Issue 11, 2007
Prompt Corner 
With the usual impeccable timing, my remarks about l'affaire Hytner were written before, but only reached readers after, the man sang the palinode whose opening paragraphs are reproduced opposite. (I have to admit here that one of the instances he cites may well be mine. I have been known to refer to Georgina Brown as "the naughtiest girl in the school", in tribute to her effervescence rather than belittlement of her critical acumen – Georgina, after all, gave me my first break in professional reviewing. If this is indeed what Nick Hytner heard, it just goes to show how we can misunderstand things when we set our minds to it.)
Experience
The rest of the article (available online) is more tentative even than the general issue suggested in my last column, that of representativeness. He, in effect, wants us to get out more. (A friend berated me recently, "Ian, you're out every evening and you still don't get out enough!", but I don't think Hytner meant it in quite that way.) Would that it were possible, basically; I didn't have a lot of time left after 13 shows in two weeks, and I'm not nearly as diligent as the likes of Mark Shenton.
Hytner wonders "whether the concept of the super-critic who sees everything and knows everything is as useful as it was. There are critics whose experience spreads wide rather than deep, who, like much of the audience, know less about theatre history, but are passionate about contemporary art, music and dance." I take his point, but in practice the editorial and cultural climate at present will seize on the first part of that quotation and entirely ignore the second, preferring instead to install people whose experience spreads in neither direction and who are passionate only about sounding off and receiving regular cheques for doing so. I don't want to seem either complacent or fatalistic in suggesting that the current set-up is the lesser of two evils, but in practice the only other game in town at the moment is the one I've just described.
Extremes
My remarks above about seeing so many shows may well sound ludicrously self-pitying: no doubt more than a handful of readers are thinking, "Gee, I should have such a packed schedule and not have to pay for any of it!" There's another issue related to this, however, which is as follows: the two weeks covered by this issue have represented the extremes of press-night scheduling. Look at the opening dates on that Contents page: you'll see that, in the first week (beginning 21 May), there was only one significant opening in London all week Othello at the Globe. Thank heaven for Chris Goode in Plymouth, Ron Hutchinson in Bristol and the Northern Exposure mini-season in Leeds.
But the following week...! Tuesday 29 May alone saw major openings at the Barbican, Royal Court and Savoy as well as Pete Postlethwaite's Prospero (try saying that ten times quickly) in Manchester and a significant revival of Patrick Marber's Closer in Northampton. The following evening, Nakamitsu at the Gate tended to get squeezed out between Kean and Philistines. Thursday, inevitably, saw everyone at the Nunn/McKellen marathon in Stratford, seeing King tear in the afternoon and The Seagull in the evening. The repertoire schedule of a third Stratford show, Silviu Purcarete's revival of lonesco's Macbett, is such that it's proven impossible for virtually any of us to get to see it.
Ridiculous
When people complain that reviewers don't get far afield often enough, they're usually failing to take into account that there's usually enough happening in London on any given evening to keep at least two reviewers from any title busy (and it's mighty rare that there's space available for more than two theatre reviews in a daily paper). That's not meant to sound metropolitan-complacent; it's just the way things are. But that second week was frankly ridiculous. (So was the one that followed it, i.e. the first half of the period to be covered by our Issue 12; the second half is once again irksomely sparse.)
The Society of London Theatres operates as an informal clearing house for the scheduling of press nights, so that such clashes seldom occur. (I'm rather proud that Theatre Record is used in the same way by a number of fringe venues.) But every so often there arises a... well, the unlovely phrase is "pissing contest": each party refuses to back down, trying to show that they're the stronger or the more able to tough it out or whatever. I swear that I actually heard the press representative of one of the shows in the previous paragraph pout, "Well, we scheduled ours first!" This kind of clash isn't in anyone's interest: each production will lose out, along with critics' patience, papers' and magazines' likelihood of catching The Story and, of course, reader's opportunities to get comprehensively informed. Perhaps a greater formality is required, more on a par with the press screening schedules compiled and stewarded in the UK by the Film Distributors' Association.
