Shun-kin at the Barbican: part of a continuing series of over long rambling theatre reviews (17/02/09)

A matinee performance?  Two hours with no interval?  Entirely in Japanese?  Seats with a restricted view?  People pretending to be trees?  There were good reasons to be concerned as we meandered through the Barbican, staring up at the brutalist splendour of the incongruously named Shakespeare Tower.           

 

As is almost inevitable these days, Shun-kin is staged as meta-theatre.  The story of Shun-kin’s life in 19th Century Japan is acted out while being recounted by a man obsessed with it in 1933.  A woman in the present day in turn narrates it for a radio recording, while trying to resolve her own affair with a younger married man.  The use of different narrators emphasises that this is a story open to interpretation from different perspectives over time, that reality is something that we project on to the world rather than something presented to us.

 

The beautiful and spoilt Shun-kin, a musical protégé, is blinded at a young age, quite possibly by a jealous nurse.  She chooses Sasuke, a servant boy from her privileged household, to be her guide and helper.  His is a world of semi-feudal relationships, of glimpses of untouchable beauty through paper walls, silent servitude and devotion.  Already besotted with her, his love only grows as she constantly humiliates and abuses him for her amusement.  For Shun-kin he is no more than the fulfiller of physical necessity, she laughs at the idea of marrying him and gives up the child born to them as soon as it arrives.  Their relationship becomes one that Sacher-Masoch could only dream of.    

 

When Shun-kin is attacked and left facially scarred by a jealous pupil, she implores Sasuke not to look at her face.  He goes away to his room to quietly pierce each of his eyes with a needle, joining her forever in blindness.  Shun-kin embraces him lovingly for the first and only time, before informing him that they will never again talk of what he has done.  They live on in this way for many years, seemingly both happy.  With her death, Sasuke is set free.  Yet he lives on for another thirty years, an ascetic life, remaining devoted until he rejoins her.  His gravestone, in the form of a submissive servant, set next to hers high on a hill looking down on Kyoto.

 

The narrators recount the story based on a book, said to have been ghost written by Susake.  Is it an accurate account or his fantasy?  Is this a story of sado-masochism or of monk-like self-sacrifice?  Is Sasuke’s self-blinding an act of thoughtless obedience, an act of genuine love or an act that satisfies his own fantasies?  Is this a critique of today’s shallowness and transience or a mocking of the feudal past?  Is Sasuke to be rejected as a fool who has wasted his life or embraced for transcending materialism and self-interest?

 

That the young Shun-kin is played by a doll emphasises Sasuke’s objectification of her, his positing of something that comes from within him on to her blank ceramic face.  Obsession can only ever be about the qualities of the person obsessing, not about the qualities of the object of obsession.  The doll is manipulated around the stage with stunning realism, reinforcing the feeling that there are forces at work beyond their control that define their roles and drive their relationship.  When the doll is replaced by an actress the puppeteer continues to shadow her every move, at one point replacing her as she beats Susake, again, it is not the object but the act of obsession that matters.  This is very much Sasuke’s story rather than that of Shun-kin.

 

This is a world in which beautiful women rarely leave the confines of their homes, existing in semi-darkness, their height restricted.  Where they colour their teeth black to emphasise the whiteness of their skin.  A world of shadows and ambiguity, of stillness, hidden meanings and ritual.  A world in which the imagination dominates. 

 

The staging captures this beautifully.  The play takes place in near darkness, a large stage lit only by candle or by the desk lamp of the narrator.  The light, and the action, is precise.  Only a very small section of the stage is illuminated at any time.  There is nothing that is unnecessary.

 

The production had its weaknesses.  The projection of images on to cloth and use of people to simulate moving trees and birds were exceptionally well done but felt a little dated and unimaginative.  The subtitles were far too distant from the action on stage, making it near impossible to read them and watch the action at the same time.  Shun-Kin is straight forward storytelling through narration, this is Jackanory not Pinter.  Yet overall this was a production of real beauty and power.     

 

On one level, this is a play about the passing of Japan’s old values ahead of the rapid modernisation, and westernisation, of the late 19th Century.  While his devotion to Shun-kin may be intensified by its sexual dimension, Sasuke’s life was always destined to be one of selfless devotion and servitude.  One is inevitably put in mind of the 47 Ronin of Chushingura or the Japanese soldiers that did not surrender until decades after the end of the war in the pacific.  It is, perhaps, in the same spirit that Sasuke relates to Shun-kin, total self-sacrificing submission not out of fear but out of love, albeit a love built within the narrowest of confines and upon brutal indoctrination around their respective roles and value. 

