Features
Doing The Drill
-Julie Parker chats
about the rewards of persistence
Rufus Norris may be older than he looks, but he has a teenager's
passion. Listening to music for a show that he and his partner
are collaborating on whilst preparing a baby's bottle, the 38
year old Young Vic associate director is single minded for all
his multi tasking.
'Directing plays can be all
consuming,' he says, 'for me the important thing is balance.'
Norris says he has been over-committed as a freelance director
for the past two years and is looking forward to spending more
time with his family. He takes a swig of herbal tea, switches
off the music, and gets down to the business of explaining why
theatre is such hard work.
Norris describes himself as
a relative late-comer to theatreland. Ten years ago he was an
actor on the dole, performing in plays for the company 'Arts
Threshold' until founder Brian Astbury suggested he direct. Rufus
became the company's artistic director from 1993 - 1995, during
which time 15 plays a year were produced. The company squatted
in the basement of a block of flats in Westminster and never
received government funding. 'It was quite a communist enterprise,'
says Norris with a grin.
Norris's job as he sees it
is to fight for what he believes in. He says that Arts Threshold
empowered him as well as offering insight into the difficulties
of surviving in theatre. 'Brian saw that I was too argumentative
and energetic to be an actor,' he says, 'he challenged me to
take on more.'
Variety has always been crucial
to Norris. The spacious Ealing flat where he lives with his partner
and two children looks as colourful as his childhood sounds.
Having grown up in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Malaysia, he now sustains
his family and his interests by combining teaching and directing
jobs with advisory work on Arts Council panels. At the Young
Vic where he has two forthcoming productions to direct he is
also involved in a Training, Participation and Research programme
and in overseeing the company's forthcoming departure from their
Waterloo base as the venue is refurbished.
'The Young Vic is very eclectic,'
says Norris with pride. He explains that instead of following
the Almeida and Royal Court's financially exhausting example
by moving venues during their home's refurbishment, the Young
Vic company will be saving money by taking up residence in a
range of local performance spaces whilst continuing to support
directors at the start of their career. 'It's very important
that we stay true to our roots,' he says, 'our commitment is
to Lambeth and Southwark, and to nurturing young theatre practioners.'
Norris was in fact launched
by the Young Vic's director's scheme. As one of the many unknowns
allowed to try out their ideas in the studio, he progressed to
two fully fledged productions and won an Evening Standard Newcomer's
Award for his main house production of Afore Night Come. Next
he'll be directing Peribanez for them, Lope De Vega's ambitious
tale of true peasant love threatened by royal desire.
Norris describes the world
of the play as harsh and says what attracts him to the piece
is its 'uncompromising look at the darker aspects of how pure
love can get battered.' Peribanez tells the tale of a poor man's
determination to fight for the woman who accepted his proposal.
The fearless protagonist exhibits some of Norris's own characteristics.
'Without places like the Young
Vic most directors give up unless they have private funding,'
says the proactive director with a frown. Despite Arts Threshold's
unfunded status, he reformed the company as Wink and successfully
toured the country with shows like Strike Gently and The People
Downstairs. Though he has rubbed shoulders with the likes of
Indhu Rubasingham at the Birmingham Rep and Domenic Cooke at
the Royal Court, he is most concerned about those still struggling
for recognition. 'Directors need a place to fail,' he says, 'otherwise
they will never succeed.'
Of course Norris takes comfort in the recent increase in money
available to the arts from the government. But the way theatre
culture has evolved over the past decade worries him. 'Fringe
theatres aren't rooms above a pub any more,' he says, 'they're
corporate golden gooses, and I wish that weren't the case.'
For Norris directing is about
pulling together. 'The companies in the strongest positions now
are those who have survived for a long time with nothing.' He
cites the likes of the Red Room, Improbable and Complicite as
former casualities of the revenue funding freeze who are finally
receiving financial support. Likewise he lights up at the mention
of theatre revolutionaries Shunt whose work as a collective has
seen them through penniless days squatting an arch in Bethnal
Green to the relief of project funding and a permanent performance
base. 'Maintaining a venue and applying for funds is not very
romantic,' he says, 'but it's the reality of running a functional
theatre company.' This recognition that few dare move into a
deserted space informs the young directors' meetings Norris holds
at the Young Vic, where finding opportunities for those without
money are top of the agenda.
So Norris's seemingly chaotic career betrays an ingenious knack
for triumphing against the odds. Working in Palestine as well
as London, championing new and therefore unheard of writers,
sound designing and writing as well as directing, his CV conceals
the focus behind the man. Only in person is the drive to put
work on the stage self-evident. 'My main concern is to create
something performable,' he says of Sleeping Beauty, his most
recent Old Vic show which he both wrote and directed, 'when the
first half was too long I knew I had to cut it.'
Such ruthlessness typifies
Norris's strong sense of autonomy. He says he admires directors
Katie Mitchell, Deborah Warner and David Farr for having started
out by founding their own theatre companies and sticking by them.
'In Europe the progression from studios to main theatres is clearer
because the company system is clearer,' he says, 'but here a
director needs a strong sense of identity.'
Sacrifices are fatherhood are
therefore part of his artistic vision. Though TV pays better
than the £2500 per show that Norris sites as the going
rate for 3 months hard work directing a production, he sees it
as incompatible with working for the stage. And film? 'Stephen
Daldry is a gorgeous man,' he says, 'but I wouldn't spend the
time he spends in an airoplane for all his awards.'
Peribanez runs at the Young Vic from
May 1, box office 0207928 6363
Musical
London
-
Making a song and dance of it
When
it comes to making a song and dance of it, London certainly knows
how to get into the spirit of musicals. Yet plenty of these money
making triumphs started out as high risk endeavours with seemingly
obscure concerns.
Though
‘Jerry Springer – the opera’ may not sound like
much of a financial gamble, the box office smash’s development
took a lot of courage on the part of creators Richard Thomas and
Stewart Lee. The slow burning success took the form of an idea
rather than the traditional script or score, and therefore only
attracted a tiny budget in the form of support from Battersea
Arts Centre.
But
with something beyond song, dance and dialogue, the challenging
‘Jerry Springer- the opera’ went on to become a surprise
hit. The piece is carefully structured to give the impression
of spontaneity, and contains a collection of heightened sketches
that spiral from everyday situations into
melody. Fittingly enough, the musical charts a fantastical day
in the life of the chat show host as he journeys to heaven and
hell and confronts the most bizarre of guests. From conception
to presentation as a series of jokes at the expense of both opera
buffs ands chat show hosts, the show blends high and low culture
in a curious way.
‘Jerry
Springer – the opera’ owes little to fifties’ feelgood
Broadway hits like ‘Oklahoma,’ to the tradition of staging
musical films such as ‘My Fair Lady’ or ‘Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang,’ or even to the trend of ‘Jerry Springer
– the opera’ captures the flavour of contemporary living.
