Theatre Record

 

This Edition

 

Issue 8, 2009

Prompt Corner

At the time of writing his work has yet to appear on the Evening Standard’stheatre page, but by all accounts Nicholas de Jongh (a graduate of University College, London) is to be replaced by one Henry Hitchings (Eton & Oxford), at the decision of the paper’s editor Geordie Greig (Eton & Oxford). Well, you can’t say the ascent of David Cameron hasn’t changed some things... or, as one blog commenter put it, “Excuse me, did anyone see which way the 20th century went?”

Unpaid

I suppose we should be satisfied that at least Henry Hitchings is a critic, albeit hitherto a critic principally of non-fiction books. The job could so easily have gone to someone with no form in either culture or reviewing but simply a way with a pithy phrase, or someone without even that but with a well-known name... or, indeed, to a succession of people without even that. The Whatsonstage web site recently advertised for a team of reporters and reviewers of plays, books, CDs, DVDs... all unpaid. I heard they’d had some 400 applications.
A few years ago I spent most of a Prompt Corner column recounting how I’d actually monitored a batch of reader-submitted reviews in comparison with commissioned journalistic work. I found that, where you’d normally expect a “bell curve” graph of the quality of shows, with the crest of the bell representing the greatest concentration of shows being of middling quality, readers’ reviews if anything bowed the other way, up at each end and down in the middle, which certainly doesn’t give any kind of accurate picture of the quality of shows overall. But it can be put even more simply. “Ordinary people” (the term is used as if critics qualify as neither) go to see a show because they expect to like it. Having paid money for a ticket, they want to like it, to get their money’s worth. When they then report that they liked it, as they had both expected and wanted to, what on earth is either newsworthy or remotely reliable about that conclusion?

Filth

What’s worth reporting, and what tells people something, is – it seems ridiculous to state something as basic as this – something they didn’t know before, not simply endless reiterations of Miss Jean Brodie’s remark, “For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.” (At least she meant it dismissively, not as a great insight.) For instance, when 1960s radio comedy show Round The Horne was Revisited in a stage show in 2004, I – in common with many of my generation and younger – rediscovered a rich, deep mine of filth. However, that radio show’s successor Stop Messing About, fronted by Kenneth Williams and now put on stage by the same creative team behind the earlier show, ran for only two series on radio (in 1969-70), and one can see why.
Williams’ strength in Round The Horne was being able to subvert straight-man Horne with marvellously inventive smut; as the lead player himself, he had no pricks to kick against, as it were. Consequently, the smutty double entendres lose much of their savour; they were so much more delicious when apparently stolen than when given freely. Put it this way: the warmest response of the evening (twice) is for Williams’ classic line “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”, which is nothing to do with the series but hails from the film Carry On Cleo. I fear that, to use a notorious nudge-nudge line, there may not be as many warm hands on Williams’ entrance this time around.

Bagful

There ought to be a formal rule for shows devised around a central theme: decide what you want to put in, then cut a third of it before showing it to an audience. It’s not always the case that such pieces end up baggy, with some bits that are too tenuously linked to the main assemblage... but it is true often enough to make a useful working assumption. Even Phelim McDermott and his colleagues in the inexhaustibly inventive Improbable company are not immune to its sway.

