Issue 3, 2010
Prompt Corner
Forgive me for commenting rather late on a show whose reviews appeared in the last issue, but it opens up a more general topic. In my Financial Times review of Innocence at the Arcola, I noted that director Helena Kaut-Howson had chosen not to follow author Dea Loher’s suggestion that the two black characters need not be played by black actors. “’No need for pretence of authenticity,’ notes the stage direction, which is rather less true in a country whose discourse of race and multiculturalism is more complex than that in which the play was written and is set. I do not think a British writer would be allowed to deploy such figures so baldly as emblems of otherness.” I should make clear that that isn’t intended to be a value judgement on the state of German diversity awareness (although on recent trips to Berlin I’ve noticed a publicly-funded poster campaign urging an attitude of “Diversity instead of uniformity”), just an observation on the different positions in which our two countries stand as a result of our differing experiences in this area.
Presentation
I have to confess, though, that I was shocked on my last Berlin visit to see a production portraying black characters by means of golliwog-style masks. Nor was this a minor venue: it was the Schaubühne’s production of a stage adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film The Marriage Of Maria Braun, directed by Thomas Ostermeier. True, the masks were used only for a couple of minutes, and when the principal black American G.I. character had been established the white actor removed his mask and simply played the part; but it still left me uneasy. I don’t think there was a significant degree of irony in the use of the masks, or at any rate not an obvious and sufficient degree. I have nothing but admiration for the skill of German audiences in “reading” stage presentations, a kind of drama-literacy that puts almost all Britons to shame; but I am beginning to sense a blind spot in the extent to which we – any of us – realise that what we see on stage is not just a representation of concepts for the world of the play or concepts brought to bear upon the staging, but also a presentation of ideas and attitudes from the world beyond the play, attitudes which inform those staging decisions. Hence, Loher’s suggestion about the actors in Innocence is not simply a blow against unthinking slavery to natural representation and a way of maintaining audience distanciation from the material, but also an indicator of a certain view towards the issue overall, and Kaut-Howson – I think wisely – decided not to derail a British audience’s perceptions of the play and the production by casting as the author suggested.
Reactionary
It can be a devil, this matter of presentation and representation, for practitioners, viewers and critics alike. The most conspicuous example in this issue is Ursula Martinez’s show My Stories, Your Emails. It’s easy to see from the reviews that Rhoda Koenig and I were preoccupied by what seemed to us the hypocrisy underlying the show’s stance: that its representation of the people who emailed Martinez was also a presentation of a particular view that she held regarding them. I don’t agree with Dominic Maxwell that she’s calling such judgements into play, and one reason why I disagree is a matter glanced at in passing in Maxie Szalwinska’s review when she speaks of “the way men view Martinez”. Not these men, but men. I was very conscious whilst watching the show that all the people she was showing were men. Now, it’s possible that no women sent her any emails in the same way, but given Martinez’s sexuality and the constituency of much of her work I find that unlikely. She decided, then, to portray an absolutely (ha! forgive me) black-and-white sexual divide in her show, a surprisingly reactionary stance for her and one which I’m afraid gave me no reason to believe that the resultant misandry in her presentation was deliberately intended in a complex, interrogatory way.
Bloody
Quentin Letts seems to assume that the bad-taste comic representations in The Lieutenant Of Inishmore are also presentations of an attitude of uncaring or disrespect to victims of the Troubles. “I don’t suppose,” he muses, “anyone would have been bold enough to have produced this send-up of Irish terrorism 20 years ago when the bombers were at the height of their murdering.” Not 20 years, no, but when the play premièred in 2001 the IRA had not yet disarmed, and its Barbican and West End transfers the following year took place at a time when dissident Republicans were continuing the armed struggle on their own, making 2002 an unexpectedly bloody year in the history of the Troubles and certainly bloodier than any since. But as regards representations and what they represent, I once again fall back on the quote attributed to Sigmund Freud: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Can You Hear Me In Tehran?