However
experimental the methods behind ‘Jerry Springer – the
opera,’ music serves a similar function for performances
that predate such postmodernity. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats,’
the crowd pleaser that closed recently after seventeen years,
masquerades as a traditional musical with a large cast and
plenty of stonking songs. Yet the writing betrays concerns beyond
the American musicals that established the genre, and music works
a different way too. The real achievement of Lloyd Webber’s
version of TS Eliot’s Old Possums book of Cat poems is the
show’s knack for turning poetry into entertainment. As the
Jellicle cats perform in the hope of winning eternal life from
their leader Old Deuteronomy and the whiskery cast relive their
memories, their words melt into song and the feelings staged eclipse
rational objections, not least the unlikelihood of cats singing.
A
show like Shockheaded Peter offers a more obvious example of the
sheer inventiveness of which music theatre is capable. Complete
with fabric-flamed dresses and papier mache monsters, the show
takes its title from the storybook predicament of parents doomed
in their efforts to bury their abnormally hairy offspring. With
eerie resonance, the Tiger Lilies’ music
complements every aspect of the production, and it is notable
that Cultural Industry, the brains behind this inspired dramatisation
of Heinrich Hoffman’ s cautionary tales, invented a new genre
when they chose to describe their work as a junk musical. The
close relationship between dialogue and song is
integral to the work, which springs fully fledged from the company’s
collective imagination.
In
this respect cult hits such as ‘Shockheaded Peter’ and
‘Jerry Springer – the opera’ would seem to contrast
classics like the oft revived ‘Oklahoma.’ These scriptless,
scoreless hits rely so heavily on the collective contributions
of entire production team that they are unlikely to outlive their
creators, and yet this of itself is proof of modern musicals’
ability to reflect the time that created them as surely as Oklahoma
espoused fifties values – for what is modern life if not
increasingly disposable?
In
its own way, ’Bombay Dreams’ also celebrates music as
an expression of collaboration. The brainchild of Andrew Lloyd
Webber and Shekhar Kapur, this highly energetic East-meets-West
hybrid tells a tale of universal themes. At this musical’s
heart lies a love story set against the backdrop of the colourful
and magical Indian movie industry, with song and dance
playing a crucial role in the production because of the show’s
focus on a culture’s dreams, ambitions and sense of identity.
For as a means of expressing a community’s sense of autonomy
(a truth that Lloyd Webber’s cats pursue as ruthlessly as
the company of Cultural Industry) music comes into its own on
stage.
Of
course, scripting songs for a whole community of characters is
not the only way to engage an audience in music theatre. It's
as well to bear in mind, however, that the alternative can be
a painstaking process. Ever-ambitious, Elaine Stritch’s eloquent
one woman show works hard to redefine the language of musical
theatre. Stritch’s testimony to the importance of living
life to the full amounts to nothing more and nothing less than
an energetic collection of songs. Clad only in a pair of tights
and a green pair of shoes, Stritch tip toes the line between the
alarming
and the amusing as she taps out the original choreography from
earlier hits to realise the essence of music as live performance.
Whether treated to a slow motion melody of memory or indulged
with a show stopping tune designed to show this Broadway Baby
still has what it takes, the audience experience the show in a
powerfully theatrical way. For Bea Arthur and other one woman
wannabees, Strich’s is a tough act to follow.
So
what are the differences between theatre and song, and what sort
of performance benefits from the inclusion of musical numbers?
In search of the more courageous answer, I turn to the performances
of the ever- daring South African theatrical troupe, third world
bunfight. Judging by their recent piece, 'Mumbo Jumbo' (written
and directed by Brett Bailey), their understanding of songs’
profundity is deeper than Lloyd Webber's. Through
words and song, their musical explores what it is about music
that can transfigure, transform and ultimately heal a fractured
and abused community. But it is impossible to describe just how
'Mumbo Jumbo' celebrates communality. One man keen to celebrate
the kind of feeling that transcends words is the musician Richard
Wagner, and like the artists behind 'Mumbo
Jumbo' and 'Bombay Dreams,' Wagner was more interested in communities
than in individuals. Making a living in the 1830s, he wrote operas
not musicals - but he did take the meaning of music seriously,
and it is this passion for music which informs the imagery of
his writing:
‘Only
on the shoulders of a great social movement can true art lift
itself from its present state of civilised barbarianism, and take
its post of honour.’
Wagner’s
manifesto about the social function of music characteristically
fails to distinguish between socialism and fascism, or anarchy
and peace, but argues instead for what he later describes as ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’
– the power of music as a universal and unifying artwork.
And the theatre pieces using music most effectively do so in a
similar way.
For
theatre that successfully uses song concerns itself with how we
feel collectively, and exemplifies the populist yet political
in a way no other artform can. Music theatre at its best is performance
which moves us to feel that alone, our feelings are worthless.
Helena
Thompson
Londonnet
predicts the musical marathons’ long runners
1.
Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang
Fantasmagorical stage stuff takes flight
2. We
Will Rock You
The Queen musical looks like a killer
3. Jerry
Springer – the opera
Chat show culture and the National theatre prove that opposites
attract
4. Bombay
Dreams
Indian Summer lasts forever
5. Bea
Arthur at the Savoy
Still a Golden Girl at seventy
The
Magic Lantern
-Helena Thompson ponders
what lies between stage and screen
When it comes to critical analysis,
the influence of film on theatre proves elusive as a screen image.
'Film theatre,' it seems, is a tough term to define because the
role of film in the theatre that embraces it is 'specific' to
each show.
Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Bombay Dreams' may not sound like a physical
or visual performance, but the presence of film posters on stage
warrants a second look. Because 'Bombay Dreams' treats the audience
up as voyeurs on the film making process, this play about the
making of a Bollywood blockbuster serves as my starting point
for considering the role of film in theatre.
For there is something beyond
a plot at work in 'Bombay Dreams.' The musical is thoroughly
Western in form - but in content it is Indian. A scene showing
a Bollywood film in rehearsal makes the audience aware of watching
characters watching each other and hints at how best to appreciate
the show. From conception to billing as a 'Bollywood musical,'
this playful expose of the film industry is a kind of postmodern
joke at its own expense and relies for its humour on the use
of film in theatre.
Whether or not Bombay Dreams
succeeds as an amusing experiment in big budget theatre making,
it is curious to note that the less mainstream practitioners
also use film in theatre to humourous effect. Robin Orlin's darkly
funny 'Daddy' at the BITE 2002 festival exemplifies the technique.
Orlin satirises Busby Berkleyesque cinematography by surrounding
her performers with CCTV cameras to expose their ill timed and
amateurish performance. Orlin's performers play the parts of
bad actors unaware of the cameras watching them as they delicately
pass plates to each other and fastidiously link arms: only on
screen from a bird's eye view is the reality of their amusingly
unsynchronised configurations revealed.
Not that film in theatre needs
to make the audience laugh. Madani Younis of the Asian Theatre
School in Leeds cites film as imperative to 'the new language
of performance for Asian theatre,' and his debut Streets Of Rage
at the West Yorkshire Playhouse features live footage - to serious
effect. His attitude to that footage in this devised response
to the Bradford Riots is telling:'Rather than bombard my audience
with multimedia overload, I want them to question the real film
footage (showing the police convicting 23 young men) before them.'
'Who Goes There?' by Dreamthinkspeak at the BAC also treats film
as a sombre medium. This promenade rework of Hamlet involves
set pieces like heartbroken Ophelia watching herself and Hamlet
on screen, or lusty Gertrude mesmorised by her own heavily made
up TV image, and the show would have been puzzling had these
installations not been linked by the theme of intangibility.