The starting point of Panic is the great god Pan: as one of the four performers puts it, a god not just of nature but of your nature, of responses uncomplicated by social or moral accretions (hence “panic” itself). But before you go very far, you already have an unhelpfully diverse bagful of topics: love and sex, obviously, with all that nymph-chasing; but he is also god of meadows, bees, rustic music, nightmares, even of rape. Then bolt on some second-degree associations: McDermott talking about bouts of prostatitis that affected his sexual activity and labyrinthitis which destroyed his sense of balance; truth-and-lies, so that each of the quartet appears to share an intimate secret with us but we can never quite be sure of their honesty; an obsession with self-help books (I’m quite tempted by Embracing Your Inner Critic, less so by The Shamanic Way Of The Bee – both real titles); even Buffalo Bill simply, as far as I can see, because that goatee beard makes him look a bit Pan-like. Add Improbable’s combination of informality and invention in staging, resulting in everything from a set draped in brown paper and a huge phallus made from twigs and adhesive tape to puppetry, shadowplay and aerialism... And before you know it you’ve got far too much material for a 100-minute show that shouldn’t even be that long in the first place. McDermott, Angela Clerkin, Matilda Leyser and even Lucy Foster who doesn’t class herself as a performer are all adroit and engaging, but the overall show is about as plausibly shaped as, well, a half-human figure with furry legs, goat’s hooves, horns, tail and a big packet, capering around playing on a pipe. All that and they didn’t even work in the Smiths song.

Ian Shuttleworth |ian@theatrerecord.com

At the Back - Obituaries

Issue 8, 2009

Augusto Boal

16 March 1931 – 2 May 2009

The Brazilian director, playwright, theoretician and activist Augusto Boal has died at the age of 78, after a long battle with leukaemia. He was working right up to the time of his death, having spent May Day in a vigil of solidarity with local workers in Rio de Janeiro, where he had led his Center for the Theater of the Oppressed for more than two decades. He left behind the text of the latest edition of his book, The Aesthetics Of The Oppressed.

Born in Rio, where he trained as an industrial chemist, Boal went on to pursue his studies at Columbia University, but accompanied them with a serious pursuit of theatre, and in 1955 wrote and directed his first play in New York. Returning to Argentina, he took on the direction of the influential Arena Theatre in Sao Paulo, a centre of left-wing ideas and resistance to the European style and content prevalent in conventional Brazilian theatre, which he ran until its dissolution in 1971. Meanwhile he and his actors were taking revolutionary theatre to country areas, at first using crude agitprop and living newspaper techniques, but gradually developing the idea of the “Theatre of the Oppressed”, which in its search for direct communication brought audience members on stage to influence plays’ outcome. This brought increasing confrontation with the military junta which had taken over the country in 1964, and in 1971 he was imprisoned and tortured before leaving to exile in Argentina.

In the following years he put his radical theories of theatre into practice all over the world, developing not only his Theatre of the Oppressed (published as a book in 1974, and in its first English edition in 1979), but also Forum Theatre, where local decisions were made by presenting them in dramatic form, and his non-verbal Image Theatre. He was greatly influenced by Paulo Freire and his book Pedagogy Of The Oppressed.

Moving to Lisbon in 1976, he went on to a professorship at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he organised Theatre of the Oppressed festivals from 1981–85. In 1986 he returned to Rio, where as a member of the city council for three years he was able to use his theatre theory as part of the decision-making process, in a technique which he called Legislative Theatre. Other developments included Culture Theatre, where different ethnic groups might present one another’s point of view, and Invisible Theatre, in which performers set up a controversial situation and enact it in a public place.

His theories were adopted all over the world, and practised in London particularly by the homeless group Cardboard Citizens. Routledge published his Games For Actors And Non-Actors (1992), The Rainbow Of Desire (1995), Legislative Theatre (1998) and an autobiography, Hamlet And The Baker’s Son in 2001.

This year Boal was asked to deliver the message for the International Theatre Institute’s World Theatre Day, which he did in Paris on 27 March. In its conclusion he said:

“When we look beyond appearances, we see oppressors and oppressed, in all societies, ethic groups, genders, social classes and castes; we see an unfair and cruel world. We have to create another world because we know it is possible. But it is up to us to build this other world with our hands and by acting on the stage in our own life.

“Participate in the ‘spectacle’ which is about to begin and, once you are back home with your friends, act your own plays and look at what you were never able to see: that which is obvious. Theatre is not just an event, it is a way of life!

“We are all actors: being a citizen is not living in society, it is changing it.”

