Issue 5, 2008
Prompt Corner 
On the opening night of Plague Over England I was, thanks to Network Rail's ticket-machine computers at Waterloo, failing to travel to Guildford to see Out Of Joint's tour of David Edgar's new play Testing The Echo (reviews of which will be reprinted to coincide with its arrival in London in a few weeks), and there has been neither time in my schedule nor an available ticket at the Finborough for me to catch up with it since. Consequently, I'm unable to pass any direct judgement on what, to go by its coverage, you might be excused for thinking the biggest opening of the fortnight... bigger than a major Shaw revival at the National Theatre, than a major Coward revival in the West End, than a significant Arthur Miller at the Donmar, bigger even than a new television-hyped Maria in The Sound Of Music. Eclipsing all these, a play in a room above a pub with a capacity of around 60? Who could have written such a work? Answer: a critic, Nicholas de Jongh of the Evening Standard.
Fulsome
The stereotypical image of critics, that we love to plant a knife between any pair of shoulder blades that present themselves to us, also imagines that we are even keener to take revenge when one of our own number gets involved with the business of creation. If anything, the evidence points the other way: even when being fairly dismissive about shoddy work such as the political satires penned by Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, we're usually not blunt enough. What's interesting in this case is that Lloyd himself is the author of one of the few less positive reviews of Nicholas's play. One of the others is the novelist and former actor Paul Bailey, who served as guest reviewer in Nicholas's own paper, the Evening Standard; lest this seem an example of commendable frankness on the Standard's part, refusing to show undue mercy even to one of its own major journalists, it should also be noted that the play is also the subject of the fastest-ever revisitation for one of the paper's "Second Opinion" re-reviews. In this case, Brian Sewell proves rather more fulsome than Bailey. (Given the subject matter of the play, there's also a certain amount of novelty in Sewell dwelling on the detail of how John Gielgud usually kept his trousers up.) And the single unambiguously sniffy review is, er, from the writer I commissioned for the Financial Times in the unavailability of either myself or Sarah Hemming. Of course, there is no question of my having deliberately sent along someone who I knew would be ill-disposed to the play; what I did do deliberately was ask a theatre practitioner – as well as being a critic and blogger, Alex Ferguson is also a maker and director of stage pieces. In other words, the least favourable opinions come from those people least firmly tied in to theatre criticism as a profession. This may be pure coincidence; as I say, I have no notion of what the play and production are actually like, and I certainly repudiate the suggestion that there is a conscious freemasonry that operates amongst critics in such instances. However, the point does seem to me to be worthy of note. But perhaps it means nothing.
Connected
I have been musing on meaning again during the past few days. As I write, I am not quite midway through the week of this years National Student Drama Festival, which opened with a guest production of Tangle by Festival alumni Unlimited Theatre. The piece attempts to address the subject of non-local quantum "entanglement", the phenomenon by which (in theory) any two particles which have once been in contact continue to be connected with one another and to exhibit sympathetic behaviour however separated they are in space and/or time; it does this in part by using a fragmented, particulate approach to narrative and refusing to offer a clear through line or an unambiguous statement of connectedness. In the discussion afterwards, a number of young people voiced a desire that this subject of unconnectedness be dealt with in a more connected way. This seems to me to be not only missing the point, but indeed going against an overall trend in the way we not just make but also watch theatre. As Jon Spooner of Unlimited replied, we now take it for granted when watching film that we take a more active role in constructing an interpretation of what is shown to us, and yet in theatre, where by its nature we have that kind of direct particle-to-particle connection with the makers and material, we expect an easier time of it. And yet, in diametrical contrast, the response in today's discussion to a piece of visual/clowning work was to feel no qualms whatever about an incompletely portrayed through line, but rather to revel in the moment of each individual scene. Youngsters, eh?