Ophelia's grief, like Gertrude's pain and the ghostly presence
at the heart of this piece, is deeply felt but impossible to
pin down. This is because, 'Who Goes there?' focuses on the haunting,
loss and grieving at the heart of Hamlet, approaching Shakespeare's
poetic drama from the point of view of Hamlet's dead father and
employing film tantalisingly as an example of how we can fool
ourselves that something dead still lives. For as a means of
expressing the conflict between reality and perception (a conflict
which can indeed be funny, as when 'Bombay Dreams'' ugliest characters
pose for the camera) film comes into its own on stage.
I learnt this for myself when
commissioned by Haringey Arts Council to adapt and modernise
Shakespeare's Hamlet into a new version called 'Ophelia', albeit
a very different event from Dreamthinkspeak's collection of interactive
installations. Presented with Jackson's Lane's spacious stage
I set about trying to retell the classic using a variety of medium
and found that film as a background addition merely detracted
from the stage where I sought to ballast the narrative. The solution
I hit upon was to wholeheartedly digest film into that narrative
and make Hamlet a film- maker. Watching the characters' on stage
reaction to Hamlet's 'mousetrap' film served to propel the action
forward and offered the audience insight into the characters'
preoccupations by demonstrating Hamlet's infactuation with his
own perceptions.
Of course, putting film-makers
or film watchers on stage is not the only way to engage an audience
in film theatre. It's as well to note, however, that the alternative
can be a painstaking process. Ever-ambitious, Shunt's narrative-free
but eloquent and intrigue-packed 'Dance Bear Dance' is proof
of the craftsmanship required to successfully stage a filmic
piece of theatre. This show about image (as self referential
as any Hamlet rework) amounts to nothing more and nothing less
than a dramatic collection of images that realise the essence
of film as live performance. The show's form is imitative of
the shifting focus it makes its subject, and the ever changing
context in which film appears heightens the drama of the piece.
Whether treated to displays of slow motion burning or bombarded
with photos warning of a culprit on the lose, the audience experience
theatre in a powerfully filmic way.
So what are the differences between film and theatre, and what
sort of theatre benefits from the presence of film? In search
of the more thoughtful answer, I turn to the performances of
multidisciplinary dance company, Ricochet. Judging by their recent
piece, 'Point Of View' (choreographed by Neil Greenberg), their
notion of the audience as voyeurs on the film making process
is more sophisticated than Lloyd Webber's. Their dance piece
involving video projections walks the fine line between the cerebral
and the emotional as the piece enacts in the flesh what film
only represents.
But it is impossible to describe
just how 'Point Of View' raises questions of subjectivity without
compromising on its power to move. One man keen to pin down the
unpinnable is TS Eliot, and in times of critical confusion I've
often found him a useful voice of calm. Like the artists behind
'Who Goes There?' and 'Point Of View,' Eliot was preoccupied
with the notion of the image - not surprisingly given his role
as artistic pioneer when cinema was growing up. He never wrote
for the screen, but he did know all about artist hybrids, and
despite working in the fields of poetry and drama, it is film
which informs the imagery of his writing:
"It is impossible to say
just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while ….
I am no prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be"
In this poem about the difficulty
of 'saying what I mean' Eliot not only refers to Hamlet (a favourite
with film theatre practitioners, as we have seen) but employs
film as symptomatic of all that is enigmatic and elusive. And
it seems to me that the theatre pieces using film most effectively
do so in a similar way.
Time Etchells, another critic-artist, would certainly agree.
In 'Certain Fragments,' his description of his characters' text
as 'ghosts of real feeling' sounds like a description of film
itself. Like many theatre practitioners making use of film, his
concern is for both the emotional and the critical. Indeed, film
theatre practitioners often act as critics and their work shares
a similar preoccupation with themes such as perception, objectification
and identity.
In recognising that the best
of film theatre practitioners warm to the subjectivity at the
heart of film, I have my conclusion. The theatre that successfully
makes use of film concerns itself with how we judge, and is often
the stuff of artist-critics - practitioners whose critical faculties
have been sharpened by constantly justifying a new genre. Film
theatre at its best is ground breaking performance which moves
us to perceive that things aren't what they seem.
Helena Thompson
Panto Panache
Still Going Strong
- The festive season
jollies along
Oh no it isn't oh yes it is - panto's not quite behind us yet.
If the manager's tipsy and you have to fight through the foyer,
you know you're in for a festive show. But bah humbug or no,
there are sweeties enough to tempt even the scroogiest of patrons.
The gay dame, the bad jokes - they're all there in this pick
and mix of festive drama treats.
The Nutcracker
the Royal Opera House
Covent Garden tube
This annual treat is tasty
as ever, with a lovely sugar plum fairy and a veritable kingdom
of sweets amongst the delights on show. Peter Wright's choreography
hits all the right spots as Erina Takahashi and Vladislav Bubnov
dance their sock off. And there's real magic in store as the
angels and toy soldiers grow from the tree.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Sadler's Wells
Angel tube
Third time round, this stage
version of C.S. Lewis' kid's story is still going strong. The
costumes are a bit lack lustre but the Christian myth is alive
and kicking as a Jesus-like Patrice Naiambana brings lion Aslan
back to life. Fact and fantasy get all mixed up as a motley crew
of kiddies take that trip through the wardrobe. What's more,
Maurice Beattie's White Witch is a match for Cruella De Ville.
A Christmas Carol
the Bloomsbury theatre
Euston tube
Scrooge or no, there's nothing
stingy about this lavish production. The lights twinkle, the
actors jig, and the costumes cost more than Ebenezer's bags of
gold. But a heart-warming performance from Dan Bates as the young
friend Scrooge betrayed is by far the most dazzling aspect of
this production. No amount of festive décor can disguise
the loose ends that trail behind this ambitious production like
the chains of Christmas past.
Dick Whittington
the Arcola theatre
Dalston overground
This witty show is apparently
suitable for kids - so it's possible the sexy shinnanigans disappear
depending on the audience. The night I went, the jokes were filthy
and director Sarah Chew's feisty version of vaudeville theatre
turned Whittington's journey to Ken Livingstone into a raunchy
romp. The up-to-the-minute script is smashing - and it's particularly
good to see the Tigerlillies getting some stage time after their
one off hit with Cultural Industry. Punntastic.
Aladdin
The Lyric Hammersmith
Hammersmith tube
Told by an Idiot have done
it again with their beguiling revamp of this Arabian tale. Hayley
Carmichael in the title role stays true to the girls-as-boys
panto tradition, and Javier Marzan as the lovely Wishy Washy
is any girl's delight. A sassy princess and a camp little genie
may celebrate the sheer joy of silliness - but there's some serious
sense at the heart of all the romance. Like all the best collaborations,
this devised piece proves more than the some of its parts.
The Snow Queen
the Pentameters theatre
Hampstead tube
This low tech, budget production
is high spirited enough to show that necessity is the mother
of invention. And it's mothers galore in this careful rendition
of Christian Anderson's classic fairy tale. From the matronly
monster in her garden of summer to the frosty queen of celibacy,
families and procreation preoccupy this loving production.
