Category Archives: 6/10

The Winter’s Tale – August 2009 (2)

6/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Aileen Gonsalves

Company: RSC Youth Ensemble

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Friday 14th August 2009

This was our first experience of the RSC Youth Ensemble, and while I enjoyed some of the performance, and felt they came up with some good ideas for staging, it’s not something I would normally include in our schedule. Some of the youngsters showed promise, all had worked very hard, and the editing done by Aileen Gonsalves worked very well. There were minimal costumes and no set (the performance took place on the regular Winter’s Tale set) and one musician at the back adding sound effects and music.

The play started with the Mamillius character investigating a hamper which turned out to have some clothes in it. The other actors rushed onto the stage as he approached the hamper and soon they were flinging the contents all over the place, occasionally trying some piece of clothing out. A few actors were helped into their ‘costumes’ and then we were into Act 2 Scene 2, with Hermione telling the waiting women to take her son for a bit. Even less explanation of Leontes’ jealousy, and no bad thing either. There’s enough explanation of the story after Hermione has been arrested and Leontes is telling his lords why he’s done it.

But first there’s a nice bit of staging, as Mamillius shows his ability to freeze time and slips out of his waistcoat so he can watch the rest of the action unfold. This emphasised the story-telling angle, and it was good to see so much of Mamillius, often the forgotten character of this play. He’s also able to stop time during the trial scene so that Hermione can get up and walk off, saving the other cast members the trouble of carrying her.

Polixenes and Camillo were played by two of the actresses within the group and a good job they made of it. The shepherds’ arrival during a storm was demonstrated by the older one flapping the ends of her cagoule, while the younger one lost his hat and had to chase it. Autolycus was singing snatches of modern songs, while Mopsa and Dorcas duetted with Abba’s Take A Chance On Me. The Bohemia scenes ended with a boat chase across the diagonal of the stage, with Camillo and Polixenes in hot pursuit of Florizel and Perdita and the shepherds following on behind. The young shepherd was nearly lost overboard but was rescued by his father.

Back in Sicilia we get the reports of the reunions from the servants and then Hermione’s statue, which was revealed in an interesting way. From our angle, we could see her walking on from the far side, but the rest of the ensemble was rushing around the stage a lot so it may not have been obvious from the front. The ‘spare’ actors then formed up in a ring around her, and as Paulina displays the statue, these actors squat down, then rise up and peel away like a curtain, running off stage. Nicely done.

The play ends with all the actors except Mamillius moving to the back, facing away from the audience. He moves towards them, and Hermione is the only one who sees him. She goes to hold his hand, before letting it go and joining the rest of the group. There’s some trigger which I don’t quite remember, and a final game of energetic tag, and then they formed up in the middle and the lights went down to end it.

There was a short post-show discussion where the youngsters were able to ask questions of Michael Boyd, and the audience got to join in too. The actors were certainly articulate and enthusiastic – our pick of the crop were Nina Kastner as Polixenes, Jodi Bree as Hermione, and Andrew Hodgson as Autolycus.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Julius Caesar – August 2009

6/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Lucy Bailey

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Tuesday 11th August 2009

This was a bit disappointing. There were enough interesting moments for me to give it 6/10, but overall the staging had a number of weaknesses which I felt detracted from the performance.

From the program notes, the director had been influenced by, amongst other things, the TV series Rome, and this influence could be seen throughout the production. At the back of the stage there was a series of screens which could be rotated to face either way. They could be folded right back to make a screen, set on an angle, set edge on to the stage, and the angled settings could face either way, so there were a lot of possibilities there. Behind and above these screens was another larger screen, and both of these levels were used to show various images throughout the performance, with the musicians on the level above. At the start, the image at the back was of the statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus, while prior to the performance two scantily clad, dirty men carried out an exhausted fight, both needing long pauses between farcically poor attacks on each other, eventually resulting in the death of one of them. I assume this was the aforementioned twins having their fight to the death to determine who ruled Rome, which may have set the scene for some folk, but didn’t do anything for me. Scabrous, gritty realism was the order of the day, however, as the manic festivities of the Lupercal took to the stage, helpfully assimilating the dead body in the process.

This was where I had the first problem with the multi-media approach. As Flavius and Murullus remonstrated with the common folk, the background screens were still showing the mass of the festival carrying on regardless, implying that these tribunes were having little effect in stopping the celebrations. That may have been the intention, but if so it completely undercuts the impact of the scene. The noise also continued making it harder to hear what was being said, and with my fondness for hearing the lines this was not a helpful aspect of the production for me. The drunken cobbler (Autolycus from The Winter’s Tale) did get some good laughs, mind you, and in general there was more humour on show than your average JC production.

I enjoyed Greg Hicks’ performance as Julius Caesar. Livelier than many I’ve seen, it reminded me of his comments earlier in the day about Peter Hall’s advice to listen to jazz music if you want to play classical roles. This was definitely the ‘jazz Julius’, which again helped the humour. Following his comments about Caesar’s reputation for being absolutely ruthless about killing or punishing people, even those he liked, I felt that came across in his performance, especially in the senate house, along with Caesar’s arrogance and passion for power. There was also a nice touch in this casting, with Caesar’s warning to Mark Antony to beware of men who have “a lean and hungry look” applying equally as well to Caesar himself.

During the discussion between Brutus and Cassius, which came across reasonably clearly, the image at the back was of the top of the stadium with the backs of people visible above the wall. This did at least allow the cheering to be more obvious, and was probably the best use of these techniques during the evening. Casca’s explanation of Caesar’s distemper was certainly acerbic enough, and got the usual laugh at “it was Greek to me”, but the delivery was strangely jerky for an RSC production and I found this another distraction which took away from my enjoyment. In fact I felt that about half the actors seemed to have been affected by this same problem, with some lines becoming unintelligible or losing their effect because of it. Fortunately, the main parts were understandable enough, although there was a strange propensity for characters to shout their way through the dialogue, acceptable when Brutus and Cassius are squaring up to each other later perhaps, but unnecessary in most of the other instances.

The storm scene was prefaced by the image of a statue of Caesar breaking up into little pieces and being blown away – a bizarre impressionistic image which might have been more effective if only the other pictures used hadn’t seemed intent on giving the production a more realistic look and feel. I lost a lot of the lines here and I was worried that the production might just be beyond recovery, but the following scenes became stronger, and although the interval came later than I would have liked I was much more engaged with the performance by that time.

