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issue 1 & 2, 2008

Prompt Corner

Well, the word is now out. On 1^st February, Arts Council England announced their final decisions about funding for 2008-11. It was less badly handled than previous stages of the process, but that's really saying very little.

Originally, ACE had boasted that it would not be cowed by conceded campaigns in favour of particular companies; this led a number of victims of proposed cuts to decide to keep their mouths shut, on the grounds that it might actually have an adverse effect. Once the appeals had been lodged, ACE announced that they would after all be taking note of levels of support for particular bodies, leading all those who had kept quiet to kick themselves. Frontman for the final decisions was chairman Sir Christopher Frayling, since new chief executive Alan Davey could hardly be expected to take the flak for his predecessor Peter Hewitts almighty mess. (Note in passing that also during this time, cabinet reshuffles have given the U.K. a new Culture Secretary in Andy Burnham, who apart from his immediate announcement that this was his "dream job" has to the best of my knowledge said nothing on the storm raging as he took office. Sweet dreams, Andy...)

Some decisions have been reversed, notably headline cases like the Bush, the Orange Tree (which I am ashamed to have left out from my rant last issue - many apologies) and Bristol Old Vic. Some have been only partly reversed: the Northcott Theatre in Exeter still only has one years funding in place, with a review due to determine what happens for 2009-10 and 2010-11; the National Student Drama Festival and the queerupnorth festival are in the same boat.

Lost

Among the 185 arts bodies which have lost their ACE funding are the following venues or companies which have appeared in Theatre Record in recent years:

Brantford, Watermans; Brighton, Komedla Productions Ltd; Cambridge Arts Theatre; Chester Gateway Theatre; Chipping Norton, The Theatre; Chisenhale Dance Space; Compass TC; David Glass New Mime Ensemble; Derby Playhouse; Doo Cot Theatre; Drill Hall; Guildford, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre; Independent Theatre Council; International Workshop Festival; Kaos; Lichfield, Garrick Theatre; Lip Service TC; London Bubble TC; London Disability Arts Forum (also Its National counterpart); Norwich Puppet Theatre; Oxford House (Oh Art!); People Show; Pimlico Opera; Pop Up Theatre Ltd; Rejects Revenge TC; Station House Opera; Total Theatre Network; Wycombe Swan.

Perhaps the most remarkable decision is to confirm the complete loss of funding for Derby Playhouse (whose future, at the time of writing, is far from certain: its announced productions remain in our Regions listings, but are subject to confirmation) and a theatre grant of nearly 22.3 million - more than the Playhouse received over the past three years - given instead to that beacon of theatrical excellence, that tried and trusted home of drama with long and proven experience in the field... er, Derby City Council. Nicholas Hytner succinctly described ACE's provisional decisions as "bollocks"; this one, in particular, is spectacularly testicular. It is the bollocks of a blue whale. It's all enough to make you want to go and lie down in a darkened room, except that all too many practitioners have been offered little alternative to doing just that.

Varied

Meanwhile, the year starts with as varied a selection of work as you're ever likely to encounter. An exotic spectacle in a tent (Afrika!! Africa!), a couple of misconceived former-Soviet biographical pieces (The President's Holiday at Hampstead, which has elicited raised eyebrows by receiving an increase in ACE funding, and The British Ambassador's Bellydancer, in which Nadia Murray's lack of stage experience has not prevented the show's transfer by the time you read this into the Arts Theatre in the West End), and the apparent vanity project An Audience With The Mafia, of which Andrew Haydon asked me whether it would be advisable for his first published Financial Times review to carry a rating of no stars at all. At the National, Lucinda Coxon's Happy Now? has received warm reviews, but I'm afraid a combination of the uncomfortable domestic events onstage and developing illness meant I had to leave it at the interval (unlike the well-known actor sitting in front of me, who had been discreetly enjoying a pre-show spliff). I'm less apologetic about having seen only 20-odd hours of the 50-hour Improve/ion; the days when I would take in the entire 24-hour cycle The Warp at one sitting are, alas, behind me now.

David Flare's The Vertical Hour finally received its British premiere some 14 months after its Broadway opening, and failed to set the arts world alight. Very nice lighting design by Howard Harrison, reminiscent of some of Robert Wlson's painting-with-light stage vistas, but as for the writing, I genuinely thought for some time that the first tutorial-room scene was a gentle parody of David Mamet, and later when one character exclaimed, "People aren't their views, you know. They aren't their opinions. They aren't just what they say," I was hard pressed not to laugh out loud. A more welcome arrival is that of the Rose Theatre in Kingston, a wonderful space which really deserves some proper funding to ensure that it gets used to the extent it and the area it serves merit. Its Ms Council revenue: £0.00.

