefits of the real village (like those around Novi Sad where horse and cart is still the major means of transport) - and vice versa. As one speaker put it, a classically derived love of Alexandria may be much altered by the actual experience of the present day Egyptian city.
We certainly learned to be wary of easy, populist labels. The international colloquium itself, like Novi Sad's thriving Hungarian minority theatre, has had far better support from the city's present far right, all-foreigners-out administration than it ever received from their more liberal predecessors.
It may take a while for the full proceedings to be published, but meanwhile the 2003 colloquium is available. e-mail enquiries to sterija@eunet.yu
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
AURÉLIA'S ORATORIO Return of new piece by Victoria Thierrée Chaplin |
Lyric Hammersmith |
16 May |
17 Jun |
585 |
BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE |
Duchess |
8 May |
27 May |
548 |
THE CHANGELING Revival of play by Thomas Middleton William and Rowley (Cheek By Jowl) |
Barbican |
15 May |
10 Jun |
575 |
COLD COMFORT New play by Owen McCafferty |
Theatre 503 |
18 May |
10 Jun |
569 |
CORIOLANUS Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Globe |
10 May |
13 Aug |
557 |
DONKEYS' YEARS Revival of play by Michael Frayn |
Comedy |
9 May |
552 |
|
DYING CITY New play by Christopher Shinn |
Royal Court Upstairs |
17 May |
10 Jun |
572 |
ENEMIES Revival of play by Maxim Gorky, in a new version by David Hare |
Almeida |
11 May |
24 Jun |
565 |
JANE EYRE Revival of adaptation by Polly Teale from novel by Charlotte Brontë (Shared Experience) |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
12 May |
29 Jul |
570 |
KALILA WA DIMNA (THE MIRROR FOR PRINCES) New adap. by Sulayman al-Bassam from Ibn al-Muqaffa The Pit |
10 May |
27 May |
563 |
|
LOOK BACK IN ANGER Tribute to the play by John Osborne |
Royal Court |
8 May |
8 May |
550 |
NIGHT-LIGHT New play by Stephen Sharkey (Out Of Inc) |
Oval House |
16 May |
3 Jun |
556 |
THE OVERWHELMING New play by J T Rogers (NT/Out Of Joint) |
Cottesloe |
17 May |
582 |
|
PROJECT D: I'M MEDIOCRE New piece by The Work Theatre Collective |
Tristan Bates |
16 May |
3 Jun |
581 |
RABBIT New play by Nina Raine |
Old Red Lion |
18 May |
10 Jun |
579 |
SHRIEKS OF LAUGHTER New play by Moses Raine |
Soho |
16 May |
3 Jun |
580 |
SILVERLAND New play by Benjamin Davis (Lacuna TC) |
Arcola |
18 May |
10 Jun |
564 |
SOME MOTHERS' SONS New play by Mike van Graan |
Oval House |
11 May |
27 May |
551 |
SPEECHLESS New play by Robbie Moffat |
Etcetera |
9 May |
21 May |
549 |
TEMPEST FUGIT: PROSPERO'S WILL New play by Frank Bramwell |
Greenwich Playhouse |
11 May |
4 Jun |
574 |
Regions |
||||
BUS New play by Mark Kirkby |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
18 May |
27 May |
597 |
ENTERTAINING ANGELS New play by Richard Everett |
Chichester Festival |
9 May |
27 May |
591 |
GOOD REASON New play by Elspeth Murray and Timm Nunn, from Anthony Minghella (Reeling & Writhing) Edinburgh, Traverse / touring |
17 May |
20 May |
600 |
|
GORGEOUS AVATAR New play by Jules Home |
Edinburgh, Traverse I touring |
9 May |
20 May |
597 |
HOW TO STEAL A DIAMOND New play by Jamie Harrison and Candice Edmunds (Vox Motus) |
Glasgow, Tron / touring |
10 May |
13 May |
600 |
JULIUS CAESAR Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC Complete Works) |
Stratford, Royal Shakespeare |
16 May |
10 Oct |
586 |
KATHERINE DESOUZA New play by Nick Stafford |
Birmingham Rep, Door |
10 May |
27 May |
595 |
MONKEY New play by Colin Teevan (Dundee Rep / Scottish Dance Theatre) |
Dundee Rep / touring |
10 May |
20 May |
599 |
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Stratford, Swan |
18 May |
12 Oct |
588 |
NHS - THE MUSICAL New musical by Nick Stimson and Jimmy Jewell |
Plymouth Theatre Royal, Drum |
15 May |
27 May |
596 |
NO MEAN CITY Revival of play byA McArthur and H Kingsley Long, adap. Alex Norton |
Glasgow, Citizens |
18 May |
3 Jun |
601 |
PACIFIC OVERTURES Revival of musical by Stephen Sondheim, John Weidman, Hugh Wheeler |
Leicester Haymarket |
16 May |
3 Jun |
596 |
PAGE 8 New play by Louis Nowra and David Page (Company B Belvoir) |
Manchester, Library / touring |
10 May |
13 May |
595 |