Prompt Corner
Issue 5, 2009
A more than usually me-centred column this issue, which would leave me open to accusations of hypocrisy if I were to mention Tim Walker turning his non-membership of the Critics’ Circle into a personal crusade and equating his own stance with protesting against the Holocaust in his review of Berlin Hanover Express. So I won’t mention that.
A handy chronological coincidence meant that I followed up my viewings of Over There and Berlin Hanover Express with a few days in Berlin itself. (And by the way, why do Ian Kennedy Martin’s characters get so exercised about a concentration camp some 80 miles from Berlin when Sachsenhausen was almost within the city limits?) Alas, I didn’t get to see the Schaubühne’s production of Marius von Mayenburg’s Der Stein to compare with its recent Royal Court outing, and the Hamlet I did catch was rather disappointing compared to previous encounters with Thomas Ostermeier’s directorial work (although it features an excellent, playfully mad/madly playful central performance from Lars Eidinger). I was also intrigued, to say the least, to discover that mid-May will see the German première of The Producers. Moreover, I must acknowledge a mail I received from Mark Ravenhill about my Financial Times review of Over There. Mark took slight exception to my description of him as an “in-yer-face godfather”; he is, he insists, the genre’s fairy godmother.
Fracas
But whilst in some respects enveloped by notions of Germanness, my most striking experience concerned English identity (a matter on which I consider myself to have an outsider’s perspective). For I finally got a chance to see Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice at the National Theatre. Now, when the fracas about this play first boiled up, I had commented on various blogs in dismissal of the protests, but had said that if I thought differently after seeing the play I would declare as much publicly. Having now seen it, I have to admit, the protesters have something of a point.
Not about racism as such, at least not in the way that they mean: as one blogger remarked, Richard Bean is an equal-opportunities piss-taker – he mocks everybody regardless of ethnicity. Certainly, when I think about the portrayal of the Irish in the play and about the protests of one Keith Kinsella about the alleged racism thereof, I can’t imagine that his outrage was anything but confected in order to make the complaints look less than entirely Bangladeshi-Muslim-centred. But as one character in the play – and, tellingly, a member of the British National Party – remarks, this kind of debate is not about skin colour any more, but culture. Bean’s target is Islamism, and he isn’t very good or very diligent at distinguishing it from Islam per se.
Hatred
Islamism isn’t the subject of more than trace levels of piss-taking in the play; it’s the subject of outright hostility. Granted, it’s not the only extremism shown growing through recent decades – far-right British nationalism also gets some focus. However, the latter’s increasing hold is treated with, if not sympathy, certainly some understanding; in contrast, no remotely comparable approach is taken to the growth of Wahhabism and the like. It wouldn’t have been that hard to show younger Muslims perceiving a lack of rigour in their antecedents’ practices, but instead what we’re shown is bigmouthed youth simply disrespecting their elders and booming about “protecting our territory”. The appearance of a Wahhabi imam with hooks instead of both hands is clearly meant to be a cartoon, going one further than the mono-hooked Abu Hamza; but when his portrayal becomes an actual cartoon, a huge animation on the backdrop spouting lines of offensiveness and hatred, it serves to remind us that cartoons aren’t by definition funny, and can in fact be instruments of hatred themselves. Pete Bishop’s other animations are amusing or blend cleverly with the staging, but I’m afraid this one reminded me of nothing so much as anti-Semitic cartoons across much of the last century. I don’t think “hatred” is putting it too strongly. More than once I felt myself on the verge of walking out, and pretty much all that kept me in my seat was the desire to be able to discuss it afterwards from a position of having seen it all.
Another problem leading to an imbalanced portrayal of Islam is that for much of the second act even the principal “good Muslim”, as it were, the character of Mushi, is shown being driven by a sense of religious commission to sire twins and give one to the mosque. Although little explicit comment is made on this matter, the subtext is that it’s a pernicious delusion, and his redemption (so to speak) comes when he frees himself from the idea and breaks with the mosque with which he has been involved for decades. Yes, this break is explained in terms of the extremism of the new imam, but there’s an untidiness of connotation there which could have been taken care of with only a little effort. I don’t think the argument that this is meant to be a rough, untidy play – a pageant of sorts, staged by the inmates of an asylum-seekers’ detention centre in a play-within-a-play framing device – excuses such laxity.
Disturbed
For me, all of this devalues the attention paid throughout most of the play to love: it seems to me to suggest, not that love is the end and integration the means, but rather that love and intermarriage are the greatest tool in the box, or perhaps the strongest weapon in the arsenal, of integration or even assimilation. (I think Bean’s endorsement moves from the former to the latter as the play continues.) I have to say, there wasn’t the slightest harbinger of this in the first half of the evening; throughout the interval I was as confident as ever that the protesters were, as I said online, earnest people missing the point that it’s about them in ways other than they think. But the second half left me deeply disturbed, and I don’t think that feeling’s going to lift for some time.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me At The Museum?
