Issue 10, 2008
Prompt Corner 
As I write this issue's column, the Hay Festival is taking place in a small, bookshop-crammed town on the English/Welsh border. One of the authors plugging their work there this year is critic Lee Siegel, author of Against The Machine: Being Human In The Age Of The Electronic Mob. Siegel's argument about the stridency-friendly nature of the Internet includes a number of valid points, some of which I've made myself in these columns or elsewhere; it also, of course, includes a number of straw men set up in opposition to his argument, in order that he may easily knock them down. But it was in a recent Guardian article (in which he defends a tactic which got him suspended from the New Republic magazine: his creation of a fictitious blog poster who left comments on Siegel's own blog praising his stance) that a couple of passing remarks of his really got me thinking.
Fallacy
Siegel writes "Critics worth their salt earn their reputations by taking on established taste" and, in more detail, that "for a true critic, judgement is the burden you start out with. The challenge, even in a short review, is to distil judgement into wit, humour, irony, history, anecdote – into a style that is the only justification for passing judgement." Now, these two remarks taken together seem to suggest that what is important in a critic is style rather than content. Everybody has opinions, therefore all opinions are equal, and it's the presentation that distinguishes between them. And this seems to me to be the fundamental fallacy that underlies the current climate in journalistic criticism – you see, I'm carrying on from my column last issue – which has led to the appointment either of "sparky" contrarians or simply of "names". The reality is that judgement isn't a given. It does actually need work, both in reaching a verdict and in explaining it. In each case, some kind of foundation is required. You need to make a case. Readability is great, it's terrific, but what is it that's being made readable? The actual stuff of criticism matters. Stuff like that doesn't just happen (sorry, I couldn't resist it).
In fact, if you consider it further, Siegel's own attitude goes some way to explaining why online contributions are as they are: he, at least partially, creates the problem that so exercises him. He is annoyed, and understandably and for the most part rightly so, by the way online comments tend to polarise in their views and simultaneously to degenerate in terms of articulacy. However, one of the things that are pretty much guaranteed to rile blog-commenters is a kind of Olympian complacency. Now, Siegel's comments about style being more important than substance suggest that he is seldom likely to make earnest pronouncements that pretend to be the last word on a topic. Nevertheless, there is a strong undercurrent to his position of "how dare they?" That strikes me as a pretty inconsistent combination: why is he so concemed about people taking issue with his judgement if the judgement itself is merely a jumping-off point for stylistic excellence? Is it simply the aesthetic aspect of coarse commenting that offends him? Or, possibly, does he have a higher opinion of his opinion (if you see what I mean) than he is prepared to admit?
Authority
This is another aspect of the issue of democracy versus authority which seems to me to be the circle that needs to be squared for Internet criticism to really find a valuable identity for itself. Yet authority itself is a vexed issue. On a handful of occasions over the months (and most recently in my review of Cheek By Jowl's Boris Godunov reprinted in this issue), my editors at the Financial Times have removed comments in which I admitted to even a slight degree of ignorance. In the current case, it seems to me a salient point that I was not hitherto familiar with the Godunov story, and that that unfamiliarity might have played a part in my response to director Declan Donnellan's technique of illustrating relationships spatially onstage. In fact, I write this a few hours after having seen CBJ's Troilus And Cressida, a story I know far better and a production in which I found that same staging technique much more irritating; as I say, the two may be related, and this strikes me as potentially relevant to the evaluations I make. But my FT editors seem to feel that such admissions compromise a reviewer's authority. I can understand that, but in such instances it is also then my job to take that into account and to maintain my credibility through constructing my argument strongly enough in other respects. It's part of the territory. (Did I sound too much like Lee Siegel there?)
Conversely, in some instances no such authority is granted in the first place. Despite the occasional ignorance, I'm an intense and unashamed intellectual snob, but I often find myself driven to distraction by an attitude of academic critics – both domestic and foreign – that theirs is the way to go about it, an implicit denial that journalistic reviewing can have imperatives that are both (a) different and (b) none the less valid. It seems to me self-evident that a specialised language will not work equally well with a non-specialised audience. You can be specific and detailed about a production to the last micron, employing a precise and elegant vocabulary evolved for that purpose, but if it's a language your readership doesn't know, then you're communicating nothing except how sterilely abstruse you can be.
Dialogue
There seems to me to be an almost painful need for dialogue between all these different modes of criticism – journalistic, academic, online. If we can't even agree on first principles, on what we're actually for, then how can we hope – any of us – to survive?
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me In Craiova?
