Issue 24, 2009
Prompt Corner
As I mentioned last issue, the latest disagreement in which a critic or critics find themselves under fire was occasioned at the press performance of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Line at the Arcola. Wertenbaker accused critics of being drunk following that afternoon’s Evening Standard awards ceremony. I understand that the Guardian article excerpted opposite superseded a letter she wrote to the paper, which was rather more forthright and virtually named names of critics she believed to be asleep.
Illusion
I was also at that performance, though not at the awards ceremony (I never get invited to those jollies... but I’m not bitter, dear me, no...), and was not only awake but adrenalised throughout, having just lost all my bank cards in a pickpocketing incident on my way to the venue. (Charles Spencer mentions this in his own review, of which more later.) I can report that I saw no critic either asleep nor unspecifically misbehaving as Wertenbaker alleges. I did see one person in the front row whose eyes were closed for much of the evening: it was Wertenbaker’s own agent, Mel Kenyon. Wertenbaker is simply not in the best position to evaluate her own work. She says, “It is a complicated play, it’s difficult, you have to pay attention to it.” This suggests to me that she is under the illusion that simply alluding to an issue or theme – art versus life, Degas’s patriotism or anti-semitism etc – amounts to dealing with it meaningfully. It’s rather like the notion that has afflicted many governments (notably Tony Blair’s) that announcing an “initiative” is tantamount to solving the problem in question and there is no need to monitor actual developments in the area.
But, having aligned myself with the critics in this respect, I now have to disagree in another. Charlie Spencer’s opening remarks about the area in which the Arcola Theatre is located have been considered by a number of commentators to be the remarks of an unreasonably timid suburbanite, and I rather have agree with that assessment. He cites my own pickpocketing misfortune as an instance of the area’s “menacing” character, even though it happened on a bus on my way there rather than in the area itself; I “regard it as par for the course” not because I was in or near Dalston, but because I happen to look like an easy target for such crimes. (The same thing happened to me once before, in the far more upmarket area of Holland Park, which I’ve never known to be considered as “menacing” except perhaps by those who got on the wrong side of the late Harold Pinter.) Charlie’s remarks about “terrifying hooded youths” and a proliferation of kebab shops have been interpreted by some as outright racist; I’m sure he didn’t mean them that way, but as Dalston is an area with a high black and Turkish population it’s not hard to see how someone can come to that conclusion. Charlie is rightly proud of his long and assiduous career as a theatre reviewer including years spent on the beat for the Evening Standard and The Stage around venues of all sorts and in all areas; I’m sure in those days he wouldn’t have been at all unsettled by a broad, straight main street such as the A10 (the former route of the Roman road known as Ermine Street) or disconcerted by the presence of a gentlemen’s hairdresser’s or two.
Cabal
Menace doesn’t always emanate from proles, as Bulgakov’s Molière, or The League Of Hypocrites shows. Although its narrative concerns the French comic dramatist and his relations with the court of Louis XIV, the real meat of the matter is Bulgakov’s own position as an artist under Stalin. In Molière’s history – one of royal patronage first granted then later withdrawn after the anticlericalism of Tartuffe and the atheism of the protagonist of Don Juan – Bulgakov found an analogy with his sense of his own status, and further distorted the historical realities in order to increase it in his tragic drama. Thus, Molière’s downfall is here brought about by a Church cabal operating with the implicit permission of government, whose name is rendered in the late Michael Glenny’s translation as the League of Holy Writ and then twisted to provide the title of this version.
Director Blanche McIntyre has past form as regards staging Bulgakov in intimate spaces: her version of The Master And Margarita in Greenwich Playhouse was in many ways the most exciting, although the smallest, of the three productions of that play that piled up within a few weeks in 2004 (p895). Nor is it any mean feat of designer Alex Marker to have fitted an entire proscenium arch into the upstairs room in Earl’s Court that houses the Finborough. And yet, despite some fine performances (Justin Avoth as an impassioned Molière, Gyuri Sarossy as an inscrutable Louis, Paul Brendan in the comic-manservant role), the staging feels pedestrian. In the absence of an immediate topical political dimension, the actual drama needs to become more electric. Bulgakov does not help matters, in that no character in the play engages significant audience sympathy: Molière crows too much when his star is in the ascendant to engage our pity when it falls, quite apart from the incestuous subplot which further complicates matters. A collectors’ item, then, rather than a gem in its own right.