Theatreland pulls together
- A cold season
for stage-strutters breeds collaboration
Christmas is upon us,
but who's really in the mood for a festive show? What with Sept
11, war in Afghanistan and a dwindling economy, even the London
stage looks loath to suspend disbelief. Here are the signs that
Stage Santa has cultural crossovers, holistic happenings and
even a political conscience in store:
Pantos bend the rules
Told by an Idiot set their spin on Aladin at the Lyric Hammersmith.
The company famed for radically reworking old stories surprise
even the most hacknied old treader of the boards with. Mean time
the newly refurbished Theatre Royal Stratford East stays true
to its local audience by casting a black Aladin. Then there's
Sarah Chew's Dick Wittington at the Arcola which claims to spice
up the rags-to-riches story with a hint of multimedia. Oh no
it doesn't oh yes it does!
Trainers tread the boards
Any one worried that violence on stage had died the death and
that politics has been jostled off stage by feelgood musicals
will welcome Lisa Goldman, the driving force behind the Artists
Against the War movement. Harnessing the force of Kay 'The Bogus
Woman' Adhead and funnymen Ridiculusmus with their all too serious
satire on the Northern Ireland peace process, Goldman's push
towards political drama should woo a younger crowd.
Cabaret comes to town
West End runs may be getting shorter and shorter, but Vaudeville
is reinventing itself in a variety of London haunts and totting
up more stage time. Shunt's cabarets under the Bethnal Green
arches have long been attracting a cult following. Now Edward
Snape at the Arts theatre has taken the lead by programming a
series of short, snappy late-night acts. Mean time littler theatres
lend a hand to littler companies by welcoming a series of support
acts. Cue the Music Hall Quartet supporting Dick Whittington
at the Arcola theatre.
Writer-directors get busy
Witness Pinter, Mamet, Marber and Hare, merrily flitting between
desk and stage as they write and direct. Most recently Conor
McPherson directed his own Port Authority, and now his production
of Eugene O'Brien's Eden looks set to transfer to the Arts theatre.
And in the wake of devising and co-writing 'Love's Works,' the
National's freshly appointed associate director Mick Gordon has
got down to programming 'a f*** off season' called 'Transformations…'
Programming goes hybrid
Purism dies the death as long-time lodger the Royal Shakespeare
Company threatens to move out of the Barbican. For the time being
the British International Theatre Event has taken over, boasting
a multicultural pick and mix of choreography and performance.
Mean time the Royal Festival Hall psyches up for the London International
Mime Festival with Diquis Tiquis, Spymonkey and other puppet-savy
mimemeisters. On a smaller but perfectly formed scale, the current
People's Show in Bethnal Green doubles as installation by day
and performance by evening. This disturbing look at domesticity
quite literally cracks open the house on stage, revealing the
building's inner workings complete with a live sound track and
CCTV.
It seem musicians, performers
and multimedia whizzkids are not the only ones to start stretching
stage boundaries. Santa's season may be a less than jolly affair,
but theatreland is pulling together and looking to the future.
Real Live
Sex Appeal
- Helena Thompson
investigates the Friel thing
Forget all the recent sex-driven
soap operas - theatre has long capitalised on in-the-flesh scenes
of debauchery.
Ever since Thelma Holt got
naked to play Lady Macbeth back in the 1960s (and she
says she was taking inspiration from the Jacobeans), sex and
the theatre have remained committed to each other. And, with
Anna Friel following her stage debut as a prostitute in Patrick
Marber's Closer with the lead role as a femme fatale in
Wedekind's Lulu, they look set to remain a faithful pair
for a long time yet.
Not so the couples on the current
stage, of course. No one knows that better than Mark 'Shopping
and F**ing' Ravenhill, who also has the controversial Some
Explicit Polaroids on his CV and has made a small fortune
turning the sexual problems of his generation into dramatic visions
of anal rape, toilet sex and paedophilia. And it seems he's done
it again, albeit it in an apparently less modern way than usual
- his Mother Clap's Molly House bills itself as a new
play all about 18th century whore houses.
"Mrs Tull's got problems.
The whores are giving her a hard time, a man in a dress is looking
for a job, her husband has a roving eye, and the apprentice boy
keeps disappearing on midnight walks," teases the publicity.
But read on and the real cause of the play's appeal becomes clear:
"Meanwhile, in 2001, a group of wealthy gay men are preparing
for a raunchy party." And for a further raunchy insensitive,
check out the footnote - "This play contains language and
scenes which some people may find offensive.'"
For what's really sexy about
the piece is less the shock of nudity or prostitution than the
sheer shock of the new. Ravenhill's eye for the rituals of our
dysfunctional society (masturbation, rape etc.), his brutal use
of language, the way his plays time-jump - these are the qualities
that have attracted a cult following and drummed up interest
from the press.
It's no surprise that theatrical
appeal, like most art forms, should be proportional to the inches
of column coverage as well as of exposed flesh - but quite what
woos the dramatic press is more of a mystery than most. Playwright
Sarah Kane, for example, is a case study in the mad relationship
between the theatre world and the publicity machine that keeps
it turning. Slated in her lifetime and lauded post-suicide, sex
in Kane's most famous works such as Blasted and 4.48
Psychosis prompted outrage at their premiere, before being
recognised as just part of the pattern of emotional and physical
violence that riddled her work - resonant only as a sullied emblem
of thwarted redemption.
Rape, doomed love and suicide
are the recurring themes of her life and work, and Pinter's soundbite
lament, "The depth and range of horror in the world was
too much for her," or his tellingly provocative, "She
was naked. She could find no protection. She was totally original,"
sums up her iconic status as an emblem of vulnerable suffering
rather than simply a writer.
It's less sex, then, than a
sense of the sordid that really woos a crowd. Certainly King's
Cross's squalid depot excited those keen for something a bit
grittier than the West End to gawp at the emotionally messy Lulu.
Friel's depiction of the woman who inspired unrequited love,
happily sleeping with the besotted without ever really reciprocating,
forms a tradition of Manons (the woman in Werner Henze's version
of Alban Berg's opera who keeps deserting her lover for a rich
benefactor) and Marilyn Monroes (in Niagara) - women who
epitomise and fall victim to the corrupt society of which they
are the product.
These tragic innocents may use their mouths less for talking
than for kissing, but they say more than the talkative females
of shows like the sexily titled The Seven Year Itch. It
irritated even its talented star, as Darryl Hannah's description
of the West End as "sterile" revealed in interview
with the Guardian.
Amongst the shows to show case
the stars more successfully are Chicago and The Vagina
Monologues. Both succeed by refusing to assume that the simple
sight of a star on stage will automatically stimulate an audience.
Chicago explores the commercial value of sex as a woman flirts
her way out of a murder charge - while what draws the audience
into The Vagina Monologues is the chance to glimpse a collection
of stars talking candidly sans glitz about their sex drive. Whether
it's with anecdotes or songs, both offer their own kind of 'foreplay'
and work hard to make the subject matter of sex meaty enough
to sustain a show.
