Category Archives: 8/10

Private Lives – August 2008

8/10

By Noel Coward

Directed by Chris Jordan

Venue: Connaught Theatre

Date: Saturday 23rd August 2008

This was a very enjoyable production of a classic play. The cast were well balanced, and apart from not being able to hear Elyot so well when his voice dropped, I found it a very clear performance. The sets were good, and the audience slightly better than last time.

Perhaps not surprisingly after a week at the RSC Summer School, which culminated with a visit from some of the actors doing The Taming Of The Shrew, I saw for the first time connections between this play and Shakespeare’s. I could see Petruchio and Kate in Elyot and Amanda, while Bianca and Lucentio are reflected by Sybil and Victor. This idea was prompted by Elyot asking Sybil if she’s trying to control him, if she’s planning to manage their lives together while appearing to be all sweetness and light. It’s unusual for me to link Shakespeare and Coward in this way, but not unprofitable. The insight didn’t add to my enjoyment of the performance, but I did enjoy the extra views along the way.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Chalk Garden – July 2008

8/10

By Enid Bagnold

Directed by Michael Grandage

Venue: Donmar Theatre

Date: Thursday 10th July 2008

Wow. Steve and I had seen this play before, but I had very little memory of it, as it hadn’t made much of an impression on me at the time. Today’s production was the complete opposite. Totally memorable, with magnificent performances and excellent writing.

The story is relatively simple. Mrs St Maugham advertises for a governess for her grand-daughter, and gets more than she bargained for. Of the four applicants invited for an interview, only one stays long enough to meet her prospective employer, and she seems very unqualified to take the post. The grand-daughter in question, Laurel, is one of those too-precocious-for her-own-good types, with lots of stories about how dreadful her life has been, all told in a causal, off-hand manner. There’s a manservant, Maitland, who appears to be a nervous wreck, and an elderly man who is looked after by a nurse. We never see this man, but he appears to have a strong influence in the household – he was the butler for many years – and the nurse occasionally comes down to pass on messages. Olivia, Mrs St Maugham’s daughter and Laurel’s mother, also makes an appearance or two, as she now wants to give Laurel a home with her and her new husband. She’s expecting another baby, and she clearly wants to get the family back together again.

Miss Madrigal, the one remaining applicant, seems to have some understanding of Laurel, but is reluctant to stay. She’s put off mainly by her own circumstances and is only persuaded to take the job through Olivia’s intervention. Miss Madrigal is also concerned about the garden. It’s a chalk garden, and the butler has been directing operations so badly that he’s trying to grow all sorts of plants, such as rhododendrons, that hate chalk soil. The analogy between the garden plants and Laurel is obvious, especially with a name like that. Within two months, at the start of the next scene, Miss Madrigal has restored order to both the house and the garden. Laurel is behaving herself – she hasn’t set fire to anything for a long time – and the garden is being licked into shape. The old butler isn’t happy at all, but being stuck in his room, he can’t do anything about it. The nurse does glare at Miss Madrigal when she comes down, but that doesn’t trouble her in the least.

Things change when an old friend of the family comes to visit. He’s a judge, and it turns out he presided over the one trial Miss Madrigal has attended – her own. She was a young girl, accused of murdering her younger step-sister, and her habit of telling lies to get attention backfired when nobody would believe her story at the trial. Now she’s naturally distressed to see the judge again, and convinced he’s rumbled her, she blurts out enough of the truth to jog his memory into remembering her fully.

With part of the truth out, there are ructions in the house. Olivia turns up to take Laurel away, and Miss Madrigal supports this. Mrs St Maugham wants to keep Laurel and send Miss Madrigal packing, but once Laurel has left with her mother, she finds the prospect of an empty house too frightening, and grudgingly comes to accept Miss Madrigal’s offer of companionship. The butler chap has died, just at the right moment, so Miss Madrigal can reign supreme in the chalk garden. The play ends with the two women beginning their edgy relationship, one that we know they’ll both benefit from, despite Miss Madrigal refusing to tell the other woman, and us, what we all want to know – did she do it?

Having said this was a simple story, I find I’ve taken a full page to give only a rough précis of the plot. Apart from the humour, of which there was a great deal, the enjoyment lay in teasing out the subtle clues about Miss Madrigal and her background. It became clear she’d been away from society for a long while – she didn’t have references, for example – and her ability to understand and relate to Laurel without joining in her games was a big clue. She wanted to help the child as much as she could, so she wouldn’t end up making the same mistakes as she had, the ones that led to her spending many long years in prison. Her knowledge of gardening was obviously learned there, and there’s one lovely scene where Miss Madrigal speaks out with more passion than usual for her, about taking care of the garden and the plants. It’s moving and very funny, and I must get the text as I can’t remember a word of it. Penelope Wilton played Miss Madrigal, and I suspect I’ll not see better this lifetime.

Margaret Tyzack as Mrs St Maugham will be hard to top as well. She got to perfection the scattiness and hauteur of the character – totally the wrong person to bring Laurel up. Some of her lines were incredibly funny, and impeccably delivered. The others in the cast were also very good, as I would expect from a Donmar production.