Tom McGrath

23 October 1940 – 29 April 2009

Tom McGrath, first editor of the iconic sixties newspaper International Times and founder of a number of Scottish institutions such as the Third Eye Centre (now CCA) in Glasgow and the Scottish Playwrights’ Studio, is another cancer victim. His wide-ranging career as poet, journalist dramatist and – perhaps above all – encourager of other writers made him many friends, and the best way to remember him is to quote some of the many tributes that appeared on the Scottish theatre website, Scotnits and in response to Mark Fisher’s Guardian obit:

I didn’t know Tom very well, but he was incredibly supportive of my work when I first came to Scotland. I have very fond memories of him in the Citz bar, describing taking part in Yoko Ono’s seminal Cut Piece where the audience are offered scissors and cut off all her clothes piece by piece. What a remarkable life he led.     David Leddy

I met him forty years ago in Glasgow, joined his “Other People” group and played my first Edinburgh Festival with them (Maureen McGrath, Alan Spence, Rob Beales, Jim Torrance, Jean Milton and others) in what became George Square Theatre. I first met Anne Thomson, my once wife, who was reading her stuff there. Through Tom I met James Kelman, Alisdair Gray, Liz Lochhead, Tom Leonard and their work. I’ve warm memories of rehearsing Lear with him on the shores of Loch Striven. And of our festival squat near Sandy Bell’s and those nights where we improvised the entire show à la Grotowski, who Tom was well into at the time. Alan Tal

I first met Tom in 1972 at Aberdeen College of Education where we were both studying to be teachers – he of English and me of French. I think we both knew that we were in the wrong place, and, indeed, he left after only a few months to take up his job at the Third Eye Centre. I remember feeling bereft of a kindred spirit at the time. Later on I used to meet up with him when he was living in Cumbernauld where my family had moved in the early sixties. In what seemed to me the unlikely setting of various cafes in Cumbernauld town centre we discussed theatre, art and Scotland. To me, in my early twenties, he was inspiring, a kind of underground arts guerrilla. In the mid-eighties Communicado had a little office space at the Lyceum and, happily, Tom was running his one man playwrights studio in a tiny adjacent office. There were periods when I would pop in to see him practically every day and it was as if it was just the continuation of a long conversation begun in 1972. He was always stimulating, wry, fun, critical, patient and brave. I didn’t see him over the last few years and, of course, I regret that. I will miss that lovely man.      Gerry Mulgrew

My own debt of gratitude to Tom is enormous. Way back in the mid-eighties when I worked for TAG, Stephen Greenhorn and I were part of a little team which was completed by Tom and it was our job to select work for the new writing programme of the Scottish Student Drama Festival. Tom taught me so much and continued thereafter to share his wisdom, sense of fun and generous humanity each time I saw him. Tom was a fine man, a real human being and a fun collaborator. I owe him a great deal and Scottish Theatre owes him in so many ways. We shall miss him.              Maggie Kinloch

Tom McGrath RIP. One of the major contributions Tom made as an artist and activist was in starting and supporting artist led centres including the Third Eye Centre. In some cases our arts centres have disconnected with the artists – time for a reconsideration of this.               Anne Bonnar

