Prompt Corner
Issue No 9, 2007
I feel a little hypocritical. I began last issue’s column by remarking disparagingly on the apparent oldschool-tie connections in the air around Henry Hitchings’ appointment as Nicholas de Jongh’s successor in the Evening Standard’stheatre seat, and my remarks were published before Henry had had a single theatre review in print. It might seem rather two-faced of me, then, to decry the Guardian’sweb site for subjecting his first such review to minute and unforgiving scrutiny (at
http: //www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/may/13/evening-standardtheatre-critic), especially when it wasn’t even a review of a newly opened show but rather of the latest cast of La Cage Aux Folles. (You can read the review itself at the back of this issue.) After all, I appeared to judge him not even on the basis of one piece of writing but on his background.
Attention
I could wriggle out of this accusation, but it would be a fairly obvious wriggle; better to own up and accept that I’m not really occupying the moral high ground in this matter. But there’s still something about the Guardian piece that unsettles me, as did earlier pieces speculating on the post-de Jongh succession and on the critical response to Nicholas’s play Plague Over England. It seems to me improper that the critics should become the story. What I’m about to say now may surprise you: we don’t deserve so much attention. At least, not in that way. I think stories like these are a result of media coverage having expanded by so many orders of magnitude, first with 24-hour rolling news TV and radio channels, and in recent years with the Internet which has in effect removed all volume limits: as much material as can be generated, can be published. Publication, too, has become a trivial matter: one copy makes the material available (unless a national firewall is in place) globally, to the most general as well as the most specialised readership… and inevitably, the generalism seems to win out in terms of how such material is pitched.
It seems to be part of the same syndrome which has led, in Britain at least, to a celebrity culture inexplicable to many non-Britons. A couple of months ago the death of a woman who had attained initial prominence for being uneducated and unattractive, not to mention racist, received coverage of Princess Diana-like proportions; now, those of us who sit in darkness taking notes about fictions find ourselves put under more examination even than MPs’ expenses claims. (Truly: at least Henry Hitchings’ review was read and understood, unlike many of the politicos’ claims being so virulently condemned.) Why? Isn’t there enough actually happening in the world?
Sensation
Enough, certainly, to keep Nicolas Kent and the Tricycle in drama for the foreseeable future. Although different in form from the Trike’s tribunal plays, The Great Game season springs from the same impulse towards citizenship, not simply of our country but of the world. Theatre can engage with specific issues and we can engage through it, and that engagement need not at all be one of agit-prop manipulation, righteous ire or futile liberal guilt.
The Great Game may be the biggest opening this issue in terms of staged material, but in terms of media profile there is simply no competition: Waiting For Godot was a sensation long before it arrived at the Haymarket after its preparatory tour. Many reviews note the extent to which director Sean Mathias has emphasised the play’s artificiality and staginess, with some speculating that the notoriously protective Beckett estate might have a thing or two to say about such liberties. After all, back in the mid-1990s Deborah Warner was banned from future Beckett undertakings by the estate after she took rather fewer liberties with Footfalls. Perhaps they’re loosening up; I recently saw the Berlin Schaubühne production of Krapp’s Last Tape (Das Letzte Band), which makes few departures from Beckettian orthodoxy (beyond the use of video instead of audio recording) but manages to stretch the action out to 75 minutes or so from the more usual 40-45. (I noted that a full 20 minutes passed before the first bit of banana business.) Or perhaps the estate now realise that their strictures against high-profile productions reflect badly upon themselves. After all, to the best of my knowledge no complaint was made against the Royal Court version of Krapp’s Last Tape which saw Harold Pinter in a motorised wheelchair and eschewing bananas altogether, nor against Peter Brook’s production of Rockaby without either a rocking chair or a recorded voice-over and of Act Without Words II with words. What next – Quad with only three figures?
Irony
Ruth Leon remarks at the end of her Spring Awakening review in this issue that “the cast is very raw but will probably settle in.” In a grim irony, it has since been announced that the show will close at the end of this week. A pity: when I finally got to see it I was as impressed as almost every other reviewer, and I thought – frankly, I hoped – that the youth market might give it sufficient “legs” to run for several months. I may have time to go back and see it again before it closes, which for me is virtually unheard-of.
A further, final admission: if you read the reviews of The Great Game, you will see references in one review to Lady Florentina Sale, in another to Lady Florentia Sale. I was following the programme essay in writing “Florentina”; the programme and I are both wrong. Susannah Clapp, when she calls the noblewoman “Florentia”, knows what she is talking about.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
At the Back does not appear this issue.