Every January, Iran celebrates its Revolution of 1979 with a theatre festival and a film festival. This year’s Fajr theatre festival was on as big a scale as ever, an intense ten days in which over a hundred performances are given in fourteen indoor venues and one outdoor. This year they were complemented by a theatre market, in which some forty Iranian companies offered their productions to the festival’s international visitors – almost a one-to-one relationship. The quality of materials in the market was extremely high, with every company putting out DVDs of their productions past and present. The same technical expertise showed in the arrival every day of a 24-page A3 festival newspaper, in full colour, with four pages in English, richly illustrated with shots of the previous day’s shows.
Controversy
This year, not unexpectedly, there was controversy both open and hidden over the festival. Peter Brook withdrew his production of The Grand Inquisitor, Bruce Myers’ solo from Dostoevsky, in protest at the régime, while one or two leading Iranian directors were noticeable by their absence from their country’s annual showcase. Not all of these absences were voluntary: last year saw the first independently produced show Iran has seen since the revolution, Dog Silence, which ran for 42 sell-out performances in Tehran’s newest and most fashionable theatre, the Iranshah. It was not invited to Fajr, although the festival has a section for the best shows of the previous year.
The many sections of Fajr take some understanding. There was an international competition of eighteen shows, half Iranian and half foreign, judged by an international jury (who chose largely Iranian shows for their awards). A section of ten more “International Guests” (without Mr Myers – in all honesty not a great loss) actually included six more Iranian productions alongside a Chinese opera and some Russian clowns. Then there was “Theatre of Nations”, featuring troupes from neighbouring countries mingled with ones from South America. The “Guest” section consisted of already successful Iranian productions, twelve of them, but so did “Festival of Festivals” (ten) and “Best of Regional Festivals” (eleven more).
Frustrating
This left “Iranian Theatre Panorama in 2010” and “New Experiences”, which I and my colleagues on the second jury, invited by the Iranian section of the International Association of Theatre Critics, were asked to judge. We saw twenty-two shows of varying quality, a full timetable that meant we took in only a couple of productions outside our remit, and none of the international shows. Here we were not seriously deprived, since it is fair to say that most of the international visitors were not in the class one expects to see at a major world festival. It was more frustrating to miss some of the bigger Iranian shows, including versions of classics such as King Lear and Macbeth, as well as Camus’ Caligula, Brecht’s Galileo and Dürrenmatt’s Romulus The Great. Students of theatre’s resistance to oppressive regimes may find some of these titles familiar.
I did get to see a play by one of Iran’s leading directors, AmirReza Koohestami, who lives in France and (perhaps as a result) is able to tour widely in Europe. Where Were You On January 8th is conducted almost entirely in cellphone conversations – and thus probably more suited to radio – but its story of panic over a stolen weapon, and its consequences for all the participants, is well and energetically told. By a freak of programming, our jury saw no less than three productions involving another Iranian known to foreign audiences. Attila Pesyani directed his own solo show, an account of a disturbing dream that showed affinities with Robert Lepage in its inventive use of objects, and supplied the text for two more very different pieces, a trendy multi-media visit to the coke-snorting classes of Tehran and an old-fashioned but charming comedy about a theatre owner desperate to play Macbeth but plagued by three witchy wives. One had the uneasy feeling that one fully worked play would have been a better advertisement for Mr Pesyani’s undoubted talents than these three squibs.
Theocratic
From the widely disparate sample offered to our critics’ jury it is possible to derive some general thoughts about Iranian theatre today. The first is that in spite of their considerable interest in Western theatre, classic and to a lesser extent modern, they still lean to very strong traditions of their own. Several of the productions we saw were faithful revisits to, or modern musings on the great poetic heritage (Khayyam, Hafez, Ferdosi) that Iran can boast. Others dwelt on aspects of the war against Iraq that quickly followed the 1979 revolution, which still remains raw in Iranian minds after a decade of shaky peace. In dramatising anything, Iran’s theatremakers are of course bound by the rigorously imposed rules of their theocratic masters: no touching between members of the opposite sex, all women to be modestly dressed, heads covered at all times and so on. The ingenuity with which they overcome these obstacles is often remarkable – and before we tut-tut too much at these restrictions, let us note that smoking is completely permitted on Iranian stages, and Iranian actors can still black up to play one of their archetypal figures, the court jester. Different thought police, different taboos. It’s also very easy to see protest where there may be none, though there was undoubtedly a strong rebellious undercurrent running through the whole festival. Green, the colour of the opposition, made regular appearances in costumes and settings, but green is also the colour of one of the Prophet’s followers, who was being celebrated in more than one of the plays seen.