So the V & A's new Theatre Galleries are open, relatively soon after the closing of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden — much sooner, in fact, than was threatened originally. It's a tiny victory for the Guardians of the Theatre Museum, along with the Society for Theatre Research, who worried that our national display of theatre memorabilia might not be seen for many years after the Russell Street closure. It's even more of a victory for Geoffrey Marsh and the formerly embattled staff of the Theatre Museum, who have been able to demonstrate with shows as varied as Kylie Minogue's underwear and the Society of British Theatre Designers' four-year output that there is a real audience for exhibitions about the performing arts, one that is prepared to trek out of the West End to find them.. Although the Theatre Museum was well sited in Covent Garden, it can now be admitted that its facilities for display were desperately limited and its presence in the heart of Theatreland woefully underexploited, a position not improved by the fact that its South Kensington masters seldom visited the site and systematically starved it of funds over a couple of decades. Back in the V&A, the theatre collections made their presence felt and at last got their due reward and recognition.
Beautifully crafted
The new galleries, curated by the lovely Kate Dorney, are airy and beautifully crafted, with large display cases housing a suitably varied show of some of the theatre collection's treasures. They occupy about the same square footage as the warren of confessional-boxes below Russell Street. Instead of the latter's chronological approach, the intention is to follow broadly the sequence of putting on a show, from script (be it Shakespeare's First Folio, Sheridan's School For Scandal or a Royal Court promptbook) through design (costumes in profusion, set models, sketches) to sitting at a performance, with the great box from Glasgow's Theatre Royal in all its plush glory (though sadly shorn of the elephants that sat above it, since even in the V&A there is a height problem.) The display's nod to the critics is to show Jack Tinker's original review of Sarah Kane's Blasted, with its memorable headline "This Disgusting Feast Of Filth". Kylie's dressing room is still there, for the galleries are determined to stress that their remit is all of the performing arts through all their history. So we see a smashed Pete Townsend guitar, and the intricate if minimal costume of a showgirl from the Eve club, as well as the original Peter Pan flying harness. Touch-screen displays offer deeper explorations into aspects such as set design. A big difference between the old and the new display is that we really can expect regular change in its content. It shows only a fraction of the wealth donated to and acquired by the Theatre Museum over the years, but where the Covent Garden fraction remained virtually unchanged, the costume display in particular should be on a six-month rota, if only for its own protection.
Drawbacks
Of course there have to be drawbacks. The biggest is that there is no room for additions to the permanent show, and no dedicated space for temporary displays, so that the Theatre Collections will have to compete with other departments for opportunities. A spectacular Diaghilev exhibition is due in Autumn 2010, which will give the museum the chance to show Picasso's frontcloth for Le Train Bleu, probably the collection's most valuable item. Meanwhile, what? A few touring exhibitions, plus the possibility of more positive activity to promote both loans from the collection and tours of specific exhibits — The Supremes appear to have been a wow in Preston. Similarly, the old Theatre Museum had its own badly designed but conveniently placed theatre for related activities, plus the Paintings Gallery to show off the magnificent collection gifted by Somerset Maugham to the National Theatre. These spaces are no longer available: any educational work in connection with the Theatre Collections has to take place in the V&A's well-appointed but distant Sackler centre, again in competition with the other departments. The Maugham collection is back in store. All possibilities for more interactive experience of the collection and the history it tells are for the moment on the shelf, going against the trend of most modern museums.
Great and fairly good
At the grand opening of the display, the great and the fairly good mingled in a nearby set of galleries to binge and gossip, many of them continuing to do so throughout Peter Hall's speech to open the display. A few may actually have got to see the exhibition, which was a few corridors away and not particularly well signposted. Two previous curators were there, neither, I fear, particularly thrilled with what they saw — Alexander Schouvaloff made the mouth water by describing the millions of euro that had gone into the new French Museum of Stage Costume, at Moulins, which houses 8,000 costumes from the Paris Opera and the Comédie Française and manages a full programme of rotating exhibitions, to great public success. What some may have heard above the hubbub was Peter Hall's reminder that the most important part of the Theatre Collections is the unseen bottom of the iceberg, the archive, housed in the drab but potentially magnificent former HQ of Premium Bonds behind Olympia. Mark Jones, the V&A's head, assured me that the upgrading of the building, which houses the National Art Library's archives as well as those of the Theatre Collections, is now a high priority.
Corporate gifts
Also speaking at the opening gala was Barbara Follett, our Minister of Culture, who did not exactly impress with her bubbling confessions of how much she loved the arts. We may need someone of sterner mettle to fight the arts corner in the difficult times to come. The V&A is not alone in fearing a sharp fall in the private and corporate gifts that underpin our cultural system, £686 million of them last year. If the Government were to make a further raid on public arts funding the consequences could be dire. We have to pin a lot faith on Liz Forgan and Alan Davey at ACE.