For my money, however, The
Shape of Things is the only play to really lick the subject
of sex into a dramatic form. Neil LaBute's latest is all about
a nerd who doesn't realise he's a pretty girl's art installation
and falls victim to her romantic power games. This is the second
play this year to take inspiration from Shaw's Pygmalion, though
you wouldn't know it from the hype as inflated as Martine McCutcheon's
throat surrounding Trevor Nunn's My Fair Lady. La Bute's
has its own star, the lovely Rachel Weisz, but it's not her who
stirs the audience so much as the play's questioning of how far
artists should be allowed to use other human beings as raw material
for their work.
The
10 Do's and Don'ts of Theatreland
- Helena Thompson's
vital tips to avoid making a crisis out a drama
1. DO -Grab a cast list.
2. DON'T buy a program,
and definitely don't buy more than one.
West End maverick Cameron Mackintosh may not be producing many
more new musicals, but he is in the business of over-charging
you for programmes and churning out the same pile of adverts
with a different cover for all eleven of his shows.
Whether it's the brilliant
Blue/Orange or the awful Notre-Dame de Paris on the front, these
programmes treat you to the same interviews with drama queens
like Thelma Holt and Maureen Lipman (or the same list of Lloyd
Webber's favourite foody hang outs, which gets a bit bland after
the first read if you're short of cash).
Fortunately Sir Cameron is
not too proud to take the lead from the Royal Shakespeare Company
and the National by supplying cast lists (a single sheet giving
you the who-plays-who-low-down) as a cash-free alternative. If
all you're after is the name of some fine thesp, then don't part
with a penny.
3. DO stay in bed if you're
ill, and if you make it to the theatre be sure to check if there's
an interval.
Theatres are full of fine old folk who've saved up for a night
out but tend to fall asleep. This means that arriving at the
theatre with so much as a cough is likely to wake up those who
need their shut eye and send you home sicker than when you arrived.
4. DON'T go to the theatre
with a cough or diarrhea, or dash to the loo during the performance.
Loo-goers also be warned. The Royal Shakespeare Company and the
National have guard-like ushers paid to keep such folk from scampering
back to their seat, as do all the West End theatres in Cameron
Mackintosh's Really Useful theatre company. These keepers of
theatreland will keep you waiting for twenty minutes at a time
until the next scene change, which could mean forfeiting some
serious onstage action.
5. DO seek out the site-specific.
6. DON'T waste your time
looking for historic homes to long-standing companies.
Here's a stage whisper for
you… the Company is dead. In the optimistic 1960s the Royal
Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre placed a high value
on the company ethos, but these days those young thesps planning
to grow old in each others' company are few and far between.
Given the more lucrative possibilities of television, commercials
and Hollywood, few actors are prepared to commit to the theatre
long-term, turning the word 'company' into a lower case word
reserved for up and coming young things most likely found on
the edges of the fringe or in such haunts as deserted warehouses,
unusual art galleries, old churches and converted bus depots.
7. DO take your drinks in.
8. DON'T forget the plastic
cups.
Theatres seeking to subsidise their shows with extortionately
overpriced drinks have at least conceded to supplying punters
with plastic cups to take their drinks into the show. But if
your golden sovereigns are few and far between, you might be
better off popping round the corner to the local pub. Plus, those
who frequent these cheaper establishments can make a safe bet
way they'll meet the cast after the show.
9. DO queue for returns.
10. DON'T expect to sell
a free ticket on the door.
Theatres aren't clubs and plays aren't gigs. However unusual
the venue, tickets get returned to the theatre then resold by
the box office (old fashioned as this sounds, it does squeeze
out the middle man and keep down the cost of a spontaneous night
out at the theatre). And if you're still in education, don't
forget about student standbys - at around 10UKP a pop for the
likes of An Inspector Calls or Hamlet, these tickets aren't just
a great way to study up on the classics, but a genuine bargain.
Long
Plays' Journey Out Of Sight
- Helena Thompson
investigates the growing trend for shorter and shorter dramas
Disappearing intervals, shrinking
stage time, mini-plays popping up faster than the curtain falls
- it's not just those wacky installation artists but the West
End, festival promoters and the general public who are cutting
Theatreland down to size with their dwindling attention spans.
"In the past people would
have wandered in and out of long performances and talked to each
other. Audiences will no longer put up with unnatural silences
for so long," says forward-thinking Tom Morris, artistic
director for the Battersea Arts Centre where cheap, snappy theatre
attracts a young, quick-witted audience.
But those with cash to burn
will have difficulty purchasing more than eighty minutes drama
of an evening. Few familiar with Theatreland could fail to stumble
on Yasmina Reza's hit comedy Art, a succinct 70 minutes of entertainment
- or the Reduced Shakespeare Company's record 37 plays in 97
minutes. Unless they're still recovering from Caryl Churchill's
bleak Far Away, that is, a 45 minute dramatic explosion guaranteed
to shatter you conscience. And even those with a taste for tragedy
will be surprised to find Medea (below right) at the Queen's
far from wallowed in self-pity at an interval-free 150 minutes.
Certainly festivals share this
taste for the short-but-sweet. If you can hold off blinking,
you may have seen the 180 second, It's Your Film, at last year's
Mime Festival. Or wandered through a cemetery where over 40 installation
pieces were on show for just three hours as part of the Stoke
Newington Festival. Or watched Human Remains (below right) which
featured as part of the Rivington Gallery's annual festivities.
In fact the increasing prestige
attached to festivals of this kind accounts for the popularity
of what could more fairly be described as an event than a play.
Stoke Newington has a hefty UKP10,000 to spend on next year's
festival, while the London International Festival of Theatre
is now in a position to coordinate projects year-round.
The LIFT festival really took
off this year, concocting a heady mix of installations, lectures
and events from the likes of young company SHUNT (below right)that
ranged from a 50 minute cruise down the River Thames to a one-hour
one-woman show in a church, and throwing in a smorgasboard of
dance and cabaret acts and live DJs aboard the HMS Pinafore boat
for good measure.
What's more, the long-standing
Edinburgh Festival has a not-so-lengthy average show time of
less than an hour, in comparison to the 90 minutes punters five
years back had come to expect. "Lots of people come to get
as much of the festival experience as possible… They want
to be able to take in four shows in an afternoon," says
a spokesperson for the Edinburgh fringe.
But if there's a price to pay,
it's the question of whether such shows of brevity warrant the
entrance sum. "I hate to spend twice as long getting to
the theatre as I do in it," says Sandy Harper, a rural dweller
disappointed by artists who take their cue from the likes of
Beckett, a cult figure whose 30 second Breath has gone down in
theatre history.
Few would challenge the craftsmanship
of the man whose Waiting for Godot is studied worldwide - but
to find established artists like Steven Berkoff misguidedly under-developing
their dramas' characters (The Secret Love-Life Of Ophelia condenses
Shakespeare's great tragedy into a paltry 80 minutes) is the
wrong sort of tragic.
So whatever happened to the
'epic', one of the buzz-words of current theatre? On the one
hand, the Royal Shakespeare Company's mounting of the Bard's
history plays turned out to be a marathon well worth running.
