Prompt Corner
Issue 10, 2009
The real drama in London during May happened not onstage, but on Quentin Letts’ other beat at Westminster. As I write, every day brings the resignation of another MP or minister, and by the time you read this, it is entirely possible that Prime Minister Gordon Brown may have been toppled in an internal party coup, because of a scandal over MPs’ expenses and other allowances (under a system introduced by Margaret Thatcher at a time of supposed stringency precisely to achieve what it did: to conceal from the public the true extent of MPs’ incomes). The most exalted scalp so far has been that of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin. You can see Quentin allude to this at the beginning of his review of The Observer, and specifically to “the way senior Labour figures have been reacting” to Martin’s “downfall”... a little disingenuous, since at least one Labour figure, Lord Foulkes, accused Quentin by name of letting fly so regularly at Martin in his parliamentary sketch columns that his status as Speaker was already severely undermined. And Tim Walker, in his review of A Doll’s House, appears to believe that a theatre such as the Donmar and a writer like Zinnie Harris could turn on a sixpence and insert allusions to political venality into their version of Ibsen’s play in an appeal to “relevancy” in the days immediately before the play opened, having been announced some months in advance. (He also refers to two of the lead players as being “refugee[s] from” a TV mini-series of 17 years ago, suggesting that he really knows how to bear a grudge.) At any rate, it was a most fortuitous time for two such politically engaged dramas to open.
Topical
My Financial Times review of The Observer is reprinted in this issue, so I’ll say little about it (except to confess that my editor asked me to rewrite it with less reference to Star Trek; perhaps I shouldn’t have ended my first draft in Klingon). As for A Doll’s House, its topical chimes seem to me to be a happy coincidence. Caroline McGinn hits the bull’s-eye, I think, when she uses the term “suffragette” to describe the opinions of the character of Christine. The play has been relocated to a moment in English history when the social and in particular the political status of women was forming a major part of political discourse; when Nora walks out on a husband who in this version is a politician, she not only asserts her independence in a personal context but causes reverberations in the polity.
However, this interpretation rather depends on there being some dramatic impact to her walking out. That doesn’t really happen in this production. Lloyd Evans is spot-on in his mischievous description of Toby Stephens’ performance as that of a comedy bounder who finds himself in the wrong play. Ibsen’s portrait of the Helmers depends in part on Torvald being almost well-meaning enough to counterbalance his unthinking condescension to Nora and his disregard of her in the fourth-act crunch; the way Stephens plays Harris’s version of the character, the surprise is that Nora has stayed with him for so long... indeed, that she ever felt any affection for him in the first place. Consequently, this is a version of the play that tries to give us a new view of the forest by cutting down the colossal tree at its dramatic heart.
Intervention
More pensive reviews for Monsters at the Arcola, with its points about community and society responses to the murder of James Bulger in 1993. Niklas Rådström’s script makes repeated references to the possibility of audience intervention in the play, and as written it seriously considers such an option and asks that productions of the play do so in performance. And this is the thing that puzzled me. I know director Christopher Haydon: he’s intelligent, skilled and conscientious, and he assures me that the company paid full attention in rehearsal to the possibility of such intervention, and were well prepared to cope with it. And yet, when I watched the play, I saw (or felt) no perceptible opportunity in its staging, pacing, pitching etc, for such spontaneous involvement.
Now, I don’t mean that I was looking for such an opportunity in order to interrupt the play myself; you may recall the events of last August on the Edinburgh Fringe, when I and my fellow reviewer Chris Wilkinson took matters into our own hands in an excessively oppressive play about Auschwitz. But this is the crux of the matter: for reviewer Chris Wilkinson and director Christopher Haydon are one and the same. For Chris of all people, with this of all plays, to muff an opportunity of this kind, is utterly bewildering to me.
Snipe
In other matters, Quentin Letts appears to have found a new comrade in his views on such matters as the wastefulness of subsidised theatre, in the person of “Curtain Caller”, the new theatre correspondent of Private Eye magazine (whose house style is for all its columnists to be pseudonymous). In fact, so totally in sympathy with Quentin is Curtain Caller that he (or she) uses a number of the same turns of phrase. Now there’s a coincidence...!
I have to admit, though, that Private Eye also pointed the finger at me in its last issue, noting that in my review of The Contingency Plan (reprinted in this issue) I referred to one fictitious government minister as “a well-meaning but ignorant snob parachuted into a plum job owing to Eton-and-Oxford chumhood with the new boss”, on the same day that Henry Hitchings’ first review appeared in the Evening Standard. It certainly gave Henry and me something to talk about when we met for the first time, on the day the Eye hit the newsstands: he told me that he didn’t even know Standard editor Geordie Greig, and I apologised for my snipe. (For the avoidance of doubt, the “ignorant snob” bit had never been intended to apply.) He seems like a thoroughly decent and diligent chap, and I’m well and truly chastened and happy to make my apology public here.
...Though not chastened enough to refrain from carping at others’ infelicities. Tamara Gausi’s review of Famine begins by musing that “It’s always interesting to see which of history’s great tragedies English theatremakers deem important enough to immortalise”; I suspect that playwright John Dunne would object most fervently to being labelled English!
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
Can You Hear Me At The Back?
- Does not appear this issue.
