Theatre Record

 

This Edition

 

Issue 12, 2010

Prompt Corner

It’s all very well to relish our reputation as butchers – hence my pretend-mocking of Charles Spencer in Quote of the Fortnight opposite – but, as he notes, there are times when a negative reception is genuinely damaging. It’s not simply a matter of closing shows (as you can see in the dates opposite, following near-universal panning, The Fantasticks closed before our reviews could be reprinted... so I’ve no excuse for failing to correct the closing date given on the actual review pages, sorry).

In 1997, when I was playing at performing comedy on the Edinburgh Fringe, I was persuaded to do a spot at the notorious Late & Live... but even before I knew I’d be doing it (and that’s no exaggeration), word had been leaked out and comedian Dylan Moran had gathered a posse of comedians all keen to give a critic the same short shrift as they felt we gave them. The fact that I myself had never written a word against them was irrelevant; it was a matter of what I was. The non-stop baying for my blood made that the most menacing night of my life, and I grew up in Belfast in the 1970s.

Unsympathetic

But there is an a possible example far closer to hand. As some reviews – those written with longer lead times – note, the artist and poseur Sebastian Horsley was found dead on the afternoon following the opening night of Dandy In The Underworld, Tim Fountain’s stage adaptation of Horsley’s autobiography. Word has it that he had been agonised and horrified, not by what Tim had done with the material, but by the unsympathetic way in which he was coming over as a character; by most accounts, Horsley was much more considerate and solicitous than his barbed epigrams suggest. An inquest has not yet been held into his death, which appears to have been from a drug overdose.

It’s difficult to write about Horsley’s death in this way without seeming to fuel the rumours and generally appearing ghoulish, but... oh, look, even that “but” looks suspicious. Various plays reviewed in this issue deal with or touch upon a Dunblane-type school massacre, the Lockerbie plane bombing and even Jack the Ripper, but when something so grievous touches a production directly, we are reminded that theatre is only ever a simulacrum of real events; if there is even a chance that it may have become part of those events themselves, we feel more unsettled than we would be by the grimmest drama onstage.

Reality

As T.S Eliot wrote, “Humankind cannot bear too much reality.” The Tricycle’s Women, Power & Politics season corroborates that view, in more ways than it perhaps intended to. Fiona Mountford notes in her review a remark by former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith about “a Parliament in which more MPs are called John than are women”. It is, in my opinion, the most powerful single line in the entire collection of plays and supporting material. It was even true when Harriet Harman originally said it following her arrival at Westminster after a by-election victory in 1982.

In the current House of Commons, however, women MPs outnumber Johns, Jons and Jonathans by more than five to one. (I have to admit that I became fleetingly obsessed with the figures behind this claim, spending some time totting up the numbers from Wikipedia’s lists of MPs in recent parliaments; I can report that the turning point came in 1992, when the 1987 parliament’s slight majority of Johns became a roughly two-to-one preponderance of women.) Now, it is without doubt a matter at the very least worthy of further examination that Britain can muster a mere 22% of MPs who share the same sex as 51.4% of the population; but surely there are enough real reasons for deploring this state of affairs without having to fabricate new ones or attempt to perpetuate obsolete ones.

Sorry

And sometimes we make assumptions based on a cultural bias. Libby Purves, Kate Bassett, David Jays and Paul Callan all state with varying degrees of explicitness that the new musical of Love Story is adapted from Erich Segal’s book and screenplay, in that order. In fact, he originated the material as a screenplay, and then at the studio’s behest turned out a novelisation in order to exploit the film’s success. We seem too ready to assume that the literature (such as it is) must have come first. Good heavens, before long we’ll be getting the strange idea that it’s natural for a stage musical to precede a hit movie! Anyway, it looks as if a few people now have to say they’re sorry...

I have to admit, though, that I am prey to similar bias. As I note in my review of the RSC’s Morte D’Arthur, it struck me as unnatural to hear Jonjo O’Neill – who I think gives the finest performance in the show – delivering such high-flown and archaic language in his Northern Irish accent... and, as I’ve said, I’m a compatriot of his. We all have our mental filters and inclinations, which sometimes are quite unexpected even to ourselves.

