Prompt Corner 
Issue 9, 2010
The term “political theatre” may never again be understood in quite the same way in Britain. By a calendrical quirk, the two-week period covered by this issue ended on Britain’s election day. You can read coverage within of the mischievous one-night-only show put on at the Traverse to mark what they were gambling would probably be Gordon Brown’s last day as Prime Minister. Little did they know...
Addressed
The political moment had been fairly directly addressed by a number of productions in recent weeks. There was Stiffed, the satire on the scandal of MPs’ expenses claims; Posh, fingering a culture of patrician entitlement once more on the ascendancy within the Conservative Party; A Day At The Racists and Pressure Drop, examining the appeal of the far-right British National Party in some areas. Indeed, a number of those involved in the latter production spent some time actively canvassing against the BNP in the constituency where they were feared to be strongest; in the event, the BNP not only suffered a decline in its share of the parliamentary vote there, but lost every one of its 12 seats on the local council.
Then there was Counted?, about declining voting figures and a growing feeling of disfranchisement (but which came first?); and, most audaciously – and to be covered next issue – Election Drama, in which a number of playwrights were asked to compose short pieces within hours of the polls closing on Thursday evening, which were then rehearsed just as quickly for a one-off performance on Saturday night. Again, little did they know that the drama would occur neither in the voting patterns nor in the results unfolding through the night (television coverage of this election was both dull and desperate, as teams of commentators struggled in vain to discern a narrative that hey could then comment on), but in the negotiations between parties that would occupy the several days following. Or would it?
Suspense
If this was political theatre, then it was theatre of a distinctly post-dramatic flavour. Britain, being unused to the kind of coalition government and parliamentary negotiations which are so common and un-sensational in many other countries, attempted to find something immensely significant and indicative of a new epoch in what was in fact simply days of politicians discussing politics with other politicians. Oh, the suspense!
How would the country’s un-codified constitution cope with such an unprecedented situation? Answer: much the same way it coped last time, for there had in fact been a precedent as recently as the 1970s. What would the Liberal Democrats do? Answer, equally unsurprisingly: they would talk to each of the larger parties, and take the deal that seemed better to them. Was this not consistently compelling drama? Answer: no, it was not. After a couple of days spent largely out of touch with the rolling new agenda due to travelling, I emerged from a show on Tuesday evening to the news that they had, as it were, finally found a government down the back of the sofa.
Fascination
Yet still the pretence at fascination, or the determination to attempt to be fascinated, persists. Future issues of TR are scheduled to contain coverage of Swing, billed as the first full-length theatrical response to the election; Hung Over, a collection of election-inspired shorts as part of the Royal Court’s Rough Cuts season; and the opening of Yes, Prime Minister, a television comedy series dating from the 1980s high-water-mark of Thatcherism when there were clearly fundamental ideological chasms between the major parties, and now adapted for the stage in an era when not only ideology but packaging are all but indistinguishable between one party and another.
Yes, the narrowest result of the election was in the seat being defended by Oscar-winner Glenda Jackson. Yes, we now have a Deputy Prime Minister who professes an admiration for Samuel Beckett and once snogged another man on a student stage. Yes, Gordon Brown’s eventual speech of resignation as Prime Minister was moderately dignified... but’s let not make any absurd claims, as a number of pundits did, that his departure was positively Shakespearean in register.
Stultifying
For the truth is that not even at such an unusual moment in our politics could we summon up any drama worthy of the name. There is no tension around the issues, no narrative thrust in any party or any conflict, and there is certainly no charismatic performer on the Westminster stage. The strength of British theatre in recent years may owe more than a little to a reasonable political climate in terms of funding; it owes nothing whatever to the stultifying climate in terms of mainstream political thought and discourse. What we must try to continue to excel at is theatrical theatre.
Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com
At the Back
Issue 9, 2010
Can You Hear Me In Craiova?
