Issue 20,2008

Prompt Corner

Ah, autumn - season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and the catastrophic exposure of the inconsistencies at the heart of credit-driven capitalism. Are those smoky October bonfires composed of piles of golden leaves, or piles of now-worthless stock options? It would be impolitic to gloat, since Theatre Record may seem like the kind of luxury that’s dispensable in a financially stringent climate. However, a subscription to TR costs no more, and usually much less, than a year’s worth of any one of the dozen-plus titles whose reviews we reprint (with the exception of the Sun and, obviously, the free Metro); moreover, as you can see from the page towards the back of this issue, the price of current issues and subscriptions remains unchanged, unlike that of virtually every UK newspaper in the course of the past two months. So we’re still bloody good value! But cometh the hour, cometh the early closures in the West End. The cover stars of this issue, in Girl With A Pearl Earring, had in fact vacated the Haymarket even before the magazine went to press. A clutch of other closure announcements (including a comfortable five months’ notice in the case of Avenue Q) have led to the inevitable rash of “crisis” articles. Well done Michael Billington, then, for saying the nigh-unsayable in a blog at http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/ theatreblog/2008/oct/21/creditcrunch-theatre-westend - The one possibility never discussed is that some shows close early because they are crap.” While he goes on to make some more debatable judgments and connections, this is indeed something that it’s all too easy to overlook. Girl With A Pearl Earring and Riflemind aren’t closing early because the global market has melted down: they’re closing because, in these instances, the market is actually working the way it’s so often claimed to. The Invisible Hand is swatting them out of the way because there’s not enough demand for them, which is in turn because they’re not good enough.

Newsworthy

Michael goes on to laud the current success of serious plays. However, I’m not sure that’s something that we can congratulate ourselves about. The day after No Man’s Land opened in the West End (reviews next issue) - a production by hot director Rupert Goold, lauded on its première at the Gate in Dublin, and combining serious and populist appeal with a cast including Michael Gambon, David Bradley and David Walliams - two of our heavyweight newspapers, The Times and the Independent, decided that the more newsworthy artistic event, the one they would cover in their front pages, was the first concert in the latest tour by Oasis. Yet, thanks to the Nobel Prize and other recent accolades, it’s surely (if unexpectedly) the case that Harold Pinter is in fact a more contemporary cultural figure than the Gallagher brothers. Oh, well, nobody said these things had to make sense. It can all be a matter of the direction from which you approach matters. For instance, in reviews of Enda Walsh’s The Walworth Farce at the National Theatre, a number of reviews compare Walsh’s writing to that of Martin McDonagh, with at least one implying that McDonagh was an influence on Walsh; in fact Walsh is older, has been writing longer, and is moreover actually Irish by birth and upbringing rather than simply by heritage like McDonagh. Richard Woulfe rather gives himself away in his Tribune review by implicitly admitting that he has seen none of Walsh’s work before; at this point it becomes apparent that he has been inadvertently telling us more about his own process of classifying this writer than about any objective context.

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Richard’s Tribune supremo Aleks Sierz wobbles a little, too, in his review of Waste at the Almeida. Aleks can often be relied upon to buck the consensus, and he does so here: whilst most reviews laud an excellent production of a patchy play, Aleks finds it “long, tedious and emotionally repellent” - so tedious, in fact, that it lulled him into a state where he mistakes the protagonist’s sister for his wife. (That’s why she hasn’t left him ere now, Aleks: it’s a different kind of devotion.) Elsewhere among the reviews of Waste, Tim Walker observes, “If people are to have the right to freedom of expression, then the least one can expect of them is that they have something interesting to express”, which fulfils its own criterion by being aphoristic, if not discernibly logical. And a merit point to Christopher Hart, the only one of us who dared to use - with absolute legitimacy in terms of the play and its plot - the word “antidisestablishmentarianism”. (The FT objected, I can confide, because the word wouldn’t fit on a single line. Well, I may never get another chance to use it as a paragraph cross-header, so…)

While I have my pedant’s hat on, may I draw your attention to a rather amusing dangling clause in Lynne Walker’s review of The Glee Club, which makes it look as if her words “A kind of Full Monty meets Brassed Off” are describing not the play but the Labour Party conference. Alas, we don’t get invited to those kind of parties any more… although, as it happens, I write this column scant hours after a meeting between a group of critics and the Culture Secretary Andy Burnham. He spoke a lot about aspirations and advocacy, and very little about implementation of any measures; he also seemed a little irked when I put together two figures that he had quoted half an hour apart and noted that his superficially admirable determination to fund the Cultural Olympiad in fact amounted to a statement of intent that it would occupy at least 0.5% of the Olympic budget. Wow, that much?