 

Perhaps this is reading too much into the setting, jumping to assumptions based on the baggage that comes with our simplified understanding of Japan and its history.  Such relationships, or the fantasy of them, exist by mutual consent readily enough today in all societies, even if they are unlikely to reach the eye gouging stage.   

 

Yet how significant is the fact that one of our narrators is obsessed with Shun-kin’s story in 1933, a time when militarism, and its ideals of obedience and sacrifice, were increasingly dominating Japanese society following the recent conquest of Manchuria and the bombing of Shanghai?  His attitude toward the tale contrasts with the almost whimsical attitude of the present day narrator, who seems only interested in its relevance to her own relationship.  Is this a statement about how much Japan has sucsessfully changed over the last seventy years or is the present day narrator’s lack of depth a statement about the shallowness and selfishness of modern life?  Should we be nodding along with Adam Curtis’s analysis in The Century of the Self or identifying with her as one of us, as opposed to the otherness of Shun-kin and Sasuke?  Is her decision not to terminate her affair an assertion of her freedom to make her own choices or an act of weakness, or one of emotional masochism?

 

While the depth of Sasuke’s devotion may be extreme and at odds with contemporary ideas of individualism, it is in keeping with values and behaviour we are familiar with.  Indeed it would be easy to criticise the staging as simply reinforcing western stereotyping of the Japanese as submissive and driven by cruelty and devotion to duty.  That Shun-kin’s and Sasuke’s relationship is a sado-masochistic one gives it an extra dimension that takes it beyond this, that makes it a love story.  It also gives it its ambiguity and complexity.

  

The final scene sees the cast walk slowly toward the bright lights of modern Kyoto, the old values and assumptions disappearing forever into its modernity.  This new world is a place not of imagination and fantasy, but one of light and certainty.  The intensity of a glimpse of unpossessible beauty through the shadows cannot co-exist with the bright lights and manifold options of the modern city, such intensity of devotion and obsession withers in the face of so many potential objects.

Rue Magique, King’s Head Theatre: A confused and overly long ramble (25/11/2008)

The King’s Head is a very fine pub that boasts a wonderfully ornate cash register.  Just beyond the roaring fire and solid oak tables lies the theatre.  A veritable slice of Narnia, entered, pint in hand, through an inconspicuous door at the back of the bar.  With room for only around thirty punters, you could sneeze into your pint from any seat and easily hit the back of the stage with flying beer.  Intimate is too weak a word.  The division between actors and audience is negligible, it feels a bit like going to see a mate’s band play at your local.

 

Many have argued that a musical about child prostitution is, at best, in poor taste.  Some have argued such issues should not be the subject of art at all, let alone a format usually so family friendly and content free.  While the days of the nation being shocked into action by Cathy Come Home are probably long gone, anything that raises awareness of the realities of abuse, poverty and degradation, that forces people not to look the other way, can only help make action to tackle such things more likely.  Theatre, film and television are the ultimate medium for this, being able to humanise and create empathy more effectively than any other.  It is not only appropriate for art to tackle such subjects but absolutely essential.  But a musical?

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with a musical about child prostitution, abuse and rape.  It is, granted, not the most obvious of formats and there are considerable risks involved given its limitations.  There is a valid argument that something so horrific cannot be expressed effectively in words but can only be communicated through the direct unmediated emotionality of music.  Much then hinges on the quality and appropriateness of the music.  The decision to adopt a stylised rather than realist approach, to adopt the conventions of the West End musical, both in terms of music and performance, therefore seems questionable.  Music of a darker nature, or reflecting the contemporary south London setting, would have helped in the credibility stakes, but then what is the right song for a 13 year old to sing on her birthday while being raped at her mother’s bidding? 

 

The plot revolves around a south London brothel dominated by the formidable Desdemona, happily prostituting her daughter, Sugar, and hoping to get her involved in dirtier and more lucrative action as she comes of age on her thirteenth birthday.   It embraces cliches with relish, from the child seeking the truth about her father to the hero rushing in to free her from her life of prostitution.  How both of these are handled says much about its unevenness.  The first through a comically over the top revelation, the second more skilfully and ambiguously, hinting at a possibly subtler and more interesting handling of the subject matter. 