Ian Shuttleworth | ian@theatrerecord.com

At the Back

Can You Hear Me In Israel?

May was, to say the least, an interesting month to be visiting Israel – the attack on the Gaza flotilla happened towards the end of the week­long “International Exposure of Israeli Theatre” at which I was a guest. From what I saw, theatre in the country is as hybrid as its population, if not quite as representative. A quarter of Israelis are Arab, a million of them have Russian as their first language. A third of the population has immigrated there. Ultra-Orthodox Jews, who have little or no interest in theatre, make up a very significant 8% of the inhabitants. Those Israelis who are interested come largely from the better-off middle class, as usual, which makes theatre a place for entertainment rather than controversy. Subsidy accounts for less than a quarter of the income of even the major companies, who are as a result obliged to keep the likes of Ray Cooney and Neil Simon in the repertoire. Fiddler On The Roof makes regular appearances, too. This commercialism was not apparent in our programme. It included work from the big companies and lesser groups, much of it with a political slant, but the nature of that slant told a lot about the nature of Israeli (let’s call it Jewish) theatre and its attitude to controversy. On the one hand you have the country’s present love-hate position in the world, achieved by hard, often brutal slog and at the expense of many Arab and quite a few Israeli lives. On the other is the centuries-old history of Jewish persecution, culminating in the Holocaust. It is perhaps not surprising if the local culture leans more heavily on the latter tradition than the former. So we saw treatments of Isaac Bashevis Singer, S Y Agnon and Amos Oz, alongside works by well-known modern playwrights such as Hanoch Levin and Joshua Sobol, with Gogol, Lorca, Pirandello and Shakespeare to represent world theatre.

Peripatetic

The Habimah, Israel’s national theatre, gave us three shows in as many venues. Their building has been under reconstruction for some time, and is unlikely to reopen before well into next year, so that they are leading a peripatetic existence around Tel Aviv and on tour. This gave us an opportunity to see some of the fine public theatres that are available in and around Tel Aviv – The Same Sea, for instance, Hanan Snir’s adaptation of a novel by Amos Oz, was seen at a theatre in neighbouring Ramat Gan, the diamond centre. Perhaps the main interest of the show was the director-adaptor’s use of other biographical material to suggest that Oz’s book was an exploration of the early loss of his mother. His innovative staging superimposed the book’s many settings and characters to produce meaningful echoes, yet the final effect was somewhat sterile. There was far more energy in The Nose, a Gogol adaptation performed by Habimah’s Young Company in another new-ish theatre, this one set below a shopping centre. This excellent initiative allows new directors and young actors to get experience, and if its results are as good as this it has nothing to fear from its seniors. Finally, the theatre in the Jewish National Museum was the venue for Hillel Mittelpunkt’s Railroad To Damascus, a remarkably well made play, directed by Habimah boss Ilan Ronen, which navigates its way through the manifold tensions and conflicting ambitions among the Arab and Jewish communities in Haifa at the time of the British Mandate in 1942.

Until their new home is ready, the Habimah must be looking with envy at the city theatre, the Cameri, which has at least four spaces in its huge building, sharing a grand plaza with the national opera. They offered a “greatest hits” programme, led by a new revival of Joshua Sobol’s Ghetto, the play which helped build the reputation of Cameri’s present general manager and artistic director, Noam Semel and Omri Nitzan, when they were running the controversial Haifa Municipal Theatre. Nitzan’s rich and pacy production was strongly reminiscent of Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production, although he told me that he had never seen it. In particular Itay Tiran, as the charismatic Nazi, Kittel, brought back strong echoes of Alex Jennings. Tiran was if anything even more impressive leading Omri Nitzan’s chamber production of Hamlet, which has played an amazing 900 performances since it opened in 2005. As fresh as if he were playing for the first time, Tiran took full advantage of the play’s opportunities for humour, adding a bravura performance on the piano to accompany the play within the play. With surprisingly little cutting, the Cameri gave us a full reading of the text’s many levels in three and a half hours that never dragged. Back in the main house, the ongoing presentation of Hanoch Levin’s last (2000) play, Requiem, had perhaps more resonance for the local audience than a wider one, since he was himself dying as he wrote and directed this adaptation of three Chekhov stories about death. He chose to interpret them in a whimsical, Brueghelesque style full of merry peasants and actors playing both horses and houses. The spirit of whimsy was equally evident in the last Cameri show, Flying Lessons, a collaboration with the Israeli New Opera. Immaculately sung, with a most tuneful score played by an on-stage band, this was a musical delight, but its story and staging left much to be desired, in spite of being the work of its hot young director Yael (Plonter) Ronen, daughter of Ilan.