Gitanes

And finally, some unalloyed praise, in the territory of one of my more rabid obsessions. I am full of admiration for Piaf director Jamie Lloyd, for his awareness that the show is not just a matter for the visual and auditory senses. When one of his Parisian characters lights up a cigarette onstage, a few seconds later the Vaudeville auditorium is suffused with the authentic aroma of Gitanes. None of your herbal rubbish there!

At the Back

Can You Hear Me In Belgrade?

There was barely time for me to pick up a change of socks after my Riga excursion before I was off to Belgrade for a quick look at this year’s BITEF Festival. There was a strong line up for this, its 42nd edition, with contributions from Heiner Goebbels, Dimitar Gotscheff, Alvis Hermanis and Suzanne Osten among others, the last with her piece of theatre for babies, which has created ripples all over Europe. There was plenty of post-dramatic theatre for jury chairman Hans-Thies Lehmann. For BITEF’s main prize, he and his colleagues chose Goebbels’ actor-free Stifters Dinge, seen earlier this year in London. Their other award went to the Brusselsbased American choreographer Meg Stuart and Philippe Gehmacher for their intimate dance piece, Maybe Forever.

Sentimentality

Lack of time prevented me from seeing any of these, but I did catch the choice of the local jury, whose Best Director award went to Christoph Marthaler for his latest, Platz Mangel. Set in a cable-car terminus (carefully recreated by Frieda Schneider) which seems to double as a health spa, it follows the trials of an affluent group of Teutons who have come up for the treatment. Some of that treatment is pretty hellish, and when we discover that the seedy gent in a mackintosh who sits in his ticket booth-cum-confessional is the Archangel Gabriel, the metaphor is not hard to spot. But first we begin with the show’s end, a splendidly cheesy ballad of the “we hope you’ve enjoyed our show” variety from the full cast, who might be mistaken at this point for the Swiss version of a Hi-De-Hi troupe. As the piece proceeds, at a leisurely pace which few directors other than Marthaler could get away with, the company’s singing talents are put to good use in a repertoire that includes more cheese, plus Bach and Mahler. There’s no plot – it’s post-dramatic, geddit? – but a very satisfying series of sketches and fragments of sub-plot, including a budding romance doomed forever to interruption by the arrival of other characters. All the visitors get their chance to unburden themselves to Gabriel in his booth, and if the show does have a point it is to poke the gentlest of fun at their selfish materialism. No vicious satire here then, but some sharp moments of both pain and pleasure, and a great deal of sheer stage beauty in sound and vision.

Aborted

The main aim of my brief visit was to take a quick look at the state of Serbia’s own theatre. BITEF these days is much more than an international festival of invited superstars. It includes a showcase weekend for local product, as well as a programme by and for the young, BITEF Polifonia, most of which this year seemed to be devoted to the sexual health problems of its constituency. There were several local contributions to the main programme, of which I caught the dress rehearsal of Bojana Cvejic’s Don Giovanni. It was performed in everyday costume by a competent group of singers and a very good orchestra, led by the young conductor Premil Petrovic. The equally young director’s “concept” was to set it as a promenade production in a huge exhibition hall, with the singers popping up in various corners or striding from end to end. Difficult enough to follow for the small dress rehearsal audience, it must have been an even greater trial for a full house. The final scene, when Giovanni receives his stone guest for dinner and follows him to the nether world for the rematch, was played out in a dull film projected on to the hall’s ceiling, which could only be appreciated on one’s back. My view is that the whole project should have been aborted when it became clear that it added nothing to our view of Don Giovanni and took much away from our enjoyment of Mozart’s sublime music; but I’m told the first night Belgrade audience liked it a lot.