Craiova in Romania is not one of the country's great tourist attractions. It has a university of some repute, and a mayor who is trying to put life back into its unprepossessing centre by landscaping squares and pedestrian precincts. Its main claim to fame is the National Theatre "Marin Sorescu", where Silviu Purcarete established his reputation as a world class director nearly twenty years ago with his production of Ubu Rex with scenes from Macbeth, which took Edinburgh and several other international festivals by storm. Purcarete went from strength to strength, and the theatre with it. Its then manager, Emil Boroghina, was able to put some of the proceeds from his theatre's extensive tours into setting up a William Shakespeare Foundation, now the chief backer of the Craiova festival, which this year celebrated its sixth edition. Its scope is nothing if not ambitious, and this year saw an expansion to Bucharest, with the participation of the capital's National Theatre and Opera among other local institutions. Under the title "Great Directors, Great Productions, Great Theatres Of Europe And The World", Craiova staged a clutch of major performances, backed by workshops, book launches and a weekend's international colloquium on Shakespeare which I was lucky enough to chair. The visiting directors in question – quite a constellation – were Declan Donnellan, Peter Brook, Eimuntas Nekrosius, Lev Dodin, Robert Wilson and Purcarete himself – and only last-minute difficulties prevented the participation of Georgia's Robert Sturua.
Enunciated
First off the blocks was Declan Donnellan, with the Cheek By Jowl Troilus And Cressida now playing at the Barbican. It's a typical Cheek By Jowl show, clearly and carefully enunciated on a spare Nick Ormerod set by a well-drilled cast that Donnellan has been able to weld in a bare few weeks into an ensemble that looks as if it has been together for years. Played on the stage of the National Theatre in a traverse configuration that brought its actors very close to the audience (as in the C by J preferred setting at the Barbican), it benefited from this intimacy, with both love scenes and battle scenes inches from our faces. As might be expected, attention to the words brought out all the difficulties of this ambivalent text and overcame them triumphantly. Yet for all the actors' skills the evening showed a curious lack of passion, even in Troilus' playful courtship of Cressida up and down the traverse acting area. Anchor of the play is David Collings' world-weary Pandarus, who leaves the camp to Richard Cant's Scouse bitch of a Thersites, with odd echoes of Mrs Shufflewick as he hoovers Achilles' tent in drag.
I didn't have my programme when I watched the production, and must confess to waiting patiently for the actresses playing Andromache and Cassandra to take their bows – a tribute to Lucy Briggs-Owen and Marianne Oldham, who doubled those roles with Cressida and Helen respectively.
Hooded
Peter Brook's contribution was not a Shakespeare, but Bruce Myers in the adaptation of Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, that remarkable monologue from The Brothers Karamazov. When it played in London there were those who criticised Myers for
apparently reading off an autocue. Better that (and I would guess that the autocue was there more as an aide-memoire) than the heart-stopping moments in Craiova where the actor visibly groped for his words, while the Romanian translation stared us in the face behind him. Nevertheless, Myers' hooded eyes and black cassock concentrated the intellectual essence of his character, presenting stubborn resistance to the Christ who has come back to a Spain that groans under his followers' intransigent yoke.
Nekrosius brought us back to Shakespeare, or at any rate his idea of Shakespeare, with the Macbeth that so annoyed me in St Petersburg last year. I saw it from the beginning this time, which at least allowed me to confirm who was playing which role, but the Lithuanian director's heavy use of seldom appropriate symbolism and careless fiddling with the plot remained as wilful and tiresome as ever. His early use of lots of wood (Macbeth and Banquo arrive carrying potted trees) makes it inevitable that Birnam Wood will never make it to Dunsinane, while the witches – three rather winsome country girls – are so lovable that any suggestion that they might be harbingers of evil is impossible. In St Petersburg a packed house survived the production's nigh-on four hours to give it a prolonged standing ovation – many of them had had to stand throughout anyway. In Craiova, a big chunk of the audience left at half time, but those who stayed cheered it to the echo. I was relieved to find that the other two Nekrosius travesties, Hamlet and Othello, were playing only in Bucharest.
Respect
It was left to Purcarete himself to restore some respect for the Bard's intentions, with a strong version of Measure For Measure for the local company. True, his Vienna was not far from today's Bucharest, and one or two local references made it clear that there are parallels to be found in the country's present levels of corruption, just as that first Ubu/Macbeth gave a vicious glimpse into the home life of the Ceausescus; but the point is not laboured. The comic subplot is ruthlessly stripped away, with Lucio becoming a commentator on Angelo's iniquity (and coming to a stickier end than usual) as our attention is focussed on the principal figures, whose story is left unadorned on a simple set of sliding panels that lets the excellent actors do the work. It all adds up to a short and powerful evening.