Strangely cold

Gesher Theatre, which followed Habimah from Moscow many years later, occupies a smart converted cinema which previously house the opera company, at the gates of Jaffa. They performed a Six Characters that didn’t really take flight until its shocking final scene, which left the audience gasping. Their director, Yevgeni Arye, had more success with a finely staged Singer adaptation, Enemies, A Love Story, though its tale of a holocaust survivor failing to engage with the three women in his life seemed strangely cold. Tel Aviv’s other major theatre, Beit Lessin, has a programme of fairly popular new writing, including the works of Hillel Mittelpunkt. The play they offered was good bourgeois fare, Savyon Liebrecht’s Banality Of Love, based on the secret love affair between the philosopher Martin Heidegger and Nûremburg chronicler Hannah Arendt, richer in argument than the sheer raw emotion it needed. Yiddishpiel, Israel’s only company performing in Yiddish, chose to show De Megileh, a kitschy cabaret version of poems by Itzik Manger which belied the rough, satirical spirit of the purim tradition on which it was all too loosely based.

Revelatory

More interesting work came from some of the smaller companies. Tmuna used almost too much hi-tech trickery to convey the dystopian journey of Dea Loher’s anti-hero Adam Geist, but achieved some strong effects. Equally stylish, but eschewing the technical in favour of fine ensemble movement, was Herzl, Rina Yerushalmi’s revelatory account, for Itim theatre, of Zionism’s founder. Another movement-based group, Ofra Henig’s Herzliya ensemble (playing in the eponymous suburb) had come hotfoot from the Barbican to perform a rather earnest Yerma in which the barren central character’s companions were all played by men. Probably the most provocative piece we saw was Smadar Yaaron’s solo Wishuponastar, in which she swings on a huge Star of David while lamenting her country’s descent into brutality – but this is a 2005 piece and Ms Yaaron, who disarmingly admitted that she is getting too old for such acrobatics, has lost some of her show’s early bite.

More might have been expected of the Arab-Hebrew Theatre’s Enemy To Lover, a naïve but visually effective adaptation of a plea for good neighbourliness by S Y Agnon, and indeed it was the only time we heard an Arab actor on stage. But the most satisfying study of reconciliation, a mix of Jewish sentiment and sharp Israeli humour, came from Khan Theatre, performing Michael Gurevitch’s delightful fantasy The Dragon’s Beloved in their vaulted space in Jerusalem – practically the only producing theatre in that very holy city.

