Issue 18, 2008
Prompt Corner 
Given that we trade in opinion, it's relatively rare that I get direct feedback on what I've written... apart from on blogs, of course, which are in the process of radically redefining our relationship with our readers; for better or worse (no doubt both). It can even be refreshing to receive an e-mailed comment from a Mr I Herbert of Middlesex remarking that the last couple of Prompt Corners have been very personal, perhaps excessively so. "Can the next one address the readership's concerns, too?" he goads. My excuse is that events such as those I recounted are of relevance to all of us who go to theatre and may find ourselves in such a situation; moreover, they prompt broader examination of subjects such as the performer/audience relationship. As I say, that's my excuse. And there could scarcely be a more eloquent connection of the personal, professional and cultural than Lyn Gardner's Guardian blog piece about her recent bereavement, an extract of which is reprinted opposite. It's made me at least feel a strange combination of emotions: to want at the same time to offer sympathy and also to express gratitude for expressing the passion and intimacy with which many of us relate to theatre.
Enjoyment
Another subject for general musing has been raised by another recent personal event. Amongst the mourning for Ken Campbell (an account of whose remarkable funeral can be found on Michael Coveney's blog at www.whatsonstage.com were various reminders of his attitude towards subsidised theatre. He used to say that the phrase "funded theatre" should be pronounced "fun-dead theatre": with various earnest, worthy conditions attached to the money, so much time is spent trying to fulfil them that there's precious little left for the enjoyment which should be at the heart of the whole venture. Indeed, as Jeff Merrifield (who holds a doctorate in Ken Campbell!) recalled, Ken's career as a maverick more or less began when the Bolton Octagon fired him from running a roadshow to attract folk into the theatre, because he was so good that they all just went to the roadshow instead; Ken and his crew decamped to the nearby college at which Merrifield was social secretary, and thus was born the now legendary Ken Campbell Roadshow. Ken also used to enjoy telling how his 1979 production of Neil Oram's 24-hour play cycle The Warp (which the Daily Telegraph's obituary mistakenly claimed was co-written by Ken) was partly funded by means of lying to the Arts Council. He needed to say such-and-such on his application for funding, advised a remarkably candid representative; but it's not true, said Ken; he needed to say it, repeated this chap; what would happen if/when they found out it wasn't true, asked Ken?; well, he'd never get any money from the Arts Council again, mused their emissary, but how badly did he want to get The Warp on to a stage? So he lied, and sure enough, he was never AC fun-dead again. But he reckoned it was worth it.
This is one aspect of a crucial way in which Ken was invaluable to British theatre: a role for which he has no obvious heir, and may prove to be the last of his line. As Mike Bradwell observed after the funeral, he was a beacon for the value of transgressive theatre... not just theatre that transgresses social conventions, but at breaches even notions of "proper" theatre. Writing to Lindsay Anderson about the joys of "ùoppy acting, or acting how your uncle used to act"; extolling the ethos of outfits such as the late Marcel S per's Smallest Theatre In The World, which he summed up as' 'doing it crappily"; the kind of guerrilla raids of the Roadshow; the contagion of his enthusiasms, ranging from ventriloquism to Pidgin English (one of the most moving moments at the funeral was a recitation in Pidgin of the "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." speech from Macbeth – "No mo' no fire now, li'l-fella candle...") to his latest passion for long-form improvised theatre... Ken made us realise how important it can be sometimes to just tear up the rules, or to wave your arse at them as you walk away; that the only way you make new discoveries is by breaking new ground, and that whether or not it "works" by conventional standards, you've a good chance of having fun finding out. Who now will goad us on, urging us to dare to be daft? Who will show us how?
Command
One final instance of the personal and the professional interacting beautifully: Blanche Marvin, the redoubtable octogenarian editor of London Theatreviews, has recently been laid up recovering from an operation. This meant that she was unable, for instance, to get to the Young Vic to see the Beckett programme Fragments, directed by Peter Brook with whom she has had a long association (presenting an annual batch of Empty Space Awards to London venues in honour of Brook's theatrical philosophy). Enter the Independent's Paul Taylor, dressed as Jimmy Savile and ready to Fix It for her; Paul phoned the Young Vic, phoned Brook, phoned Blanche (somehow keeping it a secret from her), and arranged that one afternoon Kathryn Hunter arrived to perform Rockaby in Blanche's own living room. Now that's a command performance.