It's a date

Sharper-eyed subscribers will have noticed that this issue covers one day less than our usual start-of­year double: only the first 27 days of the year. This is in order to smooth out the production schedule, nothing to worry about. Carry on, as you were; act normally...

 

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At the Back

Can You Hear Me Not Talking?

The London International Mime Festival is now in its twentieth edition, and has built up a devoted following over the decades. As a demonstration of this, all of the shows I saw this year, including one in the Barbican's main house and another in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, hardly specialist studio spaces, were full or nearly so. The hardcore Mime Festival audience includes some very individual characters: you'll see shaven heads, tattoos in unlikely places, woolly hats, shimmering party dresses... and the men look much the same. But it also includes plenty of parents giving their children a taste of unusual theatre in the family-oriented shows. Having already collected one of the highlights, Sadari Movement Theatre's brilliant chair-wielding Korean Woyzeck, in Wroclaw (Issue 21), I had high hopes of the half-dozen I chose to see in London.

Sea-monsters and werewolves

My opener, Teatro Corsado's Aullidos, at the ICA, was undoubtedly more hardcore than family show. Three very skilled Spanish puppeteers moved their almost life-sized charges through a world of fantasy to tell a tale of mermaids and monsters, punctuated by some very realistic and highly energetic sex scenes. Clever lighting ensured that the black-clad manipulators remained completely unseen as our heroine, Thalia, taken off the streets to become a servant after her mother had been killed for consorting with demons, watched her aristocratic employer being shafted senseless by the King, and later underwent some rigorous sexual training of her own with the help of a mixed cast of sea-monsters and werewolves - the underwater scenes were particularly impressive. It was all very colourful, rampantly imaginative and extremely filthy, with its only weakness some seriously over-amplified sound. (Before the performance started, anyone not turning off their mobile phone was threatened with serious retribution from Attila on sound, a monstrous Goth; unfortunately his handling of the board was also more suited to the heavy metal world from which he seemed to have emerged.)

Belgium's Mossoux-Bonté company have impressed at previous Mime Festivals, notably with Light, a solo performance by co-founder Nicole Mossoux. This time she did not appear, but co-directed and choreographed Nuit Sur La Monde with Patrick Bonté (responsible for lighting and sound), also at the ICA. A triptych of slow-moving, wordless pieces, it came from the tradition of mime as painting and could lead to growing impatience in those unwilling to take it for what it was. The first and most successful episode saw a single, kouré-like figure moving slightly in a dim light, to be joined later by five other similar bodies, dusted as if with clay. Relax and enter this butoh­inspired world and you have the pleasure of watching a Greek temple frieze in gentle movement. The middle section had the stimulus of some nudity, as previously clothed figures, crossing and recrossing the stage as if on the treadmill of life, gradually stripped down to something more elemental. In the final section, the cast had got into garish party frocks to repeat some slight movements towards and away from the audience. The electronic soundtrack that accompanied it all set me thinking (especially during the uninspired final section) about the fact that anyone with a computer and a few samples can nowadays call themselves a composer of electronic music - gone are the days of specialists like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Wall of clay

Another piece of mime as art, Paso Doble, got a standing ovation from a large Barbican audience, and I was happy to join in. The Catalan sculptor Miguel Barceló was joined by renowned movement specialist Josef Nadj, a Serb with background in Hungary and France, to create a work of art before our eyes. Starting from a wall of clay, with a clay floor in front of it, the two proceed to hack and carve it, creating transient shapes and patterns. After a while, Barceló makes Nadj a part of the work, piling wet clay pots upon him and welding him into the wall. Finally, the pair make holes in their construct just big enough to swallow them into it, leaving us to contemplate the finished sculpture. To see a thing of beauty emerge before your eyes, created with humour and dedication by two masters, is an experience to treasure.

Down below in the Pit, our own Faulty Optic were appropriately enough at work on the Orpheus legend, in Dead Wedding. Their puppets are less realistic than those of Corsario, but have a gawky charm. Orpheus, torn apart by Maenads, lies in various states of dismemberment on a hospital bed that becomes a Sisyphean hill up which he pushes his burden. Meanwhile, in Hell, Eurydice seems to have got a job in the infernal laundry, overseen by a Pluto who is a wizard on the fruit machine. Some of the best sequences were on film, while the journey to the underworld in a lift that goes down an infinite number of floors was a true coup de théâtre. Faulty Optic's mechanical ingenuity made the evening one of considerable pleasure, even if the story got lost about half way through it.

