I probably know 12TH NIGHT better than any other Shakespeare play. I have directed it three times. I know its strengths and its pitfalls for a contemporary audience. I have also seen dozens of productions of the play and am always fascinated with directors' approaches to it. So I looked forward to Peter Hall's new production at the National Theatre.
What does one make of a virtually laugh-free TWELFTH NIGHT? Is the problem with the play or with the production? The National Theatre invited Peter Hall, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, to do a production of his choice. He chose to do TWELFTH NIGHT in the small Cottesloe Theatre with his daughter, Rebecca Hall, as Viola. It is not surprising that this TWELFTH NIGHT focused more on Viola than most productions. Yes, she is at the center of the play, but other characters are as important. Hall is such a wonderful, charismatic actress that one would have to surround her with stronger personalities than the ones Hall chose for the play to be in balance.
TWELFTH NIGHT is the last of the joyful comedies before Shakespeare's work became darker and more complex. It contains elements of happy earlier works like THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (twins, mistaken identities, farce elements) and AS YOU LIKE IT (girl disguised as boy, proxy courtship, love at first sight, clown), but far more beautiful poetry. AS YOU LIKE IT and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING are more prose heavy. One remembers the lovely verse of TWELFTH NIGHT. More than the earlier comdies, there's a sense of danger here, a sense that there's a dark side to the laughter. The crucial thing for any director is to find the balance between dark and light. There was little light in this production. I have read of productions from half a century ago that emphasized the melancholy of the play. Peter Hall, who has been directing since the nineteen-fifties, seems still to be a proponent of that kind of production. It was clearly spoken, but dull in places.
What went wrong? One can begin with the casting of Orsino and Olivia. The first scene sets the tone for the play. If Orsino is lugubrious, if the actor and director don't see his silliness, the play starts off on the wrong foot. Orsino's poetry verges on bathos. It's all overdone. He calls for excess. TWELFTH NIGHT is about excess -- Orsino's self indulgent emotion, Olivia's excessive grieving (covering the walls with tear-making brine is silly excess). Toby's excessive drinking, Malvolio's excessive "self-regard." That excess has to be funny. We shouldn't take Orsino too seriously, but we should believe that Viola would fall in love with him. This dull, homely, tmiddle-aged Orsino would hardly inspire love in a relatively sane teenage girl. I believe the excesses of the characters in TWELFTH NIGHT are the excesses of youth. It is clear from the text that Viola and her twin brother are adolescents. It is also clear that Olivia and Orsino are young. Otherwise why is Olivia still unmarried? So why did we have a middle-aged Orsino and a matronly Olivia? Amanda Drew spoke Olivia's lines clearly, but there never was a character there. The dreary Orsino and Olivia fought the comic potential of their characters.
I don't totally blame the production for the fact that the more comic characters didn't elicit much laughter. Their scenes get tiresome. Simon Paisley Day found no humor in Malvolio which is a valid way to play him, but not a very enjoyable one. Hall is right in asserting in the 1960 essay reprinted in the program that Malvolio should not be a sympathetic character, but can't he still be a figure of fun? Simon Callow was a charming Sir Toby. Sir Andrew was too good-looking, but sweet. He was, if anything, too sympathetic to be funny. Hall obviously wanted his comic actors to be believable in a realistic sense, but a lot of TWELFTH NIGHT is farce, and if the comic scenes aren't funny, what's their point? I totally disagree with how Maria was portrayed. Sir Toby might be a drunk, but he is also a snob which is why he so despises Malvolio's assumptions of a higher social position than he deserves. If Maria (Finty Williams, Judi Dench's daughter) is played as a common serving wench rather than a Lady-in-Waiting, why would Toby associate with her? She isn't Doll Tearsheet. And who is Fabian supposed to be? One of the problems in the play is that Fabian pops up halfway through the play with no introduction. It is important to establish him visually earlier so we know his role in Olivia's household. I don't think Toby consorts with servants, so he must have a higher social position. This Fabian seemed to be some sort of yeoman farmer.
The most controversial casting for critics has been the elderly David Ryall as Feste. Hall states in his 1960 essay (I repeat the date of this essay because I think Hall's ideas about the play were fixed half a century ago) that Feste is "bitter, insecure, singing the old half-forgotten songs to the Duke, . . . his jokes now tarnished and not very successful." This may be a valid reading of Feste, but it is not a very entertaining one. The Fool in KING LEAR is bitter, but still funny. This jester isn't good company and can't even sing.
Any energy this production had depended on Rebecca Hall, a beautiful, charismatic actress. Her Viola didn't have much of a sense of humor. I think Shakespeare and Viola see the humor in Olivia's love for her as well as the similarity in Olivia's hopeless love and hers for Orsino. Here it was dead serious.
Hall seemed to be skittish about Antonio's love for Sebastian. Has Sebastian reciprocated? Since Ben Mansfield is far from being an adolescent, his Sebastian certainly would have understood Antonio's protestations of love. It all seemed very pre- gay liberation. If one is going to take characters' emotions as seriously as Hall does, then Antonio's love and loss of Sebastian should not be forced to the margins in the final scene.
It was nice to see a simple, intimate TWELFTH NIGHT. However, as an elderly person perhaps I shouldn't say this, but this was an elderly man's production of TWELFTH NIGHT, a youthful play about the silliness of youth and maturing into real, loving relationships. I watched the production unmoved and unamused.
TWELFTH NIGHT. Royal National Theatre Cottesloe Theatre. January 31, 2011.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Friday, 28 January 2011
GREENLAND at the National Theatre
Last summer the National presented Rupert Goold's enthralling production of Mike Bartlett's EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON. Here was a play that put ecological questions at the heart of a human story. Ecology was part of the larger question of how to live meaningfully in the chaotic post-modern world. Bartlett writes in the published text that the play is about excess and that is what the audience experienced. The play was also about recognizable characters one could care about as we followed the three-plus hour extravaganza. Why did the National felt it needed another theater piece on ecology this year? And why did it produce one that wasn't very good. Where the three-plus hours of EARTHQUAKES IN LONDON flew by, the two-hour GREENLAND seemed interminable.