We were reminded both of Terence Rattigan and Ibsen in the style of the piece, with its gentle observation and symbolism drawn from nature. I’d certainly go to see this play again, though I won’t expect it to be of this standard.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Quiz – July 2008

8/10

By Richard Crane

Directed by David Giles

Venue: Mill Studio

Date: Friday 4th July 2008

I was very much looking forward to seeing David Bradley on stage again, and in a solo performance. As it was a new play, I had very little idea what to expect and the way the play was written, neither did the character on stage.

The set was very simple. Various pallets were arranged to form a small platform and back wall in the centre of the studio space. Packing crates were distributed on either side, with candles stuck in bottles all over them. The candles were very short. Large candle holders stood on either side of the stage, with bigger candles, and a couple of rugs were lying across the platform and the floor in front of it. To complete the picture, a cross made of two strips of wood (probably off one of the pallets) was lashed to the top of the back wall. Simple, but effective.

David Bradley was playing an unnamed actor, who shambled on carrying another bottle with a lighted candle, a much longer one this time, and wearing a robe tied with a rope belt. He was obviously dressed as a monk of some kind, occasionally raising the hood. Underneath he was still wearing scruffy jeans and trainers. This was meant to be a performance of a story from The Brothers Karamazov, which the actor had been doing as a one-man show for many years, but tonight we were getting to see the effects of a serious row with his stage manager who has stormed off leaving him to do the whole show by himself. Fortunately the real stage crew has hung around, so we still get all the necessary lighting changes.

He starts by lighting all the various candles that adorn the set. This takes some time, and in the process he treats us to various candle-and-light-related comments, jokes, songs, etc. The story of his absconding stage manager, whom he refers to as a mouse, soon emerges, as does the whisky bottle, and it’s clear this is an actor who needs plenty of support to get his act together, never mind actually on to the stage. He keeps telling us about other performers who’ve died on stage or soon after a performance, and it turns out that the cause of the argument earlier on was his constant insistence each night that he’s going to do himself in. Go out with a whimper! This approach would deter most people a lot sooner than the ‘mouse’ lady, so she was obviously in love with him. It came as no surprise that years ago they’d had a one-off sexual encounter during an enforced stop-over in the only room the hotel had available at that time of night.

From time to time we get parts of what would have been the ‘intended’ performance. These are heralded by the use of the hood, and the actor taking up position on the stage and ‘acting’. These bits were fine, and showed that the old guy still had it in him, but not for long periods. Soon he’d be breaking off to tell us another story, swig from the bottle, and explain about how he’d always wanted to do a prologue, or an epilogue, but the ‘mouse’ wouldn’t let him. These statements usually led to another long-winded story about some performance where he’d deviated from the straight and narrow, and very entertaining it all was too. He also included a number of Tommy Cooper gags, and these gave us the best laughs of the evening. Not that the rest of it was lacking in the humour department.

The religious ideas were new to me, and I found them pretty odd. The character the actor was playing, the Grand Inquisitor, seemed to be saying that he didn’t want to believe in a god who would make suffering the price for redemption. A Christ who insists on pain as a precondition for heaven isn’t for him. He’d rather feed the needy, cloth the poor, etc, and to hell with god. As a result, when Christ returns, he has him arrested and sentenced to death, and this performance, and the story in the book, covers the night he spends with Christ in his cell before the execution, explaining his point of view. The actor shares this attitude towards religion with his character, whether naturally or from long acquaintance I can’t say, and gives us his own thoughts on the matter as well.

At the end, the actor takes a final swig from his bottle and collapses on the stage, a fitting ending for such an apparently disastrous performance.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Burial At Thebes – June 2008

8/10

Sophocles’ Antigone translated by Seamus Heaney

Directed by Lucy Pitman-Wallace

Venue: Rose Theatre, Kingston

Date: Friday 27th June 2008

This was a very good version of the Greek tragedy Antigone. The language was formal and declamatory for the most part and every word came across clearly. The guard who reported the un-desecration of Polyneices’s body was the only one who spoke in more conversational English and with an accent, differentiating him nicely from the toffs.

The set was very plain. What looked like wooden panels, worn and battered, curved round the back of the acting space, with a central doorway for entrances and exits. There were irregularly shaped holes where there would have been knots in the wood. Centre front was a large bowl, spotlit.

The play opened with two men taking scoops of sand from the bowl, and then backing off to the sides of the stage. Antigone and her sister then tell us what’s been going on. Oedipus their father married his own mother (Greek drama has a way of going to places most other plays avoid) and his children, who are also his half-siblings, are still suffering for his sin against the gods. Their brothers are both dead, one fighting for Thebes and one against. The pro-Theban brother is being given full honours while the other one is being disgraced by not having a funeral rites. Apparently this means he won’t get his heavenly Oyster card and will be doomed (I think that’s the gist). Antigone is all for disobeying the order to leave her brother’s body to decompose naturally, but her sister is too scared to go against Creon’s command. Creon is their mother’s brother and the new king, so what he says goes or else. Antigone isn’t put off – she knows the dangers, but she also knows the duty she has towards a brother and the gods. She’s a tough nut, that one.

