Issue 23, 2006
Prompt Corner 
We are moving into the endgame of this phase, at least, of the Theatre Museum's existence. The Covent Garden site is due to close on 7 January next year. Blanche Marvin of London Theatreviews is holding an open house there between 12pm and 5pm the previous day, so that anyone who wants to can turn up to say farewell to the site, eat and drink a little to mark its passing. All are welcome. Meanwhile, my esteemed colleague and predecessor Ian Herbert is one of the movers behind the Guardians of the Theatre Museum, whose advertisement you can read in a qouple of pages' time. Their aim is to try, even at this eleventh hour, to agitate and embarrass the Victoria & Albert Museum into rescinding, at least for the time being, its unilateral decision to close the Theatre Museum; in that time, alternative plans may be formulated to ensure the survival of a dedicated Theatre Museum on a "relevant" West End site. I urge you all to do everything you can to make your views known to the various powers-that-be. One immensely useful web site for British residents is www.writetothem.com, formerly www.faxyourmp.com but now expanded to include local councillors, MEPs and members of various devolved assemblies (not relevant in this case). Having just moved to a new location, I have been delighted to find from this site that my own new MP is the whizz-kid David Lammy, who happens to be Minister for Culture with particular responsibility for museums and galleries; so I rather think it's time I made my presence felt as a constituent. It's a course of action I commend in general.
Arms tied
From an entity which may be about to disappear from the West End to one likely to remain there for some time to come: The Sound Of Music. The one criticism that everyone seems to have in common is that Connie Fisher might benefit immensely from having, at least at a few rehearsals so that she realises, her arms tied to her sides. (This is neither a flippant nor a cruel suggestion: I once went through a rehearsal with a strip of gaffa tape - duct tape to Americans - on my lower forehead, so that I felt physical discomfort every time I indulged in my own vice of acting with my eyebrows. It worked.)
I remain suspicious of Fisher - "Fisher", you'll note, according to my standard style of referring to practitioners by their surnames; unlike most of the rest of the country, I don't feel on first-name terms with "Connie" simply because she was on a TV series. Reviewers have reacted to the same vein in her performance, albeit reacted in different ways, ranging from "the first real Maria I've seen" in Nicholas de Jongh's case to an accusation of defaulting to "Wide-Eyed Sexless Rapture" from Alastair Macaulay. What I don't agree with is the opinion that she is significantly different from Julie Andrews. Indeed, without having watched any of the television series, it seems to me from the result that what was being sought was not a new Maria but a new Andrews, with due allowances for cultural changes in the 45 or so years since the latter first came out of the Trapps. It's the same brisk freshness refurbished for a slightly different age, that's all. (Oh, and a point of pedantry: a number of reviewers refer to Maria as a novitiate. She's not. She's a novice. Novitiate is the state or period of being a novice, or a building which houses novices. It's a lovely word, but it's the wrong one.)
Wobbly
One matter which no-one seems to have mentioned, but which hit me like a slap in the face: do we not expect a major West End musical production, in the Palladium of all places, to be able to steer clear of the basic pitfall of wobbly sets? Praise has been given to Robert Jones's set design of a great disc of mountainside on which Conn- sorry, Maria is discovered lying, almost perpendicular to the stage, and which then swings down to only a few degrees off horizontal so that she can skip across it, rhapsodising that the hills are alive. They certainly bounce enough even under her relatively lissom feet to suggest that they are alive, because the whole disc is fixed on one hydraulic axis only and is simply not firm enough to avoid wobble. As with Bill Dudley's digital cycloramas for The Woman In White a couple of years ago, a beautiful idea counts for nothing if you can't make it work sufficiently well in practice. Contrariwise, I almost gasped out loud at the sudden, simple yet shocking transformation of the entire theatre into a Nazi concert hall as drapes descended and guards took their places on the forestage walkway. For me, that moment alone negates claims that Jeremy Sams' production is light on the threat of Nazism. In any case, by all accounts the tills are alive; I give it three or four years. (Now there's a hostage to fortune...!)
