Theatre Record

 

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Prompt Corner   

Issue 12, 2009

What a lot of changes in the world of the arts and culture in the last couple of weeks. The deaths of Farrah Fawcett, Steven Wells (one of the great “gonzo” arts journalists of the last quarter-century) and of course Michael Jackson have all occurred. However, two events more significant for our constituency have taken place in the 24 hours before this page went to press.

Pina Bausch, 27.07.1940–30.06.2009

The death of Pina Bausch, only a few days after she was diagnosed with cancer, has come as a blow not simply to the world of dance but of performance as a whole. The consistent openness and adventurousness of her work, as well of course as its intensity, made her one of the pioneers of an interdisciplinary approach to live performance. It is to be hoped that Tanztheater Wuppertal honours her by both maintaining her works and continuing to apply the kind of perspective and dedication she embodied. As one online commentator has noted, those pundits who went overboard about Michael Jackson (such as Germaine Greer, who compared his ability as a dancer to Nijinsky and Nureyev) ought to realise how absurd their hyperbole is in comparison with a figure such as Bausch who does indeed merit such comparisons.

Disjunction

It also seems ludicrously parochial to devote less space to the death of a colossus of international dance theatre than to the departure of the artistic director of one north London venue, but the latter is after all more within Theatre Record’sterritory. Anthony Clark’s departure from the Hampstead Theatre (whether voluntary or not, we don’t yet know for certain) will inevitably be seen by many as an acknowledgement of the criticism attracted during his tenure. A number of critics, including Charles Spencer and Mark Shenton, have written that of late they go to Hampstead with heavy hearts, or even do not go at all. There is a strong sense that Clark did not find a cohesive identity for the theatre in (what, after several years, it seems silly still to call) its new premises. The current season of 50th anniversary celebrations was intended to emphasise the continuity of the Hampstead Theatre’s history; instead it has often served to show more starkly the strange disjunction whereby a new, large, technically modern and above all structurally solid venue somehow seems to be achieving much less than its previous incarnation in a cramped, prefabricated building.

I find it particularly interesting that Clark has suggested that his as-yet-undetermined successor might consider changing the theatre’s name. The reason he suggests – that the theatre isn’t actually in Hampstead – strikes me as specious (it hasn’t been in Hampstead for some time). However, I suspect that he too may be thinking that the theatre might be better able to move forward on its own terms if it were to escape so many invidious comparisons with its past glories. A name change would be one way to signal a new agenda: not cutting itself off entirely from its history, but indicating that it has a place and path to find for itself in a contemporary theatrical landscape.

Spaces

Hitherto unpublished remarks from an interview I conducted with David Lan just as the Young Vic was reopening in 2006-7: “The great thing about the new building is that it’s a sequence of spaces: you start at one end with the workshop, big theatre, foyer, Maria, Clare, and any one of those areas can be a performance space, and it’s designed so that if you were to decide that the workshop... Somebody had the idea the other day to do a show about that Russian submarine that was sunk and they couldn’t retrieve it – well, we’re not going to do it, but if we did, the ideal place to do it would be the workshop, put the audience right at the top, because we could move everything we needed in there from one of the smaller theatres.” It’s not only interesting that, two and a half years on, they did do the show after all – see the review pages for the plaudits given to Sound and Fury’s staging of Bryony Lavery’s script for Kursk. It also strikes me that, if they had used the workshop, accessed from the main space, for Kursk, they could then have put ChéWalker’s Been So Long into the Maria space in which Walker’s staging would not have been so dwarfed as it was in the Young Vic’s main house.

And finally, this issue’s greatest laugh (in my none too humble opinion) is achieved by Tim Walker, who remarks, “I do prefer a play that’s got a little bit more to say for itself”... as a way of dismissing Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. I’m reminded of Douglas Adams’ The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: “And for an encore he goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”

Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com

At the Back - Issue 12, 2009

Can You Hear Me In Amsterdam?