Revelation
Overall, I came away disappointed in Iran’s dramatists, most of whom seem locked in a religious past, but much heartened by their actors, many of whom showed outstanding talent. Our jury gave its Best Play award to Mr Pesyani’s techno-piece, which was certainly a novelty on local stages. But the production that impressed us most was a danced Othello, in which the commitment and energy of the entire cast – who are not officially allowed to dance on stage – was a revelation.
Ian Herbert ian@herbertknott.com
Reviewed in issue 3, 2010
London |
||||
Production |
Venue |
Opened |
Closed |
Page |
| BE MY BABY Revival of play by Amanda Whittington | Union SE1 | 9 Feb |
27 Feb |
129 |
| BREATHING IRREGULAR New dance-theatre piece by Jane Mason | Gate | 2 Feb |
27 Feb |
100 |
| THE EARLY BIRD New play by Leo Butler | Finborough | 5 Feb |
27 Feb |
114 |
| 11 AND 12 New piece by Marie-Hélène Estienne from Amadou Hampaté Bâ (Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord) | Barbican | 10 Feb |
27 Feb |
118 |
| THE 14TH TALE Transfer of piece by Inua Ellams | Cottesloe | 10 Feb |
13 Mar |
127 |
| HEDDA Adaptation by Terje Tveit from Henrik Ibsen (Ibsen Stage Co) | Riverside | 3 Feb |
14 Feb |
129 |
| THE HOSTAGE Revival of play by Brendan Behan | Southwark Playhouse | 4 Feb |
20 Feb |
109 |
| THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Revival of play by Oscar Wilde (Logos TC) | Upstairs at the Gatehouse | 11 Feb |
6 Mar |
130 |
| IN MEMORY OF EDGAR LUTZEN New play by David Hauptschein (Secret Life Th) | Old Red Lion | 4 Feb |
20 Feb |
121 |
| JERUSALEM Transfer of play by Jez Butterworth | Apollo | 10 Feb |
122 |
|
| KNIVES IN HENS Revival of play by David Harrower | Arcola | 5 Feb |
27 Feb |
113 |
| A LIFE IN THREE ACTS: BETTE BOURNE & MARK RAVENHILL Transfer | Soho | 9 Feb |
27 Feb |
116 |
| MADNESS IN VALENCIA Revival of play by Lope de Vega (Black & White Rainbow) | Trafalgar Studio 2 | 11 Feb |
6 Mar |
126 |
| A MAN OF NO IMPORTANCE Transfer of musical by Stephen Flaherty, Lynn Ahrens, Terrence McNally | Arts | 11 Feb |
27 Feb |
128 |
| MUMMIES AND DADDIES Revival of play by Torben Betts (FallOut TC) | White Bear | 28 Jan |
14 Feb |
108 |
| MY STORIES, YOUR EMAILS New piece by Ursula Martinez | Pit | 2 Feb |
13 Feb |
102 |
| PANPHOBIA New play by Ceri Ashcroft & Miranda Keeling (Universal Citizens) | Lost | 28 Jan |
14 Feb |
127 |
| PUB ROCK New piece by Cartoon de Salvo | Lyric Hammersmith | 5 Feb |
20 Feb |
115 |
| REALLY OLD, LIKE FORTY FIVE New play by Tamsin Oglesby (NT) | Cottesloe | 3 Feb |
104 |
|
| RICHARD III Revival of play by Shakespeare (Love & Madness) | Riverside | 4 Feb |
21 Mar |
125 |
| SIGNS OF A STAR SHAPED DIVA Revival (revised) of play by Nona Shepphard (Graeae) | T R Stratford E15 | 29 Jan |
6 Feb |
110 |
| SLAVES New play by Rex Obano | Theatre 503 | 29 Jan |
20 Feb |
101 |
| STAGE FRIGHT New play by Lynn Howes | Canal Cafe | 3 Feb |
20 Feb |
129 |
Regions |
||||
| THE ABSENCE OF WOMEN New play by Owen McCafferty | Belfast, Lyric / touring | 11 Feb |
27 Feb |
140 |