 

Musically, it came across as a bit of a showcase for the composer, a display of his ability to write music in a variety of styles and formats.  It would have benefitted from more stylistic consistency.  The highlight was a comic tour de force in which three punters, ‘fat, masochistic and probably gay’, explain why they are sat waiting in a brothel.  Laugh out loud funny as it was, what were we supposed to think about the jolly fat chap also being the child rapist?  Was this a brave rejection of a simplistic understanding of paedophilia or were they two different characters that just happened to be played by the same actor?  It wasn’t clear.  It also said much about the unevenness of the show, caught between going for the out and out entertainment of big set piece songs and the need to respect the seriousness and complexity of its subject matter, its tone jumped around uneasily, often missing both. 

 

The format of the musical unquestionably risks trivialising the subject through the sheer artificiality of shoehorning it into its need for a simple narrative and dramatic pattern.  It also brings with it certain expectations, that the audience is there to be entertained rather than to witness genuine horror, despair and tragedy.  The overall feel is of writers unprepared to face the subject matter head on, to stare into the abyss without blinking.  The one moment they refuse to turn away, by not lowering the lights on the rape scene, was the most powerful and haunting of the show.  For the most part though, we get comic songs and levity whenever things risk getting a little too intense. 

 

It would be easy to condemn Rue Magique as exploiting its subject purely for entertainment.  It certainly makes no serious points about child prostitution or the poverty that lies at its heart.  It says little about its causes or consequences, implying the experience of child prostitution and rape can be overcome simply by being rescued by a man of good heart.  It is not exactly a feminist tract.      

 

It is certainly a highly sanitised portrayal of prostitution.  Such sanitisation could be seen as glossing over, trivialising.  Jolly songs about making it all seem okay by sharing a nice spliff seem in very poor taste when they are being performed a couple of miles up the road from Kings Cross, when there are real underage girls not far away pumped full of far harder drugs.  While it never hit the level of Springtime for Hitler, I was left confused about the authors intent.  Was this another leap on the ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ bandwagon?  Is a musical about child prostitution just part of the bad taste zeitgeist, a Ricky Gervais gag brought to life?  Is this Summer Heights High’s ‘Tsunamarama’, a school musical based on the events of the 2004 Asian Tsunami set to the music of Bananarama, made flesh?  Is this knowing or unknowing, pastiche or earnest?

 

Perhaps it was not for the reasons the writers intended, I’m really not sure what they intended, but as an experience it was, confusingly, immensely enjoyable.  It was the quality of the cast, rather than the material, that made it so.  The relationship between Desdemona and Sugar was perhaps the strongest and best written element of the show, mutual love and hate, understanding and resentment, dependence and despair.  That it convinced so powerfully though was down to the outstanding performances of the two leads.                 

 

Melanie La Barrie was superb as Desdemona, beautifully capturing her dominating façade and the underlying vulnerability and neurosis behind it.  It is a shame that her exceptional vocal talents were underused, a Piaf-trembling scorcher following the agoraphobic Desdomena’s not-at-all-cliched first trip outside in years was truly wrenching, the one moment in the show when the emotionality of the music seemed to match the power of the subject matter.  Desdemona’s evolution from corset-clad silencer of rooms to aging mother clad in hat and coat was beautifully done, as was the implication that it was temporary and that it would be business as usual again tomorrow.  That I did not find it in any way strange to see such a good friend perform on stage for the first time says a great deal about how thoroughly and convincingly La Barrie inhabited the role.                         

 

Nadia Di Mambro’s Sugar was remarkable, perhaps the most convincing portrayal of a 13 year old girl you could possibly imagine.  More than anything it was the overwhelming sense of innocence she brought to the character, the perfect counterpoint to the mercenary and exploitative world of her mother and callous troop of working girls that surrounded her.  She is destined for far bigger things. 

 

Desdemona and Sugar aside, the characters were barely sketched out caricatures – the east european whore/cleaner, the noble but ineffective homeless chap, the kick boxing romantic saviour.  The rest of the cast were excellent, making the most of what little they had to work with.  Although perhaps they too were, at times, unsure whether they were supposed to be playing it straight or for entertainment, for intensity or comedy. 

 

So where does this leave us?  There is nothing wrong with the idea of a musical about child prostitution.  There is something wrong with one in which the plot is a list of cliches and the music is that of a feel good West End show.  It unquestionably trivialises the subject.  Substitute domestic abuse for child prostitution and this becomes even more obvious.  There is undoubtedly something very limiting about the format of the musical that should make one very wary about tackling such complex and sensitive subjects.  It requires a good deal more sophistication and much closer attention to the consistency of style and tone. 

