Issue 8, 2008
Prompt Corner 
No personal perspectives on this fortnight's shows, since I was hors de combat for virtually the entire period for one reason or another. However, as predicted, the print reviews of Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat by and large found it impossible to accommodate the entire series, with the International Herald Tribune putting the domestic press to shame as the only print title to cover the entire cycle, and the Guardian as the only other title to pay more than one review visit. It's understandable, though, given that in the relevant period there were some 40 other openings in London alone.
Pokémon
I can't help wondering, too, what the genuinely intended and real practical effects were of staging the cycle in such a way: two and three, here and there, a couple of evenings at a time, across one of the largest cities in the world. Brian Logan and others may have felt a serendipitous aspect to finding Women In Love staged in a secluded outdoor spot, but the truth is that practically no-one will have simply stumbled across these shows. Nor, given the brevity of the runs, did the project give off an air of ubquity to anyone other than those already plugged into the theatre circuit.
The arrangement seems, if anything, to have been designed to make attendees work at attending. Now, while it can be salutary to have the cosy habit of turning up at a venue of an evening, sitting and passively watching a piece disrupted, I don't think this is that kind of disruption. It strikes me more as the creation of value through rarity and difficulty, with just a whiff of theatrical Pokémon: "Gotta catch 'em all!" And now I'm going to find it hard to shift the mental image of an anime Ravenhill...
Hurry, hurry, hurry
The creation of value through engineering scarcity or claims of prestige is a marketing technique that theatre has increasingly had to practise. Also in this issue we carry reviews of a new musical by Cole Porter, which no doubt came as a surprise to the late Mr Porter on whatever celestial plane he's been occupying since 1964; the UK première of a play by Tennessee Williams, which turns out to last around 12 minutes and really isn't in the same league as, say, Samuel Beckett's or Harold Pinter's works of similar length – in fact, its simply a sketch or study; a play which tries to grab simply by boasting the forthright title Fucked; and, of course, the first phase of the RSC Histories' London run – hurry, hurry, hurry: only two opportunities to see all eight plays in succession! Such a mammoth enterprise dwarfs the two-part War And Peace by Shared Experience, now arrived in London. (This issue also includes reviews from the beginning of this production's tour in Nottingham in February.)
The mere presence of a big name as an audience draw hardly counts as an extraordinary ploy, although there is, I think, a slightly morbid element to the revival of Jeff Baron's Visiting Mr Green; this outing frankly owes far less to the appeal of the play than to the chance to see the wonderful Warren Mitchell, though it may be saying the unsayable to remark that, with Mitchell expressly coming out of retirement following a stroke two years ago, there's an element of "Quick, before he drops off the twig!"
Fulsome
Tim Walker offers a remarkable testimony in his Sunday Telegraph review of the show (its only rave), that Patrick Garland is "in my opinion this country's greatest stage director'. Such fulsome admiration would be one explanation for the two separate plugs given to Garland's revival of Brief Lives with Roy Dotrice in Tim's diary column Mandrake as well as the interview feature he wrote about the production in the Spectator, and moreover his extensive quotes from Garland in his review of the entirely unrelated Gone With The Wind, to be reprinted in the next issue of TR. Tim, of course, has previously been spotted rhapsodising about the abilities of Rupert Everett, whom in other pieces he has revealed as a personal friend and occasional theatregoing companion.
And so that Tim doesn't feel there's a personal campaign at work here, a quick sideswipe at a different target: Rhoda Koenig, in her review of the triple bill of short plays by Susan Glaspell at the Orange Tree, would like to see the same venue stage Glaspell's The Inheritors but doubts whether they could afford it. They didn't seem to have much trouble doing so when I saw Sam Walters' production of it there in 1997...!
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me Wondering?
This year's celebrations for the Europe Theatre Prize in Thessaloniki didn't provide quite the excitement, on stage or off, of last year's event. There was no large-scale production to match Peter Zadek's Berliner Ensemble Peer Gynt, and no demonstration of spoilt-child behaviour to match the same Mr Zadek's refusal to collect his prize. What we were offered was a series of more modest meetings and performances to stimulate both heart and mind, and raise the age-old question: what exactly is theatre?
