Issue 9, 2007
Prompt Corner 
As I write this column, news pages and blogs are ablaze with reportage and debate on Nicholas Hytner's outspoken remarks about the alleged sexism of reviewers. Although such a story comes as a boon two a two-page Prompt Corner, I intend to leave this matter until next issue, when it can be placed in the context of the reviews of A Matter of Life And Death which supposedly prompted Hytner's outburst. Mind you, by then I fully expect everything to have died down just as quickly as it did a couple of years ago when I said some of the same things on these very pages. The difference is, however, that when I noted the length of time some critics had been in their positions, this was (wilfully?) misinterpreted as a call for them to go, and then wildly misinterpreted as motivated by a desire to get such a gig myself. (Skipping lightly over the point that I now have one...) In Hytner's case, his remarks appear to have been quoted verbatim and not to leave much room for doubt as to what he meant. Nevertheless, much more on this matter in a fortnight's time.
Mothball
Meanwhile, instead of another opening of another show, another closure of another theatre. Out of the blue, the board of Bristol Old Vic have announced their intention to mothball the venue for refurbishment, and Simon Reade his departure as artistic director at the beginning of June... two months before the current programme comes to an end, never mind that the beginning of the autumn season has already been announced.. There seems to be a lot going on between the lines of these two press statements, and while it may not be advisable to speculate, it's hard to refrain from doing so. Again, the word in the blogosphere is far from complimentary about either Simon or the board.
On the one hand, it seems precipitate to begin a refurb when there is still a £2 million shortfall in funding for same. It also augurs ill that a statement envisages the Old Vic reopening with reduced staff; this suggests the possible end of the road as a producing house, which would be a blow to the theatrical ecology of the entire region and indeed the entire country, given an inceasing presence in co-productions, as well as a blot on a continuous Old Vic history dating from 1766. Moreover, it rather looks as if during the closure there will be no hand on the artistic helm of the theatre, let alone any plans having been put in place for the continuation of the Old Vic as an entity during this period.
Embarrassing
Conversely, there seems to be a deal of ill-will towards the artistic management of Reade (and, formerly, David Farr, but more since the latter's departure to run the Lyric Hammersmith). At this point I have to hold my hands up and admit that I haven't been to the Old Vic nearly as often in recent years as I would have liked, or as its programming has warranted. Nevertheless, there are a number of claims that both attendances and goodwill amongst other local companies have dropped off in the past year or two. What looks most embarrassing of all in the immediate context of the closure announcement is that Reade did not attend the emergency staff meeting at which the news was broken. However good the reasons for his absence may have been, leaving his actor wife to open and read a letter to those assembled appears a suicidal misjudgement.
Conspiracy or cock-up? Cock-up, I think: most likely the board saw unhelpful figures, panicked and over-reacted by bringing forward the closure and refurbishment to a point where no plans were in place to see the Old Vic through as an identifiable theatrical presence. In which case, it would be a matter of boardroom politics and balance-sheets driving a short-termist approach, with the cultural life of Bristol and of England as a whole getting it in the neck. And that's to say nothing of the several dozen who will lose their jobs at such short notice. A few months ago I wrote here that sometimes one wants simply to give the suits a brisk buffet upside the head. It wouldn't solve anything, but it might help the blood pressure of those doing the buffeting. And with luck, it would make quite a satisfying noise.
Comfortable
In contrast, I'm happy to admit a re-evaluation of another artistic director's statement. When Dominic Cooke heralded his first Royal Court season with remarks about re-focusing the subjects of its plays on more middle-class strata, I said nothing here (principally due to lack of time and space). Obviously, it was ridiculous to fear that the Court would suddenly transform into an SW1 version of Chichester (Michael Billington delights in recounting his experience of seeing the lights go up on a play set and hearing a delighted voice near him in the audience declare, "Oh, goody, a chaise longue!"). But fears are irrational, and I have to admit that a little germ of some kind of that worry did remain. It has been easy for those so inclined to poke fun at the disjunction between the Court's perceived dramatic programme of in-yer-face extremities and it's-grim-on-sink-estates privation and its audience drawn from among the chattering classes, not least in its immediate geographical environs of prosperous, comfortable Chelsea. But it's always possible to over-correct, and that was what was making me uneasy.