It may seem rather pusillanimous to follow that story by remarking that I'm surprised Fragments was as well received critically as it has been. Hunter's Rockaby is staged minus the rocking chair, minus the rocking rhythm of the lines, and minus the voice-over delivery of those lines; the package also includes a performance of Act Without Words, er, with some words. I'm not entirely sure this Brook chap has got the point of Beckett's plays; and I'm damned certain that, if anyone less celebrated had taken such liberties with the playwright's works in performance, the notoriously protective Beckett literary estate would have banned all concerned from future productions. Conversely, I see that some reviewers are still misunderstanding Robert Lepage's longer works by using the term "soap opera" as a condemnation; rather (for once) than repeat myself at length, I direct you to my comments in Issue 19 of 2005, on the occasion of the London revival of The Dragons' Trilogy. Treating people's lives on a normal scale, at a normal pace, is not demeaning or inadequate; rather, it can eloquently point up the ways in which we are all exceptional, as much as Ken Campbell or Lyn Gardner's mother.
Ian Shuttleworth |ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me In Omsk?
When an invitation arrived out of the blue to visit a drama festival in Omsk, I was intrigued – I wasn't even sure where Omsk was. It turns out to be in Siberia, four hours' flight from Moscow and six hours' time difference from London. Siberia? Fur coats and deep snow? Well, actually, at this time of year (September) it's very much like London, with bright sunshine alternating with heavy rain. Omsk is not very used to foreign visitors: someone in the theatre there spoke of the first ones, in the Nineties. "Eighteen-nineties?" I asked. "No, nineteen-nineties." The situation is changing fast. The Academia Festival, the first, had a budget of €1.5 million and offered two weeks of productions featuring some of the finest companies in Europe. Sideshows included a conference on criticism – my excuse to be there – attended by critics from all over Russia and a smattering from outside the country. Most performances took place in Omsk's Academic Theatre, a magnificent 1905 building that dominates the main street (Lenin Street!), part of a collection of buildings in the city's leafy historic centre that recalls a quiet corner of St Petersburg. The Academic Theatre was restored to more than its original glory by a programme of works from 2001-2004 that cost €10 million, which came in on time and within budget, using Chinese labour to complete the task. The main auditorium is not that big, seating around 400, not many more than the recently completed (and just as opulent) puppet theatre, the Harlequin, a couple of kilometres away in the newer part of the city. This size limitation ensured overflowing houses for the performances I saw.
All this unaccustomed largesse for theatre is the result of the deliberate political stance taken by the remarkable person responsible for it, the Governor of the region, Leonid Polizhaev. In twenty years he has seen several regimes come and go, from the Soviet Union to Putin's Russia. Gazprom is the city's main employer and a useful contributor to the regional budget. At a long meeting with festival visitors, Mr Polichaev told us that an astonishing seven per cent of the regional budget goes to culture – twenty five per cent if you include a broader definition to cover education and tourism. This is not because he is an arts aficionado – he admitted to us with engaging frankness that he has no special love of theatre, being much more interested in the fortunes of the local ice hockey team – but because he sees cultural development as the key to the region's development. A benevolent philistine can be much more useful than a parsimonious art-lover.
Riotous
The festival got under way in Lenin Street, where the Moscow group Fire People, watched by a good slice of the local population, led a spirited carnival procession up to the theatre. Inside, we were treated to an ideal festival opener, the National Theatre of Belgrade in a Serbian classic, The Cabinet Minister's Wife, by Branislav Nusic. This satirical sketch of local politics creates farcical comedy out of the turmoil that ensues when a man unexpectedly attains high office. Just as Gogol's General Inspector never appears, Nusic's Cabinet Minister never speaks. What we see is the impact of his elevation (and subsequent disgrace) on his termagant wife, a Mme Jourdain of the kitchen whose attempts to join the bourgeoisie provide grist to Nusic's mill. A huge cast is completely dominatedby the larger-than-life performance of Radmila Zhivkovic, who rules the stage in the title role. Director Yagos Markovic gives her free rein, as he does to a gallery of other grotesques, speaking and mute, who come together in a riotous first act finale when the cabinet minister gets his job and complete mayhem is let loose. Not exactly sophisticated political commentary, but great fun for a festival audience. Outside, after the Serbians' theatrical fireworks, the Fire People were back with their full show, a literally dazzling orgy of fire-eating, stilt-walking and dangerous hand-held pyrotechnics, backed by a jazzy brass band who come down from their vintage fire engine to enhance proceedings.
