Issue 23, 2007
Prompt Corner 
Last issue I was so enthusiastically inveighing against people getting on to favourite hobby-horses that I mounted high on one of my own, and had a nasty fall as a result. I accused Quentin Letts of overenthusiastic use of the term "illegal immigrants" when writing about Romanian migrants to Ireland, since both countries were members of the EU and consequently their citizens enjoyed freedom of movement. Quentin has pointed out that such freedom is currently still circumscribed for citizens of Romania and Bulgaria. Apologies. (Tchah, anyone would think he was a political writer...)
We can't help, though, seeing matters through our own filters. And of course, as I've often noted here, subjectivity is one of the givens of reviewing. But that's subjectivity about artistic matters; can we achieve no better when considering social or political points that may arise from the work we are reviewing? Well, I guess not.
Rebuke
Look at the reviews of Free Outgoing, for instance: look at the reviewers who see, in the events and attitudes of Anupama Chandrasekhar's play, an implicit rebuke of us Brits for our licence and laxity. There is, they imply, there is something more understandable and, well, proper about the shocked responses in Chennai to a 15-year-old girl having sex after school, which act was caught on a phonecam and the video spread virally. How sad that it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in Britain. Charles Spencer remarks that "These days [teenage pregnancy is] viewed as the most sensible way of getting to the top of the council housing list"... which was a fiction even twenty years ago when there was such a thing as council housing. (As an explanation for non-Britons, much of that small portion of housing stock still owned by local government authorities after two decades of right-to-buy policies is now being sold off not to individual tenants but to public/private bodies of varying degrees of conscientiousness. I hope I've phrased that tentatively enough to avoid another correction!)
Only a few of us find more of interest in the responses our cultures would have in common to such a situation: the commodification of the girl in question, to the point where she becomes public property with everyone expressing an opinion about her conduct, the combination of reproof and prurience exhibited towards not just her but her family, the all too common media siege which here results in the inability to deliver water to the complex they live in. (In this respect, lndhu Rubasingham's production is a little too decorous; we get no sense of the depredations of hygiene and thirst wrought on the family and their neighbours, although there's not really a lot that can be done on that score within the course of 75 minutes' continuous action.) Most parents anywhere would respond as Deepa's widowed mother Malini does: first growing ever more strident in her condemnation of anyone else to hand – the school principal, her less favoured elder child, the family of the boy involved, or modem culture in general (in a frenzy, she cuts the plug off the family television, though the computer is left working since it drives a later scene). Later, in her attempts to find a way out for the family, she almost even offers herself to the office dork if he will smuggle Deepa out past the reporters. In the end, she sees no alternative but to collaborate with a tawdry TV programme.
And it keeps coming back to commodification, to notoriety of any kind as a publicly tradable stock regardless of the person concerned. This is why Caroline McGinn and Matt Wolf are right to praise the fact that Chandrasekhar never shows us Deepa herself onstage, and why others are wrong to bemoan that we do not see her human face. The play is precisely about the way in which she has been denied her humanity, turned into an icon, a topic, an MMS file – she even loses her name and becomes simply "the MMS girl". To show us her feelings would be to sentimentalise the play rather than accepting its indictment of us all.
Double-edged
Of course, matters can be spelt out too overtly. Kwame Kwei-Armah's Statement Of Regret comes with a reading list integrated into its text, with references onstage to (and a lengthy interview in the programme with) Dr Joy DeGruy Leary's theories of post-traumatic slave syndrome. Moreover, the fact that the play is set in a public policy think-tank – in other words, a professional talking shop – is a fairly unmissable signal that this will be a play of words rather than events. And so it proves,
being by my reckoning an hour and a half of talk followed by 45 minutes or so of... well, "action" is putting it a little generously, but some things happen. Kate Bassett's remark that "Kwei-Armah is now our black British David Hare" is surely double-edged. (I also wonder whether the references to the play's protagonist changing his name from Derrick to Kwaku are a self-defensive gesture on the part of the play's author, who was born Ian Roberts. I mean, why would anyone want to get rid of the name Ian?)