Among other things, GREENLAND shows why plays written by committees are not a good idea. The program lists four playwrights: Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne. It may be possible for four playwrights to create a coherent theatrical experience, but this mishmash wasn't one of them. Episodes simply repeated themselves instead of developing. Characters (well, not quite characters) would step forward and deliver basically the same speech again and again. Scenes would seem more repetition than development. GREENLAND was also a lesson in the problems of writing a didactic play. The National Theatre audience is likely to be aware of and accept the idea of global warming. So why give them a two-hour intermissionless harangue. If you're going to write a polemical play, you need characters the audience cares about and you need a good argument. George Bernard Shaw, the master of this sort of play, always gave the best lines to the character you were supposed to disagree with. In other words, you have got to put your ideas into a play. GREENLAND got tiresome because it only presented one side of the issue and was only interested in the people who were fighting global warming. The interesting human story is of the majority of us who know we're heading for destruction but go on driving our cars and drinking out of plastic bottles. The real issue is that we have been so brainwashed as consumers that, like addicts, we can't live without the things that are destroying our world. That's the story to tell, preferably in an entertaining satiric mode with characters who aren't walking cliches. This was a tiresome two hours. People were walking out and I don't blame them. When you're preaching to the choir, make sure that you understand the form in which they will listen to you.
For all the faults in the script, director Beijan Shebani did all he could to turn it into a viable piece of theatre. I was mightily impressed with Shebani's production of OUR CLASS last season. Like GREENLAND, it was a politically charged ensemble piece but, unlike GREENLAND, it was a gripping script with three-dimensonal characters. There were visually beautiful moments in Shebani's production, particularly in the scenes in the Arctic which were the only really interesting scenes in the play. Among other bits of theatre magic, the production had the most impressive bear I have ever seen on stage. However, al the smoke and mirrors, projections, falling snow and rain can't hide a tedious script. Why were the actors heavily miked? I was in the fifth row and only heard the actors through the loudspeakers to my right.
A slightly tangential question -- do National Theatre audiences watch DEAL OR NO DEAL on tv? I don't but take it that the many scenes in which characters were carrying numbered red boxes were in some way referring to that show. Each time a young man gave basically the same speech -- at great length - about why he wanted to win. What was the point??
I haven't said much about the cast because they weren't given anything interesting to do. It was a waste of talents like Lyndsey Marshal. They danced, ran around a lot, flew, popped up out of trap doors, gave speeches, moved furniture. Lots of sound and fury. And lots of stuff falling onto the stage and, at the end, being blown into the auditorium. Perhaps these environmentally conscious folk should care about the cleaners who have to sweep up the mess the play left and the environmental impact of the trash the production created.
As one left the auditorium one confronted in the lobby a mock radio panel show on global warming. The moderator tried to interest the exiting audience members in participating. Everyone ran for the hills. Perhaps they should have had a panel discussion on the perils of producing a committee-created, one sided polemical play.
GREENLAND. National Theatre Lyttleton Theatre. January 27, 2011.
Among other things, GREENLAND shows why plays written by committees are not a good idea. The program lists four playwrights: Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne. It may be possible for four playwrights to create a coherent theatrical experience, but this mishmash wasn't one of them. Episodes simply repeated themselves instead of developing. Characters (well, not quite characters) would step forward and deliver basically the same speech again and again. Scenes would seem more repetition than development. GREENLAND was also a lesson in the problems of writing a didactic play. The National Theatre audience is likely to be aware of and accept the idea of global warming. So why give them a two-hour intermissionless harangue. If you're going to write a polemical play, you need characters the audience cares about and you need a good argument. George Bernard Shaw, the master of this sort of play, always gave the best lines to the character you were supposed to disagree with. In other words, you have got to put your ideas into a play. GREENLAND got tiresome because it only presented one side of the issue and was only interested in the people who were fighting global warming. The interesting human story is of the majority of us who know we're heading for destruction but go on driving our cars and drinking out of plastic bottles. The real issue is that we have been so brainwashed as consumers that, like addicts, we can't live without the things that are destroying our world. That's the story to tell, preferably in an entertaining satiric mode with characters who aren't walking cliches. This was a tiresome two hours. People were walking out and I don't blame them. When you're preaching to the choir, make sure that you understand the form in which they will listen to you.
For all the faults in the script, director Beijan Shebani did all he could to turn it into a viable piece of theatre. I was mightily impressed with Shebani's production of OUR CLASS last season. Like GREENLAND, it was a politically charged ensemble piece but, unlike GREENLAND, it was a gripping script with three-dimensonal characters. There were visually beautiful moments in Shebani's production, particularly in the scenes in the Arctic which were the only really interesting scenes in the play. Among other bits of theatre magic, the production had the most impressive bear I have ever seen on stage. However, al the smoke and mirrors, projections, falling snow and rain can't hide a tedious script. Why were the actors heavily miked? I was in the fifth row and only heard the actors through the loudspeakers to my right.
A slightly tangential question -- do National Theatre audiences watch DEAL OR NO DEAL on tv? I don't but take it that the many scenes in which characters were carrying numbered red boxes were in some way referring to that show. Each time a young man gave basically the same speech -- at great length - about why he wanted to win. What was the point??
I haven't said much about the cast because they weren't given anything interesting to do. It was a waste of talents like Lyndsey Marshal. They danced, ran around a lot, flew, popped up out of trap doors, gave speeches, moved furniture. Lots of sound and fury. And lots of stuff falling onto the stage and, at the end, being blown into the auditorium. Perhaps these environmentally conscious folk should care about the cleaners who have to sweep up the mess the play left and the environmental impact of the trash the production created.
As one left the auditorium one confronted in the lobby a mock radio panel show on global warming. The moderator tried to interest the exiting audience members in participating. Everyone ran for the hills. Perhaps they should have had a panel discussion on the perils of producing a committee-created, one sided polemical play.
GREENLAND. National Theatre Lyttleton Theatre. January 27, 2011.
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
BECKY SHAW
I had the pleasure of reading Gina Gionfriddo's BECKY SHAW and seeing its New York production while I was on the Pulitzer Prize drama jury. The jury had no difficulty making BECKY SHAW one of its three finalists for the prize that year (2009). It has reached London in a production by the director of the New York production (Peter DuBois) and one of the original cast members and received raves from most of the critics. A second viewing only confirms my enthusiasm for the play.