Creon appears next, giving an excellent speech designed to win the loyalty of his new subjects. It’s all smarm and charm at this point, but it isn’t long before the paranoid control freak shows through. There’s a bit of concern amongst the gathered bigwigs about the decree against the burial, but Creon soon smoothes that over. However when the guard turns up to tell Creon that someone has carried out the funeral rites for the dead man, he starts to go all Gordon Brown on us (stroppy and authoritarian, that is).  He’s convinced ‘they’ are out to get him, and that some rich people have bribed the guards to turn a blind eye to the funeral rites. He tells the guard to bring him the guilty party or he’ll be strung up instead. Naturally the guard’s a bit miffed by this, and decides to run away.

Now we’re introduced to Haemon, Creon’s son, in song. As the chorus sings of his great abilities and virtues, the character demonstrates these in mime. This is just a short intro – in fact, I don’t think I got his name at this point – and then we’re into Antigone’s arrest by the guard and the hearing before Creon and the chorus. Creon shows little pity – he thinks women should stick to the home, never mind disobeying him or carrying out a funeral service. It doesn’t seem to bother him that it’s his niece he’s condemning to death, though it does disturb the chorus. Mind you, their main concern seems to be that she’s engaged to Haemon, and how will he take it?

Very well, apparently. After Antigone has had her say, insisting that following the gods’ instructions is more important than obeying the whim of a mere king, she’s taken away to be walled up in a cave. Her sister did try to be noble and join her in her final prison but Antigone rebuffs her – if she didn’t do the crime, she doesn’t do the time. Creon keeps changing his mind about the sister – she’s for the chop, then she isn’t, then she is. Anyway, when his son arrives there’s some friendly words of warning from some of the chorus, but Creon’s not listening. At first, his son speaks up for his father in total support, as a good son should in ancient Greece. This gladdens Creon’s heart, but it doesn’t last. Before long Haemon is suggesting very strongly that his dad should reconsider – better to admit a mistake than upset the gods.

Well, Creon’s not having that, so disaster is pretty much assured (as if there was any doubt!). Tiresias, the blind seer, turns up and his advice is so pointed and so clear that even Creon begins to doubt his actions. He sends people to release Antigone and to tidy up what’s left of the corpse, but too late. Eurydice, Creon’s wife, appears just in time to hear the sad news of Haemon’s death. He stabbed himself after hanging Antigone (or she got him to hang her, whatever). If these people hadn’t been so keen to die all might have been well, but then it wouldn’t be a tragedy. Eurydice is ominously quiet and heads off to top herself, and Creon drags on his son’s dead body – Eurydice’s arrives a few minutes later – for the final weeping and wailing. The play ends with the whole group assembled on stage in near darkness, with just the bowl at the front spotlit.

This was absolutely great. The cast worked brilliantly together. Various actors would discard assorted sheets and blankets to emerge as a character, then re-robe to blend back into the chorus. There wasn’t any humour (which is why I tend to be flippant in my notes) but I don’t expect any in a Greek tragedy, and the intensity of emotion was just right for me. The translation was excellent and very understandable, with a good rhythm and tone that seemed perfect for the tragedy style. One of the best things we’ve seen here.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Quartermaine’s Terms – June 2008

8/10

By Simon Gray

Directed by Harry Burton

Venue: Theatre Royal, Brighton

Date: Thursday 19th June 2008

This is a much kinder play than I’m used to seeing from Simon Gray. Although all the characters have their less likeable qualities, there wasn’t so much unpleasantness around as usual. Quartermaine himself was an affable chap, doing his best to please everyone, and spending most of his days in dreamland, even when he was supposed to be teaching. He reminded me of Firs from The Cherry Orchard – he always sat in the same chair in the staff room, and at the end it seemed likely that he would still be sitting there when everyone came back for the next term, even though he’d been fired.

The setting was a school for teaching English language and culture to foreign students. The other teachers included an older spinster who lives with her invalid mother, a woman married to an academic chap who is having an affair with another woman, a husband who is having an affair with his typewriter and whose wife therefore leaves him, taking their son with her, a new man who shows a remarkable affinity for accidents, and an older academic sort who is perfectly capable of talking at great length in learned detail without actually adding anything to the conversation. The proprietors are a male couple, one of whom we never see.

The set was a marvellous depiction of a staff room back in the late fifties/early sixties. The walls were scruffy, the furniture shabby, but there was lots of room. There was no plot as such, just a tour round the different characters and their ups and downs. Husbands and wives split up and got back together again. The spinster apparently bumped off her mother by pushing her down the stairs, to judge by her reactions to a police visit, about another, unrelated matter of some students trying to kill and cook a swan. She then gets religion, only to end up some time later on the fags and booze, looking desperately unhappy. The new boy ends up a permanent member of staff (just as well, as he seems to be the most hard-working of the lot of them), and experiences a brief accident-free period during his engagement, only for normal service to resume once he’s married. The older academic takes over the school when the unseen proprietor dies, and finally someone has the courage to sack the one man who doesn’t really contribute to the school’s purpose. It’s a sad moment, but inevitable.