Avant-Garde
It was the critics who started it. The opening slot of the Prize meeting, which has been occupied for the two previous years by the International Association of Theatre Critics' colloquium, was this year taken by the local Association of Greek Theatre and Music Critics for a symposium of their own, with diversity as its theme. They had the enterprise to invite Richard Schechner to give its keynote speech, and Professor Schechner gave us the benefit of his forty or more years at the cutting edge of theatre to show that there's no such thing as an old rebel. Ever controversial, he took us from his own experiments of the Sixties, the heyday of American-inspired performance art, to today's avant-garde world of self-harm and self-advertisement. His challenging thesis was that the avant-garde has a bounden duty to go further than is acceptable, as part of its constant quest to extend the borders of art. Thus, the vital beginnings of any new avant-garde movement are likely to be hesitant and amateurish, only becoming polished and acceptable when the very boundaries which they are breaking have been repositioned by their success. Daring to suggest that the events of 9/11 were a performance, not in the actions of its perpetrators but in the manner in which we perceive its execution, he went on to warn of the new triangle of forces which has replaced the old simple East-West confrontation: Adam Smith's capitalism and Karl Marx's communism (however debased) have been joined by a third focal point, that of fundamentalism. be it Christian, Hindu or Muslim.
Experts
But is it theatre? Time and again this year's Europe Theatre Prize performances left me wondering. First up of the three winners of the New Realities Prize, which might be said to be for those who most reflect the Schechner pursuit of broken boundaries, was the Swiss-German group Rimini Protokoll, who take ordinary citizens and put them into theatrical situations, not as actors – for they are not professional in this sense – but as 'experts", where their own particular professionalism comes into play. Their offering was Mnemopark, in which a group of Swiss model railway enthusiasts combine their layouts into a vast, 00 gauge panorama of their country, in which they play out a miniature Bollywood movie. recall childhood memories of wartime Switzerland and Germany , and conduct a far from superficial analysis of the Swiss economy and its place in the New Europe. Later we saw a film of another Rimini production, Wahl Kampf Wallenstein, in which neighbours from two German towns which had formerly straddled the East-West border crossed that ideological boundary to enact a modern, lash-up version of Schiller's Wallenstein and in doing so reveal many of their mutual mistrusts and anxieties.
The second New Realities winner was the German choreographer Sasha Waltz, sadly not represented by a live show but interpreted for us in a fine documentary which charted her progress from co-director (with a former New Realities winner, Thcmas Ostermeier) of the Berlin Schaubühne to proud opener of her own new dedicated dance space in a converted pumping station. Waltz is concerned especially with the human body, and in the remarkable trilogy which is her most noted work she uses them in turn to look at physiology and personal distance, sexuality and physical union, and finally death and the ultimate separation.
The third winner was Polish director Krzistof Warlikowski, whose work is definitely theatre but who can perhaps be said to have extended
some of its boundaries in the daring of his productions. One of his most recent is a revival of Tony Kushner's Angels In America, but for Thessaloniki he chose to show another Wroclaw production, Sarah Kane's Cleansed. His view of this gruesome exercise in amputation is suitably clinical, but mercifully devoid of the Artaudian gore that its author envisaged. It's also painfully long, a result of the deliberate, contemplative pace set by Warlikowski.
Arslikhan
A productive sideshow was the visit of the Belarus Free Theatre, the much-travelled cultural opposition to the repressive dictatorship of their country. Last year in Thessaloniki they lobbied furiously, distributing DVDs of their work like confetti, and calling on the support of notables such as Vaclav Havel, Tom Stoppard and (curiously) Mick Jagger. The result was a sympathetic commendation from the Europe Prize jury which they blazoned abroad as if they had won the prize itself. At the Soho Theatre earlier this year they created quite a stir and won the unbridled admiration of Michael Billington, who selflessly and without any toe-curling conducted the Belarussian session of what Private Eye calls Arslikhan that rewards every Europe Prize company. They brought three shows with them: Being Harold Pinter, an energetic and powerful piece of ensemble theatre which I'd liked a lot at Soho; Zone of Silence, a completely new three-parter which began well past my bedtime, but for Michael confirmed that they are a world-class company; and Generation Jeans, a monologue liked by many but for me barely theatre, where a journalist spoke one of his articles – albeit a very well written one – to the unnecessary backing of a DJ.