In the simplest terms, BECKY SHAW is a quintessentially American play is focusing on a dysfunctional family. What it does brilliantly is confront serious issues through comedy. We begin with an odd family configuration in a typical domestic drama crisis. Suzanna's father has died and the family discovers not only that he squandered a great deal in poor business decisions, but that he and his business partner were lovers. Four months after his death, his mother, suffering from multiple sclerosis, has taken a lover-caregiver who is, to put it mildly, a bit shady. The only daughter, Suzanna, is a thirty-one year old graduate student in psychology who has many issues of her own. The family fortune, such as it is, and domestic crises are handled by Max, who has lived with them since his mother died when he was ten. Max and Suzanna are, to put it mildly, very close. At the end of the first scene, it becomes sexual, at least for one night. Suzanna's response is to marry the first man she meets, a sweet, overly sentimental (pornography makes him cry) barista and would-be writer, Andrew. While they live in grad student poverty, Max gets rich as an investment counselor.
Max is really the central character in the play. Professionally successful, Max in his private life has no ability to dissemble. He says exactly what he thinks, no matter how hurtful. No relationship with a woman has lasted more than three months. A principal reason for this is his love of Suzanna.
Enter Becky Shaw as a blind date Suzanna and Andrew have arranged for Max. If Max is the central character, Becky is the catalyst for all the action in the second half of the play. Becky is needy, manipulative and tenacious. When Max dumps her after one disastrous date, Becky looks to Andrew for solace and sappy Andrew gets totally sucked into her black hole of need. Becky still believes she can get Max, who can't stand her, through her manipulation of Andrew. After her patently bogus suicide attempt, Max screams, "The nest time you attempt suicide, try harder." However, it isn't clear that he can avoid her. Becky becomes the litmus test by which the characters defend their sense of morality. Ardent feminist Andrew sees Becky as a victim who must be cared for. Suzanna wants her husband back, though she is really in love with Max. She has her own neediness and can only live with a strong man to protect her. She was devastated by the death of her father and needs Max's strength. Max is deeply loyal to the people he loves -- Suzanna and her mother -- but could care less about anyone else. Morality begins and ends at home for him. The only thing that all the characters share is a need for a loving relationship, however unstable. Max and Suzanna's mother claim not to believe in love, yet Max is devoted to Suzanna and her mother quickly found another man. The loving relationship they seek may or may not be sexual and sex is not necessarily a sign of love. Becky asks Max, "If you didn't want a relationship, why did you fuck me?" Ethically the question makes sense, but unfortunately that's not the way men always think. Is Becky's use of sex to hook a man for life any less ethical than Max's separation of sex and love.
This very funny play raises all sorts of issues about our responsibility beyond the people nearest to us. Is Max wrong for not caring about Iraq? Is Andrew ridiculous in feeling that Becky has become his reponsibility? In general Gionfriddo's sympathy seems to be with the most rational characters -- Max and Suzanna's mother.
One of the things I like best about the play is its non-ending. We're left without a resolution -- with a sense that the process will still be going on. Becky will not disappear. Max will still love Suzanna whose marriage to Andrew is far from satisfactory. The ends aren't neatly tied up at the final curtain.
As in New York, David Wilson Barnes's Max is the center of the play. He is the most complex, interesting character and Barnes totally inhabits him. His body language is as masterful as his comic timing. He's funny but also touching. The always terrific Hayden Gwynne plays the pragmatic mother brilliantly, a rock in a sea of neurosis. The other actors are appropriately irritating. Anna Madeley makes one see that Suzanna may be physically thirty-one but, like many graduate students, is still seventeen. Vincent Montuel is a bit too handsome and too young for the wimpy Andrew. Of course Suzanna would be drawn to this stunning guy who makes his first appearance shirtless, but in the context of the play Suzanna falls for Andrew because of his personality, not his looks. He is the opposite of Max. At first I was surprised at the casting of Daisy Haggard as Becky. She seemed ditzy in her first scene, but the New York Becky radiated neediness from her first appearance. However, as the play progressed, I totally bought that there was a neurotic strength that kept her going. She is totally focused on nabbing Max.
The pacing and character relationships were perfect, the sets (on a revolving stage) appropriate. The cheering audience brought the cast back on repeatedly at the end. This comedy of manners is deceptive. Under the laughs are really serious questions. I think the British love it because they are always drawn to characters like Max who breach all manners (an American Basil Fawlty). However, I think the play speaks more to the American sense of family responsibility and our belief that one is judged first and foremost by how one treats the people closest to them, not one's position on geopolitical issues.
It was great to see BECKY SHAW in an audience that had as many young people as old. When I saw it on a Saturday night at Second Stage in New York, the audience was totally geriatric -- the typical audience at a non-profit theatre in the Big Apple. Now I too am geriatric, but the future of theatre depends on a younger audience. It also make the energy of the theatrical experience more intense. Let's hope that the smaller non-profit theatres in London ca keep their prices low so young people still can affort to attend. The National Theatre is now as pricey as the West End, so one gets an older, well-heeled audience. The National Theatre should be the most affordable theatre in London.
BECKY SHAW by Gina Gionfriddo. Almeida Theatre. January 25, 2011.
In the simplest terms, BECKY SHAW is a quintessentially American play is focusing on a dysfunctional family. What it does brilliantly is confront serious issues through comedy. We begin with an odd family configuration in a typical domestic drama crisis. Suzanna's father has died and the family discovers not only that he squandered a great deal in poor business decisions, but that he and his business partner were lovers. Four months after his death, his mother, suffering from multiple sclerosis, has taken a lover-caregiver who is, to put it mildly, a bit shady. The only daughter, Suzanna, is a thirty-one year old graduate student in psychology who has many issues of her own. The family fortune, such as it is, and domestic crises are handled by Max, who has lived with them since his mother died when he was ten. Max and Suzanna are, to put it mildly, very close. At the end of the first scene, it becomes sexual, at least for one night. Suzanna's response is to marry the first man she meets, a sweet, overly sentimental (pornography makes him cry) barista and would-be writer, Andrew. While they live in grad student poverty, Max gets rich as an investment counselor.
