Issue 7, 2008
Prompt Corner 
It's a staggeringly packed issue, with a paucity of regional openings more than counterbalanced by the most frenzied fortnight in London so far this year. Nevertheless, at least four productions which opened (and, indeed, closed) during these two weeks are not represented in these pages, despite being probably the most intriguing project of the period. This is because they are among the 16 short plays by Mark Ravenhill which collectively constitute Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, First seen in the Ravenhill For Breakfast strand at the Traverse during last year's Edinburgh Fringe, these pieces are now being presented -usually in twos and threes, and each for only a few days at a time - in a remarkable collaboration between the National Theatre, the Gate, the Royal Court, Out Of Joint and Peines Plough, in four London performance venues and in one case on BBC Radio 3.
Frankly, this makes the damned things all but impossible to review in a conventional journalistic mode. It is, however, an instance where blogging comes into its own; by the time you read this, the enterprise will have ended, but at the time of writing, Maxie Szalwinska's as-they-happen account on the Guardian's blog site is still in progress. The print reviews for the whole batch will be reproduced in the next issue of Theatre Record, in the kind of everyday miracle that we regularly pull off. (A character in a Thomas M Disch novel paraphrases the cliché about miracles thus: 'The impossible we can do at once; the inconceivable may take some thinking.") Such affairs as this are insignificant next to Ruth Keeley's heroism in laying out this issue's reviews whilst recovering from sudden hospitalisation. She's a phenomenon, and we're all lucky to have her.
Liberalism
For myself, I was rather taken during this period by matters of political philosophy. As mentioned in my Financial Times reviews, it was an interesting experience to follow the liberal self-interrogation of David Edgar's Testing The Echo with Dr Stockmann's polemic against the tyranny of the majority and the stupidity of liberalism in the Arcola's revival of Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People, in Rebecca Lenkiewicz's forthright new version. Part of Edgar's attitude, though, and part of the implicit point of Testing The Echo, is that such interrogation is not either a manifestation of internal insecurity or an external sign of weakness. However, people who are honest about still seeking answers are almost always going to be less magnetic than people who are convinced they already have them all.
So it proves in the Ibsen, especially when played by an actor like Greg Hicks whose mere gaze can blister the paint on the back wall of a venue, never mind when he opens his mouth in full passion. John Peter is in the minority in claiming that Lenkiewicz has also flattened out the play's moral and political issues, but he has a point; although we feel ambivalent towards Stockmann, we should feel even more so, to the point of feeling ourselves deprived of any locus of sympathy in the world of the play. (That's the kind of woddly dilemma which Stephen Adly Guirgis tries to reproduce in theological terms in The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot, but largely misses. To paraphrase Verdi, Guirgis's piece is both intelligent and interesting; however, the parts that are more intelligent are less interesting, and the parts that are more interesting are less intelligent.)
Excoriation
Obviously, though, the most overtly political play of the fortnight is Never So Good. A number of reviewers expressed surprise that an unregenerate (though not unreconstructed) left-winger such as Howard Brenton could wdte such a sympathetic portrait of an old Etonian, semi-aristocratic Conservative Prime Minister such as Harold Macmillan. I suspect they are not looking at the big picture. Susannah Clapp gets closest by stating that Brenton's thesis is that "Macmillan was one of the best leaders the Left never had." For me, both the more obvious parallels in the play - such as Macmillan wondering what would be done after the fighting was over in Suez - and the less laboured ones - e.g. the references to his 1938 book The Middle Way which advocated limited nationalisation among other things - seem to function less as praise of Macmillan in his own context than as excoriation of current political orthodoxy.
