Theatre Reviews 2010
Jerusalem
Royal Court at Apollo
We had tickets
for the original production of Jerusalem,
but were stuck in Seville under the volcanic cloud and had to throw them away.
Eighteen months, and countless awards later, we finally got seats at the very
back of this Victorian theatre to find out what all the fuss was about, and
what we had missed.
It seems to me fairly clear why this has been such a huge success. A big cast, moments of great drama, full of laugh-out-loud jokes, and quite dreadful language (even The Thick of It couldn’t get away with this number of C words) giving it an excitingly ‘politically incorrect’ feel. And at the centre is Mark Rylance with surely one of the great theatrical creations of the modern era, as Johnny Byron. Rylance holds the stage for almost the entire three hours. Never once does his accent, walk, gait, mannerisms ever slip. He is convincingly the self-mythologising figure at the centre of this rural storm. It is indeed a triumph.
However, I was less convinced by the actual play.
Byron is classic liminal figure; indeed, he even lives on the edges of his village community. He is a gypsy, a traveller, a pikey, except he never travels anywhere. Instead he is the source of irritation to the respectable villagers, the centre of young, rural working class dissolute behaviour. If the newcomers just hate him, the older residents, the real working class villagers have a more troubled relationship. This is brought into focus by the publican, who bans him, but still has to come down to the caravan to escape his hectoring wife and get his packet of the drugs he needs to get through the day. They talk about how they both lost their virginity, then suddenly one is publican and the other disreputable scourge and they go on their separate ways. In general it is the youth who cluster around him. His role is a focus for youngsters who wants to experiment with drink, drugs and sex. Byron is the ultimate non-judgemental adult. He really couldn’t care a toss. Or could he? In Byron’s head he is an Arthur Pendragon figure, a representative of true rural life, a representative of English faerie. He is story teller and myth maker, the keeper of the soul of England. Or at least Wiltshire.
The play is episodic and rather long. The hangers-on troop on and off stage allowing for one to one scenes. Random characters arrive, do their scene and disappear again – such as the short appearance of his wife and son (although his son does reappear later). Although there are changes of mood, there is little progression. We start with the eviction notice being pasted on his caravan and all that happens is that that eviction becomes ever more inevitable. This was, perhaps my main disappointment; for all its splendid theatricality, it was not a very dramatic play. We proceed towards an inevitable finale with no suggestion of any surprise or development. Once we know Johnny, he doesn’t really change. We know what will happen.
Amanda detested the play. I think this was because for her Johnny is no romantic outsider, no throwback to Olde England but someone she meets on a daily basis. She is unimpressed by his mystical ramblings, his iconic role for disaffected young people. He is someone who she meets in prison, who needs help and won’t accept it, whose stubbornness makes him impossible to help. And this brings into relief the obvious fact that despite the middle class audience supporting this braggart as the massed authorities of Kennet & Avon local council close in, we know that in real life if they read of this eviction in the Telegraph they would be supporting the police, and would cross road, or even county, to avoid meeting him. And as for living at the bottom of their garden... This essential humbug is not really exploited. The audience isn’t challenged to confront their own hypocrisy, but led to view Byron as quaint, sentimentalised symbol of a sadly departed recent past.
But it did make me think. A great deal, largely about the life of the rural working classes. One character, Dave, describes his life: go to the abattoir and kill 200 cows, have lunch, kill 200 more cows. And the end of the week, you take your pay and ‘Shag-along’. When challenged by a younger man he says he is quite happy; he wouldn’t want it any other way. Looked at more closely, this sentimentalised view of the countryside is grim, depressing and deeply troubling.
So, Jerusalem; an interesting play, even a good one, with a great central performance. But the best new play of the last couple of years? Surely not.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Kingston Rose
When we were in Paris earlier this year we went to Pere Lerchaise and saw the tomb of Oscar Wilde. It was festooned with mementos, largely romantic tokens and mainly from women. This seemed a strange way of remembering the most infamous sodomite (or somdomite according to his accuser the apparently less than literate Marquis of Queensbury). I find Wilde’s most famous play equally perplexing. Is this hugely loved, ubiquitously performed farce really the finest thing this immensely talented artist had to offer? The Importance of Being Earnest seems a strangely light piece to mark one of the 18th century’s most troubling artists. If part of the problem remains Dame Edith Evans definitive Lady Bracknell, an image which has lived far too long with any subsequent actress tasked with the part, and in rendering the ‘Handbag’ line virtually impossible to deliver, this production at least goes some way to normalising the part. I am not entirely sure if it is a criticism of Jane Asher that her Lady Bracknell in no way dominated this production, or a compliment. I suspect the latter for here the youngsters seem remarkably liberated from the dowager. The Victorian parlour is vanquished in the opening scene Bruce Mackinnon’s Algernon, looking remarkably like Wilde himself in louche smoking jacket posing in a room filled with rugs and cushions and with a hookah in the corner. This is a Fitzrovian Earnest, an insight into the arrogant, rich and morally dubious young upper classes. Jane Asher’s Bracknell isn’t the gorgon mother in law of old, but simply the upholder of societal principals. She doesn’t oppose Earnest’s suit for any personal reason. It is simply not allowed by the rules of society and that is an end of it.