Max is really the central character in the play. Professionally successful, Max in his private life has no ability to dissemble. He says exactly what he thinks, no matter how hurtful. No relationship with a woman has lasted more than three months. A principal reason for this is his love of Suzanna.
Enter Becky Shaw as a blind date Suzanna and Andrew have arranged for Max. If Max is the central character, Becky is the catalyst for all the action in the second half of the play. Becky is needy, manipulative and tenacious. When Max dumps her after one disastrous date, Becky looks to Andrew for solace and sappy Andrew gets totally sucked into her black hole of need. Becky still believes she can get Max, who can't stand her, through her manipulation of Andrew. After her patently bogus suicide attempt, Max screams, "The nest time you attempt suicide, try harder." However, it isn't clear that he can avoid her. Becky becomes the litmus test by which the characters defend their sense of morality. Ardent feminist Andrew sees Becky as a victim who must be cared for. Suzanna wants her husband back, though she is really in love with Max. She has her own neediness and can only live with a strong man to protect her. She was devastated by the death of her father and needs Max's strength. Max is deeply loyal to the people he loves -- Suzanna and her mother -- but could care less about anyone else. Morality begins and ends at home for him. The only thing that all the characters share is a need for a loving relationship, however unstable. Max and Suzanna's mother claim not to believe in love, yet Max is devoted to Suzanna and her mother quickly found another man. The loving relationship they seek may or may not be sexual and sex is not necessarily a sign of love. Becky asks Max, "If you didn't want a relationship, why did you fuck me?" Ethically the question makes sense, but unfortunately that's not the way men always think. Is Becky's use of sex to hook a man for life any less ethical than Max's separation of sex and love.
This very funny play raises all sorts of issues about our responsibility beyond the people nearest to us. Is Max wrong for not caring about Iraq? Is Andrew ridiculous in feeling that Becky has become his reponsibility? In general Gionfriddo's sympathy seems to be with the most rational characters -- Max and Suzanna's mother.
One of the things I like best about the play is its non-ending. We're left without a resolution -- with a sense that the process will still be going on. Becky will not disappear. Max will still love Suzanna whose marriage to Andrew is far from satisfactory. The ends aren't neatly tied up at the final curtain.
As in New York, David Wilson Barnes's Max is the center of the play. He is the most complex, interesting character and Barnes totally inhabits him. His body language is as masterful as his comic timing. He's funny but also touching. The always terrific Hayden Gwynne plays the pragmatic mother brilliantly, a rock in a sea of neurosis. The other actors are appropriately irritating. Anna Madeley makes one see that Suzanna may be physically thirty-one but, like many graduate students, is still seventeen. Vincent Montuel is a bit too handsome and too young for the wimpy Andrew. Of course Suzanna would be drawn to this stunning guy who makes his first appearance shirtless, but in the context of the play Suzanna falls for Andrew because of his personality, not his looks. He is the opposite of Max. At first I was surprised at the casting of Daisy Haggard as Becky. She seemed ditzy in her first scene, but the New York Becky radiated neediness from her first appearance. However, as the play progressed, I totally bought that there was a neurotic strength that kept her going. She is totally focused on nabbing Max.
The pacing and character relationships were perfect, the sets (on a revolving stage) appropriate. The cheering audience brought the cast back on repeatedly at the end. This comedy of manners is deceptive. Under the laughs are really serious questions. I think the British love it because they are always drawn to characters like Max who breach all manners (an American Basil Fawlty). However, I think the play speaks more to the American sense of family responsibility and our belief that one is judged first and foremost by how one treats the people closest to them, not one's position on geopolitical issues.
It was great to see BECKY SHAW in an audience that had as many young people as old. When I saw it on a Saturday night at Second Stage in New York, the audience was totally geriatric -- the typical audience at a non-profit theatre in the Big Apple. Now I too am geriatric, but the future of theatre depends on a younger audience. It also make the energy of the theatrical experience more intense. Let's hope that the smaller non-profit theatres in London ca keep their prices low so young people still can affort to attend. The National Theatre is now as pricey as the West End, so one gets an older, well-heeled audience. The National Theatre should be the most affordable theatre in London.
BECKY SHAW by Gina Gionfriddo. Almeida Theatre. January 25, 2011.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
TIGER COUNTRY
We were very impressed with Nina Raine's TRIBES at the Royal Court this past fall. She's a writer with a sure sense of theatre and an ear for sharp dialogue. So we were curious and excited about her new play, TIGER COuNTRY, now at the Hampstead Theatre. Raine studied directing as well as playwriting. This is her production of her work.
TIGER COUNTRY is about doctors in a large city hospital. Sound familiar? Can one write a play on this subject without echoing ER, GRAY'S ANATOMY and their UK brethren HOLBY CITY and CASUALTY? The answer is not totally. The fast moving play that cuts back and forth between short scenes seems at times like a television drama, particularly in the romantic, or should I say sexual, moments. The doctors are all heterosexual, of course. The young male doctors are all handsome, the young females attractive. I'm sure there are homely doctors as well as gay doctors. However, Raine has a particular focus, the balance of dedication and cynicism necessary for a person to survive as a doctor. Her central charater, Emily, is a young emergency room doctor who taes a rather sentimental attitude toward her work while her colleagues are more hard-hearted. She almost implodes when a young woman who has had a heart attack dies. In her eyes, all her colleagues were heartless and uncaring while they were merely being realistic. The patient was dead on arrival and nothing would have saved her. Emily's attempts at resuscitation were wasting time and money. There were moments when I wanted to slap her but fortunately she grows up. Emily is surrounded by colleagues her age and senior. A female Indian surgeon realizes that she is giving up too much to be one of the blokes (necessary in her profession). She sacrifices her femininity and her ethnic identity -- the blokes are white. One becomes aware of the rigid hierarchy of a medical center and the cost of defying the chain of command even when it is necessary.