In the Polifonia programme, I caught a student production of Hamlet which had the interesting idea of playing it as Kabuki. An exotically costumed group in heavy make-up proceeded to give us a pretty full version of the story, even when cut to ninety minutes. The Kabuki conventions gradually fell away as a fine female Hamlet charged towards his/her fate, but they did allow for some interesting switches of gender: as well as Ms Hamlet we were treated to a statuesque male Gertrude. The young actors, students of anything but drama, acquitted themselves very well (rather better than their professional counterparts seen a week before in Omsk, I must say) and their director, Vladimir Cvejic showed great and pertinent invention in his staging, while also providing a handy percussive accompaniment.

Interrogation

In the Serbian showcase proper I saw Urbi Et Orbi, directed by Andras Urban. Working from Subotica, and therefore in Hungarian, he’s very much the coming man of Serbian theatre, with another production in the showcase and one in the main BITEF programme. What I saw was a piece for four actors who were allowed to improvise as, one by one, they took centre stage to talk about their lives – and under intense interrogation from their fellows revealed them to be very unpleasant ones indeed. A young woman claiming proudly to be a virgin confesses first to a fondness for masturbation, then finally to a teenage abortion. A man who wants to complain about his boss is shown up as an inadequate, neglectful father. The other two are a nymphomaniac and a paedophile respectively. Their confessions are followed by increasingly hysterical attempts at penance as microphone monologue gives way to bloody ritual. It’s a deeply distasteful production, but one marked by some highly explosive acting and a strong sense of directorial style.

Pavane

Style was the hallmark of the second show, an adaptation of a play by the prolific Jean-Luc Lagarce, who has been increasingly influential in France since his early death in 1995. Rules For Good Manners In The Modern World started as a monologue, a series of fairly banal instructions on what to do in life’s key moments – birth, courtship, marriage, death – but is here transformed by translatordirector Andjelka Nikolic into an elegant pavane in which the main speaker, a Claire Rayner figure who remains seated and calm throughout except for the moment when she pulls a revolver out of her handbag, is backed by a suave young couple who offer cynical commentary, sometimes sung, and another pair in romper suits who enact the trials of life in stylised movement. Funny at times, at others surprisingly touching, Nikolic’s production mines a great deal out of an initially unpromising text.

If you want to explore current Serbian playwriting further, BITEF’s guiding spirit, Jovan Cirilov, has edited a fine anthology for Serbian PEN (www.pencent@bitsyu.net), Infinity Contained In Ten Square Yards, which offers seven successes of recent years, from writers already known outside Serbia (Dusan Kovocevic with The Professional, Biljana Srbljanovic with Barbelo, Ugljesa Sajtinac with Huddersfield) and others who deserve to be more widely known, Ljubomir Simovic (The Sopalovic Travelling Players), Vida Ognjenovic (Mileva Einstein), Nebojsa Romcevic (Carolina Neuber) and Milena Markovic (Tracks).

Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com

Contents / Reviews

Reviewed in issue 20, 2008
London
ALVARO'S BALCONY New musical by Jonathan Kaldo	Landor	23 Sep	18 Oct	1091
BACCHAEFULL Return of play by Debbie Kent (Dirty Market Th)	Old Abattoir EC1	3 Oct	18 Oct	1086
COME DANCING New musical by Ray Davies and Paul Sirett	T R Stratford E15	24 Sep	8 Nov	1092
CRADLE ME New play by Simon Vinnicombe	Finborough	3 Oct	25 Oct	1113
CREDITORS Revival of play by August Strindberg in new version by David Greig	Donmar Warehouse	30 Sep	15 Nov	1108
DANNY DIVA New play by Russell Barr	Soho	29 Sep	4 Oct	1100
FLAMENCO FLAMEN'KA New dance show by Karen Ruimy	Lyric	22 Sep	15 Nov	1085
GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING New adaptation by David Joss Buckley from novel by Tracy Chevalier	Haymarket	29 Sep	18 Oct	1102
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE New verbatim piece by Alecky Blythe	Royal Court Upstairs	23 Sep	11 Oct	1087
KARAGIOZES EXPOSED New puppet play by Open Arts Th	Arcola	23 Sept	4 Oct	1118
KATE AND MRS JONES New play by Lorae Parry	Pacific Playhouse	27 Sep	18 Oct	1100
LEAVING New play by Vaclav Havel	Orange Tree	23 Sep	13 Dec	1089
MEMORY New play by Jonathan Lichtenstein	Pleasance	1 Oct	2 Nov	1112
MONSTER / MR KOLPERT Revivals of pieces by Daniel Brooks and Daniel McIvor / David Gieselmann	Greenwich Playhouse	2 Oct	12 Oct	1107
PERÔ New play by Guus Ponsioen (Speeltheater)	Unicorn SE1	25 Sep	12 Oct	1107
SHT-MX New play by Leo Richardson (CurvingRoad)	Trafalgar Studio 2	1 Oct	25 Oct	1106
A TALE OF TWO CITIES New musical by D Pomeranz, S D Horwich, D Soames based on Charles Dickens	Upstairs at the Gatehouse	30 Sep	2 Nov	1101
THE WALWORTH FARCE Revival of play by Enda Walsh (Druid)	Cottesloe	24 Sep	29 Nov	1087
WASTE Revival of play by Harley Granville Barker	Almeida	2 Oct	15 Nov	1114
WELCOME TO RAMALLAH New play by Sonja Linden and Adah Kay (iceandfire)	Arcola	26 Sep	18 Oct	1100
YOURS ABUNDANTLY, FROM ZIMBABWE New play by Gillian Plowman	Oval House	2 Oct	18 Oct	1101
Regions
ARCHES LIVE! Season of new work: see review pages for full production details	Glasgow, Arches	18 Sep	27 Sep	1132
ARISTO New play by Martin Sherman, based on material in Nemesis by Peter Evans	Chichester, Minerva	1 Oct	11 Oct	1122
BARABAS New adaptation by Anna Coombs from The JewOf Malta by Christopher Marlowe	Truro, Hall for Cornwall	26 Sep	4 Oct	1120
THE BLOODY CHAMBER New adaptation by Bryony Lavery from novel by Angela Carter	Newcastle, Northern Stage	30 Sep	11 Oct	1121
CHERRY BLOSSOM New play by Catherine Grosvenor et al. (Teatr Polski Bydgoszcz)	Edinburgh, Traverse	27 Sep	11 Oct	1128
DALLAS SWEETMAN New play by Sebastian Barry	Canterbury Cathedral / touring	25 Sep	28 Sep	1119
DON’T YOU LEAVE ME HERE New play by Clare Brown	Leeds, WYP Courtyard	1 Oct	18 Oct	1121
ERIC’S – THE MUSICAL New musical by Mark Davies Markham	Liverpool Everyman	24 Sep	11 Oct	1118
THE GLEE CLUB Revival of play by Richard Cameron	Manchester, Library	23 Sep	18 Oct	1119
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE Revival of play by Frank Marcus	Derby Playhouse	13 Sep	18 Oct	1118
THE LESSON Revival of play by Eugène Ionesco, translated by Donald Watson (benchtours)	Musselburgh, Brunton / touring	4 Oct	4 Oct	1131
NOISES OFF Revival of play by Michael Frayn	Glasgow, King’s / touring	22 Sep	27 Sep	1127
OFFSHORE New play by Alan Wilkins (Birds Of Paradise TC)	Glasgow, Citizens Circle / touring	24 Sep	27 Sep	1127
SIX ACTS OF LOVE New play by Ioanna Anderson	Glasgow, Tron	30 Sep	11 Oct	1129
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES Revival of play by Ray Bradbury, from his own novel	Dundee Rep / touring	2 Oct	4 Oct	1130
WUTHERING HEIGHTS New adaptation by April De Angelis from novel by Emily Brontë	Birmingham Rep / touring	30 Sep	18 Oct	1121

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