Condom man

Anyone who has been hooked by the CBeebies series The Night Garden will have had no difficulty in enjoying BlackSkyWhite's Astronomy for Insects at the ICA. A succession of oddly shaped figures, beginning with a (live) blow-up doll and two Morphs, come and go, changing shape as they do so, to a mixed score that finds room for both the Tiger Lillies and Italian pop. My notes are full of descriptions like 'the blow-up trousers" and "the farting skirt", "Santa on crutches" and "condom man". Make of it what you will - that's the fun of it. And there is real fun to be had, for BlackSkyWhite's trio are both less pretentious and less doomladen than some of their illustrious colleagues in the Russian clown diaspora.

I was less lucky with the French clowning on offer from Collectif Petit Travers in Le Parti Pris des Choses at the Purcell Room. Apparently a dancer, a juggler and a trapeze artist met at circus school in Toulouse and asked a director to construct a show around their skills. The nature of the show reveals, rather cruelly I thought, the limited abilities of its three engaging, drably clad young participants. The trapeze work is elementary and occasional, the juggling not exactly Chinese Circus class. The movement, by all three, is pleasant enough, but a show which ends with a plethora of juggling balls all over the stage and spilling into the auditorium doesn't really add up to much. Maybe the best bits happened while I was asleep - I certainly missed the "world class object manipulation" promised in the Mime Festival's brochure-programme.

Cigarette smoke

My final show is a puzzle. Pep Bou has a world reputation now for the beauty of his bubble-blowing shows. Clar de Llunes, in a packed Queen Elizabeth Hall, certainly revealed his skills to the full. It also showed how dependent on still air they can be, as time and again a bubble had to be painstakingly rebuilt. Clever use of lighting meant that Bou's creations were richly colourful and often things of great beauty. Bubbles appeared within bubbles, sometimes filled with the cigarette smoke which is an essential prop for Mr Bou, whatever the anti-smoking ordinance may think of it. He also had the forethought to have with him on stage a fellow Catalan, the pianist Jordi Maso, who compensated for the frequent bubble-bursts with a recital of works including several by Frederic Mompou, whose complete oeuvre he is recording for Naxos. By the end of the performance, Bou was creating quite enormous shapes and sending them round the stage, often standing in them as he worked. And yet, and yet - after all the magic, we could only go out into the chill South Bank air with the knowledge that we had spent an hour and a half fairly contentedly watching a grown man blow soap bubbles. Like most other elderly critics I like to go to the theatre to see a good story well told. But it is foolish and narrow-minded to reject the different experience of these Mime Festival shows. Wacky or filthy, wildly imaginative or deadly dull, works of art or kiddies' party entertainment, there is nearly always something in them to lift the spirit. And there were more than enough moments of extraordinary beauty in these evenings to satisfy all but the most blind.

Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com

 