Although we don’t get much of an explanation of why Quartermaine is the way he is, there are some oblique references to his aunt’s house, and some childhood fear of swan’s wings. We seem to be getting a number of plays and productions at the moment that don’t attempt a psychological explanation of their characters, and it makes a nice change. Steve spotted a number of Chekhovian parallels throughout the play – I’ve no idea if this was intentional on the author’s part or not. Anyway, we enjoyed it very much, and the performances were all excellent, getting a lot of subtle detail across about each character so that I felt I knew them all personally.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Last Train To Nibroc – June 2008

8/10

By Arlene Hutton

Directed by Katie Henry

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Tuesday 17th June 2008

The set was same chopped-corner platform as for De Montfort, with a bench on top, and a book sitting on that. Clothes were hanging on a peg to our left, and, as I realised later, to our far right. We sat in the middle of far right front row.

The plot is simple. A man (Raleigh) and a woman (May) meet on a train journey from California to the east coast in December 1940. They develop an unlikely relationship, which continues over the next two scenes, when they finally(!) come to terms with their love for each other. God, the frustration. There were times I wanted to bang their heads together and tell them to get on with it, but the writing was good enough to keep me watching to see what would happen.

They were an unlikely couple because of their different personalities, but these two opposites clearly attracted each other. May was an uptight, prim little madam from a small Kentucky town, with a fantasy, rather than a dream, of being a missionary. Having just spent Christmas with her (ex-)fiancé and discovering that he was no longer interested in helping her realise her fantasy life, she’s naturally feeling unsure of herself, and this combines with a natural caution of strange men to make her rather uncooperative when the young airman sits down beside her on a crowded train.

Raleigh comes across as very brash to begin with, a big lummox type who’s going to have a conversation even if she doesn’t join in. As the scene develops, though, we can start to see other aspects to each of them, and we also learn a lot about their lives. Turns out they’re both from small Kentucky towns, about twenty miles from each other, one of them being Corbin. In fact, Raleigh’s uncle has a farm just opposite her family’s place, so they practically know each other already. He’s been invalided out of the army/air force (they do things differently in the States) as he started to get fits, later confirmed as epilepsy. He’s a bit down about that, but when he found out from the porter on the train that the coffins of two great writers, F Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanial West, were on the train, he’s inspired to go all the way to New York to become a writer himself.

Through this first scene together, he spends most of his time trying to persuade May to either go with him to New York or, if he does go back home instead, to go with him to the Nibroc festival (Corbin spelt backwards). She finally agrees, so there’s hope for her yet. The actors moved the bench around four times during this scene, so everybody got to see them from all four angles. It was nicely judged, as there were some natural pauses in the flow of the dialogue. At the end of the scene, they moved the bench again, and then used the entranceways to get changed, before heading off so they could make a proper entrance for scene two.

This second scene is a couple of years later, from what I could tell. The war is beginning to bite, and the Nibroc festival has had to downsize accordingly. May arrives first, with a small green bag that she’s anxious to dispose of somewhere. Eventually she throws it away, but Raleigh finds it and returns it to her. There has obviously been some problem in their relationship, and several times I thought the scene was going to come to an early end. But they just can’t get each other out of their systems, and a remark or question would set them off again. It was good to see a play which didn’t give the impression of being structured to suit the audience so much as reporting what real people actually do. In that sense it was perhaps less overtly dramatic than most plays, but it kept me involved and caring about these two people.

May has been stepping out with a reverend chap, who’s off to be a missionary (he actually ends up enlisting as an army chaplain), but she’s worried about the amount of money he’s been taking from the church collection. The bag she was so worried about held that night’s takings, which she was presumably going to return to the church, believing that God would provide for the minister. Given her attitude, it’s a blessing she doesn’t go with him. For both of their sakes.

Her judgemental attitude knows no bounds. Raleigh is concerned to find out why she didn’t come to have a meal with his folks, after he’d been for dinner with her family. She tries to avoid the subject, but eventually we find out that it’s because his father had Jake leg, a condition that weakened the joints and caused the sufferer to limp or shuffle, and was caused by drinking adulterated alcohol. Many people, usually the poor, did this during prohibition and the distinctive limp became a social stigma, especially to someone like May.

Meanwhile, Raleigh’s time has been spent far from New York, although he did make it to Detroit in search of work. His epilepsy kept getting in the way though, as he’s susceptible to bright flickering lights, so he’s ended up back on the farm helping his folks. There’s a very moving speech towards the end of this scene where he expresses his feelings about the illness for the first time, explaining how ashamed he’s felt about everything – not being able to fight, not being able to work, letting his parents down, etc. I was nearly in tears, and it obviously affected May as well. However, he then has an actual epileptic fit (very accurately done apparently), and May dashes off to get help while he twitches on the stage. It was a powerful moment.

The final scene has them watching a huge blaze at a lumberyard from the safety of her folks’ back yard (it was an actual event in Corbin). Raleigh has come over for dinner again, so things are obviously better between them, and they each have something to tell the other. Raleigh’s news is that he’s going to New York after all, to fulfil his dream of being an author. He’s already sold some stories, including the one about how May’s younger brother hid himself away in the back of Raleigh’s pickup when he and May were out for a drive, and then ended up being car sick. He’s also got a job with a New York paper. Her announcement takes longer to fully come out.