 

It would be easy to angrily dismiss Rue Magique as middle class people writing about a subject they have no real experience of.  Yet the author is a respected psychoanalyst who has worked with victims of abuse, and has claimed that Rue Magique is inspired by real life cases.  If this is true then it is in the same sense that Bad Girls was inspired by real events.  Perhaps I am missing something, but this confuses me even more.  Why would someone with first hand experience of the true horror of child abuse choose to create something that trivialises and sanitises it for the enjoyment of an audience, that makes a cliché ridden fairy tale of it?  The subject matter, and cast, deserve a lot better.

 

Yet I enjoyed it.  Would I have enjoyed it if I hadn’t known the lead and been excited about seeing her perform?  There is no doubt that she, and the rest of the cast, saved it, but I don’t think that I enjoyed it simply because she was in it.  Was it because I really liked the venue and the beer had been flowing?  Was it just genuinely entertaining when all’s said and done and not to be taken too seriously?  I am left, unusually, very confused by the whole affair. 

 

It is easy, and fairly meaningless, for me to criticise.  I went along as a pre-ordained enemy of musicals after all.  Similarly, my complaints that it does not treat the subject matter seriously enough and refuses to stare it in the face are hypocritical.  I live in relative grandeur in the same city, what have I ever done to help those affected by child abuse save for drop a few coins in a can now and again?

 

I was also left confused about what, if anything, to write about it, knowing that anything I did would be read by the aforementioned lead actress.  Ours is a complicated and antagonistic relationship at the best of times.  I wasn’t planning to write anything.  Why would you want to criticise much of what someone you care a great deal about has been involved in for months, something she has her own strong views upon?  Surely no good can come of it.  That she is praised so highly is not a counterbalance to this, it is an honest assessment and I hope that she knows me well enough to appreciate that.  Despite her perception of recent events, I’m not prone to being ‘nice’ unnecessarily.  Perhaps she will write, with far more eloquence, a damning rebuttal.  Perhaps we will never speak again, which would be a great shame for so many reasons.  After almost 2,000 words I am still not at all sure what I really thought and felt about Rue Magique.  It’s certainly thought provoking. 

Gomorra (17/11/08)

Gomorra is the antidote to the American gangster film.  It is a portrait of the gritty reality of the Camorra, shot in a style that owes more to war reporting than to Hollywood.  This is not the Shakespearian power politics and internal turmoil of the Godfather.  This is story telling from the bottom up, played out around the most rundown of Neapolitan estates.  This is not about the generals, or even soldiers, this is about living in the war zone.  It weaves together five stories to build up a picture of the sheer pervasiveness of the Camorra, its sheer depth and suffocating spread, and in doing so, its near invincibility. 

 

 Don Ciro is the middleman who distributes money to the families of prisoners.  Had he been born elsewhere he would have been an accountant or an insurance salesman.  Instead he takes having a gun shoved into his mouth with the same weary acceptance as a Jehovah’s Witness greeting a slamming door.  His quiet routine of door-to-door payouts and chats over coffee is interrupted by the emergence of war, whole families fleeing the estate as sides are chosen and scores settled.  It is a war no one at this level understands, but which is fought nonetheless.  His switch of loyalties may be out of nothing but fear, but it leads to a bloodbath nonetheless. 

 

 Toto, a 13-year-old boy, starts out by rescuing a gun dropped during a police chase and ends up tricking the woman he’s run errands for years for to come out of her house to receive a bullet in the back of her head.  His transition from child to blood stained mafioso is portrayed as unexceptional, perfectly normal.  

 

 Pasquale, the haute couture tailor, makes the mistake of taking money to teach his skills to a chinese competitor and has his car raked with bullets, only the intervention of his better connected boss saving him from a worse fate.  As he watches Scarlet Johansson parade at a premier in one of his dresses we begin to see the true scale of the Camorra’s reach.  From running the local drug trade to being one of the investors in the redevelopment of the World Trade Centre site in New York. 

 

 Roberto is a graduate sent off to work for the charismatic Franco, a wealthy businessman who travels the country winning lucrative contracts for industrial waste disposal.  When Roberto walks away in disgust at his illegal dumping operation it is the one moment of hope in the film, but it is not a luxury others from less affluent backgrounds can afford.  In the real world illegal dumping of toxic waste has had a disastrous effect on public health in the region.   

 

 It is Marco and Ciro that are the most memorable.  Two cocky wannabe gangsters who spend their time acting out scenes from Scarface and dreaming of being the next Tony Montana.  They want to make a name for themselves, carrying out petty stick-ups and refusing to bow down to the local Mr big.  They are set up, gunned down and dumped without ceremony, the true mobsters annoyed at having to waste time on such kids.  The glamorisation of their own world through Hollywood proving no match for reality.

