Issue 6, 2007
Prompt Corner 
Once again, it's the time of year when I write this column in a few minutes snatched amid the week-long schedule of the National Student Drama Festival (of which a full report will follow next issue). By coincidence, the shows reviewed this issue have a strong vein of association with my own twenty(!) NSDFs. The Sheffield production of The Caretaker is directed by Jamie Lloyd (NSDF 2001, Falsettoland). Dying For It at the Almeida stars Liz White (also NSDF 2001, The Woman Who Walked Into Doors). Upstairs at the Royal Court, Lucy Caldwell debuts with Leaves after winning the NSDFrelated International Student Playscript Competition with The River in 2005. And at the National Theatre, Katie Mitchell's revival of Martin Crimp's Attempts On Her Life follows last year's Waves in its fascination with the kind of multimedia presentation regularly being toured more than a decade ago by John Keates and Fecund Theatre (Face To Face, NSDF 1992).
Fragmentation
To be sure, Keates did not invent this kind of technological deconstruction of theatre - it would be rash for anyone to make such a claim in a world that includes, for instance the Wooster Group. And obviously, Mitchell's NT productions have a far higher budget than Fecund's shows, which sometimes didn't stretch much beyond a couple of microphones and a video monitor. But there seems to me to be an underlying commonality of spirit, the principal difference being the broader cultural context in which we choose to describe the work: Fecund's pre-millennial fragmentation is now re-branded as post-9/11 uncertainty. Plus ça change.
Crimp's text, of course, belongs to that earlier period, even though it is barely a decade old, and you can see that a number of reviewers do not believe that it has aged well. Whether this is true or not, I'm unconvinced that Mitchell's approach helps it. On the one hand, the production would seem to be on the same postmodernist wavelength as the play; yet, by tuming it into little more than an entertainment of a particular kind (if I were feeling more pretentious, I might at this point use the term jouissance), it renders the piece in two dimensions only. If Crimp's play still has shadows, Mitchell's production does not present them (ironically, for someone normally so given to murky stage lighting); if it does not, this style certainly does nothing to paper over the play's deficiencies.
Helicopters
I feel much more intuitively in harmony with Lucy Caldwell's work. Partly this is because we grew up in the same area of Belfast, albeit two decades apart: the river she wrote of in her earlier play was a thinly disguised version of the stream that runs a couple of hundred yards from her family's house, and a couple of hundred yards in the other direction from mine; when the middle-class family in Leaves are disturbed by the noise of helicopters overhead, I know instinctively that it is not because they live in an especially "troubled" area, but rather because - like Caldwell, like me formerly - they live close by police headquarters. I was even convinced (correctly), almost from the moment I walked into the Theatre Upstairs, that an abstract arrangement of twinkling fairy lights at the back of the stage was a representation of the Belfast nightscape as seen from the hills above the east of the city.
I'm therefore very clearly "on side" as regards this play: even if the topography did not chime with me, the core situation of dealing in the aftermath of a close one's teenaged suicide attempt would still have recalled for me a time when I was in a similar position. Does this lead me to deny or overlook shortcomings in the play? Perhaps, but I think that perhaps also some reviewers are chiding it for not being the play it never set out to be. It is not just the composition of her stage family, but the whole emotional and psychological register of Caldwell's play, which is female. I mean this in a Jungian-archetypal sense: it is very much about the attempts of mother, sisters and even perhaps the attemptee herself to articulate their thoughts and feelings on the situation, about trying to connect, far more than about the "male" strain of repression and denial personified by the bookish, taciturn father. I think perhaps those dissatisfied reviewers wanted a shape and control to the material which, being a matter of "male"-type mastery, would be alien to the nature of the piece. (And I presume that Nicholas de Jongh has by now realised that the reason why attemptee Lori is so much happier in the final scene is that it is a flashback to a point several months before the rest of the play.)