He’s not long been out of hospital after his epileptic fit. They’d mistakenly put him in a hospital for crazy people, and she wrote to him every week, though she didn’t visit him. She’s surprised to find his skin is fine, and mentions this several times. Finally she explains that she’s been reading up on his condition, and basically offers to take care of him. The only thing is, she misheard him when he named the illness, and she thinks he’s got leprosy! After a good laugh at her misunderstanding (we all joined in), Raleigh focuses back on what’s important to him – that she was willing to spend her life taking care of someone with an incurable disease. He pins her down (not easy – she could give an eel lessons in being slippery) to admitting that they would actually have to live together so she could take care of him, and well, after that it’s not surprising that the marriage question pops up. Despite a final little wriggle, she agrees, and I was so happy for them.

There’s more to this play than this simple storyline suggests, and it was a real heartwarmer. The performances were excellent, as were the accents, and for something written fairly recently it had a great period feel to it. Although it’s set during WWII, the war is part of the background to these two people’s story, not a big issue that the play is attempting to deal with, and for me that’s fine. Lots of people just had to get on with their lives through the war years, and they weren’t constantly locked in philosophical debate about the ‘issues’, so it’s nice to see a play that reflects that for once, as well as being a gentle and detailed observation of human relationships and their quirks. A good choice by this young director, and very good casting.

The post-show discussion was missing Sam Walters for once, but the director and full cast were available. There was much praise for the performances and the play, with points like the accuracy of the epileptic fit and real life events such as the lumberyard fire coming up. Apparently the author had paid a visit during rehearsals, and been totally happy with the choice of actors. We did seem to get sidetracked into a debate about the likelihood of these two characters getting together, but I think it was perfectly reasonable. He wasn’t the sort of man who wanted a drippy wife who would agree with everything he said, and given the sort of life he was planning, it made sense that he would naturally want someone down to earth, and who would keep his feet on the ground, which she would certainly do. She may not have been much of a cook, but growing up on a farm she understood hard work, and by the third scene she’d been made principal of a local high school, so she’s smart too. And underneath her prim manner there’s both a kind heart and a feisty nature, both of which attract him.

For her, I think the attraction is that he doesn’t fall for her dreams, which are usually pretty unrealistic. He’s also not put off by her pickiness, at least not completely, and he opens her up to new ideas, which is challenging and a bit scary, but ultimately exciting. They’re likely to have a prickly but happy relationship, though they’re the sort of couple that will make a lot of people wonder what they see in each other.

There was also some comment about feminism and May’s choice to ‘sacrifice’ her life for Raleigh at the end. Personally, I think that’s rubbish. Given the circumstances of the play, it’s much more likely that May will go to New York with him eventually and get a job there to help support him, so for those to whom only having a career can possibly be fulfilling for a woman, that’s fine then. (Minor rant coming here.) Actually, I find the whole feminism thing utterly distorted now, as it only seems to want women to be ersatz men, rather than allowing women to choose whatever type of life suits them best, and according us the same rights as men. There’s an implied judgement that all ‘feminine’ activities are inferior, which actually encourages the macho culture we’re lumbered with at the moment, provides men with the conditions to thrive competitively, and undermines the very equality the feminists have set out to achieve. Ggrrhh. (Rant over.)

Well, now that that’s out of my system, I can conclude that this was another very successful production, and we’re looking forward to the Vaclav Havel season later this year, as well as the new air conditioning.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Rosmersholm – June 2008

8/10

By Henrik Ibsen, in a version by Mike Poulton

Directed by Anthony Page

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 14th June 2008

The set was a drawing room, with scruffy walls in depressing shades of blue, a window to our left, a stained mirror, portraits on the walls, nice formal furniture, and a white tiled stove in an angled recess. There was an attractive bowl of flowers on the table, otherwise it was as austere and gloomy as an Ibsen play. (So the designer’s done a good job, then.)

The second act has the same window and stove, but the rear wall is further forward, the furniture is more relaxed, and there are bookcases and no portraits. This was the private sitting room/study off Rosmer’s bedroom. The final scenes revert back to the first set, and all the action takes place over three days.

Rosmer is one of Ibsen’s naïve, idealistic heroes. His wife committed suicide a year ago, and he is just starting to get involved again in the life of Rosmersholm, the town his family have effectively ruled over for a couple of centuries. He’s been helped by a woman, Rebecca West, who was originally nursing his wife through her illness, and who’s stayed on in order to assist Rosmer to find his true vocation. It appears nothing improper has happened, but the situation leads to rumours, and while Rosmer remains a pillar of the community they’re unlikely to affect him much. However, as he’s not only stopped being a priest but renounced his religious beliefs as well, he finds himself friendless and vulnerable to gossip and suspicion. He’s keen to support the movement for change that was surfacing in Norway at that time, and Rebecca’s support for this has been a key factor in his recovery from his wife’ suicide. Various revelations through the play make past events fairly clear to us, although the possibility of incest in Rebecca’s past is left as a suggestion only, and the final choice of the unconsummated lovers is as downbeat as one might expect from Ibsen.