Brutus (Sam Troughton) was perfectly pitched as a noble but politically naive Roman aristocrat. His reputation with the Roman people and his skill at oratory were both a blessing and a curse; they helped the conspirators ‘get away with it’ temporarily, but then they blocked Cassius from persuading the group to act wisely in killing Mark Antony. During their ‘debate’, I was very aware that Brutus was a sort of celebrity figurehead who takes over the revolution and screws it up big time. His powers of persuasion prevail again during the strategy meeting in the second half, to everyone’s cost. I saw Cassius as being better at influencing other men on an individual basis, working anonymously behind the scenes to control the outcome of events, but he just wasn’t able to go up against someone like Brutus successfully in front of the group. At the same time I realised that, whatever their motivations, each of these men believes he’s doing the right thing. There’s no calculated choice to be a villain, as we get with Richard III. The mentions of Pompey’s defeat, and references to factions also brought out the idea that some of the men had been on Pompey’s side, and now they want either revenge or to regain their political power. Or both.

There was a moment in the run up to the assassination when Caesar takes the scroll from Artemidorus and hangs on to it for quite a while, when it might have been possible to ratchet up the tension a bit more. I was looking at Caesar during this, so I didn’t notice if the conspirators were reacting; if they did, it didn’t come across to me. If we see this production again I’ll try to remember to watch the conspirators more closely.

The senate scene was fine, but I felt the assassination itself was overdone and too stagey. Again, this was in line with the desire to rub the audience’s noses in the grime and muck of ancient Rome, but it lost impact and momentum for me. (The soothsayer’s first appearance was similarly over the top.) The remainder of that scene was fine, although I wasn’t sure if Mark Antony would be another victim of the ‘heightened’ staging. I needn’t have worried; his speech to the Romans, following Brutus’s remarkably effective oration, was all that could have been wished, with Antony having to keep his intentions well hidden at first from the openly hostile crowd.

Here was another place where the multi-media did its best to ruin a perfectly good scene. First off, there were lots of unruly crowd images projected onto the lower screens, with the cast adding an extra layer to the effect. So far, so good. However, these images never responded fully to the main action, so again Brutus and Antony were competing with a constant background rumble, undercutting the effect of their speeches. These men are meant to hold the crowd in the palm of their hand (hands?) one after another; ideally, there should be little or no noise other than what they inspire. Adding to the noise element, it seemed the city had already been set alight and was blazing fiercely, something Mark Antony was supposed to incite, but the citizens were way ahead of him. So apart from the crowd’s inattention to the speeches, the way their responses seemed muffled when they did produce them, and their total unconcern that they were about to be trapped by a massive conflagration which they presumably started, it went well. But not for Cinna the poet, poor chap, bumped off just before the interval.

The second half started with the triumvirate agreeing the list of traitors to be executed – again, too much unnecessary shouting. Antony appears to be in a superior position with this much younger Octavius, but it doesn’t last. The background image is of a row of burning torches or beacons set on a hill(?). The next scene concerns the relationship between Brutus and Cassius, their argument and reconciliation. The staging didn’t work so well for me, although I felt the performances were very good. During the second half, when soldiers arrived on the scene, they came through the angled screens (different direction indicated different army) with choreographed movements, and backed up with more film of lots of men doing the same sort of movement. Frankly, along with the music, I thought they were about to burst into a song and dance routine. I like humour, but this kind of silliness doesn’t help matters. During the confrontation between the two leaders, I kept catching glimpses of the guards on the other side of the translucent screens moving around, yet another distraction – is this production going for a record?

With the decision to fight at Philippi, and Brutus’s vision of Caesar’s ghost, strangely helped on by a woman in black, there’s nothing left but the fighting and multiple suicides. There was an additional ghost in this sequence. When Brutus is listening to his servant’s music, sitting facing him and looking diagonally to our right, his wife’s ghost came on behind him, and after waving her arms around a bit, turned and left, as if she’d been trying to get his attention and failed. I have no idea what that was meant to add to the piece.

Brutus’s ‘suicide’ – running onto a sword held by his servant – was very nicely done. Caesar’s ghost entered carrying a sword, and passed between the two living men just at the moment when Brutus runs forward, so it looked like Caesar killing Brutus. This was a lovely and unusual piece of staging – well done to whoever thought that up. The rest of it all went off OK, though again the fighting seemed a bit overdone, and the play ended with Brutus’s body being carried off by Octavius’s soldiers while the remaining soldiers gradually dropped down onto the stage, presumably dead. I took this to be a reference to the many more deaths to come, particularly when Octavius and Antony have their dust-up, but without any great conviction on my part, nor any great pleasure in seeing it.

One aspect of the production we both liked was the costumes. Instead of everyone struggling with togas, the costumes suggested Roman-ness without actually being authentic, so the actors could move around freely. The scene where Caesar was persuaded to go to the senate on the ides of March was funnier than usual, and that odd scene where Portia tells her servant to run to the Capitol without giving him instructions was done well enough, but I still have no idea what it’s for. Apart from the gloomy and sometimes inexplicable lighting changes, that’s about it for this performance. Not one I’d recommend without major changes – is it possible to lose the projectors on the way to Newcastle?

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The House Of Special Purpose – August 2009

6/10

By Heidi Thomas

Directed by Howard Davies

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Monday 3rd August 2009

This was another new play, originally intended as a film but adapted for the stage. Set in the house in Ekaterinburg where the Romanovs were imprisoned and finally executed, it was a well-rounded drama showing the various relationships, mainly amongst the family but including their guards and other staff as well. One of the guards used to work in a laundry, and quite frankly seems to take a bit too much pleasure from getting underwear clean. He’s seconded to teach the girls to do their own laundry, and soon finds one of the girls even more attractive than a bundle of washing. She reciprocates, and so he’s the only guard who doesn’t take part in the final slaughter.

The family themselves are moderately interesting, with Anastasia being the live wire, and Olga being the worrier who looks after Alexei, the Tsarevich. Turns out she was raped during their trip to rejoin their parents. (She was also played by Annabel Scholey tonight, SATTF’s Bianca and Ophelia.) Tatiana and Maria were the other two daughters, but didn’t stick in my mind so much. The main interest however, is in seeing how they lived, and getting some understanding of their situation – not knowing whether the notes they were being sent were from friend or foe (started out friend, ended up foe) nor whether they were about to be rescued or not. They seemed to be valuable pawns for the new regime, but would that last if they were close to being liberated by the counter-revolutionaries? I felt this aspect of their confinement was evoked very effectively.

The guards and prison workers were, if anything, more interesting, probably because their stories aren’t usually told. They were based on real people, and showed the diversity of people brought into the Bolshevik army at that time. Most had been country folk or labourers in factories. They knew nothing about being soldiers – one chap didn’t even know how to load the gun he’d been given, let alone fire it. The experienced guard eventually offered to teach him how to do it, but he was later arrested for being too friendly with the royal family. His father had been a gamekeeper at one of the royal family’s summer residences, so he spent time reminiscing with family and even gave them a book taken from one of their kitchens, a recipe book, which they fell on like starving people. (To read, not to eat.) He wasn’t the one bringing the notes in, and he refused to take a message out, but he was just too fond of remembering the old times, especially when a new man was put in charge of the house. This chap was much less friendly to the family, interrogating the staff at the house, and putting pressure on them to inform on the other staff, never mind the family. The original commander had been quite amenable, letting the ex-Tsar stop work for a bit and even smoke a cigarette while they had a chat.