All Raines's characters are sharply drawn and her dialogue is lively. So, despite the moments that verged on cliche, the play was enjoyable and somewhat thought provoking. Her production was flawless. The Hampstead was turned into a transverse stage with the audience seated on two sides of an open playing area. Beds, gurneys and operating tables were wheeled in and out with choreographic precision and grace. Walls are filled with projections of x-rays and scans. Her 15 member cast was top notch featuring some of Britain's best actors, familiar both from stage and television. Standouts were Thusitha Jayasundera and Adam James. Jayasundera plays the senior female physician who realizes she doesn't fit in any more when she can do nothing for her aunt who is seriously ill thanks to a botched surgery by a senior specialist. To remain one of the blokes, the doctor can not complain or move her aunt to another hospital. James is a forty-something doctor who is forced to become a patient. The younger members of the cast are also fine, particularly Pip Carter as the rebellious resident.
TIGER COUNTRY is not as rich as Raines's TRIBES, but a thoroughly enjoyable play that reinforces all one's reservations about hospitals. Having once been on the receiving end of medical imcompetence, I am always skeptical of hospital care.
TIGER COUNTRY, written and directed by Nina Raine. Hampstead Theatre. January 22, 2011.
TIGER COUNTRY is about doctors in a large city hospital. Sound familiar? Can one write a play on this subject without echoing ER, GRAY'S ANATOMY and their UK brethren HOLBY CITY and CASUALTY? The answer is not totally. The fast moving play that cuts back and forth between short scenes seems at times like a television drama, particularly in the romantic, or should I say sexual, moments. The doctors are all heterosexual, of course. The young male doctors are all handsome, the young females attractive. I'm sure there are homely doctors as well as gay doctors. However, Raine has a particular focus, the balance of dedication and cynicism necessary for a person to survive as a doctor. Her central charater, Emily, is a young emergency room doctor who taes a rather sentimental attitude toward her work while her colleagues are more hard-hearted. She almost implodes when a young woman who has had a heart attack dies. In her eyes, all her colleagues were heartless and uncaring while they were merely being realistic. The patient was dead on arrival and nothing would have saved her. Emily's attempts at resuscitation were wasting time and money. There were moments when I wanted to slap her but fortunately she grows up. Emily is surrounded by colleagues her age and senior. A female Indian surgeon realizes that she is giving up too much to be one of the blokes (necessary in her profession). She sacrifices her femininity and her ethnic identity -- the blokes are white. One becomes aware of the rigid hierarchy of a medical center and the cost of defying the chain of command even when it is necessary.
All Raines's characters are sharply drawn and her dialogue is lively. So, despite the moments that verged on cliche, the play was enjoyable and somewhat thought provoking. Her production was flawless. The Hampstead was turned into a transverse stage with the audience seated on two sides of an open playing area. Beds, gurneys and operating tables were wheeled in and out with choreographic precision and grace. Walls are filled with projections of x-rays and scans. Her 15 member cast was top notch featuring some of Britain's best actors, familiar both from stage and television. Standouts were Thusitha Jayasundera and Adam James. Jayasundera plays the senior female physician who realizes she doesn't fit in any more when she can do nothing for her aunt who is seriously ill thanks to a botched surgery by a senior specialist. To remain one of the blokes, the doctor can not complain or move her aunt to another hospital. James is a forty-something doctor who is forced to become a patient. The younger members of the cast are also fine, particularly Pip Carter as the rebellious resident.
TIGER COUNTRY is not as rich as Raines's TRIBES, but a thoroughly enjoyable play that reinforces all one's reservations about hospitals. Having once been on the receiving end of medical imcompetence, I am always skeptical of hospital care.
TIGER COUNTRY, written and directed by Nina Raine. Hampstead Theatre. January 22, 2011.
Friday, 21 January 2011
THE COUNTRY GIRL
Fors some reason, Clifford Odets is seldom included in the pantheon of twentieth-century American playwrights. Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill, whom I think is highly overrated, are accepted as our great writers for the stage and Odets usually is placed a the top of the second rank. My pantheon would exclude the lumbering O'Neill and include Odets. He had the great gift of making characters sound real and eloquent simultaneously. The devil is in the details with Odets and none of our other major playwrights could include so many detailed character portraits in one play. Odets was the house playwright for the Group Theatre in the mid-1930s, turning out four classics in a row: WAITING FOR LEFTY, AWAKE AND SING, PARADISE LOST, AND GOLDEN BOY. All are studies of the dark side of the American dream as characters give up parts of their soul for money. In these plays Odets managed to create a group of urban characters who were simultaneously optimistic and disillusioned. The language is urban poetry. Odets writes better than any of our other playwrights except Tennessee Williams.
After a period in Hollywood -- like his characters, Odets chased fortune but never quite caught it, ODets returned to Broadway with two showbusiness sagas, THE BIG KNIFE, his vision of a Hollywood sellout, and THE COUNTRY GIRL, which is just finishing a successful run on the West End. This seems to be Odets' year in London. The National Theatre is about to revive his seldom performed 1938 play, ROCKET TO THE MOON.
I had never seen THE COUNTRY GIRL onstage and only knew it from reading it and from the film with Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, of all people. Most of the play takes place backstage and in dressing rooms. It is the world of its two leading men, weak, washed-up actor Frank Elgin, who uses bits from plays he has performed in as his own fictional, self-justifying back story and young director Bernie Dodd, who can't manage a life outside of the theatre. Dodd, whose father was an alcoholic, becomes obsessed with saving Frank and providing his comeback to the stage as a leading actor. The central character is Frank's young wife, Georgie. When we first see her, she is packing a suitcase to leave her squalid flat and needy failure of a husband. Georgie is a living embodiment of disillusionment. She looks older than her years, exhausted from holding up two people. Frank tells Bernie that Georgie is mentally unstable, suicidal and an alcoholic, projecting onto her his own weaknesses. Young, idealistic Bernie believes him and treats Georgie terribly. He sees Georgie's protection of her husband as destructive when actually Frank totally depends on her.
In THE COUNTRY GIRL, Odets has written a powerful play about a strong woman surrounded by weak men. Georgie doesn't have a career, but must be mother, lover, agent, servant, domineering bitch, sexual magnet to the men who enter her sphere. By the end, all she wants to be is alone. Since the men don't see or care who she really is, Georgie remains something of an enigma to us. Slowly the details of her character emerge.