The other characters are interesting. Rebecca West herself is less likeable than Ibsen’s usual women – Strindberg would have approved. She represents the kind of free-thinking women that must have been coming out of the kitchen closet at that time, but here she’s not necessarily a force for good. It’s interesting that this character has the same name as the famous writer, although the play was written six years before the real person was born.

The doctor, Kroll (very close to troll?), represents the absolutist establishment view. He’s for God, King, country and keeping the peasants in their place. His friendship with Rosmer appears to be based more on the Rosmer family’s status and his friend’s earlier traditional opinions than on any great affection for the man himself. He frequently tells Rosmer how gullible he is, and is only reconciled to him once the revelations make Rosmer ready to doubt his support for change. Malcolm Sinclair gave us a wonderfully detailed performance, with many good lines delivered impeccably.

Ulrik Brendel is Rosmer’s old tutor, currently a down and out but hoping to make it big now that the political tide has turned in his direction. He talks big, but there’s nothing behind it. It’s a fetching performance by Paul Moriarty, and allows us to see how easily Rosmer can be swayed, and how kind and generous he can be as well.

Mortensgaard is the editor of the left-wing paper, and his insights are very entertaining. At first delighted to find that Rosmer has given up the priesthood, he’s quite candid about his disappointment that Rosmer has left the church altogether. He wants people still in the church to come out in support of the new ideas, so that ordinary people will listen to them. Another atheist is no good to him, so he just won’t mention that part. It’s a useful part for showing us how impractical Rosmer’s idealism is. Sitting in his ivory tower, hatching plans with Rebecca to change people’s attitudes, he’s completely unaware of how opinions are influenced and shaped. He had hoped to stay above it all, a pure radiant beacon of light showing others a better way to live, and he’s sidelined so quickly he hardly has a chance to take it all in.

This leaves the maid, Mrs Helseth, a strict but kind Christian woman, prone to believing superstitions, such as the local one about a ghostly white horse presaging death. She shows us the ordinary people who still hold the church and its priests in high esteem; she still calls Rosmer ‘pastor’, though I assume she knows he’s defrocked himself. Her view of events on the fatal footbridge gives us the ending of the play.

I felt this was a very good production of an interesting play. I enjoyed the arguments and the insight into the upheaval that Norway was going through at that time. The program notes identified this play as the crossover point between the external threats in Ibsen’s plays (An Enemy of the People), and the interior conflicts (Doll’s House). I’d agree with that, and that’s part of what made it so interesting for me.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Pitmen Painters – May 2008

8/10

By Lee Hall, inspired by a book by William Feaver

Directed by Max Roberts

Venue: Cottesloe Theatre

Date: Thursday 22nd May 2008

I was bowled over by the first half of this production. The humour, the characters and the painting were all magnificent. I felt the second half lost it a little bit, especially during the last scene, but the overall impression was of a really good play superbly performed. I cried, I laughed, I marvelled at the talent for painting. What more could anyone want from an afternoon at the theatre? Well, a male life model would have been nice, I suppose, but then he would have stuck out like a sore thumb in this play.

The story is a simple one, but I’ve always found this sort of thing tremendously moving. Not that there was a scrap of sentimentality on show – these were all straight-talking northerners, none of that fancy emotional stuff for them. Instead of help and support from the rest of the painting group, the members could expect only fierce criticism and downright hostility, with the odd bit of grudging praise thrown in from time to time – don’t blink or you’d miss it.

The play follows the group from their start as an art appreciation class in 1933, through their experiments with making art themselves, and finishes at the end of WW2, with socialism and the Allies both triumphant and looking eagerly forward to a better future. The stage was a large shed, with folding chairs and not much else in the way of comforts. Three screens above the stage showed us the art works in question, and my first sight of their work almost took my breath away. Oliver Kilburn’s linotype of a miner hewing coal underground was strong, dynamic and well composed. Other works were equally amazing, for folk with no training at all. They clearly had great talent within the group, although they kept it all on an amateur footing.

Their tutor for these sessions, Robert Lyon, was a posh university type, who started off by showing slides of Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo. These overblown pictures need some training to appreciate, and they certainly didn’t grab the miners’ attention. Despite concerns that the rules didn’t allow the working folk taking these classes to do anything that might be considered ‘useful’, Lyon persuaded the powers that be to allow an experiment for this class – the students were only making art as a way of understanding the processes that the ‘proper’ artists went through. The results were indeed phenomenal, and Lyon did very well out of the group, getting a proper professorship, as well as writing and lecturing on the experiment, and basking in the reflected glory of their achievements.

All of these aspects were covered in the play, as well as the fickleness of the art collectors who are always looking for the next new thing. The character of Helen Sutherland, an art collector, turns up at the first class where Lyon has booked a life model, and her comments are generally supportive. The men’s attitudes to her are ambivalent, while they’re completely divided on the subject of life modelling. George Brown wants the young lady to keep her clothes on – shop steward type, devoted to his rule book – while the others seem either OK with it or really keen. The first half ends with the model throwing off her robe and posing for a brief second before the lights go out.