 

 This is not the high end of the Camorra, the buying and selling of politicians and judges, the multi millions made from skimming off public works.  This is the selling coke from cars in housing estates and making sure the locals do as they are told.  This is not suave wisecracking gangsters, it’s badly dressed fat men with guns.  The police are nowhere in sight and never seem to enter anyone’s thoughts.  There is only one power in town and nothing happens without its say so.  This is the alternative state, all pervasive, suffocating. 

 

 The author of Gomorra is currently in hiding under 24-hour police protection amidst rumours that a death squad has been given orders to get the job done by Christmas.  In the last thirty years the Camorra is said to have been responsible for some 4,000 deaths.  By comparison, over the same period in Northern Ireland some 3,500 were killed by all sides.  The Italian Government has recently dispatched 500 troops to the area to give comfort to the tourists, but no biblical style wrath will cleanse this Gomorrah.

Norman Conquests at the Old Vic (20/10/2008)

The Old Vic’s decision to put on all three of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests plays in one day is a brave one in these times of short attention spans and punchy multimedia spectaculars.  Clocking in at well over seven hours, interspaced with lunch and dinner, it is not for the faint hearted or constitutionally challenged. 

 

While each play is discrete, they tell the same story of tangled relationships, hopes and frustrations over the course of an uncomfortable weekend in deepest rural Sussex.  Each is staged in a different part of the same house, depicting the off-stage events of the other two.  Set respectively in the dining room, sitting room and garden they can be performed in any order, though it is difficult to imagine them working nearly as well in any other.  While the first, Table Manners, is arguably the strongest, all would stand up well to individual viewing, but it is only when seeing all three together that the characters and their motivations fully take shape and the true picture of what is going on slowly reveals itself. 

 

This is superior 1970s suburban farce, with all the cliches firmly in place.  Three couples imprisoned together in a country house for the weekend.  Annie, lonely, dowdy and unmarried, spends her days looking after mother, courted haplessly by Tom the repressed and clueless vet.  She plans an illicit weekend away with her unrestrained brother-in-law Norman, hoping to relive last Christmas’ furtive fireside coupling.  Annie’s slick estate agent brother Reg, and his uptight wife Sarah, arrive to look after mother, but with Annie backing out of the trip at the last minute and the arrival of Norman’s wife, the myopic career obsessed Ruth, everything is set up perfectly for a weekend of frustration, farce and confusion (fuelled by industrial strength homemade parsnip wine).  It would be easy to dismiss all this as merely a superior version of My Family or the like, but it is so well written, performed and staged that it is never anything other than joyous.  It positively seeps with mischief, with a knowingness and complicity shared wholeheartedly with the audience, all underpinned by a quiet despair that lifts it high above mere knockabout farce.

 

Like all the best comedies it is firmly anchored in tragedy, in the boredom and dishonesty of dull suburban relationships, the frustration and bitterness of life not being quite what it was supposed to be.  Reg retreats into childhood memories of building balsa wood planes in the face of a comfortable, but loveless, marriage to the rigid Sarah.  Ruth has come to much prefer her career to her husband, while Annie quietly and dutifully looks after mother rather than living a life of her own.  Tom is so crippled by his own passivity and indecision that he risks losing Annie altogether.  The commitment to propriety that infuses all of them, to not causing a fuss, to just getting on rather than seeking happiness, has gone beyond mere reserve to become a playing of roles, an abdication of responsibility for shaping and living their own lives.  Norman is the partial exception, outwardly brimming with reckless confidence in pursuit of Annie, then Sarah, possibly even Reg.  Yet he is hamstrung by his inability to be what he feels he really is.  His lack of restraint serves as a device to bring out everyone else’s long hidden needs and desires, yet he is well aware that he is very far from being the Casanova he feels like inside. 

 

It is through the catalyst of the exuberant and unrestrained Norman that years of provincial politeness and keeping up of appearances start to break down.  Sarah’s icy exterior shows signs of melting in his embrace, Annie finally seems set on having a life of her own, Tom finally dares say to Annie what he’s been finding any excuse not to for three years.  It is this slow awakening of hope, these glimpses of possible future happiness that provide both poignancy and tragedy, all seem doomed to fade away, and life to return to what it was, once the effects of the weekend have worn off.