Coma
Tim Walker – Errata (an occasional series): From Tim’s review of Nation, “[Mark Ravenhill] is the man whose idea of entertaining an audience was to include a scene in his play pool (no water) which showed two men casually utilising a woman for oral sex as she lay in a coma in an intensive care unit.” Untrue. To be fair, though, Tim is far from the only reviewer to assume, either now or at the time, that that scene was written by Ravenhill rather than – as in fact was the case – being added by the directors of the original Frantic Assembly production. (See reviews at 2006 p1297ff.) As the playwright points out, when we’re given copies of the script for free on opening night, you’d think it wouldn’t be too much trouble to open them and check.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
Reviewed in Issue 24, 2009
Place cursor over title to see cast list
London |
||||
| Production | Venue | Opened | Closed | Page |
| CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF Revival of play by Tennessee Williams | Novello | 1 Dec | 1282 | |
| LA CLIQUE Return of cabaret show | Roundhouse | 25 Nov | 1271 | |
| DETAINING JUSTICE New play by Bola Agbaje | Tricycle | 30 Nov | 15 Dec | 1279 |
| THE FAHRENHEIT TWINS New adaptation from Michel Faber (Told By An Idiot) | Pit | 19 Nov | 5 Dec | 1256 |
| ICONS New piece by Michael Twaits | Soho | 19 Nov | 28 Nov | 1263 |
| JEST END New musical revue by Garry Anthony Lake | Jermyn Street | 19 Nov | 20 Dec | 1259 |
| JESUS MY BOY Revival of the play by John Dowie | Pleasance | 24 Nov | 29 Nov | 1281 |
| JIGGERY POKERY New piece by Amanda Lawrence | BAC | 2 Dec | 19 Dec | 1290 |
| LADY JULIA New adaptation by James & Ben Kenward of play by August Strindberg | Hen & Chickens | 2 Dec | 19 Dec | 1270 |
| LILLY THROUGH THE DARK New piece by The River People | Tristan Bates | 2 Dec | 19 Dec | 1270 |
| THE LINE New play by Timberlake Wertenbaker | Arcola | 23 Nov | 12 Dec | 1260 |
| LOBSTER / VANTASTIC Two new pieces by Russell Barr | Oval House | 20 Nov | 5 Dec | 1263 |
| LOVE HORSE New play by Bryn Magnus | White Bear | 26 Nov | 13 Dec | 1291 |
| MOLIÈRE, OR THE LEAGUE OF HYPOCRITES Revival of play by Mikhail Bulgakov | Finborough | 26 Nov | 19 Dec | 1296 |
| NATION New adaptation by Mark Ravenhill from novel by Terry Pratchett (NT) | Olivier | 24 Nov | 1264 | |
| THE PRIORY New play by Michael Wynne | Royal Court | 26 Nov | 16 Jan | 1274 |
| A REAL HUMANE PERSON WHO CARES AND ALL THAT New play by Adam Brace | Arcola | 27 Nov | 19 Dec | 1273 |
| THE ROMAN TRAGEDIES Revivals of three plays by Shakespeare (Toneelgroep Amsterdam) | Barbican | 20 Nov | 22 Nov | 1258 |
| STEPHEN AND THE SEXY PARTRIDGE Revival of musical by Lily Bevan and Finnian O'Neill (Osip Th) | Trafalgar Studio 2 | 30 Nov | 2 Jan | 1289 |
| SWEET CHARITY Revival of musical by Cy Coleman / Bob Fosse / Neil Simon | Menier Chocolate Factory | 2 Dec | 7 Mar | 1292 |
| THIS WIDE NIGHT Revival of play by Chloë Moss (Clean Break) | Soho | 26 Nov | 5 Dec | 1278 |
Regions |
||||
| THE GRASS IS GREENER Revival of the play by Hugh & Margaret Williams | Glasgow, Theatre Royal / touring | 30 Nov | 5 Dec | 1297 |
| IN TRANSIT New play by Helen Bang, Louise Knowles, Mark Prebble, Megan Bradbury and Pete Goldsack | Edinburgh, GRV | 17 Nov | 21 Nov | 1297 |
| JUMP! | New play by Lisa McGee Newcastle, Live19 Nov | 5 Dec | 1296 |