The final scene, with the family being told to pack for another change of prison, was quite moving. They went down the stairs, with the laundry guy (Yakunin?) staying on stage to give us some reactions to relate to. After some sound effects of them being led into the cellar, the shooting and the screaming started. As the shots were fired, bullet holes appeared in the back wall, with white light shining through them, a very effective way to get across the number of bullets fired. After the shooting and other noises stopped, another guard came back up to tell him (and us) what had happened. The women had so many jewels sewn into their corsets that the bullets couldn’t penetrate, so they had to be finished off at close range. The floor was slippery with blood, and fragments of the precious stones had flown back at the shooters, causing some injuries. It was the expected ending, of course, but emotive nonetheless.

There was an interesting section about the language of fans, and the period detail was excellent, without turning the play into a docu-drama. The set was suitably flexible, with both inside and outside locations evoked simply and effectively. Chairs, tables, etc. were brought on and taken off efficiently, and although I was briefly concerned that this would slow things down too much, the changes were usually covered well by the cast, as in the way the girls all trooped on for their laundry lesson carrying the tubs. All the performances were good, which made for an enjoyable evening.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Cherry Orchard – July 2009

6/10

By Anton Chekov, translated by Tom Stoppard

Directed by Sam Mendes

Company: Old Vic Bridge Project

Venue: Old Vic Theatre

Date: Wednesday 1st July 2009

As we arrived today, I remembered that the same line was shown on the screen at the back for The Winter’s Tale – “O, call back yesterday, bid time return” [Richard II, Act 3 Scene 2]. The platform was the same, again a nursery with a child’s bed, back right this time. The furniture was much smaller this time. Two oil/gas lamps hung from the ceiling. For the second act, the furniture was cleared and cushions were strewn around. After the interval, for the party scene there were two central round tables, one on each side as it were, and another table front right. They all had lots of bottles and other party debris on them. A cordon of simple chairs completed the setting. For the final leave-taking there were the usual piles of luggage and a few remaining nursery chairs, just to remind us where we were.

We were both a little disappointed with this production, after the glories of The Winter’s Tale. While the performances were all good, none seemed outstanding, and they just didn’t involve either of us emotionally. As a result, I found myself getting quite bored during some parts, although I must admit there were also a number of good laughs to be had. This version didn’t mention that Varya was adopted, as far as I could tell, so her situation didn’t come across so clearly, and her relationship with Lopakhin was confusing as well. I reckoned Lopakhin was simply in love with Ranevskaya and not really interested in Varya at all, but the final conversation between them, where he fails to propose, suggested otherwise. He got down on his knees, held Varya’s hand, and then came out with some banal remark about the weather. Very funny, but without tearing at the heartstrings as this scene can do. He also stood behind her and appeared to stroke her hair, indicating some strong emotional attachment to her, but for me it came out of the blue.

The final scene, with Firs all alone in a locked up house, started to be moving, but the symbolic music, with the chopping and the cracking sounds (they’re meant to be there) somehow spoiled it for me. Frankly, my dear, I didn’t give a damn, and I was finding the seat pretty uncomfortable by this time as well.

Selina Cadell as Charlotta did her magic tricks very well, and I was aware when Lopakhin was exulting at having bought the estate where his father and grandfather had been serfs, that some aspects of this play may have stronger resonances for an American audience than for us. The American accents weren’t a problem but they didn’t help either, unlike The Winter’s Tale. So not my favourite production, then, but a hopeful start for the Bridge Project. We’ll look forward to their next offerings.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

A Doll’s House – June 2009

6/10

Originally by Henrik Ibsen, in a new version by Zinnie Harris

Directed by Kfir Yefet

Venue: Donmar Warehouse

Date:  Thursday 25th June 2009

This is a tricky production to evaluate, with so much having been changed from the original. First, there is the change in setting from Victorian Oslo to Edwardian London, and the area of life from banking to politics. Then the language is also seriously changed; not just translated from Norwegian to English, but to relatively modern English as well, making the dialogue seem both anachronistic and much more aggressive. The characters don’t draw us into their lives by their restraint so much as fling words at each other, like guests on some bizarre Edwardian Jerry Springer show. This change of style lessened the impact of the emotional discoveries and changes for me, and left me feeling slightly disappointed. There was a good deal more humour as a result, which is rarely a bad thing, and but for the childish reactions of a number of the youngsters in the audience, the amount of physical sexual activity might have had more of an impact, so my sense of disappointment wasn’t just with the play.

Then there was the style of performance, which was cruder than I would have liked, although powerful in the final scene between Thomas and Nora. The actors all did a fine job with this style of production, despite occasional bouts of shouting for no apparent reason, so I will have to put any lack of subtlety in the performance down entirely to the director. Both Steve and I felt that the part of Doctor Rank was underwritten, though ably played by Anton Lesser, and my overall impression was of a ‘dumbing down’ of the play for a modern audience. It was still good, but not as good as the ‘real’ thing, and it’s hard to avoid the big question in all of this – why bother?

The set was magnificent, with a wide curved back wall completely filled with book shelves, a Christmas tree to our left waiting to be adorned, lots of packing crates and boxes everywhere, and a beautiful parquet floor. Overhead there was a large oval hole with a railing around it, suggesting a pretty impressive house, and a ballroom above the library. The costumes were all perfectly in keeping, which made the strangeness of the dialogue all the more noticeable.

Both children were on stage today, and this version certainly made it clear, through Gillian Anderson’s excellent acting, how totally she believes herself to be an unfit mother after Thomas’s scathing condemnation of Kelman’s influence on his children. The scene between Kelman and Christine Lyle, Nora’s old friend, declaring their long-held love for each other, was good, and funnier than it had any right to be, and it was interesting to see Tara Fitzgerald as the friend after seeing her play Nora a number of years ago.

It was an enjoyable afternoon, and I can’t help feeling that, with a bit of rewriting and more sensitive direction, this could be a reasonably good version of a classic play.

P.S.    Having slept on it, I’ve had some more thoughts about this version. I realised that times have moved on, and in some ways the original isn’t as challenging and provocative as it once was, but I couldn’t see the new ideas and challenges which were being presented in this version. I didn’t see any fresh take on the situation, and I did see a number of things that weakened the main thrust of the piece, namely the moral difficulties caused by the inflexibility of the social mores and legal position of women at that time. Firstly, with the more modern style of language, Nora’s choice to leave her husband at the end seems the sensible choice, rather than a huge leap into the unknown with no chance of support from society and every chance of extreme hardship for someone who has been relatively cosseted all her life. Secondly, the portrayal of Kelman (Christopher Eccleston) removed the possibility of him being a good man forced by circumstances to commit some dodgy dealings to make ends meet. He makes it clear that he did the things he’s accused of, and while it can be a good thing that he makes no excuses for that, it does throw Christine into a morally ambiguous light for choosing to be with him regardless. Is she just a woman who’s fallen for a ‘bad’ man, or is she really able to see the goodness in him and possibly bring that back out?