Hohepunkt
As German or pseudo-German experiences go, The Sound Of Music ran a distinct third during this fortnight. It was eclipsed firstly by Thomas Ostermeier's production of Sarah Kane's Blasted, entitled in German Zerbombt. My Financial Times review of that production is elsewhere in this issue. Not everyone agrees, of course: on seeing Kieron Quirke after I'd read his review, I jocularly remarked to him that he had no soul, whereupon he twice grabbed my arm to stop me walking away while he continued his excoriation of the production. In the "pro" camp, I suspect the person whom Maxie Szalwinska heard responding audibly behind her was Paul Taylor; I say this not to mock Paul in any way, but to testify to the power of Ostermeier's production, that it can draw vocal exclamations even from such a potentially jaded spectator. One thing, though: after his Nora (A Doll's House) (which I was almost the only British reviewer to rave about) and now Zerbombt, I think perhaps, when he brings his next show over, Mr O. might be advised to leave the stage revolves at home for a change. Just because the revolve was popularised by Max Reinhardt in Berlin,: that doesn't make its use mandatory in all productions from that city a century later.
But the Hohepunkt of my German viewing was Claus Peymann's magnificent 2001 Berliner Ensemble Richard II, in Stratford for half a week only. The central visual metaphor may be overdone: an accretion of earth and water on Achim Freyer's spare monochrome set rather belabours the point that faction and civil war are turning the governance of England into a quagmire. Much of the delivery - strongly declarative, from predominantly white-made-up faces - may owe more to the company's Brechtian history than to Stratford sensibilities. But it made its points (and, above all, Shakespeare's) beautifully and powerfully. Michael Maertens may be the finest Richard I have ever seen, Sam West and Kevin Spacey not excepted. His is not a negligent king, simply an insufficiently commanding one; he exudes a great emotional clarity at every instant, and can find a wealth of resonance in a single word (only partly because he sometimes has more syllables to savour: "Herunter" offers more phonetic mileage than 'Down"). Manfred Karge is a looming, Machiavellian presence as the Duke of York, and there is even a running gag in which Hanna Jürgens' oft-fainting Queen (looking oddly reminiscent of Joanne Catherall of The Human League) is revived by water, I caught a brief flash on the surtitles describing Thomas Brasch's translation as "faithful to the original, with additional wordplay". Boy, is there ever! Love's Labour's Lost at its most euphuistic doesn't pun or romp as much as Richard's exchange with the dying John of Gaunt. But it is shot through with a sardonicism perfectly in keeping with a play from which no-one emerges unsullied. A bleak, mordant delight.
Honour
A few hours later, having initially been misinformed about its running time, I had to abandon Yellow Earth Theatre's King Lear at the interval of its last performance in order to stand any chance of getting back to London the same night. (Why are rail services to Stratford so unremittingly terrible?) I'm afraid I didn't feel heartbroken to do so. While the first three acts were not by any means bad, I got the impression that after their initial decision to collaborate, David Tse Ka-Shing's Chinese-British company and the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre expected a momentum of ideas that in the event do not materialise. Zhou Yemang's Lear becomes a corporate kingpin in a near-future Shanghai; the company deliver some lines in English, others in Mandarin (largely in keeping with actors' respective nationalities); the Fool is transformed into a chorus of inner voices; but nothing else of note. I'm sorry, but I shan't be feeling obliged to catch up on it during the rest of the show's UK tour.
I'm not sure what Aleks Sierz means when he says that the whips in Whipping It Up "have no ideals except for their own public-school loyalties". (Amazing how many reviewers mention not just public schools but the resemblance of the whips' Office to a public-school common room. I wouldn't know.) It struck me that the sacrifice made at the end of the play retains a kind even of nobility which, author Steve Thompson seems to suggest, is anachronistic but far from undesirable; that the Chief Whip exhibits in extremis the kind of honour which is alien both to the day-to-day running of the office and to contemporary political culture as a whole. This is what I think Quentin Letts misses when he says its portrayal of Tories is out-of-date: far be it from me to teach an experienced Parliamentary sketch-writer how to suck eggs, but the point seemed to me to be not the various kinds of corruption and peccadillo being bandied around, but the fact that political values didn't enter the picture anywhere, for either party. Quentin laments that it's the Tories who are the targets rather than Labour, but he hasn't been in the theatre game long enough to take account of Alistair Beaton's Feelgood back in 2001. A number of reviewers say that Thompson's play is nearly as good as Beaton's; if that were true, it would be a poor thing indeed. In fact, it's more than a little better. Although, when the character of the blonde intern started simpering intensely, I couldn't help whispering to my companion, 'Ah, Terry Johnson's been directing again...".