On the other, shows with hefty subject matter like Mick Gordon's
Love Works at the Gate or Indhu Rhubasingham's 140 minute retelling
of The Ramayana, or even Pinter's two hour version of Proust's
landmark novel, Remembrance of Things Past - were billed as extravaganzas
when actually they distilled lengthier works.
 Market
forces, apparently, favour the miniature. But those in the industry
agree there should be room for the play that simply takes its
time. I just hope people don't forget those plays like Pinter's
The Caretaker (right) or Eugene O'Neill's Long Days journey into
Night - there are some haunting dramas that ought to last, regardless
of their length.
Drama in an hour
- Stage stuff for the busy
* The Royal Court's double
bill of Mountain Language and Ashes to Ashes pairs two of Pinter's
briefest works to date in a vision of political and domestic
hell sure to send a short, sharp shiver down the spine.
*Forced Entertainment's infamous
Starfucker orbits many a performance festival with twenty merciless
minutes of highly charged insults that put Hollywood stars to
shame and make other highlights of the London International Festival
of Theatre (like the fifty-minute river cruise up the Cherry
Garden Pier in Bermondsey) look positively indulgent. This mini-masterpiece
deserves a lengthy tour.
* Devised pieces like Frantic
Assembly's excellent Hymns stick to a resonant seventy minutes
- catch this and you'll be singing the company's praises.
*Yasmina Reza's hit comedy
Art packs a punch in just over sixty minutes. Ever economical,
Reza's knack is for suggesting far more than her characters say.
*If brevity is the soul of
wit, The Reduced Shakespeare Company's record 37 plays in 97
minutes put the Bard to shame.
Dead
Good Performances
-The Stoke Newington Festival
ressurects a Victorian Cemetery
If memories could come to life, they would choose a graveyard
as their place of residence - or so argue those determined to
explore how we recall. Illogical as it may sound, these practically
minded artists have real reason for choosing North London's biggest
cemetery, Abney Park in Stoke Newington, as their performance
space.
'These are real time events
about the act of being forgotten,' says Anthony Hampton who together
with Silvia Mercuriali forms rotozaza, a young company who take
their name from a sculpture by Jean Tinguely. The aesthetically-minded
duo made quite an impression at The British Festival of Visual
Theatre last year, where their piece of autotheatre, 'Bloke,'
explored the meaning of masculinity and the question of free
will by requiring a random bloke from the audience to respond
to imperatives relayed over the tannoy.
But what's currently on Hampton's
mind is rotozaza's latest piece, World Service, planned for this
weekend as part of the Stoke Newington Festival. Hampton and
Mercuriali are the unifying force behind a collaboration involving
over sixty international artists including the infamously interactive
company, Shunt. Hampton says what he's enjoyed most is meeting
with the artists in Abney Park Cemetery and basically brainstorming
the possibilities thrown up by such an overgrown location. He
explains that over two months the performance piece he now calls
a marvellous monster went from strength to strength. Riot police,
polar bears, electronic birdsongs and suicide victims are just
some of the delights in World Service's Pandora's Box of graveyard
performances.
Of course rotozaza are not alone in targeting unusual performance
spaces or uniting international performers. Even the straight-laced
Covent Garden theatre festival hosted outdoor performances of
Charley's Aunt and Pinocchio a few weeks ago, and the London
International Festival of Theatre (where rotozaza will be performing
a new piece aboard the HMS president in Blackfriars) reaches
unusual venues like the Theatre Museum and St Luke's Church.
What is distinctive about rotozaza is the space they leave for
the audience's imagination. As Hampton enthuses about violent
cracks, gaping holes, words that hang out of context, necessary
guessing and general desanctification, he reveals that mystery
is something to rotozaza seeks to preserve. In striving to turn
epitaphs into performance, World Service stays true to the company's
conviction that collaboration makes a project more its parts.
'Whatever happens from 10pm
on June 22 and 23 it'll be the largest and most insanely ambitious
single art event to happen in London for a long time,' says Hampton
with an enigmatic grin.
The
Direct Route
-Helena Thompson lets theatre
director Indhu Rubasingham tell it like it is
INDHU RUBASINGHAM is the kind
of star you want to believe in. Her acclaimed Birmingham production
of the Ramayana recently transferred to the National, and Rubasingham
has been busy ever since rehearsing contemporary plays. Sitting
on her Finsbury Park roof she has genuine cause to positively
beam.
"The Ramayana the second
time around is the show I'm most proud of ," she asserts
(and that's saying something, judging by the success of previous
shows like Roy William's award winning The Gift and her acclaimed
production of Tanika Gupta's The Waiting Room). She smiles at
the memory of staging the heroic tale South Asians have been
passing on for 2500 years.
Not that it's been easy. In
fact it was the challenge of the Ramayana that Rubasingham says
she loves, referring to the collaborative and holistic approach
she and her cast took to staging a tale as dramatically problematic
as its protagonist's monkey-ridden quest. And she is not ashamed
to admit that first time round not all the actors supported the
unusual techniques required to retell to Asians a story full
of ten headed monsters completely alien to most British theatre
goers. Ever candid, she describes the role of the director within
the theatre industry as an air traffic controller-barrister hybrid.
"You have to be sure no one crashes, and you always have
to make your case," she explains.
For Indhu knows not to be fulhardy.
She says she owes a lot to directors as varied as Ang Lee and
Neil Barktlet, and cites the filmic qualities which would alienate
so many stage directors as a genuine strength in the current
play she is directing (Roy Williams' Clubland for the Royal Court).
Diversity and talent are to her the most important qualities
within the theatre industry - "plus you need people who
know what they're talking about," she adds wryly.
And she's had her share of
prejudice. Born in England to Sri Lankan parents and one of the
youngest directors to find her way to the National, Indhu Rubasingham
is repeatedly assumed to be male by the press. Furthermore, it
is only now after over ten successful stagings of Asian plays
that she has been offered the work of a writer in the British
canon (she directs Sir David Hare's The Secret Rapture as part
of the forthcoming Chichester festival). Yet the woman who started
her directing career on an Arts Council bursary to the forward
thinking Theatre Royal Stratford East has few gripes." I
was attracted to the theatre industry as a way of exploring and
expressing myself, and I've not been disappointed," she
says.
Here I am, poised to reveal
the racial prejudices riddling the theatre industry and Indhu's
teaching a philosophy beyond either Asian spirituality or British
stage theory. In a last ditch attempt, I ponder whether artistic
directors or funding bodies are the real culprits when it comes
to stereotypes of skin, and ask her who decides how freelance
directors are pidgeon-holed. "You do," she laughs.
Clubland opens at the Royal
Court Friday June 15.
Box office: 020 7565 5000
Having a Blast
-Helena Thompson discusses
Sarah Kane's work with assistant director Joe Hill-Gibbins
Dead babies, eye-sucking, anal
rape - all in a day's work for Joe Hill-Gibbins, and yet the
twenty three year old looks happy and fulfilled. As assistant
director to James MacDonald on the Royal Court's revival of the
late Sarah Kane's debut, Blasted, he is more than familiar with
the grittiest moments of what the Daily Mirror originally deemed,
"the vilest play ever."