But the show which most strongly divided opinion this issue wasn't anything profound or contentious, but rather a quartet of blokes being silly in The Bicycle Men. Charlie Spencer, Benedict Nightingale and Paul Taylor are all palpably in favour of this American quartet's string of songs and sketches, barely held together by a narrative of sorts; Fiona Mountford has little time for it, and Lyn Gardner unleashed a zero-star review (though not the only one this issue: Sam Marlowe gave The Dorchester a big fat nuthin' as well). I have to say I'm with the thumbs-down contingent. Why does a musical set in France include parodies of Gilbert & Sullivan, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, all-purpose Latin music and a number about white guys at a fish fry in the 'hood? The answer, I suspect, is that musician Mark Nutter and his comrades came up with the numbers and then looked for a way to string them together; hence the show meanders around many different settings in its 100 minutes without amassing more plot than can be recounted in ten seconds. Why was an interval added after the programmes were printed? In an effort to make it feel less insubstantial. Why are cuts between scenes punctuated by physical-theatre parodies as the team throw chairs around in dim lighting? Er, pass. It simply did nothing for me whatever. If that makes me a girl, so be it. (I can't speak for fellow dissenter Brian Logan on that score.) Still, at least their songs were original. In Desperately Seeking Susan... damn, out of space.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
No "At the Back" this issue
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
THE ARSONISTS Revival of play by Max Frisch in new version by Alistair Beaton |
Royal Court |
6 Nov |
15 Dec |
1346 |
THE BICYCLE MEN New musical by Dave Lewman, Joe Liss, Mark Nutter & John Rubano (Skullduggery) |
King's Head |
8 Nov |
2 Dec |
1356 |
THE BROTHERS SIZE New play by Tarell Alvin McCraney (ATC) |
Young Vic |
13 Nov |
15 Dec |
1370 |
CANDLESTICKS Revival of play by Deborah Freeman |
Pentameters |
15 Nov |
2 Dec |
1365 |
THE CAR CEMETERY Revival of play by Fernando Arrabal, transl. Barbara Wright |
Gate |
5 Nov |
1 Dec |
1344 |
CASANOVA New play by Carol Ann Duffy and Told By An Idiot |
Lyric Hammersmith |
8 Nov |
24 Nov |
1360 |
CHAINS Revival of play by Elizabeth Baker |
Orange Tree |
16 Nov |
15 Dec |
1384 |
DEATH AND DANCING Revival of play by Claire Dowie |
Drill Hall |
9 Nov |
25 Nov |
1350 |
DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN New musical by Peter Michael Marino, with songs by Blondie |
Novello |
15 Nov |
1 Jan |
1378 |
THE DILEMMA OF A GHOST New play by Ama Ata Aidoo (Border Crossings I National Th of Ghana) |
Africa Centre |
11 Nov |
14 Nov |
1363 |
THE DORCHESTER New play by J B Miller (Okai Collier Prods) |
Jermyn Street |
15 Nov |
8 Dec |
1369 |
FREE OUTGOING New play by Anupama Chandrasekhar |
Royal Court Upstairs |
12 Nov |
24 Nov |
1366 |
THE GIANT New play by Antony Sher |
Hampstead |
7 Nov |
1 Dec |
1351 |