Wonder
About the only play I saw this fortnight which I haven't already reviewed in the body of this issue and which I cannot bend to my NSDF linking concept is Platonov. To the best of my knowledge, Lev Dodin of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg has never visited the festival in Scarborough. (Perhaps if he had, the watery element of his production would be more turbulent, finding its inspiration in the North Sea rather than, as is the actual case, in the Thames as it flows past the Riverside Studios where his company was performing several years ago.) A number of reviewers had seen this production on its previous London visit in 1999; I had the advantage of seeing it in its home theatre only a few weeks earlier. On my retum visit to it in London, the expression of delighted wonder on my companion's face throughout (she subsequently described it as "a piece of God") reminded me what is at the core of the theatrical experience, and also of our attempts as reviewers. Our goal has to be to communicate and share such sensations of the best. For all our protestations of detachment and impartiality, what really drives us is the desire to spread the good news whenever we find it.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
Can You Hear At the Back?
To borrow a Charles Spencer trope, I must confess ... that it's a while since I've had a proper look at the contents of the Record. It's a while, too, since I've been in a position to comment on the shows an issue contains, but I have actually visited a couple of those recorded here, and welcome the chance to put in my two penn'orth again. But first let me say how good it was to find such a rich selection of reviews for a very busy and entertaining fortnight and to be reminded of what the London critics do best, which is to disagree with one another. The Mandate was revived recently ... and it instantly soared into my personal pantheon of great political comedies,' says Lloyd Evans. `One of the most comically laborious evenings I've endured in a theatre,' says Mr Spencer of the same occasion. At least they both loved Dying for It, Moira Buffini's new adaptation of Erdman's other hit, The Suicide. For another fine contrast, read Charlie (again) and Susannah Clapp on Joanna Lumley in Jonathan Miller's Sheffield Cherry Orchard. Same actions, very different reactions.
Gossip
It's also interesting to note the number of gossip writers now moonlighting as theatre critics: Quentin Lefts is joined by Paul Callan and Tim Walker, and none of them looks out of place. Look at the way all three handle Maggie Smith's performance in The Lady From Dubuque. We're going to miss Alastair Macaulay, now off to be dance critic for the New York Times, and practically the only critic still bothering to describe acting in any depth, but at least the evocations of the unique Smith quality from these three are as good as any from their mainstream colleagues. And it's Quentin Letts who responds to young Lucy Caldwell's Leaves with a sight more sensitivity than new writing fan Nicholas de Jongh. On the other hand, it's de Jongh who remarks of Tim Supple's multilingual Midsummer Night's Dream (in what some may see as a curious moment of self-denial), `Purists and saturnine intellectuals who go around swanking about how they loathe live theatre should keep away and shut up', where Letts is less overwhelmed: 'Something about the soapy audience set my reactionary teeth on edge.' I find myself agreeing with most of Letts's far from adulatory review, in the face of almost universal drooling from the rest of the critics.
To explain: I took a crowd of American students to the Roundhouse, and we saw the show from right at the back of its second circle, in seats which may have cost only £15 but should never have been sold by any self-respecting management. The poor projection of the actors (in whatever language), the obscuring pillars and the dodgy acoustic of the farther reaches of the Roundhouse combined to make a thoroughly unsatisfactory evening. As Quentin Letts suggests, the splendid new, shiny (and rather squeaky, when people fidget in the upper tiers) Roundhouse is more suitable for a political rally than for theatre. All the reviewers saw the show from close up, and got a very different impression. The reaction of my poor young Americans, many of them unfamiliar with the story, had my sympathy. `Who was the guy in the Mohawk with the red nappy?' was one question - and if you can sit through the Dream without discovering who Puck is, you're in trouble.
Gimmicks
The praise for Tim Supple's direction seems seriously misplaced, too. There is talk of magic in what is a production strong on acrobatics, but almost totally lacking in magic. Others admire the social distinctions of a production in which everyone, from tinker to Theseus, is dressed much the same, and in which the fairies might just as easily have been walk-ons in the mechanicals' play. That play, by the way, was one of the least funny versions I have ever seen of an interlude where it's usually almost impossible not to get laughs. The vaunted directorial and design innovations seemed mere gimmicks to me, paper-tearing, elastic-winding, rope-climbing and all, none of them forwarding or illustrating the movement of the play. One of its redeeming features was the music, but I couldn't help remembering the old adage, 'If a production isn't working, bang on a drum.'
And just what was the point of all the languages? So that Sri Lankan audiences might enjoy the ten minutes in Singhalese? Any scholars of Sanskrit in tonight? On the way out I met a dear friend, a German critic, who had come to see what all the fuss was about. She was very angry: 'Folkloristic kitsch!' she snarled. I'm inclined to agree.