However, after seeing the Court's current offerings, That Face upstairs and My Child in a radically refashioned main house (reviews next issue), I'm more than reassured. I would even hazard a guess that Cooke's remarks might not so much have been a policy announcement as a rationalisation of programming decisions which seemed to offer him a convenient conceptual way to bundle them together for marketing purposes. It will probably seem odd to link the Royal Court with Alan Ayckbourn in this way, but I was reminded of Ayckbourn's response to the glib accusation that he writes about and for the middle class: that his middle class is the contemporary, broad middle class in which we almost all identify ourselves.
Assured
Admittedly, it's rather harder to sustain that argument in the case of That Face: while private education is increasingly common in Britain, and atomised families are all but the statistical norm, it's scarcely an ordinary experience to offer Mummy the choice of checking herself into a private mental institution before Daddy flies in from his second family in Hong Kong to have her sectioned. But writer Polly Stenham is concerned with the children (and not in a "Won't somebody please think of the children?!" way), with showing that the stresses and deprivations which screw us up need not be material.
Taking that view to its extreme would be endorsing the kind of position taken several years ago by former Eurythmic David A. Stewart, who tried to claim he suffered from something called Paradise Syndrome, suffering depression precisely because he had everything he wanted both materially and creatively. Stenham, of course, gets nowhere near such a position. It really is a remarkably assured piece of writing fro someone who was still in their teens when it was composed. What we must do now, of course, is restrain ourselves from pushing her too far, too fast: she has an evident and considerable gift which it's our duty not to burn out.
Chastened
The second half of the Young Vic's Big Brecht Fest was more than welcome, too; Dominic Cavendish is right to wish that the double bills spanning the Maria and Clare studios had been twinned with a main-house production. Sandy McDade in Señora Carrar's Rifles is not simply an excellent Brechtian heroine but one that manages to evoke at once Brecht's own flinty Germanism, the Celtic forebears of the play (in particular Synge's Riders To The Sea) and even the Spanish setting: McDade has twice played Angustias in The House Of Bernarda Alba, including once at the Young Vic, but in a few years' time she will make an excellent if unorthodox Bernarda. We do not see enough of McDade south of the border, and do not recognise her talents enough when we do.
And yet something about this particular pairing brought out reservations in me - not quite to the extent voiced by Sharon Garfinkel in her Tribune review, but nevertheless... It's comically obvious to note explicitly that Brecht was a writer of immense political commitment, and indubitably it enriches our understanding to see such naked agitprop pieces revived. But does my discomfort increase because ours is an age beyond such simple protests, or rather because we continue to feel chastened by these kind of direct exhortations even at a lifetime's remove?
Both pieces are punctuated by basso rumbles and tremors which both sound warlike and remind us of the double-bill's subtitle, The Earthquakes To Come. And yet the unambiguous mentality of "If you are not with us, you are against us" so exalted here - explicitly stated by a character in the Spanish play, and so stridently the theme of the parable against Swedish neutrality in the face of the Nazis, How Much is Your Iron? - is precisely the attitude I had seen on the very previous night being dissected with regard to Bush and Blair's Iraq policy in Called To Account. Commitment is laudable when we agree with it, otherwise it is deplorable fanaticism; and hindsight is one of our most precious gifts.
Afternoon movie
Finally, another of my periodic "I'm astounded that..."
comments: are Paul Taylor and Rachel Halliburton really the only reviewers
(apart from me) to remember what I have always understood to be a classic of 1960s British cinema, The
Family Way? Everyone dutifully notes the source of Rafta,
Rafta... in Bill Naughton's comedy All In Good Time, but scarcely
anyone points out that that play began its life (under yet another title) on
the small screen and is best known as the aforementioned film, with father and
daughter John and Hayley Mills playing father and daughter Ezra and Jenny
Fitton. Well, for anyone who has managed to miss it in an afternoon movie slot
on television, the DVD is under £10 on Amazon. None of which is to detract from