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Still Hear Me Out East?
Last issue I was talking about the International Association of Theatre Critics and the differences between its many sections, members of which had gathered in Seoul for our fiftieth birthday congress. On the way home I met the Hong Kong section of IATC, who had organised a four-day colloquium on a very similar theme to that explored in Seoul. We were looking at new tendencies in theatre again, but this time with a much more Asian emphasis - Richard Gough, from the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, and I were the only invited Western speakers.
What is remarkable about the Hong Kong IATC is its strength and structure. It has an office, a couple of full-time employees, and a programme that deals with much more than making sure the right critical bottoms are on the right seats at first nights. They don't organise theatre awards, but they do publish books, run an active website and work in the local educational community to train the critics of the future. Until recently they were responsible for a bilingual insert in Hong Kong's largest newspaper, devoted entirely to theatre criticism and circulating 130,000 copies. The New Vision Arts Festival, which was running while I was there, offered its public a handsome brochure of essays introducing its shows, again the work of the Hong Kong IATC. All this in a place where theatre is by no means top of the cultural agenda, and where there are only four permanent funded theatre companies, none playing year-round.
Synthesis
The international symposium organised by the Hong Kong critics was their first, though you wouldn't have thought it. A series of papers were delivered, made available in print in English and Chinese, and translated efficiently and simultaneously into English, Mandarin and Cantonese. As well as Hong Kong critics and theatre people, the contributors included critics from Beijing, Shanghai and Canton on the mainland, and also from Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
From the Chinese contributors I detected a sense that all was not well with the more traditional forms of "Chinese opera", with many companies closing and commercial, Western styles intruding. This is particularly true in Shanghai, where West End plays and Broadway musicals are becoming common, partly to satisfy the need of foreign residents and tourists, partly to give practice to local students of English. Beijing's theatre can be more political. The city has an International Festival every May, and it also has a burgeoning Fringe. A remarkable synthesis of all these trends was on show in the New Vision festival, a chamber piece based on a celebrated Beijing opera, Mu Guiying, written and directed by Li Liuli, a well known director in the Beijing People's Art Theatre who has set up his own studio theatre.
Petals
In Li's version, Mu Guiying is stripped down to a small cast, reflecting the early operas which might be performed by one singer over a long period, with a set consisting of two chairs and a table. The cast and musicians, impeccable products of the Beijing opera tradition, bring high standards of traditional performance to an adaptation which shocked some purists. The piece basically concerns a legendary woman warrior, who meets the ghosts of her husband, his father and grandfather on the night before a decisive battle. Although the costumes are in period, Mu is discovered sitting in a decidedly modern bath full of red rose petals, echoing the famous scene from American Beauty - though it is the movie which has borrowed a regular feature of Eastern theatre in its use of petals. She is visited in turn by the three ghosts, who take up position at the corners of Li's
well-lit square of action. The voices rise and fall in the strident cadences of Chinese opera, and the movements are completely stylised, bringing a classical beauty to the piece. The music is played on traditional instruments, but composed by Guo Wenjing in an eclectic style which offers both instrumental commentary and choral interludes to back the actors. A dozen instrumentalist-singers achieved a rich variety of accompaniment which added greatly to the production. The moment when Mu finally puts on her warrior costume and prepares for battle is one of stunning beauty, visual and aural. The message of the play seems to be not much more than that of the original, that women can also be capable of heroic, patriotic deeds, but Li Liuli has presented it in a way which unashamedly uses the static, declamatory tools of traditional Beijing Opera to thrill modern audiences with its rich imagery.