Wicked landlord
Back in Covent Garden, Capital and Counties, like the wicked landlord from some Victorian melodrama, have seized our inheritance and are trying everything they can to get out of the clause in the lease which says that the site must be used for a museum. Their tactics include the downright lie that no one has asked them if they can put another theatre museum into the vacated galleries. The plan for a new Theatre Museum in Theatreland is not dead, however, just biding its time until a known, very suitable and very central site becomes available. When this occurs, in a few years' time, we will have another place to show a few more of the V&A Theatre Collections' jewels, as well as material from the many other collections that make this country the world's richest storehouse of historic memorabilia in the performing arts. Meanwhile, Harvey Goldsmith's British Music Experience at the 02 Dome is showing what might be done in specialised areas. (He's got another smashed Townsend guitar — how many of them are there, for Heaven's sake?)
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com
Reviewed in issue 5, 2009: |
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London |
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BERLIN HANOVER EXPRESS New play by Ian Kennedy Martin |
Hampstead |
10 Mar |
4 Apr |
247 |
BURNT BY THE SUN New adaptation by Peter Flannery from film by Nikita Mikhalkov (NT) |
Lyttelton |
3 Mar |
21 May |
220 |
DANCING AT LUGHNASA Revival of play by Brian Friel |
Old Vic |
5 Mar |
9 May |
231 |
DEEP CUT New play by Philip Ralph (Sherman Cymru) |
Tricycle |
11 Mar |
4 Apr |
253 |
FALL OF THE PEACOCK THRONE New play by Chris Lee |
Southwark Playhouse |
6 Mar |
28 Mar |
255 |
HALLELUJAH New play by Jane Brodie |
Theatre 503 |
5 Mar |
28 Mar |
230 |
HIPPOLYTUS revival of play by Euripides, adapted by Timberlake Wertenbaker (Temple Th) |
Riverside |
26 Feb |
28 Feb |
240 |
ISFAHAN CALLING New play by Philip de Gouveia |
Old Red Lion |
26 Feb |
14 Mar |
243 |
A MIRACLE New play by Molly Davies |
Royal Court Upstairs |
4 Mar |
21 Mar |
225 |
THE MOZART QUESTION New adaptation by Simon Reade from Michael Morpurgo |
New End |
4 Mar |
4 Apr |
224 |
THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM New play by Enda Walsh (Druid) |
Riverside |
5 Mar |
29 Mar |
239 |
NIGHT, LONDON – ADVENTURES IN A SPLINTERED CITY New improvised play |
Tristan Bates |
3 Mar |
21 Mar |
256 |
OBAMA ON MY MIND New musical by Teddy Hayes (Trilby Prods) |
Hen & Chickens |
5 Mar |
21 Mar |
236 |
OLIVER TWIST / LA RONDE Adaptations from Charles Dickens /Arthur Schnitzler (Love & Madness) |
Riverside |
4 Mar |
22 Mar |
250 |
OVER THERE New play by Mark Ravenhill |
Royal Court |
6 Mar |
21 Mar |
227 |
STOVEPIPE New play by Adam Brace (HighTide) |
West 12 |
9 Mar |
26 Apr |
244 |
VICTORY Revival of play by Howard Barker |
Arcola |
6 Mar |
4 Apr |
242 |
WHITER THAN SNOW Revival of play by Mike Kenny (Graeae/Birmingham Rep) |
Unicorn SE1 |
11 Mar |
21 Mar |
246 |
Regions |
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AS YOU LIKE IT Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Leicester, Curve |
3 Mar |
28 Mar |
257 |
THE CARETAKER Revival of play by Harold Pinter |
Bolton, Octagon |
6 Mar |
28 Mar |
261 |
DREAMBOATS AND PETTICOATS Compilation musical |
Glasgow, King’s / touring |
2 Mar |
7 Mar |
263 |
FOR KING AND COUNTRY Revival of play by John Wilson |
Plymouth, Theatre Royal / touring |
27 Feb |
28 Feb |
256 |
THE GENTLEMEN’S TEA-DRINKING SOCIETY New play by Richard Dormer (Ransom Prods) |
Glasgow, Tron / touring |
12 Mar |
14 Mar |
266 |
KING PELICAN New play by Chris Goode |
Plymouth, Drum |
9 Mar |
21 Mar |
261 |
LOOK BACK IN ANGER Revival of play by John Osborne |
Newcastle-u-Tyne, Northern Stage |
10 Mar |
21 Mar |
262 |
THE NAKED TRUTH New play by Dave Simpson |
Perth / touring |
10 Mar |
19 Mar |
265 |
PETER PAN Revival of play by J M Barrie, adapted by Douglas Irvine (Children’s TC, Minneapolis) |
Glasgow, Platform / touring |
26 Feb |
28 Feb |
262 |
A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY New play by Adam Rolston |
Reading, The Mill At Sonning |
4 Mar |
19 Apr |
260 |
SPIDER’S WEB Revival of play by Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie Co) |
Glasgow, Theatre Royal / touring |
2 Mar |
7 Mar |
264 |
SUSPENSION New play by Catherine Johnson |
Bristol Old Vic Studio |
3 Mar |
28 Mar |
258 |
SWEENEY TODD Revival of play by Chris Bond |
Hornchurch, Queen’s |
9 Mar |
28 Mar |
261 |
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Revival of play by Edward Albee |
Dundee Rep |
4 Mar |
21 Mar |
264 |