Idiosyncratic
Two final notes. Firstly, I'm aware that my use of Nahum Tate's King Lear in my last column was in some respects staggeringly ill-advised. The versions of the Lear (or Leir, or Lir) story prior to Shakespeare generally did have relatively upbeat endings, so in one respect Tate was simply rectifying what must to contemporary audiences have been the genuinely shocking departure from convention of Shakespeare's tragic drive. But my point stands: today, it's the Shakespeare version that we know, and departure from it which seems dubious to say the least. Secondly, any misprints (such as two I already know about but have been unable to change in time: the mis-spelling of Oliver Emanuel's surname in the production details of Magpie Park and David Hermanstein's in those of Safe) are entirely my responsibility; this issue once again bears the idiosyncratic hallmarks of having been laid out by the editor rather than by someone who knows what they're doing. Apologies to all concerned.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
No "At the Back" this issue
Contents / Reviews
Reviewed in issue 11, 2007: |
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London |
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ALASKA New play by DC Moore |
Royal Court Upstairs |
29 May |
23 Jun |
621 |
ALL MOUTH New play by Jonathan Lewis and Miranda Foster |
Menier Chocolate Factory |
31 May |
7 Jul |
639 |
THE B FILE Revival of play by Deborah Levy |
Etcetera |
31 May |
17 Jun |
634 |
BLUEBEARD New drama by Pericles Snowdon (Fluff Prods) |
Old Red Lion |
22 May |
9 Jun |
620 |
CRESSIDA AMONG THE GREEKS New play by David Foley (WSR Prods) |
White Bear |
23 May |
17 Jun |
620 |
CYMBELINE Revival of play by Shakespeare (Cheek By Jowl) |
Barbican |
29 May |
23 Jun |
623 |
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Revival of musical by Jerry Bock (Sheffield Theatres) |
Savoy |
29 May |
|
627 |
FORGOTTEN VOICES New adaptation by Malcolm McKay from book by Max Arthur |
Riverside |
1 Jun |
7 Jul |
640 |
KEAN Revival of Frank Hauser translation of Jean-Paul Sartre adaptation of play by Alexandre Dumas |
Apollo |
30 May |
|
630 |
NAKAMITSU New adaptation by Benjamin Yeoh of Noh play |
Gate |
30 May |
16 Jun |
634 |
OTHELLO Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Globe |
24 May |
19 Aug |
616 |
PHILISTINES Revival of play by Maxim Gorky in new version by Andrew Upton (NT) |
Lyttelton |
30 May |
18 Aug |
635 |
STREETS PAVED WITH GOLD New play by Victor Richards |
Oval House |
22 May |
26 May |
620 |
YELLOW LINES New play by Steve King |
Oval House |
31 May |
16 Jun |
638 |
Regions |
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Children's International Theatre Festival See pages for details of individual productions |
Edinburgh, various |
19 May |
28 May |
656 |
CYPRUS Revival of play by Peter Arnott (Mull Th) |
Edinburgh, Traverse ! touring |
30 May |
2 Jun |
664 |
Fierce Festival See pages for details of individual productions |
Birmingham, various |
20 May |
5 June |
648 |
THE FLOUERS O' EDINBURGH Revival of play by Robert McLellan |
Pitlochry Festival |
30 May |
17 Oct |
665 |
FORGET-ME-NOT LANE revival of play by Peter Nichols |
Scarborough, Stephen Joseph |
30 May |
25 Aug |
653 |
HAPPY DAYS Revival of play by Samuel Beckett |
Dundee Rep |
26 May |
9 Jun |
662 |
KINDERTOTENLIEDER New piece with script by Dennis Cooper, music Stephen O'Malley! Peter Rehberg Glasgow, Tramway |
24 May |
26 May |
|
662 |
KING LEAR Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Stratford-upon-Avon, Courtyard |
31 May |
21 Jun |
641 |
MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Chichester, Minerva |
1 Jun |
1 Sep |
653 |
MAGPIE PARK New play by Oliver Emanuel |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
22 May |
9 Jun |
649 |
MAHABHARATA New adaptation by Stephen Clark with music by Nitin Sawhney |
Brighton, Theatre Royal / touring |
22 May |
26 May |
648 |
'E POLISH QUINE New play by Henry Adam (Dogstar Th) |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
31 May |
2 Jun |
666 |
SAFE New play by David Hermanstein |
Leeds, WYP Courtyard |
22 May |
9 Jun |
649 |
THE SEAGULL Revival of play by Anton Chekhov, in new version by Trevor Nunn with the company (RSC) |
Stratford-upon-Avon, Courtyard |
31 May |
15 Jun |
643 |
SNAKE IN THE GRASS Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn |
Pitlochry Festival |
29 May |
17 Oct |
664 |
SPEED DEATH OF THE RADIANT CHILD New play by Chris Goode |
Plymouth, Drum |
22 May |
2 Jun |
649 |
THE TEMPEST Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
29 May |
7 Jul |
651 |
TOPLESS MUM IN DEAD HERO SHOCKER!! New play by Ron Hutchinson |
Bristol, Tobacco Factory |
23 May |
16 Jun |
650 |