Cross-over
The theatre of Hong Kong itself is going through its own period of self-examination. Chinese opera, amateur and professional, is still popular with the Chinese-speaking community, while the English residents can expect the occasional touring company - The Woman In Black was playing during my visit. The ex-colony boasts a number of very well equipped venues, which can be empty for much of the
year. There seems to be little cross-over between the two communities, although there is plenty of cultural crossover in the work of local Chinese companies. The example that I saw, also in the New Visions Festival, came from Ensemble Theatre. Founded in 1993 by two Gaulier-trained graduates of the Hong Kong Academy, Jim Chim and Olivia Yan, the company presented a show a year until 2002, when funding enabled them to expand to several, with Chim making a separate name for himself as a stand-up comic. They now have permanent premises and can run a programme of youth theatre activities.
Surtitles
Faust auf dem Klosett: Epic Toilet Opera was their offering in the festival, in which the two leaders of the company, playing Faust and Mephisto, were joined by five actors and two dancers to play out a collage of scenes loosely based on Goethe and described by playwright-director Mann Chan as a "symphonic poem'. The versatility of the cast meant that it often seemed that a far bigger company was on the large stage, as they made full use of song, dance and movement to juxtapose the stories of the Gretchen of Goethe and her modern equivalent, a Triad moll. As the title suggests, the work is principally set in a toilet, which can be ingeniously manipulated in Ricky Chan's clever design. Chan WanLai's music, ranging from a capella to full-blown rock, is an insistent feature of the performance, and will not please those who would prefer Berlioz or Gounod to accompany their Faust, but it works well here, culminating in the flush to end all flushes as the toilet self-destructs. Outstanding performances from Olivia Yan and the dancer Daniel Yeung, as well as the anchoring Jim Chim in the central role, made this a rich and powerful theatre experience, well worth the notice of festivals worldwide, even if it would benefit from severe trimming. It was noticeable that where Li Liuli's Beijing production had English surtitles, no such luxury was offered for this much bigger show in a theatre resembling a Broadway house, the Kwai Tsing Auditorium. "The English wouldn't be interested", said the company, explaining that very few had turned up to previous translated shows. This seems somewhat defeatist, particularly with a production that reached international standards, and suggests a division in Hong Kong theatre that may be in need of radical attention.
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
AMY LAMÉ'S MAMA CASS FAMILY SINGERS New solo piece |
Soho |
16 Nov |
25 Nov |
1358 |
AY CARMELA! Revival of play by José Sanchis Sinisterra, translated by Steve Trafford (York Th Royal) |
Shaw |
8 Nov |
18 Nov |
1343 |
BONFIRES AND VANITIES New play by Candida Cave |
Burgh House |
1 Nov |
19 Nov |
1343 |
'DA KINK IN MY HAIR New musical by trey anthony [sic] |
Hackney Empire |
8 Nov |
25 Nov |
1370 |
DEADEYE New play by Amber Lone (Kali Th) |
Soho |
15 Nov |
25 Nov |
1376 |
THE END OF REALITY New play by Richard Maxwell (New York City Players) |
Pit |
8 Nov |
18 Nov |
1342 |
FROST/NIXON Transfer of new play by Peter Morgan |
Gielgud |
16 Nov |
|
1371 |
KING ARTHUR New play by Keith Dewhurst (Shapeshifter) |
Arcola |
10 Nov |
9 Dec |
1372 |