Reviewed in issue , 2009 |
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London |
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ANDROMAQUE Revival of play by Racine (Cheek By Jowl) |
Silk Street |
23 Apr |
2 May |
452 |
FACTORS UNFORESEEN UK première of play by Michel Vinaver |
Orange Tree |
1 May |
30 May |
460 |
THE GREAT GAME: AFGHANISTAN Repertoire season of plays – see review pages for full details |
Tricycle |
24 Apr |
14 Jun |
455 |
A GUIDE TO SEXUAL MISERY A new piece by Wolfgang Weinberger (Sweet Ents) |
Leicester Square |
23 Apr |
23 May |
479 |
IN A THOUSAND PIECES Return of piece by Paper Birds |
Soho |
6 May |
16 May |
483 |
THE LAST CIGARETTE New adaptation by Simon Gray and Ronald Harwood from books by Gray |
Trafalgar Studio 1 |
28 Apr |
1 Aug |
462 |
PEER GYNT Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen in new adaptation by Colin Teevan (NTS) |
Barbican |
1 May |
16 May |
477 |
ROMEO AND JULIET Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Globe |
30 Apr |
23 Aug |
471 |
ROOKERY NOOK Revival of play by Ben Travers |
Menier Chocolate Factory |
29 Apr |
20 Jun |
467 |
SARABAND New adaptation from film by Ingmar Bergman |
Jermyn Street |
5 May |
16 May |
470 |
SEVEN OTHER CHILDREN New play by Richard Stirling, after Caryl Churchill |
New End |
6 May |
16 May |
454 |
SHOUT! Revival (revised) of musical revue by Phillip George |
Arts |
28 Apr |
28 Jun |
461 |
STRANGE RESTING PLACES New piece created by Rob Mokaranka & Paolo Rotondo (Taki Rua TC) |
Soho |
4 May |
9 May |
490 |
TIME AND THE CONWAYS Revival of play by JB Priestley (NT) |
Lyttelton |
5 May |
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480 |
WAITING FOR GODOT Revival of play by Samuel Beckett |
T R Haymarket |
6 May |
28 Jun |
484 |
WUTHERING HEIGHTS New musical from novel by Emily Brontë; songs Felix Cross, book Deepak Verma Lyric Hammersmith |
30 Apr |
23 May |
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474 |
YOU CAN SEE THE HILLS Return of play by Matthew Dunster |
Young Vic, Maria |
27 Apr |
9 May |
463 |
Regions |
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AFTER MARY ROSE New play by D Jones, based on a play by J M Barrie (Magnetic North) |
Livingston, Howden Pk Ctr / touring |
24 Apr |
24 Apr |
502 |
AS YOU LIKE IT Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC) |
Stratford-upon-Avon, Courtyard |
28 Apr |
3 Oct |
491 |
BLISS / MUD Revivals of plays by Olivier Choinière / Maria Irene Fornes |
Glasgow, tron |
29 Apr |
9 May |
503 |
FUNNY TURNS New play by John Godber |
Hull Truck |
28 Apr |
16 May |
497 |
GUARDIANS / MUHMAH New plays by Lucy Caldwell / Jesse Weaver (High Tide Festival) |
Halesworth, Cut |
2 May |
10 May |
499 |
HEAR ME New piece based on Witnesses by Tadeusz Rozewicz (Gappad Th) |
Glasgow, tron |
6 May |
9 May |
506 |
HOME OF THE WRIGGLER New piece by Stan’s Café |
Birmingham, A E Harris Factory |
23 Apr |
25 Apr |
493 |
HOORS New play by Gregory Burke |
Edinburgh, Traverse |
5 May |
23 May |
504 |
THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA Revival of play by Federico Garcia Lorca, translated by Tom Stoppard Southampton, Nuffield |
28 Apr |
9 May |
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499 |
IT’S A LOVELY DAY TOMORROW / ME, AS A PENGUIN New plays by Dom Grace & Boff Whalley / Tom Wells |
Leeds, West Yorkshire Playhouse |
28 Apr |
2 May |
500 |
THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA European première of musical by Adam Guettel |
Leicester, Curve |
5 May |
23 May |
500 |
MOONLIGHT AND MAGNOLIAS Revival of play by Ron Hutchinson |
Scarborough, Stephen Joseph |
5 May |
27 Jun |
500 |
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER Revival of play byOliver Goldsmith (Mappa Mundi / Theatr Mwldan / Torch Th) |
Cardigan, Theatre Mwldan / touring |
23 Apr |
25 Apr |
493 |
SIGN OF THE TIMES New play by Tim Firth, expanded from his play A Man Of Letters |
Richmond / touring |
27 Apr |
2 May |
497 |
THE THORN BIRDS – A MUSICAL New musical by Colleen McCullough, from her novel (Wales TC) |
Swansea, Grand / touring |
23 Apr |
25 Apr |
494 |
THE WHITE CROW New play by Donald Freed |
York, Theatre Royal |
5 May |
23 May |
501 |