"From an actor's point
of view it's pretty remorseless," he says with a chuckle,
"It starts bad and it gets a whole lot worse." And
any one who's seen the 150 minute play critics are busy reappraising
in the wake of Kane's suicide will agree. The opening of the
play in a Leeds hotel room where a bigoted journalist has brought
a young girl for sex literally explodes into a vision of human
depravity. "We wanted to really blow the play apart this
time," says Gibbins.
The result is a production
whose macabre mixture of humour and horror has delighted as many
as it has horrified. Judging by Gibbins' gesticulations (so wild
he looks as if he might explode himself) the play inspires him
with downright glee. Even the fact that Edward Bond, one of Kane's
greatest influences, hated the current production because he
refused to see the funny side of Kane's writing makes Gibbins
laugh.
But his explanation of Kane's
humour is controlled. "Watching a man who desperately wants
to kill himself is very cruel but it is funny too that he is
left at the mercy of a die-hard optimist," he explains.
And at the mention of those characters with whom he has spent
the past five days in rehearsal, Gibbins' arm waving subdues.
"There are elements of Ian's crude charm, Cate's strength
under pressure, and even the soldier's desperate tenderness which
I didn't see on first reading," he says.
For it's less the comedy or
brutality of the writing than the subtlety that really moves
him. "Kane said in interview that Blasted was influenced
by Pinter, Bond and Beckett - but I wish she hadn't. Nothing
about her writing is clear cut." Gibbins compares her with
the poetic playwright Sam Shepherd, citing the ying-and-yang
nature of her characters' relationship and the opacity of the
language as qualities their writing shares.
The glint in his eye returns
as he warms to the theme of Kane's linguistically challenging
script. He passes on anecdotes from the rehearsal room of "Cleansed,"
one of the last of Kane's plays to be staged during her lifetime
: " they did this exercise and came up with as many as seven
different meanings for a line, which Sarah said was fine - then
she told them she expected them to express all seven."
Gibbins' timing in the telling
of this joke is impeccable. Small wonder he cites Kane's punctuation
as a strength in her writing (as does Sarah's brother Simon who
attended all the rehearsals as he fine-combed her text for a
production of Methuen "Complete Plays"). Not that either
he or the text as he sees it labour the cerebral. "One of
the most striking qualities of Kane's writing is that she tells
a story using images as much as words," he says - and pauses.
"She wrote very carefully,"
he continues, before arguing with calm precision that what Kane
was reacting against was the journalistic kind of play that set
itself up as a kind of forum for debate. "This isn't an
ideological construct," he says, " In smashing together
peace time and civil war she transcends the specifics of the
Bosnian crisis."
And now he's stopped smiling.
He refers to her final play, 4.48, completed with no stage directions
or characters two days before she killed herself, as the logical
conclusion to her work. "I don't hold with the idea that
she was a young playwright who needed to blossom. I think she
was already there," he says.
The under-twenties with whom
'Blasted' has been particularly popular over the last few weeks
would seem to support this theory, and Gibbins says the educational
workshops focussing on Kane's work have been packed. Certainly
audiences have laughed a lot at the black humour of MacDonald's
interpretation. "Young people are always drawn to what's
vile and disgusting," says Gibbins cheekily - before adding
in all seriousness, "this is a play that will last."
The Sarah Kane festival
continues at the Royal Court until June 9
Sites for sore
Bums
-Helena Thompson digs deep
to unearth the grass roots of future cult theatre
Boo-hissing the baddy and eyeballing
the actor may have seen their day - but audience participation
remains a popular pastime. That's if the enthusiasm for the sorts
of shows favouring the railway bridge over the proscenium arch
is anything to go by.
"Most
of our audience wouldn't be seen dead in conventional theatres,"
says David Rosenberg of Shunt, whose cabarets under Bethnal
Green railway arches have built up a strong word-of-mouth reputation
and a hefty award collection. Their latest typically interactive
show, The Tennis Game (right), secured critical acclaim
for its slant-eyed look at male-female relations, and nimbly
side stepped theatrical clichés by pushing at the sorts
of dramatic boundaries that set audiences at a comfortable distance
from performance.
Judging by their after-show
discussions, Shunt's supporters aren't too bothered whether Daldry
succeeds Nunn, or Jeffrey Archer forgets his lines, and when
it comes to the names of great stars remain positively anaemic.
Yet they remember every detail of the inexpensive sightscapes
that characterize London Bubble theatre company's outdoor
tours. And they're perfectly willing to swap two pounds at the
door for a candle to be exchanged for a beer before following
performers into the middle of a naked tennis match.
Shunt are a company after my own heart. As a young
dramatist who publicised her first play by turning a tube station
into a club and transferred her next two from traditional venues
to non-traditional performance spaces, I take my cue from their
unusual brand of theatre as experience. And I'm not the only
one.
There are other collectives
of performers adapting to non-theatre venues. Since launching
in 1998, the provocatively named, The Museum of… has
not only staged two of Shunt's performances, but bombarded
punters with a text of 2000 questions and led them through the
crumbling corridors of Alice in Wonderland's imagination, to
mention but a few of their interactive ventures. Then there's
the deserted warehouse of Three Mills Island where shows
like Sarah Chew's ghostly Down by the Greenwood Side have
been tapping into the empty eeriness of the place to give chilling
promenade performances since late last year.
More established companies
have also begun to think beyond the confines of the established
stage. Fans of Cirque du Soleil would no more blink at
the prospect of travelling to Battersea Power Station to see
their latest show than they would close their eyes to one of
the company's dance or acrobatic stunts. Neither have the artistic
directors of the Almeida Theatre flinched at its current
state of disrepair. Instead, they have determined to use the
watery venue to evoke the world of Shakespeare's island drama,
The Tempest.
"This is our way of terrifying
ourselves anew," says director Jonathon Kent. His prophetic
words echo round the building with more conviction than the speeches
delivered to the passive audiences of some stale West End shows.
Those who dare to follow his lead will find themselves no longer
sitting, but standing in the undiscovered country of site-specific
theatre.
How all the world became
a stage
1932
Sydney Carroll and Robert Atkins found Regent's Park Outdoor
Theatre, later to stage the work of the New Shakespeare
Company. Over the years established artists ranging from
Vivian Leigh to Felicity Kendal to Jeremy Irons perform here.
All productions are adapted to a natural, low-tech environment.
1953
Festivals of British theatre in Edinburgh and Chichester encourage
street performances, and Joan Littlewood's theatre workshops
gain critical acclaim. Influenced by avante-garde absurdist practitioners
in France, she devises dramatic work suitable for non-traditional
venues.
1997
The New Ambassadors' Theatre is renovated to suit the
needs of theatre companies specializing in physical theatre.
Hitherto restricted by inflexible West End theatres, experimental
young companies like Frantic Assembly, Shared Experience and
Theatre de Complicite thrive in this new performance space.
1998
A group of young performers trained in mime and circus found
the theatre company, Shunt. They regularly perform interactive
cabarets beneath Bethnal Green Railway Arches.
1999
Acclaimed directors like Annie Castledine (Spoonface Steinberg)
describe themselves in the Directors' Guild as 'site-specific'
practitioners.
2000
Producers at the established Almeida theatre opt for dilapidated
Gainsborough Studios for their ghostly staging of Coriolanus
and Richard III. Ralph Fiennes stars.