Innovative
The next two festival offerings were from major German companies, the Berliner Ensemble and the Schaubühne respectively. Academia's selectors had chosen with clever economy – the Berliners' Peer Gynt swallowed half the budget for this year's Almada Festival – programming a couple of solos that showcased two of the country's leading performers: Martin Wuttke, still renowned for his performance as Arturo Ui for Heiner Müller, and Anne Tismar, Thomas Ostermeier's Nora. Neither of the shows are new – in fact both actors have now left the producing companies – but they remain impressive. In Tom Peuckert's Artaud And Hitler At The Romanian Café, Wuttke is the crazed Artaud, climbing up the wall of his asylum room as he recalls the day he was cut by the Führer. It's more of an artistic cri de coeur than a view of modern Germany's attitude to its Nazi past, but it gives a bravura vocal and physical opportunity that Wuttke seizes brilliantly, In complete contrast is the demeanour of the mute, suicidal spinster in Franz-Xaver Kroetz's Request Concert, delicately played by Tismar on a realistic set that places it in today's urban Eurowilderness rather than the decaying Germany where it was written more than thirty years ago. Both performances have innovative additions. Wuttke climbs on top of his glass-fronted box to deliver a final chanson, "Je Suis Malade". Not only does this allow the audience as much as the actor to recover from the intensity of the performance: it turns out, amazingly, that Artaud actually recorded this very song, something Wuttke did not know when he chose it. Less successfully, Tismar's director, Thomas Ostermeier, plays down the radio programme which gave Kroetz's play its title and much of its dramatic drive, instead importing a real opera singer to perform an aria in the middle of the piece.
I had to leave the festival at this point. I'm sure your mouths will water as much as mine when I tell you that in doing so I missed Rimas Tuminas directing the Small Theatre of Vilnius, Robert Sturua directing the Ivan Franko Theatre from Kiev, Gabor Zambeki with the Katona Josef from Budapest, Natalie Lermitte from Paris as Piaf, and the local company in a couple of productions of their own. There were also the polar extremes of Russian clowning. Slava Polunin with his ever-popular Snowshow and AKHE with their take on Faust. The festival ended with Kryzsztof Penderecki conducting the Omsk Symphony Orchestra in a concert of his own works, The next Academia is in 2010. I want to be there – and stay longer.
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.comContents / Reviews
London |
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THE COLLECTOR Revival of Mark Healy adaptation from novel by John Fowles |
Arcola |
29 Aug |
20 Sep |
976 |
FRAGMENTS Return of revival of short pieces by Samuel Beckett |
Young Vic |
28 Aug |
13 Sep |
974 |
HEDDA New version by Lucy Kirkwood, from play by Henrik Ibsen |
Gate |
28 Aug |
27 Sep |
979 |
JOAN RIVERS: A WORK IN PROGRESS BY A LIFE IN PROGRESS New play by Rivers/Bernstein/Markell Leicester Square |
4 Sep |
18 Sep |
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989 |
LIBERTY New adaptation by Glyn Maxwell from Les Dieux Ont Soif by Anatole France |
Globe |
3 Sep |
4 Oct |
985 |
LIPSYNCH New play by Robert Lepage |
Barbican |
7 Sep |
14 Sep |
995 |
LORCA DREAMS I SUEÑO LORCA New play by Maria Caudevilla, with extracts from Lorca (Baraka TC) |
Arcola |
25 Aug |
6 Sep |
981 |
ONE MINUTE Revival of play by Simon Stephens |
Courtyard |
4 Sep |
28 Sep |
994 |
PAINTING BY NUMBERS New play by Simon Mawdsley (Stretch TC) |
Old Red Lion |
2 Sep |
20 Sep |
998 |
THE PRETENDER AGENDA New play by Christopher Manoe |
New Players |
28 Aug |
27 Sep |
984 |
ROMEO AND JULIET Revival of play by Shakespeare (Theatre of Memory) |
Middle Temple Hall |
26 Aug |
13 Sep |
972 |
SONS OF YORK New play by James Graham |
Finborough |
5 Sep |
27 Sep |
993 |
THARK Revival of play by Ben Travers |
Upstairs at the Gatehouse |
3 Sep |
21 Sep |
992 |
TWELFTH NIGHT Revival of play by Shakespeare (Filter/RSC) |
Tricycle |
2 Sep |
27 Sep |
982 |
Regions |
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OUTLYING ISLANDS Revival of play by David Greig |
Pitlochry |
20 Aug |
16 Oct |
1001 |
SUNSET SONG New adaptation by Kenny Ireland from novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon |
Aberdeen, His Majesty's / touring |
5 Sep |
13 Sep |
1001 |
HORRID HENRY — LIVE AND HORRID! New play by John Godber, based on books by Francesca Simon |
Sheffield, Lyceum / touring |
28 Aug |
13 Sep |
1002 |
CABARET Revival of musical by Kander & Ebb/Joe Masteroff, from Christopher Isherwood |
Birmingham Rep / touring |
2 Sep |
13 Sep |
1003 |
LA MACHINE New street theatre piece created by François Delarozière |
Liverpool City Centre |
5 Sep |
7 Sep |
1003 |
MARIE: THE STORY OF MARIE LLOYD Return of play by Steve Trafford |
York, Theatre Royal Studio / touring |
5 Sep |
13 Sep |
1004 |