THE LADY OF BURMA New play by Richard Shannon |
Old Vic |
12 Nov |
12 Nov |
1358 |
THE LIGHTNING PLAY New play by Charlotte Jones |
Almeida |
17 Nov |
6 Jan |
1378 |
MY BROTHER'S KEEPER Return of play by Michael J Flexer (Apikoros) |
Pleasance |
14 Nov |
3 Dec |
1354 |
MY MATISSE New play by Howard Ginsberg (Okai Collier) |
Jermyn Street |
16 Nov |
9 Dec |
1346 |
NOT ABOUT HEROES Revival of play by Stephen Macdonald (Feelgood Th Prods) |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
8 Nov |
18 Nov |
1377 |
ONE MAN STAR WARS TRILOGY New piece by Charles Ross |
Garrick |
6 Nov |
11 Nov |
1338 |
ORESTES New adaptation by Helen Edmundson from Euripides (Shared Experience) |
Tricycle |
8 Nov |
2 Dec |
1344 |
PORGY AND BESS Revival of opera by George & Ira Gershwin, in new adaptation by Trevor Nunn |
Savoy |
9 Nov |
|
1349 |
PRIVATE JOKES, PUBLIC PLACES New play by Oren Safdie |
New End |
14 Nov |
10 Dec |
1359 |
SCENES FROM THE BACK OF BEYOND New play by Meredith Oakes |
Royal Court Upstairs |
7 Nov |
25 Nov |
1334 |
SHAW TRIPLE BILLS Revival of plays by George Bernard Shaw |
Orange Tree |
13 Nov |
25 Nov |
1359 |
SOUL-ETUDE Installation by Peter Niki (FeEast) |
Old Abattoir |
16 Nov |
19 Nov |
1336 |
THE SOUND OF MUSIC Revival of musical by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II |
Palladium |
14 Nov |
|
1364 |
STONES IN HIS POCKETS Return of play by Marie Jones |
Duchess |
7 Nov |
2 Dec |
1341 |
THERESE RAQUIN New adaptation by Nicholas Wright, from novel by Emile Zola (NT) |
Lyttelton |
13 Nov |
21 Feb |
1360 |
WAVES New piece devised by Katie Mitchell and the company, from novel by Virginia Woolf (NT) |
Cottesloe |
16 Nov |
8 Feb |
1373 |
WHIPPING IT UP New play by Steve Thompson |
Bush |
10 Nov |
23 Dec |
1355 |
THE WORLD IN PICTURES New piece by Forced Entertainment |
Riverside |
7 Nov |
18 Nov |
1337 |
YOU'VE GOT TO LOVE DANCING TO STICK TO IT New piece by Julian Fox |
BAC |
14 Nov |
3 Dec |
1377 |
ZERBOMBT (BLASTED) Revival of play by Sarah Kane (Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz) |
Barbican |
7 Nov |
11 Nov |
1339 |
Regions |
||||
DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE revival of play by David Edgar adapted from novel by Robert Louis Stevenson |
Perth |
10 Nov |
25 Nov |
1392 |
15 MINUTES New piece by Highway Diner based on The Atrocity Exhibition by J G Ballard |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
7 Nov |
11 Nov |
1391 |
Glasgay! Festival |
Glasgow, various |
19 Oct |
12 Nov |
1389 |
HEROES Tour of play by Gerald Sibleyras, translated by Tom Stoppard |
Edinburgh, King's I touring |
14 Nov |
18 Nov |
1393 |
THE INDIAN BOY New play by Rona Munro written in response to A Midsummer Night's Dream |
Stratford, RST Cube |
9 Nov |
11 Nov |
1381 |
ISABELLA'S ROOM Play by Jan Lauwers (Needcompany) |
Glasgow, Tramway |
9 Nov |
11 Nov |
1391 |
MEMORY New play by Jonathan Lichtenstein |
Mold, Clwyd Theatr Cymru |
7 Nov |
25 Nov |
1387 |
MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN Revival of play by Bertolt Brecht, transi. Michael Hoffman |
Richmond I touring |
9 Nov |
11 Nov |
1388 |
OEDIPUS THE KING Revival of play by Sophocles (NTS Young Company) |
Glasgow, Bridge / touring |
15 Nov |
18 Nov |
1394 |
OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD Revival of play by Timberlake Wertenbaker |
Colchester, Mercury |
6 Nov |
18 Nov |
1387 |
PERICLES Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Stratford, Swan |
15 Nov |
6 Jan |
1382 |
THE WINTER'S TALE Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Stratford, Swan |
15 Nov |
6 Jan |
1382 |