Rufus Norris, who can be a gimmicky director (his recent production of Mozart's DON GIOVANNI was dreadful) here leaves the play alone and focuses on the performances. Being a West End enterprise, the production has a cast of actors best known for their many television appearances, but with impressive theatre credentials. All give nuanced performances. All three leading roles are tricky because the characters are deeply flawed. Frank at one point says that he must come to like his character before he can play him and that is true as well of any actor in an Odets play -- he or she must find what is likeable amidst the weakness and brashness. I know people who don't care for Jenny Seagrove but I found her totally believable as a trapped woman who stops believing it is too late to change her life. Martin Shaw, who usually plays heroes in television detective dramas found the balance between bluster and weakness in Frank. Like many actors, Frank is a child who has never grown up. Georgie, young enough to be his daughter, must be his mother. Mark Letheren found Bernie's anger and his need to save Frank. I saw this production on a weekday matinee at the end of a long run. It was fresh and totally committed. It reminded me of what a great playwright Odets is and how alive he still is in the right hands. The language is beautiful, both mundane and poetic.
A tangential note. As much as I enjoyed this performance, I was appalled at the state of the Apollo Theatre. At West End prices, one expects a level of comfort and upkeep. The carpet is being held down with duct tape. The old seats are uncomfortable and there is no legroom even in the stalls. New York theatre owners keep their buildings in good condition. The Apollo, like many old West End theatres, is a dingy dump. Anyone paying Wes End prices should expect more than that.
THE COUNTRY GIRL by Clifford Odets. Directed by Rufus Norris. Sets and costumes by Scott Pask and Jonathan Lipman. With Martin Shaw, Jenny Seagrove and Mark Letheren. Apollo Theatre. January 21, 2011.
After a period in Hollywood -- like his characters, Odets chased fortune but never quite caught it, ODets returned to Broadway with two showbusiness sagas, THE BIG KNIFE, his vision of a Hollywood sellout, and THE COUNTRY GIRL, which is just finishing a successful run on the West End. This seems to be Odets' year in London. The National Theatre is about to revive his seldom performed 1938 play, ROCKET TO THE MOON.
I had never seen THE COUNTRY GIRL onstage and only knew it from reading it and from the film with Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, of all people. Most of the play takes place backstage and in dressing rooms. It is the world of its two leading men, weak, washed-up actor Frank Elgin, who uses bits from plays he has performed in as his own fictional, self-justifying back story and young director Bernie Dodd, who can't manage a life outside of the theatre. Dodd, whose father was an alcoholic, becomes obsessed with saving Frank and providing his comeback to the stage as a leading actor. The central character is Frank's young wife, Georgie. When we first see her, she is packing a suitcase to leave her squalid flat and needy failure of a husband. Georgie is a living embodiment of disillusionment. She looks older than her years, exhausted from holding up two people. Frank tells Bernie that Georgie is mentally unstable, suicidal and an alcoholic, projecting onto her his own weaknesses. Young, idealistic Bernie believes him and treats Georgie terribly. He sees Georgie's protection of her husband as destructive when actually Frank totally depends on her.
In THE COUNTRY GIRL, Odets has written a powerful play about a strong woman surrounded by weak men. Georgie doesn't have a career, but must be mother, lover, agent, servant, domineering bitch, sexual magnet to the men who enter her sphere. By the end, all she wants to be is alone. Since the men don't see or care who she really is, Georgie remains something of an enigma to us. Slowly the details of her character emerge.
Rufus Norris, who can be a gimmicky director (his recent production of Mozart's DON GIOVANNI was dreadful) here leaves the play alone and focuses on the performances. Being a West End enterprise, the production has a cast of actors best known for their many television appearances, but with impressive theatre credentials. All give nuanced performances. All three leading roles are tricky because the characters are deeply flawed. Frank at one point says that he must come to like his character before he can play him and that is true as well of any actor in an Odets play -- he or she must find what is likeable amidst the weakness and brashness. I know people who don't care for Jenny Seagrove but I found her totally believable as a trapped woman who stops believing it is too late to change her life. Martin Shaw, who usually plays heroes in television detective dramas found the balance between bluster and weakness in Frank. Like many actors, Frank is a child who has never grown up. Georgie, young enough to be his daughter, must be his mother. Mark Letheren found Bernie's anger and his need to save Frank. I saw this production on a weekday matinee at the end of a long run. It was fresh and totally committed. It reminded me of what a great playwright Odets is and how alive he still is in the right hands. The language is beautiful, both mundane and poetic.
A tangential note. As much as I enjoyed this performance, I was appalled at the state of the Apollo Theatre. At West End prices, one expects a level of comfort and upkeep. The carpet is being held down with duct tape. The old seats are uncomfortable and there is no legroom even in the stalls. New York theatre owners keep their buildings in good condition. The Apollo, like many old West End theatres, is a dingy dump. Anyone paying Wes End prices should expect more than that.
THE COUNTRY GIRL by Clifford Odets. Directed by Rufus Norris. Sets and costumes by Scott Pask and Jonathan Lipman. With Martin Shaw, Jenny Seagrove and Mark Letheren. Apollo Theatre. January 21, 2011.
Friday, 14 January 2011
THE POTTING SHED at the Finborough
Graham Greene's THE POTTING SHED was first performed in London and on Broadway in 1958. It has seldom been revived since. There's nothing particularly wrong with the play though critics over the years critics have deemed it dated in style and substance. The solid production at the Finborough Theatre proves that perhaps now, when atheism can be as doctrinaire as fundamentalist Chrstianity, it is again timely.