It’s a busy year for the International Association of Theatre Critics. Their April symposium in Wroclaw on Acting Since Grotowski was part of the Europa Prize celebrations. In May delegates met in Novi Sad as part of the Sterijino Pozorje festival to discuss International Theatre Festivals And Audience Development, and several of the same participants were in Amsterdam in June to follow up their Serbian deliberations with a colloquium on “international” shows and the critic’s response to them, entitled Tour De Force – Forced to Tour?

Cosmopolitan

This last meeting was held in conjunction with the Holland Festival, and perhaps because of that event’s prestige the contributors were more cosmopolitan than ever, coming from Argentina, Canada, the Caribbean, India, Israel, Morocco, New Zealand and South Africa as well as the more usual European countries. The problems we looked at centred around the shows themselves and the critic’s response. In these times when festivals are greedy for exotic foreign product, there is a temptation to package some allegedly local material as authentic and send it out to conquer export markets. I was very surprised to hear my South African colleague decrying the work of Mark Dornford-May in these terms – he was particularly horrified by the Christmas Carol (complete with gumboot dance) that was much admired recently at the Young Vic. On the other hand he was a great supporter of Brett Bailey, whose Third World Bunfight production of Orfeus could be seen in Amsterdam. This retelling of the Orpheus-Eurydice story was originally presented in magnificent outdoor settings in its native country, with the audience silently following Orpheus (played by a Congolese singer) on his underworld journey through a twilit undergrowth and returning to contemplate the story’s outcome beside a still lake. In Amsterdam the setting was an abandoned factory outside the city, to which the audience was driven in a blacked-out bus. The twilight remained, but the settings for the various striking tableaux encountered by the distraught singer were inevitably less inspiring, throwing the piece’s rather pedestrian text into higher relief. And just as my colleague questioned the authenticity of Dornford­May’s work (his Mysteries was in four languages), I must wonder about Bailey’s use of Xhosa, Swahili, French and a Congolese dialect to present a “South African” production.

Rootless

Shows like these provided a good basis for our consideration of what critics can do to orient their readers to other people’s theatre. It is not sufficient to sit complacently in your own theatre and be surprised that visiting work is different from the normal local fare, reacting with either scorn or ecstasy. The constructive critic will do their homework, and try to explain what is special (or not) about the visitors. On the other hand, these South African examples point up the problem: it is valuable to see a show on its home territory and note its impact on a local audience, but this impact may be lost on tour, while what may seem an uncomfortable amalgam to a local audience may take wing in different surroundings. The appetite of international festivals for exotica has brought a plague of rootless kitsch, yet some of it has made great entertainment. Authenticity is not all. What matters is whether a show is good in its own right, though it often happens that the more local its origins, the more universal is its appeal.

Multi-disciplinary

More broadly, this year’s Holland Festival content confirmed its standing as one of the world’s great multi-arts festivals. Its director, Pierre Audi, has achieved international status since the time when he established the Almeida as a focal point for exciting new theatre and music – he now has a Ring Cycle under his belt, and next year will direct Verdi at the Met – and his programming reflects his breadth of vision. Work by crowd-pullers like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sasha Waltz, Alain Platel and Heiner Goebbels sits alongside a weekend devoted to the complete works of Edgar Varese, new operas by Dutch composers and a strong selection of non-European work – from Bunraku puppets to Third World Bunfight. His personal favourite was Ein Kirche Der Angst Vor Dem Fremden In Mir, a multi-disciplinary piece by the German director Christoph Schlingensief in which he confronts being diagnosed with lung cancer last year.

The festival also brought together work by a trio of Dutch and Flemish directors who have dominated the local scene for many years. Guy Cassiers offered a new opera, Johan Simons brought an adaptation of Josef Roth’s Job from the Munich Kammerspiele, and Ivo van Hove, himself a former Holland Festival director, showed off the Municipal Theatre’s own acting company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, in the magnificent new theatre which has been cleverly balanced on top of the existing Stadsschouwburg.