Freed of the dead hand of the forbidding aunt, the young cast is free to enjoy themselves. The two young men are witty and pleasantly objectionable, while Jenny Rainsford, making her professional debut as Cecily is delightful. The comedy turns from the local vicar, perfectly played by Richard Cordery were glorious.
The plot is pure pantomime, pure trivia. Earnest isn’t Earnest but Jack and Algernon’s trip to the country impersonating Earnest leads to two Earnests, neither of whom is real. The preposterous ending must have been cheesy even in 1895 and it all ends ludicrously happy ever after. This nonsense is enlivened by some scintillating dialogue and Wildean one-liners (LB: Do you smoke? JW: I do LB: Good. A man needs an occupation. There far too many unoccupied young men these days), but overall it really is a great to-do about nothing. There is a great deal of satire and wit, of course. Lady Bracknell may be upholding society’s mores but it is clear at every stage that those mores are hypocritical to the core. It is also fiercely anti-marriage. Love, yes, marriage no. At the end Jack/Earnest craves forgiveness from Gwendolin: It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me? Gwendolen. I can. For I feel that you are sure to change.
But surely the real clue, without getting too psychological about it, is
that neither Algernon nor Jack is who they say they are. They are living lies
in order to follow love. If love takes them outside the bounds of society or
parental support then so be it. As a message from a man who a year later was
doing hard labour for the crime that dare not speak its name,
that is a slightly less trivial point.
The Dolls House
Henrik Ibsen
Guildford Theatre Company
The Electric Theatre, Guildford
As regular
readers of this site will know, I am a passionate fan of Ibsen’s plays. His
most famous work, The Dolls House takes
the breath away for its modernity, its understanding of the principles which
were to become feminism, decades before anyone else took such ideas seriously,
and the excellent psychology which pervades his writing, again even before
there was such a thing as psychology.
So when I noticed that a small local company was doing a version of The Dolls House in Guildford’s small venue the Electric Theatre, I thought it worth trying. Guildford Theatre Company is as small professional company – as far as I can see created by/for recent graduates of the Guildford School of Acting. Hence it was a very young and quite inexperienced cast that took to the stage, which was traditionally set as a middle class haven of respectability. The plot is well known: bird-brained, wittering, spendthrift Nora is the wife of morally superior Torvalt, a man who is just starting a senior, responsible and well paid position at the local bank. He is unaware that – for very good reason – Nora borrowed money from a dubious local character. Far from being careless with money, she is actually spiriting away anything she can get her hands on to meet her repayments. But the knot is twisting. Her husband wants her money lender out of the bank, and Nora forged her father’s signature on the original IOE. All will be revealed unless a way out can be found; and there is no way out!
It is in the nature of the part that Nora covers a huge range, from presenting this naive and (as in this case) deeply irritating girl, and ends the play as a dead serious woman demanding to be taken as seriously as her husband – or indeed any other man. Kate Victors succeeds in this exceptionally well. Her husband, Torvaldt, can be easily portrayed as a monster, but here Paul Bryant is extremely convincing, making him a normal man for his time. He is not reprehensible; he is kind, even generous, and deeply in love. But he is a product of his time and can be nothing else. He is stunningly convincing in showing desperate lust for this wife just before the cataclysmic end. Nora’s childhood friend, the hard-hearted Christina (Polly Hughes) is well played as is the morally dubious money lender Nils (Peon Bearman). Only Ben Gallacher’s Dr Ranke doesn’t seem to quite work as the older family friend and all round confessional.
At the interval I thought this a decent effort, by the end I was very impressed. The Dolls House is a long play, and there is little action. It is essentially a lot of talking in a drawing room. However it is superbly written, perfectly structured and continually ratchets up the tension. The production was effective, subtly clever (good use of music, an ever starker set mirroring the tensions) and didn’t ask too much of a young cast. Only the ‘Tarentino’ scene failed to convey the required emotional trauma.
One Man, Two Guvnors
By Richard Bean after Carlo Goldini
National Theatre
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, for reasons I
can no longer recall (but almost certainly involved trying to meet women) I
spent a weekend at a hall outside Shrewsbury doing a drama course. I spent the
time doing Commedia dell’Arte, learning the standard
roles of the characters, the improvisation techniques and the structure of the
drama. It is the bedrock of pantomime, farce, Punch and Judy and a hundred
other more recent incarnations. For some, Goldini’s The Servant of Two Masters killed the
genre, but there are plenty of other suspects. This production, rewritten for
Brighton in 1963, and more specifically for James Cordon to play the Harlequin
role for everything he can, is an absolute delight – as long as you are not
looking for anything clever, sophisticated, subtle or insightful. This is just
bloody good fun. The plot can be written on the back of a dirty postcard.