 

The performances are uniformly superb.  Paul Riiter stands out, his Reg is beautifully rendered and instantly recognisable.  Frustrations with his sterile but comfortable existence regularly threatening to tear through his polished and slick exterior, held back by his role as oldest sibling, as respected and relied upon adult.  Amanda Root’s Sarah is every inch the uptight woman of a certain age for whom the importance of the right table placement has surpassed any wilder or more interesting urges.  Ben Miles is similarly superb as Tom, really capturing the inner confusion and torment of someone out of their depth, solid and deeply reserved, utterly incapable of taking the initiative, seemingly doomed to live out his days quietly and alone out of shear politeness. 

 

Amelia Bullmore’s Ruth has least to do, but beautifully captures the feeling of distance that she has created between herself and Norman, and does some very fine comedy squinting.  Jessica Hynes beautifully captures the passive and worn down Annie, whose own identity has all but disappeared in the sterility, loneliness and boredom of her existence.  Hynes expertly captures that feeling of retreated horizons, a stillness and timidity waiting to be shattered, if only she could decide if that’s what she really wants.   Stephen Managan will, understandably, get most of the attention.  His Norman is exuberant and charismatic, bounding about the place like an overexcited dog in search of adventure and mischief. 

 

The in-the-round staging emphasises the circularity and enclosure of lives being played out without meaning, ambition or direction, of the momentary dislocation of well established patterns of behaviour.  It creates real intimacy between actors and audience, serving to heighten the sense of complicity and recognition.  We are not simply watching a fixed narrative unfold on a stage, this is much more voyeuristic, much more dynamic, like watching the rest of your family argue from across the sitting room.  It is an amphitheatre, with audience and performance all part of one shared event in the same way they are at a football match, the overall feel is of an intimacy and connectedness that turns spectating itself into an experience rather than passive activity.

 

Add in the unlikely presence of Douglas Hurd, Sandi Toksvig in a bright red jumper and the awful hushed silence between Kevin Spacey accidentally knocking the aged Alan Ayckbourne to the ground and the realisation he hadn’t killed him, and it made for a fantastic day out.

Oedipus at the National (16/10/2008)

Ralph, alas not Sir Ranulph, Fiennes gave an excellent portrayal of Sexy Beast  era Ben Kingsley playing Oedipus.  There was a large platter of piled up ham at the after-show party, beautifully referencing the events on stage.  The overly actor-like shouty performances may well have been authentic to the ancient Greek tradition, the revolving stage and cast dressed up in modern suits less so.  Modernising the delivery and staging would have helped matters considerably.  It was a straight run through, no gimmicks, minimal stage adornment.  I’m not sure what the point of it was.  It’s not as if we didn’t know what was going to happen, so the only thing they had to work with was the staging and production.  We’re in ancient Greece talking of Oracles and gods but everyone just happens to be wearing a suit.  Why?  Bit odd.  If a story is as old and tired as Oedipus, important as it is, it needs to be jazzed up, pimped.  ‘Pimping Oedipus,’ incidentally, is a great name for a punk band. 

  

A simple re-enacting is not theatre, it’s mere mimicry, repetition.  The original text should be the starting point, the setting should be modern, it should have something to actually say to the audience in front of it.  Tragedy has to have resonance.  Macbeth is sublime not through mere tragedy but through its understanding of human weakness and ambition.  It is this that makes it eternally contemporary, forever repeatable, both on stage and off.  I’m left with nothing to say about Oedipus as performed.  There is little to criticise, like a photograph it captures what it intended to, it mirrors and repeats it perfectly.  It’s like taking a photograph of something you know incredibly well just for the sake of it, a picture of your living room or office.  You may marvel at the quality of the image but you’d never bother to look at it again.  The free wine, little black dress (as worn on Eastenders) and Andrew Lincoln’s marvellous green jumper nonetheless made it an enjoyable day out for all the family.  My mum would have loved it. 

No man’s land, at the Duke of York 07/10/2008

Pinter’s No man’s land is a musing on loneliness, memory and power, played out in the mausoleum of a wealthy Hampstead drawing room. Two writers, one very successful (Hirst), one not (Spooner), meet on the Heath and repair for a drink in front of Hirst’s huge teak bar. Spooner initially dominates the conversation, full of bravado about his talents and success. Only later does he discover that Hirst is a writer too, an immeasurably more successful one at that. The relationship shifts, the play ending with Spooner begging Hirst to let him work for him as his secretary, beseeching him to allow him to undertake the most menial of tasks. Spooner is a pseudo-intellectual bore, impoverished, seedy and self-aggrandising, the negative image of Hirst’s outwardly dignified, if alcohol drenched, Lord of the Manor, who is trapped and isolated not by his failings, as Spooner is, but by his success. Both are pastiches, played for laughs, intersected with moments of real poignancy and tension.