THE POTTING SHED is structured as a kind of mystery. The form goes back to Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX. Something happened to James Callifer when he was fourteen that he has totally forgotten and which his family has tried to erase. During the course of the play James is impelled to discover the secret and this family must deal with the consequences. There is no incest or murder here in this hyper-intellectual British family. The secret has metaphysical implications which change James and since the family are celebrated professional atheists -- the patriarch was the Richard Dawkins of his age -- upset his family. Has James gone mad because he has come to believe that he experienced a miracle? To accept his conviction is to admit that there is something more than -- or other than -- science and rationality. The play explores a mystery in the religious sense of the word. The question the revelation at the heart of the play poses is whether miracles happen. If they do, the family's staunch atheism is exposed as a sham. Graham Greene is writing in prose the sort of religious play in the mode of T.S. Eliot and Christopher Fry wrote in verse. There is a strong kinship between THE POTTING SHED and Eliot's THE COCKTAIL PARTY and THE FAMILY REUNION. Greene was a Catholic and his Catholicism permeates his work, but his approach to his religion was complex and far more modern than Eliot's. Faith and doubt go together in Greene's universe. There is little comfort in faith and God is always unknowable. Yet God does intervene in our world. Greene's plays are intrinsically dramatic because his faith is built on contradictions. I prefer his novels to the plays. There is something formulaic about his dramatic structure. It is too pat for his subject matter. He's a good playwright, but much more than a good novelist at his best. Seeing this production of THE POTTING SHED made me want to reread the novels. There's a new Hollywood film of his classic novel, BRIGHTON ROCK, coming out this Spring. Will Hollywood do justice to this complex writer? Probably not.
I enjoyed this production of THE POTTING SHED at the tiny Finborough. Svetlana Dimcovic staged and paced the play effectively on the small playing area. The playing area created by the walls of this oddly shaped building makes a natural box set that is a perfect size for this sort of drama. Given the brevity of the play, I would have cut one or both of the intervals to maintain tension (without intervals, the play runs less than two hours). Paul Cawley as James, the man discovering his past, was fine in the big moments. I never felt his spiritual emptiness in the first half of the play. He must go through a major change and I think it demands an actor with greater range than Cawley has. In essense we must see a man reborn in the third act but that depends on seeing the deadness before. I'm sure he was improvement over the original John Gielgud and pop star Cliff Richard in the 1971 revival (whose idea was that?). The other ten actors were well cast and more than adequate. If I am a bit dissatisfied, it is because I think more is at stake in the play for all the characters than these actors realized. Everyone underplayed a bit too much. Since I excoriated the cast of a previous Finborough production for chewing up the scenery, I am uncomfortable criticizing this group of good actors for not raising the emotional temperature enough. It's tricky to find the proper balance in a tiny space like the Finborough but I didn't feel that Eileen Battye in the crucial role as the matriarch holding the big secret was ever more than mildly piqued as if someone had breached a rule of etiquette when actually a thirty-year-old family secret is about to be exposed. It's more a question of listening and reacting than how the lines were spoken. I'm not sure one can totally avoid melodrama in this work, which is a kind of Agatha Christie mystery with deep religious implications.
Whatever my reservations, I am deeply grateful to the Finborough for giving me the opportunity to see this play again. And may I say I'm grateful to the friendly new owners of the nice wine bar downstairs for providing cleaner amenities. And I look forward to the new air conditioning system for this famously hot (in all senses of the word) performing space
THE POTTING SHED by Graham Greene. Finborough Theatre. January 13, 2011.
THE POTTING SHED is structured as a kind of mystery. The form goes back to Sophocles' OEDIPUS REX. Something happened to James Callifer when he was fourteen that he has totally forgotten and which his family has tried to erase. During the course of the play James is impelled to discover the secret and this family must deal with the consequences. There is no incest or murder here in this hyper-intellectual British family. The secret has metaphysical implications which change James and since the family are celebrated professional atheists -- the patriarch was the Richard Dawkins of his age -- upset his family. Has James gone mad because he has come to believe that he experienced a miracle? To accept his conviction is to admit that there is something more than -- or other than -- science and rationality. The play explores a mystery in the religious sense of the word. The question the revelation at the heart of the play poses is whether miracles happen. If they do, the family's staunch atheism is exposed as a sham. Graham Greene is writing in prose the sort of religious play in the mode of T.S. Eliot and Christopher Fry wrote in verse. There is a strong kinship between THE POTTING SHED and Eliot's THE COCKTAIL PARTY and THE FAMILY REUNION. Greene was a Catholic and his Catholicism permeates his work, but his approach to his religion was complex and far more modern than Eliot's. Faith and doubt go together in Greene's universe. There is little comfort in faith and God is always unknowable. Yet God does intervene in our world. Greene's plays are intrinsically dramatic because his faith is built on contradictions. I prefer his novels to the plays. There is something formulaic about his dramatic structure. It is too pat for his subject matter. He's a good playwright, but much more than a good novelist at his best. Seeing this production of THE POTTING SHED made me want to reread the novels. There's a new Hollywood film of his classic novel, BRIGHTON ROCK, coming out this Spring. Will Hollywood do justice to this complex writer? Probably not.
I enjoyed this production of THE POTTING SHED at the tiny Finborough. Svetlana Dimcovic staged and paced the play effectively on the small playing area. The playing area created by the walls of this oddly shaped building makes a natural box set that is a perfect size for this sort of drama. Given the brevity of the play, I would have cut one or both of the intervals to maintain tension (without intervals, the play runs less than two hours). Paul Cawley as James, the man discovering his past, was fine in the big moments. I never felt his spiritual emptiness in the first half of the play. He must go through a major change and I think it demands an actor with greater range than Cawley has. In essense we must see a man reborn in the third act but that depends on seeing the deadness before. I'm sure he was improvement over the original John Gielgud and pop star Cliff Richard in the 1971 revival (whose idea was that?). The other ten actors were well cast and more than adequate. If I am a bit dissatisfied, it is because I think more is at stake in the play for all the characters than these actors realized. Everyone underplayed a bit too much. Since I excoriated the cast of a previous Finborough production for chewing up the scenery, I am uncomfortable criticizing this group of good actors for not raising the emotional temperature enough. It's tricky to find the proper balance in a tiny space like the Finborough but I didn't feel that Eileen Battye in the crucial role as the matriarch holding the big secret was ever more than mildly piqued as if someone had breached a rule of etiquette when actually a thirty-year-old family secret is about to be exposed. It's more a question of listening and reacting than how the lines were spoken. I'm not sure one can totally avoid melodrama in this work, which is a kind of Agatha Christie mystery with deep religious implications.