GREATEST HITS! New show by Momix |
Peacock |
8 Nov |
24 Nov |
1362 |
HONOUR BOUND New piece by Nigel Jamieson (Sydney Opera House I Maithouse Th) |
Barbican |
14 Nov |
17 Nov |
1368 |
THE HUMAN COMPUTER New piece by Will Adamsdale |
BAC |
7 Nov |
17 Nov |
1377 |
THE LADY OF BURMA New play by Richard Shannon |
Riverside |
9 Nov |
3 Dec |
1364 |
THE LIGHTNING FIELD New play by David Ozanich |
Oval House |
13 Nov |
8 Dec |
1369 |
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Revival of play by Shakespeare (Red Shift) |
Greenwich |
6 Nov |
10 Nov |
1355 |
ONE, NINETEEN New play by Tim Stimpson (Net Curtains TC) |
Arcola |
15 Nov |
1 Dec |
1385 |
SKARA BRAE New play by Peter Hamilton |
White Bear |
30 Oct |
17 Nov |
1345 |
SMILIN' THROUGH New play by Billy Cowan |
Drill Hall |
8 Nov |
25 Nov |
1383 |
THE SOHO DIVAS REVUE Revue show with C O'Connor, J James, M Detroit, N Willams, Z Asha |
Soho Revue Bar |
8 Nov |
11 Nov |
1350 |
STATEMENT OF REGRET New play by Kwame Kwei-Armah (NT) |
Cottesloe |
14 Nov |
1 Jan |
1373 |
THE TABLE (STOLIK) New piece by Karbido |
Tricycle |
5 Nov |
14 Nov |
1361 |
THEY HAVE OAK TREES IN NORTH CAROLINA New play by Sarah Wooley (Theatre 503) |
Tristan Bates |
16 Nov |
1 Dec |
1369 |
UNTOUCHED New play by Nick Huntington (Act Naturally) |
King's Head |
15 Nov |
2 Dec |
1365 |
Regions |
||||
AFTER THE BIRDS New piece by Earthfall and Th Association Chorea |
Cardiff, Millennium Centre |
7 Nov |
17 Nov |
1397 |
AMADEUS Revival of play by Peter Shaffer |
Sheffield, Crucible |
13 Nov |
8 Dec |
1396 |
BEAST ON THE MOON revival of play by Richard Kalinoski |
Nottingham Playhouse |
6 Nov |
17 Nov |
1390 |
CORPSE! Revival of play by Gerald Moon |
Homchurch, Queen's |
5 Nov |
24 Nov |
1390 |
THE DEMON BARBER New piece by Graham McLaren |
Perth |
9 Nov |
24 Nov |
1401 |
DON JUAN COMES BACK FROM THE WAR Revival of play by Edon von Horvath, tr. Christopher Hampton |
Coventry, Belgrade |
8 Nov |
17 Nov |
1395 |
FAITH HEALER Revival of play by Brian Friel |
Manchester, Library |
30 Oct |
17 Nov |
1390 |
THE GLASS CAGE Revival of play by J B Priestley |
Northampton, Royal |
6 Nov |
17 Nov |
1393 |
HENRY V Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Stratford-upon-Avon, Courtyard |
6 Nov |
14 Mar |
1386 |
HERBAL REMEDIES New play by James Kelman |
Glasgow, Arches |
17 Oct |
27 Oct |
1399 |
LEGAL FICTIONS Revivals of two plays by John Mortimer. The Dock Brief and Edwin |
Bath, Th Royal / touring |
6 Nov |
10 Nov |
1394 |
ST NICHOLAS Revival of play by Conor McPherson |
Glasgow, Citizens/touring |
13 Nov |
17 Nov |
1402 |
THE SOLDIER'S TALE Revival of music theatre piece by Igor Stravinsky and C F Ramuz |
Glasgow, Tron / touring |
16 Nov |
17 Nov |
1403 |
TAMBURLAINE MUST DIE New adaptation by Kenny Miller from book by Louise Welsh (Glasgay!) |
Glasgow, Tron |
6 Nov |
11 Nov |
1398 |
THEY MAKE THESE NOISES New play by James Kelman |
Glasgow, Arches |
8 Nov |
16 Nov |
1400 |
A TIME TO KEEP New community play by David Edgar and Stephanie Dale |
Dorchester, Thomas Hardye Sch. |
16 Nov |
1 Dec |
1396 |