Ian Herbert | ian@herbertknott.com

Reviewed in issue 12, 2010

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London
Production	Venue	Opened	Closed	Page
AFTER THE DANCE Revival of play by Terence Rattigan (NT)	Lyttelton	8 Jun		638
BEATING BERLUSCONI New play by John Graham Davies	King's Head	9 Jun	4 Jul	662
COMING HOME UK première of play by Athol Fugard (Protean Prods)	Arcola	14 Jun	3 Jul	665
DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD New adaptation by Tim Fountain from book by Sebastian Horsley	Soho	15 Jun	10 Jul	661
DANGEROUS Revival of play by Tom Smith based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses	Above The Stag	17 Jun	11 Jun	666
EVERYTHING MUST GO New piece by Kristin Frederickson	Pit	16 Jun	26 Jun	657
THE FANTASTICKS Revival of musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt	Duchess	9 Jun	26 Jun	643
KABUKI Selection of scenes (Shochiku)	Sadler’s Wells	4 Jun	15 Jun	636
KNICKERBOCKER GLORIES Revivals of three plays	Union SE1	10 Jun	26 Jun	662
LIKE A FISHBONE New play by Anthony Weigh	Bush	14 Jun	10 Jul	658
LILIES ON THE LAND New play by The Lion's Part	Arts	10 Jun	17 Jul	663
LULU New adaptation by Anna Ledwich of plays by Frank Wedekind	Gate	16 Jun	10 Jul	664
MY BROOKLYN HAMLET New play written and performed by Brenda Adelman	New End	15 Jun	27 Jun	660
NAPOLEON NOIR New play by Marcus Heath (The Stage Co)	Lost	20 May	6 Jun	666
THE NEXT CURVE Two new plays (CurvingRoad)	Old Red Lion	10 Jun	26 Jun	665
ROMEO AND JULIET Revival of play by Shakespeare (Ruby In The Dust)	Leicester Square	4 Jun	11 Jul	651
SUS Revival of play by Barrie Keeffe	Young Vic, Clare	10 Jun	26 Jun	649
TEMPEST, THE Revival of play by Shakespeare (Oxford Shakespeare Co)	Gray’s Inn	11 Jun	18 Jun	652
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY New adaptation by Jenny Worton from film by Ingmar Bergman	Almeida	16 Jun	31 Jul	667
TOM'S A-COLD / THE RUFFIAN ON THE STAIR New play by David Egan / revival by Joe Orton	Orange Tree	4 Jun	19 Jun	646
THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DR FAUSTUS Revival of play by Christopher Marlowe (Third Party)	New Diorama	9 Jun	26 Jun	660
WILD HORSES New play by Nimer Rashed	Theatre 503	17 Jun	10 Jul	670
WOMEN, POWER AND POLITICS Season of new plays by various writers	Tricycle	11 Jun	17 Jul	653
Regions
BUS STOP Revival of play by William Inge	Pitlochry	10 Jun	14 Oct	686
DAISY PULLS IT OFF Revival of play by Denise Deegan	Newbury, Watermill	7 Jun	10 Jul	679
DECKY DOES A BRONCO Revival of play by Douglas Maxwell (Grid Iron)	Northampton, Becket’s Park	14 Jun	19 Jun	684
A DRUNK MAN LOOKS AT THE THISTLE Revival of piece by Bill Sweeney, from Hugh MacDiarmid	Edinburgh, Traverse / touring	9 Jun	9 Jun	687
THE FAMILIES OF LOCKERBIE New play by Michael Eaton	Nottingham Playhouse	11 Jun	19 Jun	680
GUYS AND DOLLS Revival of musical by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling, Abe Burrows	Leicester, Kilworth House	9 Jun	3 Jul	682
HAY FEVER Revival of play by Noël Coward	Leeds, WYP Quarry	16 Jun	10 Jul	683
HENRY AND ELIZABETH New piece by Chris Goode (Signal To Noise)	Homes in the Northampton area	7 Jun	12 Jun	679
THE HIRED MAN Revival of musical by Howard Goodall and Melvyn Bragg from novel by Bragg	Bolton, Octagon	11 Jun	3 Jul	682
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Revival of play by Oscar Wilde	Manchester, Library	8 Jun	3 Jul	680
KISS ME KATE Revival of musical by Cole Porter	Pitlochry	8 Jun	16 Oct	685
LOVE STORY New musical by Howard Goodall and Stephen Clark, from screenplay/novel by Erich Segal	Chichester, Minerva	7 Jun	26 Jun	671
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Revival of play by Shakespeare	Scarborough, Stephen Joseph	8 Jun	31 Jul	680
MISS JULIE Revival of play by August Strindberg (Living Pictures Prods)	Cardiff, Chapter	17 Jun	19 Jun	684
MORTE D’ARTHUR New adaptation by Mike Poulton from book(s) by Thomas Malory (RSC)	Stratford-upon-Avon, Courtyard	17 Jun	28 Aug	674
NOISES OFF Revival of play by Michael Frayn	Pitlochry	9 Jun	16 Oct	686
POWDER MONKEY New play by Manda Dalton	Manchester, R Exchange Studio	4 Jun	19 Jun	676
ROGHAINN NA DAOINE (THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE) New piece by Toria Banks and Th Hebrides	Glasgow, Tron	8 Jun	12 Jun	687
ROUGH CROSSING Revival of adaptation by Tom Stoppard from The Play At The Castle by Ferenc Molnar	Pitlochry	9 Jun	13 Oct	685