The landscape has changed so much (Brenton seems to me to be saying) that a paternalistic toff such as Macmillan can plausibly personify a criticism of current Labour government policies from the Leff His one-nation attitudes may have been more than a little patronising, but they depended on convictions about community and society which have in the intervening half-century been suffocated and replaced with eerie, pod-grown replicas consisting entirely of political jargon but without either thoughts or feelings motivating them. Aleks Sierz is quite right to note that Macmillan's ruthlessness and other negative elements are absent from Brenton's account, but I think that's because Brenton never set out to create a representative portrait, nor really a portrait of any kind. Contrary to its superficial appearance, the subject of Never So Good is not Harold Macmillan but the kind of political-philosophical complacency that can generate remarks and beliefs such as 'most of our people have never had it so good", both then and now, and the varying degrees of justification for such beliefs. It is not that Brenton has come in from the Left; it is that the rest of the political world has outpaced him in its move to the Right.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
"At the Back" does not appear in this issue
Contents / Reviews
Reviewed in issue 7, 2008: |
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London |
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BLACKBIRD Revival of play by David Harrower |
Rose, Kingston |
31 Mar |
5 Apr |
360 |
BLISS New play by Olivier Choinière, translated by Caryl Churchill |
Royal Court Upstairs |
2 Apr |
28 Apr |
362 |
CONFESSIONS OF A DANCEWHORE Return of piece by Michael Twaits |
Oval House |
27 Mar |
3 May |
379 |
CONTAINS VIOLENCE New piece by David Rosenberg |
Lyric Hammersmith |
2 Apr |
26 Apr |
365 |
COTTON WOOL New play by Ali Taylor (Buckle For Dust TC) |
Theatre 503 |
4 Apr |
26 Apr |
343 |
CRAVE Revival of play by Sarah Kane (Room For Pudding) |
Trinity Buoy Wharf |
1 Apr |
12 Apr |
364 |
THE ELEPHANT MAN Revival of play by Bernard Pomerance (Sheffield Theatres) |
Hackney Empire |
25 Mar |
29 Mar |
374 |
AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen in a new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz |
Arcola |
4 Apr |
26 Apr |
377 |
FOURPLAY / THREE MORE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS Revivals by Sergei Belbel / Caryl Churchill |
Tristan Bates |
3 Apr |
20 Apr |
379 |
GAME? New piece by Tangled Feet TC |
Southwark Playhouse |
31 Mar |
5 Apr |
346 |
GOD OF CARNAGE New play by Yasmina Reza |
Gielgud |
25 Mar |
|
336 |
THE HISTORY OF LONDON UNTIL IT GOT BURNT DOWN New play by Richard Roques (A&R TC) |
Jermyn Street |
27 Mar |
19 Apr |
369 |
IN MY NAME New play by Steven Hevey (Yaller Skunk Th) |
Old Red Lion |
26 Mar |
12 Apr |
355 |
INSTRUCTIONS FOR MODERN LIVING New piece by Duncan Sarkies and Nic McGowan |
Pit |
1 Apr |
5 Apr |
357 |
INTO THE HOODS Return of piece by ZooNation |
Novello |
26 Mar |
|
344 |
JINGO Revival of play by Charles Wood |
Finborough |
28 Mar |
19 Apr |
356 |
THE LAST DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT New play by Stephen Adly Guirgis |
Almeida |
3 Apr |
10 May |
370 |
LOST HIGHWAY New opera by Olga Neuwirth based on film by David Lynch (Young Vic/ENO) |
Young Vic |
4 Apr |
11 Apr |
383 |
LUNCH WITH MARLENE New play/cabaret by Chris Burgess |
New End |
28 Mar |
27 Apr |
361 |
MARIA FRIEDMAN: RE-ARRANGED New cabaret |
Menier Chocolate Factory |
27 Mar |
4 May |
354 |
NEVER SO GOOD New play by Howard Brenton (NT) |
Lyttelton |
26 Mar |
14 Aug |
347 |
PARK AVENUE Revival of musical by Arthur Schwartz and Ira Gershwin (Lost Musicals) |
Lilian Baylis |
30 Mar |
27 Apr |
367 |
A PERFECT GANESH Revival of play by Terrence McNally (South Asian Touring Theatre Consortium) |
Watermans |
25 Mar |
29 Mar |
341 |
PETER PAN – EL MUSICAL Revival of play by JM Barrie in new musical version |
Garrick |
30 Mar |
27 Apr |
358 |
SLIPPERY MOUNTAIN New play based on a text by Qi Zhixiang and Yang Xiaoxong (Not So Loud TC) |
New World Restaurant W1 |
25 Mar |
13 Apr |
342 |
TESTING THE ECHO New play by David Edgar (Out Of Joint) |
Tricycle |
4 Apr |
3 May |
380 |
WEDDING DAY AT THE CRO-MAGNONS New play by Wajdi Mouawad |
Soho |
2 Apr |
19 Apr |
368 |
Regions |
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CAN WE LIVE WITH YOU? New piece by Lung Ha's TC |
Edinburgh, Traverse etc |
3 Apr |
5 Apr |
390 |
HAMLET Revival of play by Shakespeare (Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory) |
Bristol, Tobacco Factory |
26 mar |
3 May |
386 |
MEASURE FOR MEASURE Revival of play by Shakespeare, adapted by Jonathan Holmes (Creation TC) |
Oxford, North Wall |
25 Mar |
12 Apr |
385 |
MICKY SALBERG'S CRYSTAL BALLROOM DANCE BAND New play by Ade Morris |
Newbury, Watermill / touring |
3 Apr |
5 Apr |
389 |
ROMEO AND JULIET Revival of play by Shakespeare (Northern Broadsides / New Vic) |
Leeds, WYP Quarry / touring |
26 Mar |
5 Apr |
388 |
TOUCHED Revival of play by Stephen Lowe |
Salisbury Playhouse |
4 Apr |
26 Apr |
389 |
TWINKLE, LITTLE STAR Revival of play by Philip Meeks (Th Royal / Lakeside Arts Centre) |
York, Theatre Royal |
1 Apr |
19 Apr |
388 |
WHAT AM I DOING HERE? New piece by Volcano TC |
Swansea, Taliesin Arts Centre |
25 Mar |
29 Mar |
385 |