Two years ago I wrote here about the sixth International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova, Romania. Returning this year for the seventh festival, I was flattered to find my article occupying a couple of pages in the festival’s lavish brochure, although closer inspection revealed that its more trenchant remarks had been cut. The same will probably happen to this page at the eighth festival, if I’m allowed back. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy this year’s festival or its predecessor – on the contrary, I had an immensely enjoyable time at both, and learned a lot.
Immersion
This was in spite of the considerable difficulty under which the seventh festival and its tireless organiser, Emil Boroghina, laboured. Faced with severe budget problems a couple of months before its opening, the festival had to cut back severely on its parallel programme in Bucharest, and as if this wasn’t enough, the turmoil in the air caused by the Icelandic ash cloud meant that many distinguished invitees, including the Japanese troupe due to perform in the festival, were unable to attend. Those who came were treated to two weeks of intensive immersion in Hamlet, with a widely varying selection of performances and a generous programme of accompanying events, including symposia for both critics and academics. (To my embarrassment, the academics proved livelier than the critics.) It may seem a quixotic if not downright daft idea to set out to present a dozen different productions of Hamlet in succession, but that was Mr Boroghina’s plan, and the clutch I saw proved its merit. My few days alone gave me Hamlet in full, Hamlet postmodernised, Hamlet solo, Hamlet in English, Japanese, Chinese and Polish, Hamlet with English, American, Japanese and Polish directors. With a little more time, I could have added a German, a Korean, several Romanian and two Lithuanian versions to my collection, as well as the Wooster Group’s idiosyncratic take on the Dane. When Hamlets come, they come not single spies...
Imponderables
It was a chance to ponder on many imponderables. What do you leave out? Where does a film version differ from a filmed stage version? Is it more important as a political thriller than as a study of family dysfunction? How central is the play within the play?
Although I arrived, too late to see Oskaras Korsunovas’s troupe, the festival was buzzing with its impact. In this case the play-within-aplay element took some precedence, since the actors were throughout very visible as actors, from the moment at the play’s beginning when they all sit in front of their make-up mirrors intoning the opening line, “Who’s there?” On the following evening, Robert Wilson appeared both in person and on film to answer that question in two very different ways. Live Wilson, 68 years old, grey-haired, dressed like a successful banker, spent at least three minutes in silent meditation before giving his audience a warm and generous account of the influences on his distinguished career. He spoke in particular about his 1995 solo, Hamlet, A Monologue, which was then projected in the version made in 2000. In it a dark-haired, slimmer Wilson, looking a little like James Bond, gives a barnstorming reading of scenes from the play that recalls Wolfit at his height. Its closing scene sees Hamlet holding up the dress he has used to represent Ophelia: he finds his “Doubt that the stars are fire” poem still in its sleeve and again confesses to his love. Live Wilson’s low-key recall of the scene was twice as moving as the overwrought filmed moment.
Intensity
Because of their travel problem, we had to see Yoshihiro Kurita’s Ryutopia Noh Theatre Hamlet on film, too. Although filmed during an actual performance, it made concessions to film technique in its frequent close-ups, so that we lost some of the sense of distance in which a full cast might move. The gain lay in its focus on the Hamlet of Hirokazu Kouchi, who spent the entire performance seated at the front of the stage. The intensity of his stillness did not prevent him from offering a most expressive delivery of his spoken role. The Noh tradition implicit in Kurita’s production was emphasised in the Mousetrap play within the play, narrated by a traditional shamisen player and taking up a disproportionate part of the evening’s length. This bold decision paid off in the main play’s last scene, however, when the narrator returned to portray its multiple deaths with commendable despatch.
Incoherent
Kurita used Japanese traditions while remaining faithful to Shakespeare’s intentions. An alternative approach is to use his texts as the jumping-off point for a personal statement, the choice of Monica Pecikiewicz in her flamboyantly incoherent production for Wroclaw’s Teatr Polski. Her not exactly original view seems to be that women are eternal victims, and to prove her point she subjects her women to an escalating series of violent acts, most of them sexual. In a blindingly obvious moment of alienation, the actress playing Ophelia refuses, rather belatedly, to take off any more clothes, and is drowned for her pains by the actor playing Horatio in the bath recently vacated by a naked Claudius. Sensational, but silly.