Kelman’s moral choices are also the template for Nora’s. He has the money to lend her because of what he’s done, and it’s Thomas’s absolute condemnation of Kelman’s actions, with Nora knowing that she’s done the same thing, that sets up much of the tension of the final act, much of which was missing in this production. So if Kelman is definitely dishonest, a popular choice in the current climate, where does that leave Nora? Can we excuse her innocence and choices if Kelman’s are to be condemned? Is it one law for the women and another for the men? And then the penny dropped.

It is the moral ambiguity that comes to the fore in this production. How do we evaluate the choices made by Kelman and Nora, and do we deal with the actions solely on the basis of their illegality, or do we make distinctions between them based on the intentions and results? This may not have been the adaptor’s intention, of course, but it’s a view I’m willing to accept as valid for this piece. It certainly supports Ibsen’s view that women are judged by men’s standards, which is still true today.

However, I still feel the ambiguity in setting is a hindrance. The Edwardian aspect makes it easier to get away with such a clear demonstration of the oppression of women (Thomas’s comment about owning his wife got an audible reaction from the audience) while the modern language lessens the impact, although it probably helps the younger audience members understand it better. So perhaps my final comment above still applies, though without the need for rewriting.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Write Me A Murder – June 2009

6/10

By Frederick Knott

Directed by Ian Dickens

Company: Ian Dickens Productions

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Tuesday 16th June 2009

This was the only Frederick Knott play we hadn’t seen, so we were keen to add it to our list. The plot takes place in an old country house, part of a large estate which has been run down over the years. The set showed the study/sitting room, with a section of it walled off to the right. This part had a door or French windows out to the gardens, a filing cabinet, table and chair, and lots of bookcases with some guns displayed on the wall near the front. The door to the other part of the room was towards the back. The sitting room had a door to the kitchen on the left, next to the large fireplace. There were French windows centre back leading to the garden and we could see a sundial just outside them. There were chairs and a desk, and we could also see the stairs up to the bedrooms at the back on the left which was also the way to the front door. There was lots of wood panelling, and various family portraits hung about the place.

The plot concerned the sale of the house by its current owner the Honourable Clive Rodingham to Charles Sturrock, a businessman who’s made pots of money but who started out with nothing more than a chip on his shoulder when he lived in the very village they can see from the windows of this house. He’s mad keen to buy up the big house and become the lord of the manor, getting his own back on all the posh folk who he felt looked down on him all those years ago. He’s brought his young wife with him, Julie. She’s trying to be a writer, and as Clive’s younger brother David is an established author and has finally turned up now that his brother’s told him their father’s dead, Sturrock rather menacingly suggests that David help Julie out with her story which he agrees to do.

She’s attempting to win a short story competition in the newspapers; a small prize, but given her husband’s crushing contempt for her abilities it’s a big step for her. David mainly writes thrillers and detective stories so they start to work out a murder plot. Clive, meanwhile, is off to America to schmooze his prospective in-laws; he’s nabbed a rich US woman and hopes to live a life of contented luxury for many a year to come. There’s also a Doctor pottering around, Elizabeth Woolley, an old family friend as well as the local GP, and still as sharp as a pin. A good mix of characters, with a number of possibilities.

The plot was a little bit clunky, with lots of room for things to go wrong, but it was enjoyable enough. It felt like an attempt to reprise Dial M For Murder; it wasn’t quite up to that standard, although the final twist was lovely to watch. Some decent performances, and a reasonably good night all in all.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

As You Like It – June 2009

6/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Michael Fentiman

Company: RSC Understudies

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Tuesday 9th June 2009

This was a good performance of an interesting production with some nice touches. The standard was still good, although it’s play that needs sparkle and it’s asking too much of the understudies to produce that level of performance first time out. The introduction by Michael Fentiman warned us that Christine Entwisle would play Phoebe for the final scene as Debbie Korley was doubling both Phoebe and Audrey, making her a potential bigamist without this extra help. As there was a dance at the end, it would indeed have been difficult to get away with just one woman playing two parts.

The set was interesting as well and reminded me of a number of things, particularly the DASH Arts Dream. The back wall was made up of lots of squares of what looked like patterned paper, or possibly wood. The squares looked like they would easily come out or open up to make doors or windows, and it reminded me of the paper-covered back wall in the aforementioned Dream. There were double doors in the centre of the wall and a couple of larger panels above. The floor was likewise made up of patterned squares, all in a light colour. The lighting on this stark set was equally decisive; a stream of white light poured across the stage on the diagonal, matched by another diagonal later on; there were a few gloomy scenes to contend with, but mostly it was fairly bright all over with no specific highlights.

The first glimpse of the wintery forest came with the exiled Duke and his lords appearing through trapdoors. Then Celia, Rosalind and Touchstone arrived at Arden and the plants began to take over. Touchstone was covered in undergrowth (though in his case it’s more like overgrowth) and during the intermission the doors and panels started to come off the back wall, with trees starting to show through. I liked the split personality of the set in the second half; they never quite got rid of the back wall but the bundle of overgrowth stayed on stage throughout. The forest was also liberally peppered with Orlando’s verses. Large bits of cardboard appeared all over the place, hanging from the roof, stuck on the side walls and around the first balcony, stuffed into the foliage behind the wall and just about everywhere you looked there was at least a letter or word. Very effective.

The individual performances were good, with James Howard’s Jacques being excellent. His first entrance was solo, carrying a guitar and singing “Under The Greenwood Tree”, a song normally sung by Amiens. Instead of Jacques asking the absent Amiens for more, he asked us if we wanted more, so some of us obliged him by calling out. He carried on, and finally took lots of bows. At first we applauded, then we laughed, then we applauded again, then we laughed again, then the other lords came on and we laughed at his reaction. Now he could play his musical trick on the other lords and that was good fun too, with entertaining reactions from the lords who sprang apart as if bitten. He also managed a good version of the seven ages of man speech which is normally very boring – he managed to get a couple of laughs – and his character came across very clearly throughout. I was aware of his melancholy, which wasn’t unfunny this time, and how he and Touchstone were so similar; this forest wasn’t big enough for the both of them. One minor weakness – Clarence Smith as Charles, the Duke’s wrestler, was less good in his delivery of the lines. He didn’t project quite enough so that lines said facing away from us tended to get lost, and his diction wasn’t quite as clear as the others, but it wasn’t a bad performance – I’m sure he’ll get better with practice – and he managed the wrestling scene very well which can’t be easy with so little rehearsal.