Site specific theatre coming
soon
Feb 4 - March 4
Shunt will be performing their Ballad of Bobby Francois
at the Drome beneath London Bridge.
until Feb 17
The Tempest, Shakespeare's
stormy drama about the relinquishment of art, finds a natural
home in the flooded relic of the Almeida theatre.
from March
Wedekind's provocative Lulu takes up residence in the
old coach station at King's Cross. Anna Friel stars.
By 2003
Having set up tent for their acclaimed show, Quidam, the
ground-breaking Cirque du Soleil intend to make Battersea
power station their permanent home. Their current show Quidam
continues until Feb 4.
What Women
Want
-Helena Thompson
ponders the plays of the fairer sex
''Men use the exit doors as
public lavatories'' - a telling comment on the state of British
theatre as voiced by Sir Cameron Mackintosh at the end of the
Theatre 2001 conference. Not one I intended to dwell on as I
reached for a few of my favourite plays and prepared to enjoy
drama from the comfort of home. But that's when I started making
some criticisms of my own.
Now there's no need to judge
a book by its cover but quite why Shelagh Stevenson's award winning
The Memory of Water and Helen Blakeman's remarkable debut
Caravan get lumbered with small time publishers like Samuel
French and Nick Hern while prestigious Faber and Faber plump
for the likes of Mark Ravenhill (Some Explicit Polaroids)
and Stephen Jeffreys (The Libertine) remains a head scratching
matter. After all the girls' plays are no less performable than
their glossy male shelf sharers.
A quick survey of the London
theatre scene shows that an extra x-chromosome far from hampers
script writing. Caryl Churchill made her reputation as a politically
sensitive writer and Sarah Kane's darkly poetic plays are due
for a revival at the Royal Court. Mean time Bryony Lavery's exuberant
The Wedding Story went down a storm at the Soho theatre
while Charlotte Jones recently won the Blackburn award for her
time-jumping In Flame.
Not that you'd guesse these
writers had much in common unless you met them. Gender aside,
all that unites them is a heady combination of difference and
determination. Only after penning over twenty plays has Caryl
Churchill earnt her right to paint the kind of portentous vision
that could brand a first-time playwright pretentious. Jones'
debut dutifully worked its way to the West End via the Bush -
and it took suicide to secure Sarah Kane a good review.
Of course the perseverance
of the old boys who have become the staple diet of Britain's
theatre institutions the RSC and the National is to be admired.What
they've spawned, however, is a safe little club of derivative
writers ever further from challenging the status quo. Alistair
Beaton's Feelgood is timely enough (an all-powerful press
officer and a sychophantic prime minister stage a culture of
media manipulation) - but it adheres to the well-made play formula
Ibsen set in stone decades ago. And Joe Penhall's issue-bashing
Blue/Orange, merrily transferring to the West End, has
more than a little in common with box office hits Oleanna
and Speed-the-Plow, both exploring psychological territory
and polarising an audience with issues of political correctness.
"That's what you do. You take someone else's model and you
appropriate it yourself," says Penhall.
Well if these guys were the
only ones holding up the mirror to modern life, our eclectic
existences would be dismally misrepresented. By contrast, Shelagh
Stevenson's Ancient Lights takes on the topical business
of critiquing our media crazed celebrity infatuation, whilst
her Experiment with an Air Pump questions how far science
can be pushed. Likewise, Helen Blakeman's Normal and Caravan
give a language to recent history by staging issues at once timeless
and topical like child abuse, incest and adultery. April de Angelis,
whose brilliant The Positive Hour questions where feminism
has landed us, makes the daring observation, "Men who dare
to write differently are seen as eccentrically intelligent. Women
are seen as mad."
It's women who have really
spearheaded contemporary writing trends. Cue - the return of
verse drama, as heralded by Joanna Lawrence's The Three Birds
at the Gate and Kathleen Oliver 's Swollen Tongues at
the BAC, both of which contemporised poetry as a fresh new dramatic
mode. As to our currently dwindling attention span, Kane and
Churchill are pretty economical in their packaging of current
affairs. Sixty minute Blasted set a businessman and his
girl down in a Bosnia hotel while fifty minute Far Away
dramatised a utopic vision of the future and raised money for
Palestinian theatres into the bargain.
Female playwrights are disturbing
traditional narratives in a way that Beaton, Mamet and Penhall
do not. Even playwrights like Marber (whose Closer reveals
an acute sensitivity to the modern relationship) or Ravenhill,
with his eye for the rituals of a dysfunctional society, have
failed to play so effectively with time, space and language.
Women can't stop punters pissing against stage doors - but they
may have signposted the future of theatre.
Much ado about
2001
-Spid our theatre critic
compares last year's theatre scene with dramas to come
The traditionally well-made
play may have had its day, but British drama is alive and kicking.
This year London luvvies took a few risks, and landed on their
feet.
The Gate's willingness to convert its little
black box into a mini-amphitheatre let Joanna Lawrence's The
Three Birds really take flight. Inspired by Sophocles' fragments
but crammed full of modern imagery, her debut heralds the return
of verse drama. Mean time a safety net of supportive new and
old venues nurtured this ethos of daring to be different. Matthew
Bourne's The Car Man marks his company's forthcoming residency
at the Old Vic, while Cirque du Soleil's giant
tent by Battersea Power Station looks set to outlive their current
Quidam show. Most notable is The Royal Court's return
to Sloane Square. Its doors opened to Conor McPherson's Dublin
Carol, whose bare-walled set showed the building in all its
naked glory.
Even the West End took the
odd gamble with two shows that are still going strong. In welcoming
Macaulay Culkin onto the London stage, the new play
Madame Melville showed that with the right cast a star-studded
play can still be a quietly poignant affair. At the other extreme
the unknown duo in Stones in his Pockets look set to give
Hollywood a run for its money with their clever critique of the
film industry.
The Millennium's dramatic trends
continue to strut their stuff by nurturing that coveted dramatic
ingredient - surprise. Having established himself as the voice
of previously silenced Irish drama, Conor McPherson not only
graces the New Ambassador's from February 15 with his
new play Port Authority, but is tweaking Beckett's Endgame
to suit the big screen.
And adaptations remain all
the rage. Not content with turning La Ronde into the critically
acclaimed The Blue Room, David Hare takes on Chekhov's
Platonov for the Almeida to stage in a King's Cross depot.
After they've staged Wedekind's Lulu starring Anna Friel, that
is. Stage whispers that Nicole Kidman will appear at The National
and De Niro in Art suggest screen actors are as keen
as ever for a taste of the London stage.
So this year it's left to the
Royal Shakespeare Company to uphold some notion of dramatic
tradition. People called Peter remain prominent as ever, with
Peter Brook and Peter Hall taking on the mammoth tasks of directing
the Henry VI trilogy and John Barton's Trojan War
verse plays respectively, each an epic ten hours. For those with
less time to spare the company is also premiering the work of
Peter Whelan and Peter Barnes.
Yet even the RSC is
staging a couple of noh plays. As film and theatre cross-fertilize
and the most established companies look to the traditions of
other countries, London theatre 2001 promises to be a breeding
ground for new forms.
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