Peter Brook’s made-for-TV version of his latest Paris Hamlet, reuniting Adrian Lester and Scott Handy a decade after their success as Rosalind and Orlando for Declan Donnellan, benefited both from its deliberate use of the film format and from its rigorous orthodoxy – allowing for the absence of any political plot. Once you decide to concentrate on the family version of the play, the intimacy of an approach like Brook’s pays big dividends. Lester and the rest of his multiracial cast spoke in conversational tones direct to camera, bringing out the sheer poetry of the text while giving the plot a contemporary immediacy.
Imaginations
A curious east-west crossover came in Richard Schechner’s Hamlet for the Theatre Academy of Shanghai, which featured four handheld cameras projecting it on to three screens at one end of its traverse stage. His scholarly “director’s note” gave the distinct impression that he didn’t understand the play, and this was borne out in the performance, where, having decided that the Hamlet– Horatio relationship was a gay one, he gave poor Horatio nothing to do (except keep up his Facebook page) after the long kiss that established this idea. Instead, Ophelia took over the stage, and half of her father’s lines. The Danish court was a modern Western one, but the players, supervised by a casually dressed Player King, were three children in full Beijing Opera make-up and costume. A fine conceit, as was the idea of placing all the dead in Ophelia’s grave, laughing manically, at the end of the play, but conceit remained the hallmark of this wayward production. It was a coup for Craiova, nevertheless, and a demonstration, as was the entire festival, of how many different and usually credible Hamlets are to be found lurking in the folios and quartos, not to mention the fevered imaginations of some self-seeking directors.
Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com
Reviewed in issue 09 - 25 May 2010
Productions opening 23 April–6 May 2010 Reviews to 16 May
London |
||||
Production |
Venue |
Opened |
Closed |
Page |
| ALL THE FUN OF THE FAIR New musical with book by Joe Conway, songs by David Essex | Garrick | 28 Apr | 5 Sep | 469 |
| BRITAIN'S GOT BHANGRA New musical by Pravesh Kumar / Sumeet Chopra / Douglas Irvine (Rifco Arts) | T R Stratford E15 | 28 Apr | 16 May | 472 |
| DANIEL DERONDA New adaptation by John Cooper from the novel by George Eliot | Upstairs at the Gatehouse | 5 May | 29 May | 480 |
| DEBBIE REYNOLDS: ALIVE AND FABULOUS Musical cabaret | Apollo | 29 Apr | 9 May | 486 |
| DESERT BOY New play by Mojisola Adebayo (Nitro) | Albany | 4 May | 15 May | 495 |
| DIRTY WHITE BOY: TALES OF SOHO New adaptation by Clayton Littlewood from his own writings | Trafalgar Studio 2 | 30 Apr | 23 May | 489 |
| DREAM OF THE DOG New play by Craig Higginson | Finborough | 27 Apr | 22 May | 462 |
| ELEVATOR New play by Gabriel Pintilei | New Diorama | 6 May | 22 May | 495 |
| EURYDICE New play by Sarah Ruhl (ATC) | Young Vic, Maria | 5 May | 5 Jun | 487 |
| GETTING AWAY New play by Sarah Henley (Giant Olive TC) | Lion & Unicorn | 27 Apr | 22 May | 463 |
| GIFTED New play by Peter Billingham | White Bear | 29 Apr | 16 May | 492 |
| HOLDING THE MAN New adaptation by Tommy Murphy from book by Tim Conigrave | Trafalgar Studio 1 | 4 May | 3 Jul | 481 |