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Contents / Reviews

Reviewed in this issue:
London
AFRIKA! AFRIKA! New circus show conceived by Andre Heller	Tented Palaces	17 Jan	19 Apr	31
ANGRY YOUNG MAN Revival of play by Ben Woolf (MahWaff )	Trafalgar Studio 2	14 Jan	2 Feb	27
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN Revival of musical by Irving Berlin, Herbert 8 Dorothy Fields	Union 5E1	18 Jan	9 Feb	4
AN AUDIENCE WITH THE MAFIA Revival of one-man show by Albert Fox	Apollo	21 Jan	16 Feb	44
THE BEHEADING Newplay by Rodin Rae (Crescent Th Workshop)	Etcetera	8 Jan	27 Jan	6
THE B F G Revival of adaptation by David Wood from story by Roald Dahl	Polka	14 Nov	9 Feb	4
BLAIR ON BROADWAY Transfer of musical by lain Hollingshead and Timothy Muller (Third Way Prods)	Arts	17 Jan	31 Jan	43
BRENDAN AT THE CHELSEA New play by Janet Behan	Riverside	17 Jan	3 Feb	33
THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR'S BELLYDANCER New adaptation by Man Hesoott	Arcola	9 Jan	2 Feb	11
LA CAGE AUX FOLLES Revival of musical by Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein, from play by Jean Poiret Monier Chocolate Factory	9 Jan	8 Mar		15
THE CONSERVATORY New play by Mark Dooley	Old Red Lion	16 Jan	3 Feb	30
COUNTERFEIT SKIN New play by Jason Charles	Courtyard	22 Jan	10 Feb	43
THE DYBBUK New adaptation by Eve Leigh from play by 5 Anski	King's Head	22 Jan	24 Feb	60
HAPPY NOW? New play by Lucinda Coxon (ND	Cottesloe	24 Jan	10 May	63
HELTER SKELTER / LAND OF THE DEAD Two new plays by Neil LaBute	Bush	17 Jan	16 Feb	37
THE HISTORY BOYS Return of play by Alan Bennett (NI)	Wyndhams	7 Jan	1 Jan	5
I AM FALLING New dance theatre piece	Gate	9 Jan	2 Feb	13
IMPROVATHON 2008 New improvised piece (The Sticking Place)	People Show Studios	18 Jan	20 Jan	34
JACQUES BREL: THE RAGE TO LIVE New musical with book by Judith Paris, songs by Jacques Brel	New End	27 Dec	13 Jan	24
LET THERE BE LOVE New play by Kwame Kwei-Armah	Tricycle	21 Jan	16 Feb	46
LITHUANIAN FESTIVAL Three new plays (see reviews page for details) (Ads Printing Ho)	Southwark Playhouse	10 Jan	26 Jan	56
LIZZY, DARCY AND JANE New play by Joanna Norland (C Co)	Tabard	8 Jan	2 Feb	10
London International Mime Festival See reviews pages for full details	various	12 Jan	27 Jan	71
MAD FUNNY JUST New piece by Creased	Theatre 503	22 Jan	9 Feb	66
METAMORPHOSIS Return of David Farr/Gisli Om Garearsson adaptation from story by Franz Kafka	Lyric Hammersmith	14 Jan	2 Feb	29
A MOTHER SPEAKS New play by Judd Batchelor	Hackney Empire Studio	17 Jan	3 Feb	26
MY SISTER IN THIS HOUSE Revival of play by Wendy Kesselman (Inside Arts)	Greenwich Playhouse	15 Jan	3 Feb	14
NETOCHKA NEZVANOVA — NAMELESS NOBODY New adaptation from the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky New End	17 Jan	3 Feb	50
THE PERFECT PICNIC New play by Ian Bloomfield and Tim Armstrong-Taylor, music by Mozart	Jermyn Street	15 Jan	2 Feb	48
THE PRESIDENTS HOLIDAY New play by Penny Gold	Hampstead	22 Jan	16 Feb	49
PURGATORIO UK premiere of play by Ariel Dorfman	Arcola	18 Jan	9 Feb	42
THE SEA Revival of play by Edward Bond	Haymarket	23 Jan	19 Apr	57
THE TEMPEST Revival of play by Shakespeare (Tara Arts)	Ms	10 Jan	27 Jan	22
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT Solo show by Thelma Ruby	New End	27 Dec	13 Jan	41
UNCLE VANYA Revival of play by Anton Chekhov in translation by Stephen Mulrine (English Touring Th)	Rose, Kingston	25 Jan	9 Feb	67
VAREKAI New show by Cirque du Soleil	Royal Albert Hall	B Jan	17 Feb	7
THE VERTICAL HOUR New play by David Hare	Royal Court	22 Jan	1 Mar	51
WALKING ON WATER Newplay by Paul Minx (King William Prods)	White Bear	11 Jan	28 Jan	25
WHITE BOY Return of play by Tanika Gupta (N117)	Soho	17 Jan	9 Feb	45
Regions
BARRY Revival of play by Frederic Mohr (Rowan Tree TC)	Glasgow, Citizens	22 Jan	26 Jan	86
THE CHILDREN Revival of play by Edward Bond	Dundee Rep	18 Jan	19 Jan	85
THE GLASS MENAGERIE Revival of play by Tennessee Williams	Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum	12 Jan	9 Feb	84
LIGHT Revival of piece by Nicole Mossoux and Patrick Banta	Dundee Rep	23 Jan	23 Jan	85
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Revival of musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth	Newbury, VVatermill	21 Jan	8 Mar	82
ON A SHOUT New play by Dave Windass	Hull Truck	25 Jan	16 Feb	83
SALONIKA Revival of play by Louise Page	Leeds, WYP Courtyard	23 Jan	16 Feb	83
SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE New adaptation by Joanna Murray-Smith from play by Ingmar Bergman	Coventry, Belgrade B2	15 Jan	2 Feb	79
TRANSLATIONS Revival of play by Brian Friel (Arches TC)	Glasgow, Citizens	23 Jan	2 Feb	87

 

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