Ayub Khan-Din's wonderful British-Asian update of it; Nicholas de Jongh of
course entirely misses the point by assuming
that the play must share dominant metropolitan attitudes towards homosexuality,
and more to the point by not cracking a single smile.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
No "At the Back" this issue
Contents / Reviews
Reviewed in issue 9, 2007: |
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London |
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ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS New adaptation by Roy Williams from novel by Colin Maclnnes |
Lyric Hammersmith |
3 May |
26 May |
529 |
AFRICAN GOTHIC Play by Reza De Wet (The Other TC) |
White Bear |
3 May |
20 May |
533 |
AFRICAN SNOW Transfer of new play by Murray Watts (Riding Lights TC / York Theatre Royal) |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
24 Apr |
5 May |
515 |
THE BIG BRECHT FEST: Señora Carrar's Rifles /How Much Is Your Iron? Revivals of plays by Brecht |
Young Vic, Maria / Clare |
24 Apr |
5 May |
498 |
CALLED TO ACCOUNT New verbatim play edited by Richard Norton-Taylor |
Tricycle |
23 Apr |
9 Jun |
490 |
CHARLIE AND HENRY New play by Peter Maddock |
New End |
1 May |
27 May |
526 |
CORIOLANUS Revival of play by Shakespeare (Ninagawa Co) |
Barbican |
25 Apr |
29 Apr |
500 |
ELLING New adaptation by Simon Bent of play by Axel Hellstenius and Petter Næss, from Ingvar Ambjarnsen |
Bush |
27 Apr |
2 Jun |
516 |
FALLUJAH New play by Jonathan Holmes (ICA / Ilium Prods) |
Old Truman Brewery |
3 May |
2 Jun |
521 |
FEELGOOD Revival of play by Alistair Beaton |
Rosemary Branch |
2 May |
27 May |
533 |
KINDERTRANSPORT Revival of play by Diane Samuels (Shared Experience) |
Hampstead |
25 Apr |
26 May |
504 |
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN Revival of Allan Baker adaptation from Manuel Puig |
Donmar Warehouse |
25 Apr |
26 May |
507 |
THE LETTER Revival of play by William Somerset Maugham |
Wyndham's |
1 May |
|
523 |
THE LONDON PLAYS: London Tongue /London Falls Two new plays by Ed Hirne |
Old Red Lion |
26 Apr |
19 May |
506 |
MADONNA AND ME New play by Tommy Kearney |
Union SE1 |
24 Apr |
12 May |
519 |
NAN Revival of play by John Masefield |
Orange Tree |
4 May |
2 Jun |
534 |
RAFTA, RAFTA... New play by Ayub Khan-Din, based on All In Good Time by Bill Naughton |
Lyttelton |
26 Apr |
8 Sep |
511 |
SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM Revival of musical revue with songs by Stephen Sondheim |
Venue |
1 May |
14 Jul |
527 |
THAT FACE New play by Polly Stenham |
Royal Court Upstairs |
23 Apr |
19 May |
494 |
THE THING ABOUT MEN New musical by Joe Di Pietro and Jimmy Roberts, from screenplay by Doris Dörrie |
King's Head |
30 Apr |
3 Jun |
520 |
WHAT ANDREW HEARD New play by Jack Grone (Leisure Isle Prods/TYPE) |
Tabard |
3 May |
27 May |
506 |
YOUR HAND IN MINE New piece by Wishbone |
Lyric Studio |
23 Apr |
5 May |
497 |
Regions |
||||
BROKEN GLASS Revival of play by Arthur Miller (Rapture Th) |
Stirling, Tolbooth / touring |
28 Apr |
28 Apr |
546 |
CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED New play by Alan Wilkins |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
29 Apr |
19 May |
544 |
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES Irish première of adaptation by Owen McCafferty from teleplay by J P Miller |
Belfast, Lyric |
1 May |
26 May |
539 |
HOME HINDRANCE New piece by David Leddy |
Glasgow, David Leddÿ s flat |
1 May |
19 May |
545 |
I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE Revival of play by J B Priestley |
Nottingham Playhouse |
1 May |
12 May |
539 |
THE PATRIOT New play by Grae Cleugh |
Glasgow, tron |
27 Apr |
12 May |
543 |
THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE Revival of play by Jim Cartwright |
Newbury, Watermill |
30 Apr |
26 May |
539 |
THE SUNSHINE BOYS Revival of play by Neil Simon |
Leeds, WYP Quarry |
26 Apr |
19 May |
538 |
SUNSHINE ON LEITH New musical by Stephen Greenhorn featuring the songs of The Proclaimers |
Dunee Rep / touring |
26 Apr |
12 May |
541 |
THIS PIECE OF EARTH New play by Richard Dormer (Ransom Prods) |
Belfast, Old Museum Arts Centre |
20 Apr |
28 Apr |
537 |
TILT New play by Ailis Ni Riain (New Works / Granary Th, Cork) |
Glasgow, Citizens / touring |
1 May |
5 May |
546 |
THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE Revival of play by Pierre Marivaux, adapted by Braham Murray / Katherine Sand |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
23 Apr |
19 May |
537 |
THE WAY OF THE WORLD Revival of play by William Congreve |
Northampton Royal |
1 May |
19 May |
540 |
WE THAT ARE LEFT New play by Gary Owen |
Watford Palace |
23 Apr |
5 May |
538 |