That recurrent 'what is theatre" question was raised again in my mind by the "readings" delivered by the main (and thoroughly deserved) Europe Prize winner, France 's Patrice Chereau. His undoubted eminence as a director was brought home by a film of one of his recent opera productions, From The House Of The Dead, which vividly showed all the desperation of Dostoevski's prison stories and the desolation of Janacek's music. As an actor, he partnered Dominique Blanc in a tender, definitely dramatic "reading" of Marguerite Duras's La Douleur. But his second effort, a solo exposition of Pierre Guyotat's novel Coma, was definitely a reading – and no more.
Politburo
Other pleasures of the week included a lively, folk-based treatment of Euripides' Bacchae by the local company, the National Theatre of Northern Greece, and a work-in-progress presentation of Hamlet by Oskaras Korsunovas, to be seen later this year in Europe's other Capital of Culture, Stavanger. The prize ceremony itself went off without last year's high jinks, when an inordinately long-winded succession of speeches was interrupted by an angry Angela Winkler wondering when her company would be allowed on to the stage to perform. Instead of being one of an on-stage Politburo of mostly elderly notables, I found myself co-presenter with Georges Banu of a much sleeker ceremony. Even so we could not avoid unscripted drama. The Belarussians had done another good job of whipping up sympathy, and when Rimini Protokoll came up to collect their share of the New Realities Prize they went on to suggest that Sasha Waltz's share (which she was sadly unable to receive as a result of illness) be given to the Free Theatre. They were not at all amused when I suggested that rather than giving away other people's money they might like to donate some of their own winnings. This seems to have contributed to a subsequent outbreak of righteous indignation from the German critics present, who considered that Sasha Waltz had been mortally insulted by my not calling her husband on stage to receive the plaque that was her due. Explaining to them afterwards that this was at the express wish of Ms Waltz did little to mollify them.
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
AUTO AUTO! New piece by Christian von Richthofen |
Riverside |
10 Apr |
4 May |
413 |
THE BLACK & WHITE BALL Première of musical by Cole Porter, book by Warner Brown |
King's Head |
8 Apr |
4 May |
400 |
BRIEFING New piece based on novel by Doris Lessing (Mercurial) |
Camden People's |
10 Apr |
26 Apr |
434 |
CHICKEN New play by Mike Batistick (Inner City Prods) |
Theatro Technis |
3 Apr |
27 Apr |
408 |
THE FETCH New play by Samantha Wright (Company C) |
Old Red Lion |
17 Apr |
3 May |
424 |
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND Double bill of new plays by Oladipo Agboluaje / Rukhsana Ahmad |
Oval House |
17 Apr |
3 May |
413 |
FRAM New play by Tony Harrison (NT) |
Olivier |
17 Apr |
22 May |
431 |
FUCKED New play by Penelope Skinner (Tangram Th) |
Old Red Lion |
16 Apr |
3 May |
423 |
GLASPELL SHORTS Revivals of three short plays by Susan Glaspell |
Orange Tree |
7 Apr |
19 Apr |
399 |
HAVE BOX WILL TRAVEL New piece by Charlie Dark |
Lyric Studio |
17 Apr |
3 May |
424 |
HENRY IV PART ONE Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Roundhouse |
16 Apr |
23 May |
426 |
HENRY IV PART TWO Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Roundhouse |