During the second half we see the group’s interest in art, and their keen eye, develop. They’re not afraid to speak their minds, whether the art they see is fashionable or not, and their direct relationship with the pictures, old or modern, gave me some of the best insights I’ve ever had into modern art, or at least the art that was modern in their day. Oliver Kilburn’s description of what the artist was trying to achieve with a piece which was basically a grey circle inside a grey square, was enlightening, although the fact that I couldn’t make out what medium was used was rather frustrating. Was it a painting? Was it a sculpture? Either way, his perspective was very illuminating, and I’m grateful for that, and for the affirmation that we don’t have to know  a lot to be able to enjoy art. The other fun part was during the students’ trip to London, where they visited an exhibition of Chinese art, which has very strong traditions and rules. Lyon was dismissive of the work on view, but the group were able to express clearly what this type of art is about, showing individual expression in subtle ways, where each tiny difference from the long tradition of the past is a major leap forward for the artist. I like Chinese art anyway, but it was good to hear it championed so effectively.

Not all of the group were miners. One, Harry Wilson, was a dental technician, having been invalided out of WWI, and another was a young lad who was related to George Brown, and ended up going off to fight when the war started. I wasn’t clear what this character was meant to be doing in the group, although there was some good comedy around his participation. He didn’t get involved in the painting – we never saw any of his work – and his death appeared to have had very little effect on the other characters. He just seemed to tail off. Still, the rest of the characters more than made up for it. One of my favourite lines was in response to Robert Lyon’s suggestion that the group could vote on some matter that was dividing them. “This is a democracy – we don’t take votes” was George Brown’s emphatic conclusion.

The issues discussed throughout the play covered an amazing range. The effect of supporting artists financially is explored through a meeting between Ben Nicholson and Oliver Kilburn, whom Helen Sutherland has offered to support via a stipend so he can paint full time. Nicholson paints a different picture, one where the paid artist has to work according to his patron’s wishes, and his frustration at being stifled was clear to see. Later on, the way Helen drops the group once they’re ‘in’, as she goes in pursuit of the next unknown, is a clear warning of the dangers faced by anyone relying on her financial support.

There’s also the question of ‘good’ art, and who gets to decide this – that runs throughout the play – and the ticklish question of whether anyone could do what these men had done, or whether they were just exceptionally gifted. Lyon’s point of view was that, given the chance, all people could produce art to this standard, while the group felt that was rubbish, they just happened to be bloody good at it! I took Robert Lyon’s point – there is a lot of talent that even now isn’t being discovered or nurtured fully, but perhaps not so many people would come up with such powerful work as this group did without some sort of training, so they definitely were exceptional.

This is such a rich piece that I can’t put down everything that happened, but the warmth and enjoyment will stay with me for a long time. A superb production, and a great play.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Boris Godunov – May 2008

8/10

By Alexander Pushkin

Directed by Declan Donnellan

Company: Cheek By Jowl

Venue: Barbican Theatre

Date: Saturday 17th May 2008

I knew nothing about this play except for its name, and that it was Russian. It was also being done by Russian actors, in Russian. Given my experiences during the RSC’s Complete Works festival, it’s surprising I chose to go to this, but we do like Cheek by Jowl’s work – the Twelfth Night had been exceptionally good. So here I was, knowing nothing of what was to come, but looking forward to a new experience.

Our seats were on the Barbican stage. Actually, the temporary seating ran down both sides of the stage, the former auditorium was screened off, and the acting space was a long narrow platform sandwiched between the two. Still, I can always claim I’ve been on stage at the Barbican, if I ever feel the need.

As we came in, there was a church service in progress at the far end of the platform, to our left as we sat down. Russian Orthodox – lots of beards, incense and chanting. To our right, a man sat at a table, tapping away on a battered old typewriter. I took this to be Pushkin, writing the masterpiece we were about to see, but that wasn’t quite it. The chanting continued for some time, and then the lights dimmed as two characters began the play. Dressed in modern suits, they were talking about Boris Godunov having killed the heir to the throne, Dmitry, and how the people would want Boris to become their next ruler. For those familiar with Shakespeare, this was home ground. I was a little confused by the way one of the characters, a prince, was also interacting with Boris as he told the other chap what he’d seen of the heir’s murder. He and Boris played some game with their hands over the crown, which sat on a small throne between the church area and the table. Then Boris removed the crown, and sat on the throne himself. After that, he became colder towards the prince, but I don’t know whether this was based on the prince’s own description of events or a parallel piece of action. Anyway, it was clear that these two characters, both members of the royal family, consider themselves to have better claims to the throne than ambitious Boris. However, the people love him, so it’s Boris’s crown.