Staging. During Orlando and Oliver’s first conversation, or slanging match if you prefer, Orlando showed his talents as a wrestler by pinning his brother to the ground. I noticed how well the conversation between Oliver and Charles gave the audience all the background information it needs about the situation at court. When the court arrived it was with a formal dance, more Spanish than French to my mind, with lots of foot stamping. The Duke and his followers swept out, leaving a sad Rosalind to be cheered up by her cousin. Their dialogue came across clearly, as did the banter with Touchstone. He arrived before the girls had finished their bit and took the opportunity to down a bottle of something, presumably alcoholic, which he’d hidden down the front of his trousers. But before he could down the second bottle, similarly secreted, he had to speak to the girls and then it was too late; they kept him talking so long the wrestling was about to start before he could wet his whistle again.

Rosalind was surprisingly keen to see the bone-breaking wrestling match, though her change into love-struck woman was beautifully done, as was Orlando’s smitten-ness, resulting in a lack of dialogue. The wrestling itself involved a lot of banging heads against the back wall, and there was a suitable amount of blood on each contestant’s head by the end. The court was spread around the auditorium with Rosalind and Celia just along from us. I noticed that the court applauded Charles’s successes, while the girls clapped and cheered for Orlando. This may have been what tipped the Duke into banishing Rosalind, not liking the way she influenced his own daughter. The Duke is certainly shown as full-blown tyrant in this production.

The girls were soon planning their trip to Arden. The line referring to Rosalind’s height was inappropriate with this casting but she tackled it head on and we all took it in our stride, accepting the unusual circumstances. They leave by different exits for once, to carry out the various aspects of their plan.

Next was the arrival of Duke senior and his men in the forest. The first lord and Amiens were played by the same actor so he had to indicate someone else when he mentioned Amiens, but it all worked very well. Immediately we were back with the usurping Duke, and his courtiers were informing him about his daughter’s flight. Hisperia, Celia’s woman, was brought on too, but as she was standing right beside us I couldn’t see her face until she turned to leave when it became apparent that her cooperation with the investigation had been obtained by means of violence – her face was cut and bruised. I got a bad feeling about this Duke.

When Orlando returned home Adam warned him to go away, as his brother wasn’t happy with the news of Orlando’s success. When Orlando rushed over to embrace Adam, he kicked the money box into the audience, which caused some laughter. It was handed back readily enough and didn’t hold up the performance at all. I was very aware, as Adam was asking Orlando to take him along, that people in service didn’t have a lot of options in those days. Adam might have saved some money, but he was probably better off with an employer than on his own. And I’m delighted to say that although Adam wasn’t seen again after the forest feast this production didn’t actually kill him off for once. A gentle retirement, then. How fitting.

Next came the main event – the girls and Touchstone arriving in Arden. Celia, poor lass, was so leg-weary she was actually in a trolley being pulled by Rosalind. And she was covered by a blanket. So her complaints about being too tired to go on seemed just a tad selfish and petulant. Rosalind, for her disguise as Ganymede, had a pencil moustache, a hat over her tied-up hair and ordinary trousers, shirt and jacket. Touchstone, apart from the strands of foliage he manages to get caught up in, was still in his fool’s clothes which in his case appeared to be a set of restraining clothes – a pair of trousers with straps topped with the remains of a straitjacket (one of the arms came off later on when he scrambled his way out of the foliage). When Corin and Silvius turned up, they hid; Celia snuggled under her blanket, Rosalind ducked behind the trolley, and Touchstone nipped off to the side of the stage.

Silvius was playing an instrument and singing his love song to Phoebe as he came on, a common practice in this production. The instrument appeared to be a mandolele (a cross between a mandolin and a ukulele) with ten strings. (I don’t know what it’s called in real life.) After Silvius left, Celia, ever practical, was up from her comfy bed in a trice to suggest they ask the remaining shepherd for food.

Next we had Jacques giving us his song, and then Orlando and Adam arriving in the forest with Orlando helping Adam off the stage until he could get him some food. The Duke turned up again with his men who prepared dinner – meat kebabs over an open flame in one of the trapdoor fire pits – yum. Orlando grabbed one of the lords to persuade them to part with some of their food but was soon charmed into behaving nicely, although there was a lord pointing a gun at him behind his back. There were a lot of guns in this production – everyone following the exiled Duke in the forest had one – but fortunately no need to fire any of them. Jacques delivered the speech about meeting the fool very well, with some nice pauses during the time sequence which made it funnier, as he waited for someone to tell him what the time would be an hour after ten o’clock. Amiens’ song was dropped; instead they just had the Duke leaving the stage, Orlando seeing that Adam was well looked after then following the Duke, and the two of them returning to have a few short words before they all left the stage.

The nasty Duke then confronted Oliver about his missing brother in a very short scene, but it was enough to get across his tyranny, and then we had Orlando in the forest, strumming his guitar and singing some of his poetry written in praise of Rosalind. Trust me, they sounded better sung than said. Plus he has a nice voice. We then got the opening lines of Act 3 Scene 2, with Orlando running off past us after “and unexpressive she”. Oliver then appeared at the centre back of the stage, looking around, presumably for his troublesome brother, and then he headed off in the other direction. Interval.

The stage crew then took some time setting up the stage for the second half, what with sweeping away bits of paper, tidying up the foliage nest that Touchstone had deposited on the far side of the stage, demolishing the back wall and plastering the whole stage with poetry snippets (see above). They may have lacked a lot of the comforts of life in Arden forest, but good housekeeping wasn’t one of them. Forest floor swept and washed on a regular basis. One of the trapdoors had a block set up in front of it, over on our side of the stage towards the back. When all the work was done, Amiens?/lord?/Corin? (that’s the trouble with all this doubling) popped in there and began to skin a rabbit. For real. A real rabbit. A real, dead rabbit. And he was really skinning it. EEUUUGGGHHHHH!!!!! At least that’s what Touchstone thought, as he stood or sat on the other side of the stage, preparing to address the shepherd but not quite able to as first one leg, then another, then the whole body was pulled out of the skin (after the head had been chopped off). I didn’t find it all that grisly (she lied) but Touchstone wasn’t the only person who was finding it tough going judging by the noises coming from the audience. Once fully skinned, the rabbit was put in the bucket and was being carried off stage before Corin noticed Touchstone and started the next bit of Act 3 Scene 2. [Found out in 2011 that the rabbit skinning had to be dropped for New York, as there was a huge outcry from animal lovers over there.]