It's excellent that the National is using its £10 Travelex season in the Lyttelton to offer new audiences contrasting revivals of Sizwe Banzi and Attempts on Her Life. Only Clare Allfree is young enough and bold enough to wonder what all the fuss is about in the case of the former, but Martin Crimp's 'masterpiece' (who else but his biographer, Aleks Sierz?) gets a deliciously divided press. The love-hate extremes of description are reached not only for Crimp but for his director, Katie Mitchell, who seems to be more and more enamoured of techniques which my boss, in Prompt Comer, traces back to John Keates' Fecund Theatre. I'd rather point compare-and-contrast merchants to Robert Lepage, for whom the close-up hand-held camera is only one of a huge repertoire of technical surprises, and hope that Ms Mitchell can soon lose her obsession with a single, increasingly otiose approach that was misguided enough when she first used it in her Oresteia. John Nathan and Maxie Szalwinska lead the admirers, but the proof that it's easier - and unfortunately much more fun - to write a damning review comes from Georgina Brown and, not surprisingly, Messrs Letts and Walker.
Ground breaking
When I saw the original production of Attempts, ten years ago, I went straight to the pub to read the text, in the hope of receiving the enlightenment that had escaped me. A pint of bitter later, I was none the wiser, but ready to pigeonhole the piece in the slovenly slot of `automatic writing', an area now firmly occupied by the recent work of Caryl Churchill but first explored by luminaries such as Beckett and Pinter. Now, the Churchills and Crimps (both master dramatists when they bother) preserve their unsuccessful efforts at starting a play and offer us the joined-up contents of their recycle bin. Before, the Fifties and Sixties brought us plays where we could make our own conclusions about their meaning, by joining up the dots for ourselves, but at least they had some kind of shape.
The Caretaker is one such, and I can still remember my bewilderment at the praise heaped on Donald McWhinnie's 1960 production. It was as if the critics were over-compensating for their destruction of The Birthday Party, whose real masterwork status had been revealed in the mean time by a fine television version. The Caretaker is formulaic where The Birthday Party was groundbreaking. Three great parts (and very well performed here), each with its own star aria, with no useful purpose. What happens when the play ends? Where have we got? We've shared a few sensational moments, had a few laughs, that's all. Don't ask whether the characters on stage have the least life off it - the writer has only joined up the dots long enough for the play to unfold. How much more satisfying to watch some solid Galsworthy or Somerset Maugham, eh what? At the Tricycle we also had to put up with a director who wants to impose himself on the play and does so by some very tiresome means - an overloaded musical score, a drip-by-drip soundtrack, and worst of all the insistent use of spotlights to show us when a character needs to be heard, a patronising trick which is rightly condemned elsewhere in this issue.
Still, it's great to see such life coming out of Sheffield, with Cherry Orchard yet more evidence of that life. And chastening to find my moans about join-up-the-dots plays refuted by Michael Billington, who in his review of The Lady From Dubuque stoutly defends a play which 'leaves the audience the dignity of interpretative choice.'