| ABSENT FRIENDS Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn | Oldham, Coliseum / touring | 29 Jan |
20 Feb |
130 |
| AND A NIGHTINGALE SANG Revival of play by C P Taylor | Newcastle-under-Lyme, New Vic | 2 Feb |
20 Feb |
133 |
| BACKBEAT New play by Iain Softley and Stephen Jeffreys from screenplay by Softley | Glasgow, Citizens | 12 Feb |
6 Mar |
147 |
| BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS I’M AFRAID OF New piece by Lynda Radley | Glasgow, Lansdowne Parish Ch. | 2 Feb |
21 Feb |
143 |
| BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS Revival of play by Neil Simon | Watford Palace | 9 Feb |
27 Feb |
139 |
| THE CHING ROOM / THE MOIRA MONOLOGUES Pieces by Alan Bissett | Glasgow, Citizens | 9 Feb |
13 Feb |
146 |
| ETIQUETTE Revival of piece by Rotozaza | Glasgow, Stereo | 9 Feb |
13 Feb |
143 |
| THE HISTORY BOYS Revival of play by Alan Bennett | Leeds, WYP Quarry | 8 Feb |
6 Mar |
139 |
| THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE Revival of play by Martin McDonagh | Leicester, Curve | 9 Feb |
27 Feb |
140 |
| LORD ARTHUR SAVILE’S CRIME Revival of play by Trevor Baxter, from Oscar Wilde | Bromley, Churchill / touring | 1 Feb |
6 Feb |
132 |
| MEDEA Revival of play by Euripides in new version by Tom Paulin (Northern Broadsides) | Oxford Playhouse / touring | 3 Feb |
6 Feb |
134 |
| THE MISER Revival of play by Molière in new version by David Johnston | Coventry, Belgrade | 2 Feb |
13 Feb |
133 |
| MOON FOOL: ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT new piece by Moon Fool, based on Shakespeare | St Albans, Trestle Arts Base / tour | 4 Feb |
4 Feb |
135 |
| MOTOR VEHICLE SUNDOWN New piece by Andy Field | Glasgow, Stereo | 9 Feb |
13 Feb |
143 |
| 1945 / QUARTO INTERIOR Pieces presented in the Manipulate Festival | Edinburgh, Traverse | 2 Feb |
2 Feb |
142 |
| PROMISES, PROMISES New play by Douglas Maxwell (Random Accomplice) | Glasgow, Tron | 3 Feb |
6 Feb |
144 |
| PROOF Revival of play by David Auburn | Perth | 29 Jan |
13 Feb |
141 |
| A RAISIN IN THE SUN revival of play by Lorraine Hansberry | Manchester, Royal Exchange | 1 Feb |
20 Feb |
131 |
| SALT New play by Fiona Peek | Manchester, R Exchange Studio | 4 Feb |
20 Feb |
136 |
| SALTO.LAMENTO Return of piece by Figurentheatre Tübingen | Edinburgh, Traverse | 3 Feb |
3 Feb |
142 |
| THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN New play by Brian Mitchell & Joseph Nixon (New Perspective Th) | Newbury, Corn Exchange / touring | 5 feb |
6 Feb |
136 |
| TOLD BY THE WIND New piece by Katie O'Reilly, Jo Shapland & Phillip Zarrilli (Llanarth Group) | Cardiff, Chapter Arts Centre | 29 Jan |
6 Feb |
130 |
| TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT Revival adaptation by Giles Havergal from novel by Graham Greene | Hornchurch, Queen’s | 8 Feb |
27 Feb |
139 |
| WALL OF DEATH; A WAY OF LIFE New piece by the Ken Fox Troupe and Stephen Skrynka (NTS) | Glasgow, SECC / touring | 4 Feb |
12 Feb |
144 |
| THE ZEROS KEEP GOING New piece devised by Stephen Redman and Flatrate TC | Glasgow, Tron | 11 Feb |
13 Feb |
146 |