This scene took us through both Rosalind and Celia reading out some of the poetry and into their private discussion of the verse-writer. This time, I was aware that Rosalind was reading these verses as Ganymede, but hearing them as herself. When it comes to the revelation about who has written the verses I always find Rosalind completely obtuse at this point, despite her quick wits. I can only suppose she’s used to people writing fancy verse in her praise, and doesn’t expect to see Orlando again anytime soon which is why she takes so long to absorb Celia’s information. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve seen Rosalind, describing her disguise, drop her trousers and take the padding out of her crotch. Very effective, very funny, and it showed an astonishing attention to detail. When Orlando and Jacques turned up, she and Celia snuck off stage and round the back where they could watch what went on. Orlando had the guitar which he handed to Jacques, who took it off with him when he went.

There was a moment when Orlando first saw Ganymede that told us he saw the similarity to Rosalind immediately. But then he ‘realised’ he was talking to a boy and he snapped out of his romantic dream in a chappish sort of way, becoming brisk and manly, as you do. Their banter was also pretty brisk which got us through the rest of the scene quite quickly. To give them a break, Touchstone brought on Audrey to woo and wed her. Sir Oliver Martext arrived carrying a flaming cross (don’t ask me why). Jacques dissuaded Touchstone from marrying badly in the forest, so off they went and we were back to Rosalind and Celia wondering where Orlando has got to. To pass the time they headed off to see Silvius and Phoebe do their turn, with all the lovesick problems that brings. Phoebe was carrying a tray of fresh baked rolls which she dropped when she laid eyes on Ganymede. Silvius picked them all up again, having previously stolen one to keep next to his heart; he slipped it out of sight quickly when Phoebe looked at him.

Back at the shepherd’s house Rosalind and Celia entered with Jacques, who disappeared quickly once Orlando arrived. The wooing was good fun, and when it came to the end of the scene Orlando headed off to serve the Duke, Rosalind went off to sit somewhere quiet and Celia lay down on the stage to sleep for a while all on her own. The next scene is a puzzling one to us modern folk; Jacques leading the forest court in a stag-romp with lots of horns on view. Here it was done as a dream sequence, with Celia’s father coming on with his court in a reprise of the earlier dance entrance. Then the forest lords came on and the two groups formed into two lines. They danced around, there were lots of horns but no singing, and Celia joined in the dancing. After a short while she dropped back down onto the floor and the rest left, so that Rosalind could come back on and wake her up. Puzzling, but no worse than the original scene.

Next we got the letter from Phoebe declaring her love for Ganymede, followed by the arrival of Oliver to apologise on Orlando’s behalf for his non-appearance and to explain what’s happened. The connection between him and Celia was noticeable, though not so rampant as I’ve seen before. Next up were Audrey, Touchstone and William, with Touchstone making it clear to William that he’d better give up any plans he had to marry Audrey, as Touchstone has first dibs. (Actually William had first dibs, but who’s going to argue with a highly-trained court jester?)

When Orlando came on with Oliver he had his right arm in a sling, and when Oliver clasped him firmly before leaving to arrange his wedding, Orlando winced with pain. Even so, once the marriage arrangements are made amongst Orlando, Ganymede, Phoebe and Silvius, he got rid of the sling so he could put on a jacket for the marriage day. This removed the need for the scene with Touchstone and Audrey listening to a song. As Orlando and the exiled Duke discussed the situation it was clear that neither of them has realised who Ganymede is, despite both of them being strongly reminded of Rosalind when they saw the boy. (Where exactly did Rosalind get her quick wits from?) Touchstone dids his seven points of a quarrel speech, Audrey turned up looking completely different from before (it’s amazing what a wedding makeover can do for a woman) and then Hymen brought on Celia, accompanied by any spare cast members who were done up for a country-style wedding ceremony. Rosalind sneaked on to the stage at the front and all was finally revealed. With the news that the usurping Duke has gone off to be a hermit, and Jacques heading off to wait for the new/old Duke in his former cell, the stage was clear for merriment and dancing, after which they all left the stage except for Rosalind.

The epilogue is one of the best known bits, and rarely dropped. Here she said the opening lines and then sang a verse of The Parting Glass, a lovely old song and well performed but not as much fun as the regular epilogue. Still, we’d all enjoyed ourselves so much that there was rapturous applause, well deserved. Nothing more to add, looking forward to the regular version in August.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Time And The Conways – May 2009

6/10

By J B Priestley

Directed by Rupert Goold

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Wednesday 27th May 2009

As Steve was saying on the walk back to Waterloo, there are some dramatists you can adapt to your heart’s content, Shakespeare being the most obvious one, and others whose work is much more specific, and which doesn’t necessarily benefit from superfluous gimmickry or convoluted interpretations. Today’s offering was a case of the latter. Fortunately, despite the director ‘Goolding’ the lily with his usual filmic flourishes, the performance was enjoyable enough and the actors mostly did a fine job given the limitations of the production.

The opening sequence was one of those superfluous touches. The metal curtain opened to give us a viewing slit, and with a curtain drawn part way across we could only see a small section of the stage. One of the characters, Hazel, was carrying a suitcase full of clothes and apparently running across the stage (but actually staying on one spot) while some of the other characters moved past behind her, presumably as if they were standing still or just milling around. It wasn’t very effective from my angle, and the few lines were lost in all the hustle and bustle. Then she actually did run forward and off at the side, while the curtain was pulled back. This left us with a long narrow slit showing very little of the set, letterbox viewing gone mad. All I could see was the top of someone’s head, and nothing else for about a minute. Then the metal curtains opened fully and Hazel finally came bursting into the room with the suitcase. A long start, and not a particularly good one. Did the curtain not open when it was meant to? Was the delay intended for some meaningful reason? Or did the complicated opening delay the start because the stage crew had to clear stuff out of the way? I neither know nor care.

The first act unfolded pretty uneventfully, introducing us to the family, their situation (father dead, but family still well off and both sons home safe from the war) and the time period, just after WW1. (See, some writers do manage to tell us these things without too much trouble.) We also get to meet two friends of the family: Joan, a friend of Hazel’s with her beady eye fixed firmly on Robin, the younger son who’s just been demobbed and turns up towards the end of the act, and Gerald, the young lawyer who looks after the family’s legal affairs. Gerald has also brought along Earnest Beevers, an intense young man who would nowadays be called a stalker. He’s got it bad for Hazel, and puts up with the snobbish attitudes of most of the family in order to get to her. The only family member who’s nice to him is Carol, the youngest. There’s also Alan, the elder son who has seen action and is now working as a clerk for the local council, Madge, the eldest daughter who’s rather plain with a good mind and a passion for socialist ideals and reform, and Kay, the birthday girl, whose party we’re seeing. She wants to be a writer, though she hasn’t produced anything she’s happy with yet. And of course there’s Mrs Conway, family matriarch and temperamental diva, capable of great shows of loving and great cruelty, though we don’t see so much of that in this first act.