I was not able to stay for Robert Wilson's fine The Lady From The Sea, or Lev Dodin's King Lear, which failed to impress at the Barbican last year, but the mad king cropped up frequently in the Shakespeare symposium, with Maria Shevtsova explaining that the Dodin version benefited from a racy, colloquial translation and a very Russian Fool, while John Elsom spoke of a Lear in Tajikistan which deeply shocked the patriarchal members of its audience, and Octavian Saiu fruitfully explored the echoes of the "foolish, fond old man" to be found in Beckett's Endgame. There were many other pleasures in the international contributions, including one from "Mr Shakespeare", Stanley Wells, whose honorary doctorate crowned an exciting week for him and for Craiova. That one determined community can attract world class theatre practitioners and scholars every two years gives hope to us all.
Ian Herbert | Ian@herbertknott.com
Contents / Reviews
Reviewed in issue 10, 2008: |
||||
London |
|
|
|
|
AN ALCHEMY OF FLESH New play by David Hauptschein |
Old Red Lion |
8 May |
24 May |
545 |
BEAU JEST UK première of play by James Sherman |
Hackney Empire |
8 May |
1 Jun |
543 |
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY Revival of play by Harold Pinter |
Lyric Hammersmith |
12 May |
24 May |
550 |
BORIS GODUNOV Revival of play by Alexander Pushkin (Cheek By Jowl) |
Barbican |
13 May |
17 May |
554 |
DERREN BROWN: MIND READER New illusion/mentalism show |
Garrick |
7 May |
7 Jun |
529 |
CELIA New play by Richard Nyeila |
New Players |
12 May |
24 May |
553 |
CHARLIE AND LOLA'S BEST BESTEST PLAY New play by Jonathan Lloyd from books by Lauren Child |
Polka |
1 May |
26 July |
555 |
CLOCKED New play by Neil Flynn |
Warehouse Croydon |
6 May |
25 May |
569 |
COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE New adaptation by Linda McLean of novel by Laura Esquivel |
Southwark Playhouse |
13 May |
31 May |
563 |
THE DEEP BLUE SEA Revival of play by Terence Rattigan |
Vaudeville |
13 May |
|
556 |
AN ELIGIBLE MAN New play by Rosemary Friedman |
New End |
6 May |
8 Jun |
540 |
FAMILYMAN New play by Rikki Beadle-Blair |
T R Stratford E15 |
8 May |
31 May |
545 |
THE FLYING MACHINE New play by Phil Porter |
Unicorn |
6 May |
1 Jun |
549 |
THE GOOD SOUL OF SZECHUAN New translation by David Harrower of play by Bertolt Brecht |
Young Vic |
14 May |
21 Jun |
560 |
HENRY VI PART ONE Revival of play by Shakespeare (Royal Shakespeare Co) |
Roundhouse |
6 May |
24 May |
531 |
HENRY VI PART TWO Revival of play by Shakespeare (Royal Shakespeare Co) |
Roundhouse |
6 May |
24 May |
531 |
HENRY VI PART THREE Revival of play by Shakespeare (Royal Shakespeare Co) |
Roundhouse |
6 May |
24 May |
531 |
IN SPITTING DISTANCE New play by Taher Najib (Rukab Project) |
Pit |
7 May |
17 May |
530 |
NATURAL SELECTION New play by Paul Rigel Jenkins |
Theatre 503 |
9 May |
31 May |
569 |
OXFORD STREET New play by Levi David Addai |
Royal Court Upstairs |
7 May |
31 May |
538 |
PYGMALION Revival of play by G B Shaw (Peter Hall Co) |
Old Vic |
15 May |
2 Aug |
564 |
RAPUNZEL'S LAST MIDNIGHT New musical by Joe Evans (Ruby In The Dust Prods) |
White Bear |
13 May |
1 Jun |
544 |
RICHARD III Revival of play by Shakespeare (Royal Shakespeare Co) |
Roundhouse |
7 May |
25 May |
533 |
STOCKHOLM New play by Bryony Lavery (Frantic Assembly) |
Hampstead |
14 May |
24 May |
559 |
THAT FACE Transfer of new play by Polly Stenham |
Duke Of York's |
9 May |
5 Jul |
546 |
UNDER MILK WOOD Revival of play by Dylan Thomas (London TC) |
Tricycle |
14 May |
24 May |
537 |
Regions |
|
|
|
|
DRAWER BOY Scottish première of play by Michael Healey |
Glasgow, Tron |
8 May |
24 May |
577 |
THE ENGLISH GAME New ply by Richard Bean (Headlong Th) |
Guildford, Yvonne Amaud / touring |
12 May |
17 May |
573 |
FUNNY GIRL Revival of musical by Jule Styne / Bob Merrill / Isobel Lennart |
Chichester, Minerva |
8 May |
14 Jun |
570 |
MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Mold, Chvyd Theatr Cymru |
1 May |
24 May |
575 |
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM Revival of play by Shakespeare (Royal Shakespeare Co) |
Stratford, Courtyard |
15 May |
13 Nov |
576 |
PATIENT NO. 1 New play by Donald Freed |
York, Theatre Royal Studio |
6 May |
17 May |
572 |