Reviewed in issue 10, 2009 |
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London |
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THE CONTINGENCY PLAN Double bill of new plays by Steve Waters |
Bush |
7 May |
6 Jun |
516 |
A DOLL'S HOUSE Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen in a new version by Zinnie Harris |
Donmar Warehouse |
19 May |
18 Jul |
540 |
THE DOORBELLS OF FLORENCE New adaptation of book by Andrew Losowsky (Vivid Dreams Prods) |
Rosemary Branch |
15 May |
31 May |
548 |
DUET FOR ONE Transfer of play by Tom Kempinski (Almeida) |
Vaudeville |
12 May |
1 Aug |
527 |
ENGLAND Revival of piece by Tim Crouch |
Whitechapel Gallery |
12 May |
16 Jun |
530 |
THE EXQUISITE CORPSE New play by various writers (True/Fiction Th) |
Southwark Playhouse |
7 May |
30 May |
544 |
FAMINE Revival of the play by John Dunne (London Irish Th) |
Old Red Lion |
7 May |
23 May |
518 |
THE FRONTLINE Return of play by Ch é Walker |
Globe |
8 May |
23 May |
521 |
GRASSES OF A THOUSAND COLOURS New play by Wallace Shawn |
Royal Court Upstairs |
18 May |
27 Jun |
635 |
INCHES APART New devised piece (story consultant Joel Horwood) (Old Vic New Voices) |
Theatre 503 |
14 May |
6 Jun |
531 |
INVISIBLE STORMS New play by Jamie Harper and Dan Muirden |
Cock Tavern |
8 May |
30 May |
544 |
MONSTERS New play by Niklas Rådström (Strawberry Vale Prods) |
Arcola |
8 May |
30 May |
519 |
MORE LIGHT New play by Bryony Lavery |
Arcola |
15 May |
30 May |
522 |
MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION Revival of play by Bernard Shaw (Michael Friend Prods) |
Pentameters |
14 May |
30 May |
549 |
THE NEW BLACK New piece by David Mills |
Oval House |
7 May |
23 May |
524 |
THE OBSERVER New play by Matt Charman (NT) |
Cottesloe |
20 May |
8 Jul |
545 |
ORDINARY DREAMS New play by Marcus Markou |
Trafalgar Studio 2 |
14 May |
6 Jun |
534 |
PAINTING A WALL Revival of play by David Lan |
Finborough |
14 May |
6 Jun |
539 |
PICTURES FROM AN EXHIBITION New piece based on suite by Mussorgsky, with text by James Fenton |
Young Vic |
13 May |
23 May |
532 |
SPARROW HEIGHTS New play by Martin Hearn (Horla) |
Greenwich Playhouse |
14 May |
7 Jun |
548 |
TICK... TICK... BOOM! Revival of musical by Jonathan Larson |
Duchess |
13 May |
17 May |
549 |
TUNNEL 228 New work by Punchdrunk |
Waterloo Station |
8May |
22 May |
523 |
TWELFTH NIGHT Revival of play by Shakespeare |
Unicorn (Weston) |
13 May |
7 Jun |
524 |
UNDER GLASS New piece by the Clod Ensemble |
Village Underground |
11 May |
16 May |
529 |
THE WINSLOW BOY Revival of play by Terence Rattigan |
Rose, Kingston |
15 May |
30 May |
535 |
Regions |
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ADVENTURES OF WOUND MAN AND SHIRLEY New piece by Chris Goode |
Bristol, Tobacco Factory / touring |
12 May |
13 May |
553 |
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS revival of play by Shakespeare, editoed by Gary Owen (RSC) |
Walsall, White Hall Jr Sch / touring |
18 May |
18 May |
558 |
CYRANO DE BERGERAC Revival of play by Edmond Rostand in version by Anthony Burgess |
Chichester Festival |
14 May |
30 May |
550 |
GHOSTS Revival of play by Henrik Ibsen in version by Amelia Bullmore |
Glasgow, Citizens |
15 May |
30 May |
560 |
HAUNTED New play by Edna O’Brien |
Manchester, Royal Exchange |
18 May |
13 Jun |
559 |
A HISTORY OF FALLING THINGS New play by James Graham |
Mold, Clwyd Theatr Cymru |
28 Apr |
9 May |
553 |
LOOKING FOR YOGHURT New play by Mi Jeong Kim, Toyoko Nishida & Peter Wynne-Willson |
Birmingham Rep, Door |
19 May |
30 May |
560 |
LOVE’S TIME’S BEGGAR New piece by Ankur Prods Adult Th Workshop and Cora Bissett |
Glasgow, tron |
20 May |
22 May |
562 |
MARY STUART Revival of play by Friedrich Schiller in version by Mike Poulton |
Mold, Clwyd Theatr Cymru |
12 May |
30 May |
554 |
MUSEUM OF DREAMS New play by Ailie Cohen and Guy Hollands (TAG Th) |
Glasgow, Citizens |
20 May |
26 May |
562 |
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD revival of play by J M Synge (Druid Ireland) |
Oxford Playhouse / touring |
7 May |
9 May |
552 |
QUEEN BEE New play by Margaret Wilkinson |
Newcastle-u-Tyne, Northern Stage |
13 May |
16 May |
558 |
SERIOUS MONEY Revival of play by Caryl Churchill |
Birmingham Rep |
12 May |
23 May |
554 |
SINGING I’M NO A BILLY, HE’S A TIM Revival of play by Des Dillon (NLP Prods) |
Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum / touring |
14 May |
16 May |
562 |
THE YOUNG LADIES OF... New piece by Taylor Mac (Queerupnorth) |
Manchester, Library |
12 May |
16 May |
558 |