Everyone is having a wonderful time in that scatty upper middle class way – mercifully the charades are done off stage – and despite a few ominous comments, the tone is light-hearted and happy. With Mrs Conway singing for the guests as the final piece of entertainment (top of the bill, as usual) only Kay sits in the darkened drawing room, listening to the music and trying to get her thoughts and feelings down on paper. Suddenly she has one of her ‘turns’, and we get a freeze frame effect, with the actress, spotlit, on the central seat while the walls start to move and the room revolves, so that we see her from different angles. Then the lights go out. Visually, it’s quite a good effect, but it does have the disadvantage of disconnecting Kay from the older version in the next act. The ‘traditional’ version simply has her going over to the window and being in that same position at the start of the second act. This time, I don’t remember where she was in the room, so the placement clearly wasn’t as evocative for me.

The second act shows us the Conways twenty years on. Another war is looming and the slump after the last war has wiped out most of the value of the family’s assets, those which Mrs Conway hasn’t squandered on the profligate Robin, now unhappily married to Joan and avoiding her and their two kids as much as he can. Well, they’d get in the way of his drinking and complaining about how bad his luck has been. His mother looks as though she’s had a mild stroke, although it may just be bitterness that makes her mouth twist that way when she talks, and she appears to have a greater fondness for port than before.

Hazel has married Earnest, who is doing very well for himself and their family, but he doesn’t intend to help the Conways out with his hard earned cash. Hazel is clearly able to afford whatever she wants, is completely miserable and terrified of Earnest, although I didn’t see much reason for it in this production. Alan is still a clerk with the local council, and despite the contempt some of others have for him, he’s really the most successful and certainly the happiest of the Conways. Kay is a journalist for some paper which sends her out to get stories on film stars. She hasn’t written anything serious for years, and judging by this portrayal, she’s a dipso lesbian with a drug habit and a job in a very camp woman’s prison. Hattie Morahan’s facial grimaces made it hard to engage with this central character. She seemed like a caricature, and long before the comment was made on stage I wondered if the director was deliberately trying to turn this act into another family charade. If so, it didn’t work for me at all.

Hazel was also a bit over the top in this scene I felt, while Ma Conway can get away with anything, such is her character. The others were fine, but the overall effect was spoiled by the lack of balance and I found some bits dragging during this and the final act which never usually happens with a Priestley play, at least not for me.

The drawing room was appropriately empty-looking for this scene in the future. The signs of vanishing fortune were writ large on the bare walls and in the lack of furniture compared with Act 1. At the end of the second act, Kay is standing at the mirror, and again the walls move, but this time the mirror swings in at an angle, and we get a series of similar mirrors, suitably reduced in size, with other actresses dressed like Kay standing at them. There’s a nonsensical movement sequence that ripples down the line, and then the mantelpiece lights are switched off one by one to end the act – another puzzling and unnecessary interpolation.

The final act opens with Kay back in the freeze frame position. They’d cleverly arranged some papers so they could cascade onto the floor and stay there, in mid flight. When the action started up again, she pushed the papers all the way onto the floor, which looked quite effective. Next we get to see some of the events referred to in the second act, and some of the ways that some members of the family bring about the unhappiness of the future. We see how casually Mrs Conway ruins Madge’s best chance at a loving relationship, how Robin woos and wins Joan (not that she was resisting) and we get to see Carol again, the one missing from the second act and described by Earnest as the best of the lot. Kay starts up the kind of grimacing that explains a lot about her future facial expressions, as echoes of the future come back to her. She wants Alan to tell her the lines from William Blake that had given her some comfort in the future, but he doesn’t know them yet. Mrs Conway makes some comfortable and glorious predictions about the family members, accompanied by some more pointless choreographed movements from the girls, and then Kay slips through the curtains at the back with Alan following. Mrs Conway heads off to sing, and then things get really weird.

The lights go down, the curtain comes across, and then goes back again to reveal a smaller proscenium arch with curtains. It seems to represent the Conways’ bow window and curtains. Carol steps through and does a little dance to accompany her mother’s singing, then she goes off and the curtains are drawn back to show us a gauze screen which is used to project images of Alan and Kay, as well as having the actors themselves there, moving in such as way as to interact with their other selves. Lines from the play were repeated at this stage, presumably another attempt to be ‘meaningful’. However it was all pretty pointless and meaningless and was really turning me off, but finally it ended, the lights went out, and the whole performance came to an ignominious end. I held my applause till the actors were actually present on stage, as I didn’t feel the production deserved any reward. The cast had worked hard though, so I wanted to acknowledge them for that, and several performances were as good as they could be in the circumstances. Adrian Scarborough as Earnest and Faye Castelow as Carol were the best for me.

Looking back this evening, I find that writing these notes has reminded me how much was missing from this production. I wasn’t as emotionally engaged, the tweaks and twiddles didn’t add to my enjoyment or understanding and mostly took away from it, and I feel cheated somehow, as if the ‘real’ play is still waiting to come out. I’m glad the National have decided to embrace the dramatic tradition of this country once again, but I hope we get some better productions of these classic plays from them in the future.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Parlour Song – May 2009

6/10

By Jez Butterworth

Directed by Ian Rickson

Venue: Alemida Theatre

Date: Saturday 9th May 2009

This was a perplexing piece; very well written language-wise, with three very good performances and a fascinating set, but I’m still not sure what it was about. Mind you, when a playwright gets away with describing cunnilingus as a good ice-breaker, the afternoon’s got to be enjoyable.

The set was basic black, with two quarter revolves facing the back to start. The sides of these sections formed a screen, and at the start this had a misty picture of a forest of tree trunks projected onto it, a bit like a Chekov setting. Lines from the play were also projected at the start of each scene, like titles, and there were other images to add to the atmosphere. The two quarter sets held a sitting room on the left and a dining room and bedroom on the right, although at the end, all the missing items appeared on the left side (couldn’t see the stuffed badger, though). Some scenes were played in front of the screen, and on one occasion the two bits of screen came forward to create a V shape, similar to the position the revolves took when they swung round. There were conifers in a hedge to each side of the stage, and what with the lighting effects and projected images, the whole production had a dreamlike, surreal quality.

The play is set during a long hot summer, with Ned (Toby Jones) blowing things up all over the country (he’s a demolition expert) and Joy (Amanda Drew) his wife ‘disappearing’ various objects from the house while seducing Dale (Andrew Lincoln) their neighbour and Ned’s close friend, this despite the fact that Dale is also married with kids. It becomes (fairly) clear that Joy is planning to run away from Ned, and  preferably with Dale, but he bottles it (this is when he finally thinks to mention the two kids who are so important to him!) and she ends up staying with Ned. Finally, the rain comes, and I’m left wondering, was that a one-off and all down to the heat, or is there more to the story? I misunderstood that Ned killing his wife was part of his dream, so I was a bit confused when she reappeared, especially as the body double they’d got for Amanda Drew fooled me completely. I mean, I know she’s a good actress, but two places at once? (It’s been a long week.)