After the church stuff is all cleared away, the man at the typewriter starts to talk. Apparently he’s a monk who’s lived through Ivan the Terrible’s reign, as well as his son Feodor’s, and he’s been writing a history of the events so that the Russian people will know about their past. There’s a young lad with him. He came to the monastery as a boy and looks after the older man, despite having one arm shorter than the other – he holds his left arm awkwardly. When the monk gives him the history, telling him to carry on the work, he decides to run away, and possibly plans to become Czar himself – both Steve and I were a bit unsure on this point. The surtitles were very useful, but it was easy to miss a line or two when we were caught up in the action. Anyway, the young man ends up at the Russian/Lithuanian border, and is nearly caught by the officers of the law, who have a written description of the man they’re looking for. Being able to read, he lies about the description to try and throw suspicion on someone else as the runaway, but this other chap remembers enough of his learning to give an alternative version of the officer’s orders, and the young man has to fight to escape. It’s not exactly clear what happens. He seemed to give the officer a jab in the neck, so that he could hardly talk, but then the action shifted to the next scene.

From here the play really began to hook me. The young man pretends to be Dmitry, the deceased heir, and for all sorts of reasons, people believe him. Most importantly, the kings of neighbouring countries choose to support him, and are prepared to provide troops to help him regain ‘his’ throne. Disaffected Russians also flock to him, and there’s a lovely scene where he greets the representatives of various groups who’ve come to offer him their support. It was clearly done in public, and done to make the most of the tributes – a photo-op.

To seal the deal, a Polish nobleman offers to marry his beautiful daughter to ‘Dmitry’. He’s pretty keen, she’s definitely keen, already seeing herself as Czarina, and they have an intimate scene beside a pool that’s appeared in the middle of the stage. He’s torn by doubt – should he tell her the truth or not? Will she love him as he is, or does she only love him because she thinks he’s the heir to the Russian throne? Eventually he decides to confess, and she’s horrified. She has no intention of marrying a peasant! However, she’s also politically astute, and comes to realise that he may be a fake, but he’s a powerful fake, with a good chance of becoming the real Czar, so she better get on board before the train leaves the station. I remember them ending up in the pool, getting very wet, though I’m not sure now how all that related to the dialogue. By this time I was finding it hard to keep an eye on the surtitles as there was so much happening on stage.

The final scenes covered the fighting over the throne, and were back to being confusing. From what I could understand, the fake Dmitry’s forces are defeated and he’s killed, though whether this is after he’d successfully claimed the throne or not, I couldn’t tell. The program notes inform us that he did actually rule for a short time before being ousted, so I assume that’s what the play was telling us.

These Russian actors certainly know how to make the most of their curtain calls. There were a number of bouquets  handed over, and not just to the ladies. Evgeny Mironov who played the pretender received several of them, and the whole cast took their time to revel in the applause, which was pretty strong.

I enjoyed this performance much more than I thought I would, and I may be more willing to check out foreign productions in future (but don’t bet on it).

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The English Game – May 2008

8/10

By Richard Bean

Directed by Sean Holmes

Company: Headlong

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 12th May 2008

This was the sixth public performance of this new play, if our calculations are right, and also the press night. There were probably a large number of friends and family in as well, as the early laughter from some parts of the audience, some of whom were right behind us, seemed over the top for the action on stage or the dialogue. I always find this off-putting, as it distracts me from my own enjoyment, but fortunately this play was good enough to have me warmed up by the end of the first act, so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

We did manage to get ourselves into the wrong seats at the start, though. We hadn’t realised that the entire first row had been taken over by the cricket pitch, so instead of being five rows from the front, we were only four. Still, it’s only the second time that’s happened in all our years of going to the theatre, so that’s not bad.

The whole stage (including the first row) was covered in grass, with a few bits of concrete off to our left to represent a burnt down pavilion, a few trees behind that, a litter bin far right, and a big juicy dog turd in the midst of the grass. Simple, but effective. The action took a while to get going. First Will arrives, with his father Len, who’s well past his prime and needs a lot of help to get about. Len’s put down in a folding chair to our right, and shows us his character from the off. After demanding a cup for his water, he waits till the filled cup is in his hand, and when Will’s back is turned, tips it onto the grass.

Gradually the other players arrive for the match, and with one replacement player – Gary’s neighbour, Reg – we get to know who everyone is through the introductions and greetings. The banter is good fun; Thiz (the aging rock band member) tells some entertaining jokes, and all the elements of an amateur Sunday team were present. The first act takes us up to the start of play, the second covers the lunch interval, while the third skips nimbly through the team’s innings and the packing up afterwards.

All the performances were excellent. The various relationships were pretty clear from the start, though there were some interesting developments as the game progressed. In particular, a number of people found loud mouth Reg easier to get on with once he’d scored some good runs for them. There’s a long debate on the LBW rule, but mostly the conversation is about their friendships, wives, children, jobs, etc. Towards the end of the match, it’s discovered that Len has finally gone to the pavilion in the sky, and some of the players help Will to get the body off the pitch and back into the van. At the end of the play, the set is as empty as it was at the start, and minus one dog turd.

I enjoyed this play very much. It reminded me of Steaming, the Nell Dunn play which looks at the relationships between a group of women using the setting of an old-fashioned steam bath. This was the male equivalent, all the more so because women were banned from the team, so the men had to provide their own sandwiches and tea. Never having been part of an all-male group, I don’t know for certain how realistic this was, but it seemed pretty accurate to me. Along with the laughs, there were some moving bits, but it never got too heavy, and left me feeling I’d spent an entertaining evening in the company of people I might never have met otherwise.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me