 

The relationship between the two is never made clear, in the evening they are strangers who just happen to have met on the Heath. The next morning they share stories of their days together at university. Are these memories real? Is Hirst’s memory fading and Spooner merely playing along? Or is it Hirst that is playing an elaborate game, feigning recognition to demonstrate Spooner’s seedy deceptiveness? The two characters could be seen as one, split in direction at some key juncture, but perhaps they are simply the separate faces of the same person, the expansive and monosyllabic, the successful and self-sabotaging.

Michael Gambon’s Hirst is sublime, every particle of the man inhabits the character, conveying at once power, success and dominance and at once fear, solitude and the annihilating effects of age. He is alone, trapped in his success, his reputation. His only company, Foster (David Walliams) and Briggs (Nick Dunning), are equally ambiguous, both threatening and sinister, reflective and submissive. They serve, guard and, perhaps, imprison Hirst. Both are as dependent on him as he on them. It is they that Spooner attempts to supplant, without success.

David Bradley’s performance as Spooner is every bit as strong as Gambon’s, reeking of failure, vulnerability and arrogance. Dunning is equally excellent as the coarse and shouty Briggs, delivering his lines with real gusto and aggression, the threat of violence barely contained beneath his immaculate suit. Walliams’ Foster is more ambiguous, initially confident and imposing, later resigned and reflective. Walliams performance is uneven, he has the physical presence but lacks the intensity, the air of unpredictability, needed to convince. He is better later when a more relaxed performance is required, but stands out as the weak link given the magisterial performances of the other three.

The play, and production, are impressive, often laugh out loud funny and never anything less then engaging. Yet it’s difficult to care. Visually, the stuffy drawing room is a perfect metaphor for their insularity, their isolation. It is solid, yet out of date, impersonal. The script is clever, perhaps overly articulate, but its ambiguities do not leave one seeking to fill in the gaps, they do not stick as ideas, they lack depth and resonance. It spoke of, and perhaps to, the era it was written in rather than the mood of today. It was a pastiche of characters that have all but passed, a musing that seems self-indulgently elitist in these more complex times. I was impressed rather than moved, intrigued rather than challenged.

The 1954 BBC adaptation of 1984 at the BFI (29/09/2008)

1984 is without doubt one of the most influential books ever written.  Its dystopian portrayal of totalitarianism has inspired all manner of novels, films, plays, graphic novels and other art of all descriptions.  Its impact on our language has been greater than that of any other modern novel, indeed it is difficult to think of any other work of fiction that has left such a lasting linguistic legacy.  Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, Newspeak and Orwellian have become part of our every day parlance.  Its true impact though, the making less likely of the very future it describes, is impossible to measure. 

 

I will assume you are familiar with the story and characters (if not you should be reading it rather than wasting your time with this piffle).  I shall not waffle on about censorship, personality cults, behaviour and thought modification or mass surveillance, nor about Oceania, Victory Gin or Ministries of Truth, Peace and Plenty.  Nor will I compare and contrast with Brave New World, Blade Runner or Children of Men.  You can do all that perfectly well of your own accord over a cup of tea and a Kipling (I’d go for a Lemon Slice if I were you).

 

1984 is a novel that lends itself to visualisation.  The 1954 BBC adaptation is one of the most faithful and by far the most successful.  It was performed live, bar a few pre-recorded inserts.  The recording, not of its original performance but a second one shortly afterwards, only exists at all as someone at the BBC chose to point a camera at a monitor as it went out.  This was in the days before videotape and the ‘telerecording’ technique of the day was expensive and used very sparingly.  The poor quality of the recording, grainy and occasionally jerky, only adds to the overwhelming atmosphere of grim claustrophobia that pervades every second.

 

It is this grimness, this early 1950s Britain, still visibly scarred by war and drudging poverty, that, besides providing the perfect visual background, makes flesh the sterility and ugliness of life under the Party.  It is this very state of desperation, this sense of powerlessness and conformity, that the regime seeks to maintain.  It has no interest in building utopia but simply in maintaining itself in power.  The never ending war Oceania is engaged in is not fought for victory but to destroy the output of its own people, to keep them in a state of never ending poverty.  It is only those that have a certain level of prosperity that have the potential to question, educate themselves and rebel, not those pre-occupied with their own survival.  It is no coincidence that all so-called revolutionary movements have been led not by the toiling masses but by a small educated middle class element that has enjoyed the material security needed to have such aspirations, and the time on its hands to do something about it.  The regime’s role is to prevent prosperity and keep everyone firmly towards the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 

 

The proles, some 85% of the populace, are treated as little more than animals, confined to their squalid vermin ridden sectors and kept sedate with cheap beer, pornography and a national lottery that appears to provide their only hope of escape.  At the same time, they are, in one sense, freer than Party members, subject to much less control and far less intimidated by the apparatus of the state.  In part this is because they have nothing to lose, but the reality is that the Party hierarchy is content to leave them to their own devices as they pose no threat.  Those that could, the rebellious ‘middle class’ outer party members, are simply eliminated.