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
THE AGENT New play by Martin Wagner |
Old Red Lion |
8 Mar |
24 Mar |
244 |
BLACK CROWS New play by Linda Brogan (Clean Break) |
Arcola |
8 Mar |
24 Mar |
259 |
THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE Revival of play by Bertolt Brecht in new version by Frank McGuinness |
Cottesloe |
9 Mar |
14 Apr |
269 |
THE ELEVENTH CAPITAL New play by Alexandra Wood (Young Writers' Festival) |
Royal Court Upstairs |
26 Feb |
10 Mar |
224 |
THE END OF EVERYTHING EVER New piece by NIE |
BAC |
1 Mar |
18 Mar |
227 |
THE ENTERTAINER Revival of play by John Osborne |
Old Vic |
7 Mar |
26 May |
254 |
EQUUS Revival of play by Peter Shaffer |
Gielgud |
27 Feb |
1 Jan |
228 |
THE FOUR SEASONS Revival of play by Arnold Wesker (Version Th) |
Arcola |
1 Mar |
24 Mar |
241 |
GENERATIONS New play by debbie tucker green |
Young Vic, Maria |
27 Feb |
10 Mar |
235 |
GLASSBODY new installation/performance piece by Anna Furse (Athletes of the Heart) |
Guy's Hospital |
7 Mar |
24 Mar |
274 |
KING OF HEARTS New play by Alistair Beaton |
Hampstead |
5 Mar |
31 Mar |
247 |
LOVELY AND MISFIT European première of three plays by Tennessee Williams |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
8 Mar |
31 Mar |
260 |
LES MISÉRABLES Revival of musical by Alain Boublil & Claude-Michel Schönberg (Pimlico Opera) |
Wandsworth Prison |
2 Mar |
10 Mar |
262 |
MR SOLE ABODE New piece by Leo Kay and Benji Reid (Madrugada) |
Lyric Studio |
1 Mar |
17 Mar |
264 |
MOJ OF THE ANTARCTIC New piece by Mojisola Adebayo |
Oval House |
8 Mar |
24 Mar |
274 |
NINE YEARS New piece by Lone Twin |
BAC |
23 Feb |
25 Feb |
239 |
PEER GYNT Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen (National Th of Iceland) |
Pit |
28 Feb |
10 Mar |
240 |
PLUNDER Revival of play by Ben Travers (Watermill Th) |
Greenwich |
8 Mar |
17 Mar |
239 |
PRAMFACE Retum of play by Lizzie Hopley |
Warehouse Croydon |
2 Mar |
25 Mar |
234 |
STUNG New play by Pilar Orti |
Theatro Technis |
27 Feb |
10 Mar |
273 |
THE TEMPEST Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Novello |
28 Feb |
24 Mar |
242 |
THINGS OF DRY HOURS New play by Naomi Wallace (Gate/Royal Exchange) |
Gate |
8 Mar |
31 Mar |
263 |
TREATS Revival of play by Christopher Hampton |
Garrick |
8 Mar |
1 Jan |
265 |
THE UNCONQUERED New play by Torben Betts (Stellar Quines) |
Arcola |
28 Feb |
3 Mar |
245 |
VERTIGO New adaptation by Jonathan Holloway from novel by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac |
Pleasance |
6 Mar |
18 Mar |
273 |
WHIPPING IT UP Transfer of new play by Steve Thompson |
New Ambassadors |
1 Mar |
1 Jan |
251 |
WHISKY GALORE! – THE MAKING OF A FILLUM New adaptation by Giles Croft from Compton Mackenzie |
Hackney Empire |
26 Feb |
3 Mar |
226 |
Regions |
||||
BULLETPROOF SOUL New play by Jennifer Farmer |
Birmingham Rep, Door |
5 Mar |
10 Mar |
280 |
CORIOLANUS Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) (Complete Works) |
Stratford, Royal Shakespeare |
6 Mar |
31 Mar |
276 |
HUGHIE Revival of play by Eugene O'Neill |
Glasgow, Arches |
2 Mar |
17 Mar |
285 |
HUMBLE BOY Revival of play by Charlotte Jones |
Perth |
2 Mar |
17 Mar |
286 |
INTIMATE EXCHANGES Revival of the eight-play sequence by Alan Ayckbourn |
Scarborough, Stephen Joseph |
6 Mar |
5 May |
280 |
JOHNNO New adaptation by Stephen Edwards from novel by David Malouf |
Derby Playhouse |
8 Mar |
31 Mar |
281 |
MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Leeds, WYP Quarry |
28 Feb |
24 Mar |
279 |
National Review of Live Art / New Territories Season of work by various companies (full listings p282) |
Glasgow, Tramway |
7 Feb |
3 Mar |
282 |
THE RECOVERY POSITION New piece devised with Mark Murphy (NTS Young Company) |
Glasgow, Platform at the Bridge |
28 Feb |
3 Mar |
284 |
STRANGERS, BABIES New play by Linda McLean |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
27 Feb |
17 Mar |
284 |
THE TEMPEST Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Newcastle-under-Lyme, New Vic |
1 Mar |
17 Mar |
279 |
TO BE SURE New play by Tim Loane |
Belfast, Lyric |
7 Mar |
31 Mar |
281 |
TOAST Revival of play by Richard Bean |
Hull Truck |
2 Mar |
24 Mar |
280 |
TWELFTH NIGHT Revival of play by Shakespeare (Chekhov International Th Festival) (Complete Works) |
Stratford, Swan |
28 Feb |
3 Mar |
275 |