Thrilling

I found van Hove’s piece utterly thrilling. He is a director whose past work has often seemed showy and too taken up with technical effects. The same could easily be said of his Antonioni Project, a synthesis of three films by the moody Italian director – but, by heaven, it works.

We are looking at a fairly bare, blue-painted stage with one or two odd items of furniture and some big movie lights. In front of it, in what would be the orchestra pit, is a line of computer screens and editing stations, manned by a team of technicians, with the actors moving about among them. On a screen upstage we see shots of an American city – Houston maybe, or Atlanta. A couple of the actors move to their marks on stage and we suddenly see them on the screen, superimposed on the city shots.

What follows is a masterly intercutting of the desolate affairs depicted in L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse, to form one single landscape of solitary despair. Van Hove’s actors appear in merciless, warts-and­all close-up on various screens, but at the same time we can see them and the rest of the company at work on the big blue stage, cameras swirling around them. Later, the source of the soundtrack is revealed as an on-stage jazz band, who accompany the production’s central section in full view. Screen sizes vary from the full proscenium to the monitors in the pit, catching the production’s different intensities – the scenes of sexual attraction are particularly riveting.

Specially conceived for the festival, it follows two other cinematic adaptations by Van Hove, Fellini’s Rocco And His Brothers and Bergman’s Cries And Whispers. Although it seems to indicate an obsession with film, I see this latest as a Hallelujah to the theatre. It is saying to the film world, “Yes, you have all the techniques to reach perfection in months of shooting, retakes, editing and sound management. We can use all those techniques to produce live theatre, in one take, on the night.” The meticulous technical command of the director is matched by the superb playing of his large cast.

Stimulating

The IATC programme continues in September, in Pilsen, where their next colloquium will accompany the Divadlo festival. You can find out more about the Association and its activities on their website, www.aict-iatc.orgMeanwhile, if I may, let me draw your attention to their latest publication, Theatre And Humanism In A World Of Violence, the proceedings of their Congress in Sofia last year. With a varied line-up of contributions from a couple of dozen international critics, plus distinguished guest speakers such as David Edgar, Richard Schechner and the Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, it makes stimulating reading. You can get it at a special offer price from the Society for Theatre Research’s website, www.str.org.uk

Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com

Reviewed in Issue 12, 2009

 