Francis Henshall (Harlequin), unemployed skiffle musician, picks up gofer jobs with two seedy
characters, and being a man of little brain, gets utterly muddled up. The whole
of the first half is about his desperate hunger, which leads to a long set
piece dinner – given for both his masters, but which actually sees him put
aside more food for himself than the others. In a series of long improvised
sessions involving the audience, Cordon gets help with the bags, scrounges a
cheese sandwich and gets his filched food saved for him. That one of these
audience participations was not all they may appear to have been, I’ll leave
for those who wish to find out!
There are some seriously dreadful jokes, and really
bad pointers to the date. Going to Australia means loving Opera and there is
much amusement at the idea of a pub which ‘serves food’... The set was
delightful and a real first for the National. It was completely Naff! A series of flats not a lot different from how we did
our school pantomimes – although rather splendidly painted. They were very,
very Brighton – tall windows and narrow lanes down to pier – which is on fire!
Much of the action resembles postcards, with scenes opening and closing to set
tableaux. And there is the music, provided by The Craze, a band which progresses from Buddy Holly to the Beatles,
but no further. They played before the play started between
scenes in the interval and at the very end, introducing a series of set piece
music hall turns form the cast.
One could go on, but pointlessly. This is quite simply
a rollicking piece of great entertainment. Superbly performed, deliciously
directed by Nick Hytner and a first sign that Corden could become a huge comedy star of the stage. He has
come a long way since we last saw him on this stage in The History Boys. Just where will he be the next time?
To Kill a Mockingbird
York Theatre Royal at New Victoria Theatre, Woking
To
Kill a Mocking Bird is a tremendous story, and this dramatised version, produced
by York Theatre Royal did the basic job well; Scout narrates the story (as both
a child and a grown up) of her father’s defence of a coloured man in the deep
south on a charge of rape. As everyone knows, there was no chance of his being
found not guilty even though no one believed he was guilty. The irascible child
Scout (Grace Rowe) was well played as was her sober and slightly dull father
Atticus (Duncan Preston) whose heroism lies in his ethical strength rather than
the macho values of the South. Narration was shared between the adult and child
Scout, but while the child was happily acting out her part, the adult narrator
never seemed quite comfortable; we were never sure how ‘present’ she was.
Perhaps the most gripping moments were during the court case as Atticus
destroys the prosecution case, but to no avail. Overall the large cast was
generally competent but overall I felt the production was pedestrian and too
safe.
The set was a constant irritant; while clever it was just too clean and too complex. A little veranda on wheels was constantly being brought in ad off stage for no great reason. Better surely to put a light on it when it was supposed to be part of the action. The entirely wooden court room was bright and clean with not a trace of dirt. Surely not? And do we actually need to see every character? Surely reporting the miserable racism of the old biddies on neighbours is sufficient we don’t need so many bit part players. But the crucial problem was the absence of heat. The heat was referred to but never felt. It needed a bit of Tennessee Williams heat to give the piece some atmosphere and tension. And that was the main deficiency, a well told story completely lacking in atmosphere. At over 2 ½ hours it was not a short play, yet in a way it was too rapid. Some cuts to the detail of the plot and a more languid, heat hazed pace might have helped to increase the tension and justify the extreme reactions of the white participants.
So overall an enjoyable evening of competent theatre rather than a great evening of something special. I would probably only recommended this touring production for those who are real fans of the Harper Lee tale and will enjoy the familiarity of the book and are not looking for any insights or relevance to the current day.
Hamlet
National Theatre at New Victoria Theatre
Woking
We thought we
had missed the opportunity to see Rory Kinnear’s much
acclaimed Hamlet which had
disappeared from the National’s repertoire. But to our considerable surprise, we
discovered he was touring with the production and visiting Woking
, just up the road. So a fine excuse to visit a
local theatre. Despite its clearly civic background, this is a well appointed
piece of 70s architecture, a comfortable small theatre with good sightlines and
a surprisingly large stage. All of it was needed for this fabulous production.
I have never previously got on
with Hamlet, and found Simon Russell
Beale’s version surprisingly dull. Not this one though. The something rotten in
the state of Denmark is the authoritarian state itself. An oppressive, surveillance sate full of
secret agents and double agents. As the leadership pretends to be something
other than oppressors – we saw this as Libya was revolting and it is difficult
not to see the connections – but behind the smiles we know these are desperate
and dangerous men.
Kinnear is superb throughout the three and a half hours, and ably supported by David Calder as Polonius, and Patrick Malahide as Claudius, fine totalitarians both! The energy is high and maintained, the modern dress context worked for me, and, most importantly of all, Hamlet finally made sense to me!