The early scenes in particular were excellent. Dale did a lot of talking to the audience, then we’d get a little scene, and so on, and the dialogue and characterisation were spot on. There was a lot of humour too, with different parts of the audience reacting more strongly to certain lines – the people along our row really enjoyed the line about Kosovans – but it didn’t feel divisive in this performance. I loved the exchange about Falkirk, where Ned’s sure he hasn’t shown Dale his video of that demolition job, and Dale has to describe the whole thing in detail before Ned remembers.

The workout scenes were also good. Initially, Ned asks Dale to help him get a bit fitter, and so Dale takes him through an exercise session, during which Ned is telling this long-winded story about how he came to buy his new bride a heavy soapstone bird bath from his share of the fifty pounds he’d found blowing along the street. The story gets in the way of the exercising, and the ultimate point is that that morning, the bird bath had disappeared. Not something Ned could have misplaced, or misremembered. The story itself is quite good fun, but the humour of this bit is mainly in the way the lads work out, with Ned almost rupturing himself with the first exercise, and Dale looking like a complete poseur.

The second session is similar, in that the comedy is all physical. This time, it’s just Ned exercising in his own sitting room using weights, and then working up to the bar bell which is just a bit too heavy for him. His little jogs and puffing out his breath were good fun, and then when he did get the bar up over his head he couldn’t control it properly, so when Dale arrived he had to topple over towards the sofa to get out of the awkward position he’d got himself into. Great fun. There was also the look that Joy gives him over dinner where we can clearly see that she’s not enjoying their relationship at all, and the bit in the bedroom, when Ned is listening to a tape that Dale’s lent him about satisfying a woman sexually, was just hilarious. That’s when we get to hear about the ice-breaking effects of cunnilingus, and get to enjoy Ned practising his tongue wiggles.

There were a lot of scenes and I found I wasn’t fully engaged all the time, but overall the performances kept it going and made it worthwhile.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Factors Unforeseen – May 2009

6/10

By Michael Vinaver, translated by Catherine Crimp

Directed by Sam Walters

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 7th May 2009

Set: office blue carpet, white laminate table centre diagonal, three L-shaped low benches on three sides, each with white backing like a modesty screen, and a glass of water strategically placed underneath the top of the L (actors, for the use of). A few coats and jackets are hung by the cross entrances, otherwise the auditorium is bare, unusually so for this place.

The ‘play’ has no plot, nearly 30 characters, and a jumble of scenes which tell the story of a small French company being taken over by a big American multi-national, only to lose profitability due to unforeseen circumstances and end up as a small workers’ cooperative, ripe for another takeover. The circular nature of the story was commented on in the post-show, as was the topicality of the situation. Not only do we have companies going bust due to an economic downturn, but in this case the company’s problems were caused by televised interviews with an aristocrat dying of cancer – we’ve recently had similar public deaths from cancer in Jade Goody and also Farrah Fawcett. As the company makes sun tan products, the adverse publicity for sun worshipping was disastrous especially as they were just in the process of launching a major new product, Heavenly Body (from what I could gather, it was the same product in a different bottle – nothing new there, then). We get to see snippets of scenes from a lot of perspectives – the US company bosses, the French management team, the workers on the shop floor, including the union rep, and the dying Princess and her rather sycophantic interviewer. We also heard occasionally from the retailers who were concerned about taking on too much stock, and met an executive from Kronenburg at the airport.

The play began and ended with a narrator, giving us the background and then the resolution to the story. We were then into a whirlwind of management-speak as the managers discussed a promotion in a very disjointed way, and the piece pretty much carried on in that vein for the rest of the time. The three benches were occupied by three ‘couples’ – one was the Princess and her interviewer, another was the two American bosses, and the third was two women workers in the filling department. Twice during the performance they got up in unison and shifted position, presumably to alleviate numb bum syndrome, but otherwise they were pretty static. The two women did move around when the workers went on strike, and the central table was turned over for a while, but mainly it was the actors’ energy that kept things moving. They were so good at involving us in this fragmented plot that I even found myself looking for the TV screen when the managers were viewing the ads for the launch campaign, although I knew there was nothing there.

While I didn’t find the play hugely enjoyable, there was a lot to smile and even chuckle at. For example, I liked the two women at the airport, who half recognised each other and tried to connect with talk of briefcases and lighters and ‘weren’t you at such and such conference’. They also reflected the financial situation for their companies – now up, now down. I liked the way the workers went on spontaneous strike when they realised that management had led them into a downturn and the union rep found herself no longer in charge of their militancy. I liked little details like the reference to someone as ‘Sandra from Aerosols’, typical of the workplace, and the way the US men couldn’t pronounce the French names correctly. In the post-show, someone asked whether they could have transposed the play to England, but while that might have helped with the names, we would have lost that little touch.

All the performances were excellent – I can’t single out anyone from such a good ensemble – and I was tremendously impressed by both the actors’ hard work and their patience, especially those who had to sit on the benches for so long. So overall I kind of enjoyed myself and I would be willing to give this author’s work another go, though I won’t make it a priority. The layering of dialogue didn’t add anything extra for me and simply created an unnecessary distraction, particularly at the end when the final piece of narration was held up by frequent hubbubs of lines from the play. Another audience member commented on how the energy fell off at the end, and for me that was the reason – I liked the narration, didn’t like the hubbubs.

The post show had some of the usual questions about why this play, and about the translation, etc. Sam informed us that the translation was done by Martin Crimp’s daughter, currently doing post grad work at university, as Martin himself was too busy. I think she did a very good job, personally, as did the author apparently, after seeing her initial translations of some tricky passages selected by her father. There was also a question about the lack of punctuation in the text as mentioned in the program. Sam pointed out that we don’t use punctuation when we speak, pace Victor Borge, so not having it in the text made them all work a lot harder to discover what was actually going on.

I think the discussion relaxed and let its hair down a bit when one chap admitted he didn’t care for it much, which Sam had been expecting. I asked about the author’s intention regarding the humour. Sam reckoned both author and actors would be delighted if audiences laughed. Some of the actors chipped in as well; apparently we were a good audience, and they also find there’s not many gags as such but a lot to smile and chuckle over, a background rumble I think it was called. Someone raised the question of the playwright’s political leanings. A reviewer had commented on a passage supporting Communism in the second half, but Sam didn’t rate that idea, nor did most of us I reckon. In fact, I saw the commercial logic in the need to cut back when times are tough – if there’s no company, there’s no jobs at all – while Steve saw echoes of Dario Fo’s work in the surreal and absurd nature of the situation. I also felt the style was a lot like the Vaclav Havel plays we saw last year, especially Mountain Hotel.

An interesting piece, and well performed, though not entirely to my liking.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me