London
APART FROM GEORGE Revival of play by Nick Ward	Finborough	15 Jun	29 Jun	670
ARCADIA Revival of play by Tom Stoppard	Duke Of York's	4 Jun		633
AS YOU LIKE IT Revival of play by Shakespeare	Globe	8 Jun	10 Oct	639
BEEN SO LONG New musical by Che Walker and Arthur Darvill, from play by Walker	Young Vic	17 Jun	15 Jul	676
DERREN BROWN: ENIGMA New mentalism show	Adelphi	17 Jun	18 Jul	681
THE CHERRY ORCHARD / THE WINTER'S TALE Revivals by Anton Chekhov / Shakespeare	Old Vic	9 Jun	15 Aug	647
FOR THE BEST New piece by Mark Storor	Unicorn	4 Jun	28 Jun	653
I AM MONTANA New play by Samuel D Hunter (Yaller Skunk)	Arcola	4 Jun	27 Jun	658
JOHNNY JOHNSON UK première of musical by Kurt Weill and Paul Green (Lost Musicals)	Lilian Baylis	14 Jun	12 Jul	667
KAROO MOOSE New play by Lara Foot Newton (Baxter Th)	Tricycle	16 Jun	11 Jul	674
THE KING AND I Revival of musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein	Royal Albert Hall	13 Jun	28 Jun	671
KURSK New play by Bryony Lavery (Sound & Fury)	Young Vic, Maria	8 Jun	27 Jun	642
THE MOON THE MOON New play by Clare Duffy, Jon Spooner & Chris Thorpe (Unlimited Th)	Southwark Playhouse	5 Jun	20 Jun	644
THE MOUNTAINTOP New play by Katori Hall	Theatre 503	12 Jun	4 Jul	668
NEVERMIND New play by Martin Sadofski	Old Red Lion	17 Jun	4 Jul	682
ORWELL: A CELEBRATION Adaptation by Dominic Cavendish of "Coming Up For Air" plus extracts	Trafalgar Studio 2	10 Jun	4 Jul	654
PETER PAN Revival of play by J M Barrie, adapted by Tanya Ronder	Kensington Gardens	10 Jun	30 Aug	656
PHÈDRE Revival of play by Racine in version by Ted Hughes (NT)	Lyttelton	11 Jun	27 Aug	661
HAROLD PINTER: A CELEBRATION Evening of scenes and readings (NT)	Olivier	7 Jun	7 Jun	660
S-27 New play by Sarah Grochala	Finborough	11 Jun	4 Jul	659
SING TO ME THROUGH OPEN WINDOWS / THE PRIVATE EAR Revivals by Arthur Kopit / Peter Shaffer Orange Tree	5 Jun	20 Jun		660
A SKULL IN CONNEMARA Revival of play by Martin McDonagh (Love & Madness)	Riverside	17 Jun	26 Jul	655
THE TEMPEST Revival (adapted) of play by Shakespeare	Open Air	10 Jun	28 Jun	670
THYESTES Revival of play by Seneca in version by Caryl Churchill	Arcola	5 Jun	27 Jun	637
TWILIGHT OF THE GODS New play by Julian Doyle	Courtyard	11 Jun	5 Jul	636
VAGABONDS’ VOYAGE New piece by Little Wonder (Sprint Festival)	Camden People’s	4 Jun	20 Jun	636
WHISPERING HAPPINESS New play by Kenneth Emson	Tristan Bates	12 Jun	4 Jul	667
WHO WILL CARRY THE WORD? New play by Charlotte Delbo (Roberts Pryce & Co)	Courtyard	11 Jun	5 Jul	678
Regions
AMATEUR GIRL New play by Amanda Whittington	Hull Truck	12 Jun	27 Jun	685
BALGAY HILL Revival of play by Simon Macallum	Dundee Rep	11 Jun	27 Jun	689
THE BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY New piece by Wildworks	Plymouth, Devonport S Dockyard	2 Jun	20 Jun	683
BEDROOM FARCE Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn	Leeds, WYP Courtyard	10 Jun	4 Jul	685
BLITHE SPIRIT Revival of play by Noël Coward	Newbury, Watermill	25 May	27 Jun	683
THE DUCKY New play by D C Jackson (Borderline TC)	Edinburgh, Traverse	10 Jun	13 Jun	688
GARAGE BAND New play by Andy Barrett	Nottingham Playhouse	9 Jun	20 Jun	683
GARDEN OF ADRIAN New piece by Adrian Howells	Glasgow, G12 Gilmorehill	15 Jun	20 Jun	690
GOOD THINGS Revival of play by Liz Lochhead	Pitglochry Festival	10 Jun	17 Oct	687
HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn	Scarborough, Stephen Joseph	9 Jun	29 Aug	684
MARIA MAGDALENA New piece by Wayn Traub	Glasgow, Tramway	4 Jun	6 Jun	686
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND Revival of musical by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, from novel by Rosa Guy Birmingham Rep	9 Jun	20 Jun		684
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE Revival of adaptation by Jay Presson Allen from novel by Muriel Spark	Pitlochry Festival	11 Jun	15 Oct	688
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS Revival of play by J M Barrie	Pitlochry Festival	10 Jun	1 Oct	687
WHISKY GALORE New musical by Ian Hammond Brown and Shona McKee McNeil from C MacKenzie	Pitlochry Festival	9 Jun	17 Oct	686