Reviewed in issue 8, 2009
London
AFTER DIDO New adaptation by Katie Mitchell and the company of Henry Purcell opera (Y Vic / ENO)	Young Vic	16 Apr	25 Apr	410
ALPHABETICAL ORDER Revival of play by Michael Frayn	Hampstead	21 Apr	16 May	416
BAD BLOOD BLUES New play by Paul Sirett	T R Stratford E15	22 Apr	9 May	413
CALENDAR GIRLS New play by Tim Firth based on his screenplay	Noël Coward	14 Apr	25 Jul	397
COUNTRY MAGIC Revival of The Enchanted Cottage by Arthur Wing Pinero	Finborough	16 Apr	9 May	407
CRIMES OF THE HEART Revival of play by Beth Henley (Jraff Prods)	Union	8 Apr	25 Apr	409
DON JOHN New play by Emma Rice (Kneehigh/RSC)	BAC	9 Apr	9 May	396
G & I New play by Anton Burge	New End	9 Apr	3 May	413
HANG ON New piece by Theatre Rites / Ockham’s Razor	Lyric Hammersmith	17 Apr	25 Apr	400
INTERIORS New piece by Vanishing Point, based on work by Maurice Maeterlinck	Lyric Studio	22 Apr	9 May	421
ME & JEZEBEL New play by Elizabeth Fuller (Third Eye TC)	New End	20Apr	2 May	426
NOCTURNAL New play by Juan Mayorga	Gate	21 Apr	16 May	419
ONLY WHEN I LAUGH New play by Jack Shepherd (Love & Madness)	Arcola	15 Apr	2 May	406
ORGY OF TOLERANCE New piece by Jan Fabre	Royal Festival Hall etc	15 Apr	16 Apr	408
PANIC New piece by Improbable Th	The Pit	16 Apr	16 May	414
A PLACE AT THE TABLE New play by Paul Burgess (Daedalus TC)	Camden People's	15 Apr	2 May	395
PRIVATE THOUGHTS New play by Alex Martinez	Hackney Empire Studio	9 Apr	25 Apr	395
SOHOSTREETS: A WALK IN FOUR DECADES New promenade piece by Theresa Shiban	Soho	22 Apr	2 May	426
Spill Festival of Performance See reviews pages for full production details	various	2 Apr	26 Apr	392
STOP MESSING ABOUT New play compiled from material by Johnnie Mortimer & Brian Cooke	Leicester Square	22 Apr	24 May	423
TIN HORIZON New play by Orlando Wells	Theatre 503	17 Apr	9 May	420
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Revival of play by Edward Albee	Trafalgar Studio 2	14 Apr	9 May	403
THE WINTER’S TALE Revival of play by Shakespeare (Th Delicatessen)	295 Regent St	16 Apr	16 May	426
THE WOODSMAN New play by Steven Fechter	Old Red Lion	14 Apr	2 May	425
Regions
THE BAGWELL IN ME New piece by Ann Liv Young	Glasgow, Arches	21 Apr	22 Apr	437
BILLY LIAR Revival of play by Keith Waterhouse & Willis Hall (Middle Ground TC)	Dundee Rep / touring	21 Apr	25 Apr	441
COPENHAGEN Revival of play by Michael Frayn	Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum	18 Apr	19 May	439
HAY FEVER Revival of play by Noël Coward	Chichester Festival	16 Apr	2 May	430
KELLERMAN New piece by Andrew Quick with Pete Brooks (Imitating The Dog)	Leeds, West Yorks Playhouse	22 Apr	25 Apr	434
THE LAST WOMEN New play by Carran Waterfield (Triangle TC)	Coventry, Belgrade	20 Apr	25 Apr	433
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS GOT HER HEAD CHOPPED OFF / OUR TEACHER’S A TROLL (NTS)	Mull / touring	15 Apr	18 Apr	438
QUARTET Revival of play by Ronald Harwood	Oldham, Coliseum	17 Apr	9 May	433
RESTORATION New adaptation by Matthew Francis from novel by Rose Tremain	Salisbury Playhouse	9 Apr	25 Apr	432
SPOONFACE STEINBERG Revival of play by Lee Hall (Beggars And Kings)	Glasgow, Citizens	21 Apr	25 Apr	441
TOWN BLOODY HALL / THE LIBRARY New pieces by Nic Green / Sacha Kyle	Glasgow, Arches	14 Apr	18 Apr	437
WIDOWERS’ HOUSES Revival of play by George Bernard Shaw	Manchester, Royal Exchange	20 Apr	9 May	433
THE WINTER’S TALE Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC)	Stratford-upon-Avon, Courtyard	9 Apr	3 Oct	427