| HUCK New adaptation by James Graham from book by Mark Twain (Shapeshifter) | Southwark Playhouse | 29 Apr | 15 May | 489 |
| HURTS GIVEN AND RECEIVED / SLOWLY New plays by Howard Barker (The Wrestling School) | Riverside | 30 Apr | 9 May | 480 |
| I WENT TO THE HOUSE BUT DID NOT ENTER Staged concert by Heiner Goebbels | Barbican | 28 Apr | 1 May | 475 |
| LIARS' MARKET New play by Ernest Hall | Union SE1 | 29 Apr | 15 May | 495 |
| MACBETH Revival of play by Shakespeare | Globe | 29 Apr | 27 Jun | 476 |
| ME, AS A PENGUIN New play by Tom Wells | Arcola | 30 Apr | 22 May | 492 |
| MR MAUGHAM AT HOME New play by Anthony Curtis | New End | 23 Apr | 16 May | 463 |
| MUSASHI New play by Hisashi Inoue | Barbican | 5 May | 8 May | 490 |
| PSY New show by Les 7 Doigts De La Main | Peacock | 29 Apr | 15 May | 494 |
| THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS New adaptation by Philip Dart from novel by Erskine Childers | Jermyn Street | 5 May | 22 May | 493 |
| THE ROMAN BATH UK première of play by Stanislav Stratiev in a version by Justin Butcher | Arcola | 3 May | 15 May | 493 |
| SPYMONKEY'S MOBY DICK New play by Spymonkey | Lyric Hammersmith | 23 Apr | 1 May | 460 |
| SUPERMARKET SHAKESPEARE New piece inspired by Sonnet 23 by Shakespeare (Teatro Vivo) | Sainsbury’s (various) | 20 Apr | 16 May | 495 |
| SWEET CHARITY Revival of musical by Cy Coleman / Bob Fosse / Neil Simon (Menier Choc. Factory) | Haymarket | 4 May | 484 |
|
| TWELFTH NIGHT Return of revival of play by Shakespeare (Filter) | Tricycle | 6 May | 29 May | 471 |
| WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN Revival of play by Thomas Middleton (NT) | Olivier | 27 Apr | 464 |
|
| WOULD LIKE TO MEET New piece by non zero one | Barbican Centre | 26 Apr | 16 May | 461 |
Regions |
||||
| BEAUTIFUL HOUSE Revival of play by Cathy Crabb | Manchester, Library | 23 Apr | 8 May | 501 |
| BINGO Revival of play by Edward Bond | Chichester, Minerva | 23 Apr | 22 May | 496 |
| BLUE HEN New play by Des Dillon (NLP TC) | Glasgow, Citizens / touring | 5 May | 8 May | 506 |
| CANARY New play by Jonathan Harvey | Liverpool Playhouse | 27 Apr | 15 May | 502 |
| CRYING IN THE CHAPEL New play by Pauline Stafford / Chris Coghill / Nick Clarke (Fink On) | Manchester, Contact | 28 Apr | 8 May | 504 |
| DANGEROUS LIAISONS Adaptation from novel by Choderlos De Laclos (Mappa Mundi) | Cardigan, Theatr Mwaldan | 23 Apr | 23 Apr | 501 |
| THE DARKTOWN CAKEWALK Performance piece by Linder Sterling et al. | Glasgow, Arches | 23 Apr | 23 Apr | 505 |
| DEATH OF A SALESMAN Revival of play by Arthur Miller | Leeds, WYP Quarry | 5 May | 29 May | 505 |
| GORDON BROWN: A LIFE IN THE THEATRE Theatrical evening devised by Dominic Hill / David Greig | Edinburgh, Traverse | 6 May | 6 May | 507 |
| A NORTHERN ODYSSEY New play by Shelagh Stephenson | Newcastle upon Tyne, Live | 28 Apr | 22 May | 504 |
| PIECES New play by Hywel John | Mold, Clwyd Theatr Cymru | 27 Apr | 15 May | 503 |
| RESPECT New play by Lutz Hübner | Birmingham Rep, Door | 26 Apr | 8 May | 501 |
| A SMALL FAMILY BUSINESS Revival of play by Alan Ayckbourn | Mold, Clwyd Theatr Cymru | 5 May | 29 May | 505 |
| WHISKY KISSES Musical by Euan Martin / Dave Smith / James Bryce | Glenfiddich Distillery | 1 May | 1 May | 506 |
| WIFE AFTER DEATH New play by Eric Chappell | Oxford Playhouse / touring | 26 Apr | 1 May | 502 |