Whatever my reservations, I am deeply grateful to the Finborough for giving me the opportunity to see this play again. And may I say I'm grateful to the friendly new owners of the nice wine bar downstairs for providing cleaner amenities. And I look forward to the new air conditioning system for this famously hot (in all senses of the word) performing space
THE POTTING SHED by Graham Greene. Finborough Theatre. January 13, 2011.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
THE GLASS MENAGERIE
As with KING LEAR, I have seen many productions of Tennessee Williams's THE GLASS MENAGERIE and have directed the play myself. Only one production captured the play as I understand it -- a production at the Hippodrome Theatre in Gainesville, Florida. Usually the Amanda is too old to have children in their early twenties and, to compensate, the children have to be older than their stated age in the script. Jessica Tandy played Amanda in her eighties --- she would have been Tom and Laura's grandmother but not their mother. The same miscasting often occurs with Blanche in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE who is supposed to be thirtyish, not middle aged. Often, too, the focus is placed too much on Amanda and Laura when the relationship between Tom and Amanda is equally important. It is Tom's memories we are watching, after all.
The current production, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins at the Young Vic has its flaws, but the fascinating, near over-the-top performance by Leo Bill as Tom makes it worth seeing. The program reminds us that Tom Williams, not yet named Tennessee Williams, had a nervous breakdown while working at the International Shoe Company and living at home with his garrulous mother and mentally disturbed sister. Leo Bill's Tom is at the breaking point. He is all nervous energy, frustration and entrapment. When his mother cries, "I don't believe you go to the movies," he backs against the wall as if harboring a guilty secret (homosexuality?). This young man has to get out of this apartment and away from his chatterbox of a mother or lose his mind. To some extent, Bill's performance throws the play a bit off balance, but it is perfectly valid and fascinating to watch, particularly for someone who knows the play well. The Brits next to me thought he was too manic, but I think he justifies the production. Bill is an actor willing to take great risks.
Deborah Findlay, an actress I usually like from stage and television roles, is a bit disappointing as Amanda. Perhaps it is the awful southern accent, but I never quite believed her (I must say that in general the dialects were all over the place. Bill's Tom was New York, Jim was midwest -- well, it is St. Louis -- and Laura nineteen-thirties Hollywood. Btitish actors are usually better with American dialects these days -- they certainly seem to be getting lots of leading roles on American tv with their Hugh Laurie midwestern accents. I don't demand accuracy, but consistency would be nice). Great Amandas combine desperation with humor. Like all Tennessee Williams's heroines, Amanda is funny, sad and irritating all at once. Somehow Findlay was too earthy to capture Amanda. She has clearly never met a southern steel magnolia. I have lived in the south for decades now and have met many Amandas. They're a dying breed now, but once ruled the roost in every church and cultural organization. Sinead Mathews was perfectly acceptable as Laura, a bit too pretty and with a strange, throaty voice. I didn't see that brief blossoming of a wallflower and deflation when her dream, after briefly coming true, is dashed. Kyle Soller is equally OK. I missed that sense of a young man for whom high school was always going to be his finest hour and he knows it. He basks in Laura's fond memories of him, but the future doesn't look too bright. Which is to say that 90 per cent of the pathos and the humor in this production came from Leo Bill's Tom.
The staging, pacing and music are fine. Hill-Gibbins used the odd Young Vic space effectively. The audience sits on two sides of a corner stage, but the production uses a curtain which sometimes rises from the floor and sometimes descends from above to give a sense of the illusion Tom speaks of in his prologue. This wasn't a revelatory production but I'm glad I went.
THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams. Young Vic Theatre. January 13, 2011.
The current production, directed by Joe Hill-Gibbins at the Young Vic has its flaws, but the fascinating, near over-the-top performance by Leo Bill as Tom makes it worth seeing. The program reminds us that Tom Williams, not yet named Tennessee Williams, had a nervous breakdown while working at the International Shoe Company and living at home with his garrulous mother and mentally disturbed sister. Leo Bill's Tom is at the breaking point. He is all nervous energy, frustration and entrapment. When his mother cries, "I don't believe you go to the movies," he backs against the wall as if harboring a guilty secret (homosexuality?). This young man has to get out of this apartment and away from his chatterbox of a mother or lose his mind. To some extent, Bill's performance throws the play a bit off balance, but it is perfectly valid and fascinating to watch, particularly for someone who knows the play well. The Brits next to me thought he was too manic, but I think he justifies the production. Bill is an actor willing to take great risks.
Deborah Findlay, an actress I usually like from stage and television roles, is a bit disappointing as Amanda. Perhaps it is the awful southern accent, but I never quite believed her (I must say that in general the dialects were all over the place. Bill's Tom was New York, Jim was midwest -- well, it is St. Louis -- and Laura nineteen-thirties Hollywood. Btitish actors are usually better with American dialects these days -- they certainly seem to be getting lots of leading roles on American tv with their Hugh Laurie midwestern accents. I don't demand accuracy, but consistency would be nice). Great Amandas combine desperation with humor. Like all Tennessee Williams's heroines, Amanda is funny, sad and irritating all at once. Somehow Findlay was too earthy to capture Amanda. She has clearly never met a southern steel magnolia. I have lived in the south for decades now and have met many Amandas. They're a dying breed now, but once ruled the roost in every church and cultural organization. Sinead Mathews was perfectly acceptable as Laura, a bit too pretty and with a strange, throaty voice. I didn't see that brief blossoming of a wallflower and deflation when her dream, after briefly coming true, is dashed. Kyle Soller is equally OK. I missed that sense of a young man for whom high school was always going to be his finest hour and he knows it. He basks in Laura's fond memories of him, but the future doesn't look too bright. Which is to say that 90 per cent of the pathos and the humor in this production came from Leo Bill's Tom.
The staging, pacing and music are fine. Hill-Gibbins used the odd Young Vic space effectively. The audience sits on two sides of a corner stage, but the production uses a curtain which sometimes rises from the floor and sometimes descends from above to give a sense of the illusion Tom speaks of in his prologue. This wasn't a revelatory production but I'm glad I went.
THE GLASS MENAGERIE by Tennessee Williams. Young Vic Theatre. January 13, 2011.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)