Oblique
I wonder whether such a hankering for an easy time may partly be behind the response to Leo Butler's Be The Devil. Certainly it's linguistically dense and oblique, but I think that the narrative is appreciably clearer than that, and that our reservations ("our", for although I did not review the piece, I do agree with the overall response) are rather that Butler's writing is in this instance challenging for the sake of it, without necessarily having a sufficient idea of where that challenge leads to. A fervently contrasting view is available on playwright David Eldridge's blog http://onewrIterandhisdog.blogspot.com, although it seems to me that he spends all his time forcefully saying that we are wrong without really explaining how or why. And as for A Couple Of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians... oh dear, I seem to have run out of space.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
"At the Back" doesn't appear this issue
Contents / Reviews
Reviewed in issue 5, 2008: |
||||
London |
|
|||
ARTEFACTS New play by Mike Bartlett |
Bush |
25 Feb |
22 Mar |
217 |
THE BABY BOX New play by Chris Leicester |
Old Red Lion |
26 Feb |
22 Mar |
219 |
BABY GIRL/DNA/THE MIRACLE New plays by Roy Williams/Dennis Kelly/Lin Coghlan (NT) |
Cottesloe |
28 Feb |
12 Mar' |
238 |
A COUPLE OF POOR, POLISH-SPEAKING ROMANIANS New play by Dorota Maslowska |
Soho |
5 Mar |
29 Mar |
252 |
DOUBLE PORTRAIT New play by Tom Shkolnik |
Arcola |
6 Mar |
29 Mar |
241 |
FAT CHRIST New play by Gavin Davis |
Kings Head |
28 Feb |
23 Mar |
219 |
HANGING BY A THREAD Devised/ performed by Amelia Pimlott and Hannah Marshall (Ding Foundation) |
Little Angel |
28 Feb |
16 Mar |
223 |
HEDDA GABLER Revival of the play by Henrik Ibsen (Schaubuhne Am Lehniner Plat, Berlin) |
Barbican |
27 Feb |
1 Mar |
232 |
THE HIRED MAN Revival of the musical by Howard Goodall from Melvin Bragg novel (New Moves) |
Greenwich |
4 Mar |
8 Mar |
245 |
HOUSE OF AGNES New play by Levi David Addai |
Oval House |
6 Mar |
29 Mar |
231 |
I'LL BE THE DEVIL New play by Leo Butler (RSC) |
Tricycle |
27 Feb |
8 Mar |
235 |
INVOLUTION New play by Rachel Welch |
Pacific Playhouse |
21 Feb |
15 Mar |
223 |
LEGAL FICTIONS Revival of two short plays (The Dock Brief, Edwin) by John Mortimer |
Savoy |
28 Feb |
26 Apr |
240 |
MAJOR BARBARA Revival of the play by George Bernard Shaw (NT) |
Olivier |
4 Mar |
15 May |
246 |
MAKE ME A SONG: The Music of William Finn Revue conceived by Rob Ruggiero |
New Players |
6 Mar |
6 Apr |
259 |
THE MAN WHO HAD ALL THE LUCK Revival of the play by Arthur Miller |
Donmar Warehouse |
5 Mar |
5 Apr |
254 |
MULES Revival of the play by Winsome Pinnock |
Young Vic |
6 Mar |
15 Mar |
260 |
PLAGUE OVER ENGLAND New play by Nicholas De Jongh |
Finborough |
29 Feb |
22 Mar |
242 |
POSTCARDS FROM GOD: The Sister Wendy Musical Return of musical by Marcus Reeves, Beccy Smith |
Hackney Empire |
6 Mar |
23 Mar |
237 |
SARAJEVO STORY Created by Lightwork from an original idea by David Annen and Gregg Fisher |
Lyric Studio |
26 Feb |
15 Mar |
234 |
THREE SISTERS ON HOPE STREET New play by Diane Samuels and Tracy-Ann Oberman from Chekhov |
Hampstead |
26 Feb |
29 Mar |
220 |
THE VIEWING ROOM New play by Daniel Joshua Rubin |
Arts |
6 Mar |
29 Mar |
258 |
THE VORTEX Revival of the play by Noel Coward |
Apollo |
26 Feb |
7 Jun |
224 |
WOYZECK Revival of the play by Georg Buchner, adapted by Adrian Jackson (Cardboard Citizens) |
Southwark Playhouse |
29 Feb |
15 Mar |
257 |
Regions |
||||
THE ALMOND AND THE SEAHORSE New play by Kaite O'Reilly |
Cardiff, Sherman |
29 Feb |
15 Mar |
263 |
BAILEGANGAIRE Revival of the play by Tom Murphy |
Glasgow, Arches |
27 Feb |
8 Mar |
267 |
THE DEEP BLUE SEA Revival of the play by Terence Rattigan |
Guildford, Yvonne Amaud |
3 Mar |
8 Mar |
263 |
ELEPHANT Devised and presented by Dodgy Clutch and the Market Theatre, Johannesburg |
Newcastle, Theatre Royal |
28 Feb |
1 Mar |
262 |
THE ELEPHANT MAN Revival of the play by Bernard Pomerance |
Sheffield, Lyceum |
25 Feb |
8 Mar |
261 |
HONEYMOON SUITE Revival of the play by Richard Bean |
Hull Truck |
29 Feb |
22 Mar |
263 |
MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN New adaptation by Lisa Evans |
Northampton, Royal |
26 Feb |
15 Mar |
261 |
THE MOTHER SHIP New play by Douglas Maxwell |
Birmingham, Door |
5 Mar |
15 Mar |
264 |
NATIONAL REVIEW OF LIVE ART/NEW TERRITORIES Festival of performance |
Glasgow, Tramway |
6 Feb |
8 Mar |
269 |
NOSTALGIA New play by Lucinda Coxon |
Plymouth, Drum |
4 Mar |
15 Mar |
264 |
SPIES New play by Daniel Jamieson from novel by Michael Frayn |
Oxford Playhouse |
25 Feb |
1 Mar |
260 |
THE WALL New play by D C Jackson |
Glasgow, Tron |
4 Mar |
8 Mar |
269 |