16 Apr |
23 May |
426 |
HENRY V Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Roundhouse |
16 Apr |
23 May |
427 |
I SAW MYSELF New play by Howard Barker (Wrestling School) |
Vanbrugh |
9 Apr |
19 Apr |
408 |
THE INTERNATIONALIST New play by Anne Washburn |
Gate |
8 Apr |
3 May |
402 |
JOHN MORAN AND HIS NEIGHBOUR SAORI New piece |
Soho |
7 Apr |
19 Apr |
403 |
MOLORA New adaptation by Yael Farber of the Oresteia by Aeschylus (Farber Foundry) |
Pit |
9 Apr |
19 Apr |
409 |
MY LIFE WITH THE DOGS New piece by NIE |
BAC |
16 Apr |
3 May |
410 |
THE PAJAMA GAME Revival of musical by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross |
Union SE1 |
15 Apr |
1 May |
423 |
THE PINK BEDROOM UK première t revivals of Tennessee Williams shorts |
Courtyard |
8 Apr |
27 Apr |
418 |
RICHARD II Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Roundhouse |
15 Apr |
22 May |
425 |
SHOOT/GET TREASURE/REPEAT New cycle of plays by Mark Ravenhill |
various |
3 Apr |
20 Apr |
396 |
SMALL CHANGE Revival of play by Peter Gill |
Donmar |
15 Apr |
31 May |
419 |
SO CLOSE TO HOME New play by Mark Wheatley (Mapp / Brighton Festival) |
Arcola |
3 Apr |
26 Apr |
398 |
THE TIGER LILLIES: THE 7 DEADLY SINS New cabaret show |
New Players |
10 Apr |
26 Apr |
414 |
THE TRAGICALL HISTORY OF DR FAUSTUS Revival of play by Christopher Marlowe (Third Party) |
Landor |
8 Apr |
19 Apr |
430 |
TRIPTYCH New play by Edna O'Brien |
Southwark Playhouse |
9 Apr |
10 May |
404 |
VISITING MR GREEN Revival of play by Jeff Baron |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
8 Apr |
10 May |
405 |
WAR AND PEACE Revival (revised) of adaptation by Helen Edmundson from Tolstoy (Shared Experience) |
Hampstead |
14 Apr |
11 May |
415 |
Regions |
||||
Arches Festival See review pages for full details |
Glasgow, Arches |
8 Apr |
19 Apr |
450 |
AS YOU LIKE IT Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Watford Palace |
7 Apr |
26 Apr |
439 |
THE EMPEROR'S NEW KILT revival of play by Andy Cannon & lain Johnstone (Wee Stones/NTS) |
Edinburgh, King's / touring |
12 Apr |
19 Apr |
447 |
ENDGAME Revival of play by Samuel Beckett |
Liverpool Everyman |
16 Apr |
3 May |
446 |
FROZEN Revival of play by Bryony Lavery |
Manchester, Library |
8 Apr |
26 Apr |
441 |
THE GLASS MENAGERIE Revival of play by Tennessee Williams |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
14 Apr |
24 May |
442 |
HAPGOOD Revival of play by Tom Stoppard |
Birmingham Rep |
15 Apr |
26 Apr |
444 |
LONDON ASSURANCE Revival of play by Dion Boucicault |
Newbury, Watermill |
14 Apr |
17 May |
446 |
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Stratford upon Avon, Courtyard |
10 Apr |
27 Sep |
435 |
ONE STEP FORWARD, ONE STEP BACK New piece conceived by Tristan Sharps (dreamthinkspeak) |
Liverpool Cathedral |
7 Apr |
10 May |
440 |
SPRING AND PORT WINE Revival of play by Bill Naughton |
Bolton, Octagon |
4 Apr |
26 Apr |
439 |
THAT'S LOVE New play by Ron Aldridge |
Reading, Mill At Sonning |
2 Apr |
10 May |
442 |
THREE MEN IN A BOAT Revival of adaptation by Paul Burbridge from book by Jerome K Jerome |
York, Theatre Royal |
4 Apr |
26 Apr |
439 |
TO BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU New piece conceived by Lloyd Newson (DV8) |
Nottingham Playhouse I touring |
11 Apr |
12 Apr |
442 |
TRUMPETS AND RASPBERRIES Revival of play by Dario Fo |
Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum |
19 Apr |
10 May |
448 |