 

As we move, slowly and fictitiously, towards a post-totalitarian world in which Orwell’s dystopia ceases to have the direct resonance it used to, it is what he has to say about conformity and apathy that begins to chime more loudly.  It is clear that the Proles could easily rise up and destroy the party and state.  So why don’t they?  It is here that 1984 is at its most disturbing, in its portrait of the mundane realities of all societies.  Do they hold back out of fear?  There is little evidence of this.  They hold back because the very idea of choice has been destroyed, the very idea of rebellion has (almost) ceased to exist.

 

Seligman described this as ‘learned helplessness’.  In his most oft cited experiment he gave electric shocks to a dog, which it could stop by pressing a lever.  Another dog was similarly electrocuted but its lever did nothing to stop it when pressed, it seemed to end randomly whatever action the dog took.  The second dog learnt to be helpless, even when the mechanism was adjusted so that the shock would be stopped by the lever it did not try and activate it.  Despite being able to easily escape electrocution, it didn’t even try.  Once the futility of its actions had been demonstrated, once hope had been taken away, it simply lay down and accepted it.  The Proles are much the same, so used to being helpless that they have lost even the idea of trying to do anything about it.  They grumble about the beer that the Party supplies, get excited about the illicit pornography they’ve managed to get their hands on (which in fact is written by a machine in the Ministry of Truth) but they do not question and they do not act. 

 

This is the very society we have become.  The tragedy is that it does not take force and state control to achieve this.  We have embraced consumerism, indifference and inaction, a holy trinity for a civilisation that no longer believes in determining its own future.  Believing in anything is not cool, buying it is.  Our society is one of passive acceptance, we would rather complain about it down the pub than even think about doing anything to change it.  Politics is for someone else, taking to the streets is what they do abroad, we are more civilised, refined and tolerant.  We observe, not live.  We drink, not act.  Our schools do not teach us about politics, philosophy or our own history.  Our media only reports it if ‘our’ people are involved, if there is footage, if its in english.  We are insular, badly informed and have next to no influence on the decisions that shape our lives.  They are for politicians, or have been outsourced to private companies to make for us.  We are the voters, the market, the consumer.  Passively accepting that freedom of choice is the same as the choice of freedom.

 

Anyway.  The 1954 BBC production is also notable for staring a young Peter Cushing as Winston, in one of his first major roles, not to mention Donald Pleasance.  Cushing is something of a revelation if all you’ve previously seen of him is his Hammer Horror persona.  He is perfect as the repressed yet rebellious Englishman, rebelling not so much out of ideology (he actually quite likes his job rewriting history) but out of a sense that things aren’t quite cricket and out of a boredom with the sterility of his existence.  The key role of boredom in shaping historical and political events has been much overlooked.  Indeed it is the mundanity, the politeness, the very englishness of the production that makes it all the more disturbing.  This is brought home so forcibly by its understated acting and by its sheer roughness, at one point the whole wall wobbles when a door is closed, Ed Wood style.  Its budgetary and technological limitations, alongside the restrictions caused by live performance, force everything down on to the actors, script and the ideas themselves.  Cushing’s presence in almost every frame simply adds to the sense that he is constantly being watched, never free to be himself.  Indeed it is when Winston returns home after work and we see that the in-home CCTV means he cannot relax, cannot be himself even there, that he has no space, no time where he can escape except in his own head, that the true horrific nature of his predicament becomes most disturbing.  The fact that what is in his head itself can be deleted, edited and reprogrammed seems almost a relief from this torture.  

 

The original screening resulted in rival Early Day Motions in the House condemning and applauding it in equal measure, and the Daily Express headline of “Wife dies as she watches”, following the tragic demise of Beryl Merfin (now there’s a name) of Herne Bay during its screening.  Nothing quite so dramatic happened at the BFI on Thursday, but as we sat out on a bench by the river afterwards, looking out over the London whose alternative future we had just seen, we felt profoundly uncomfortable.       

Six characters in search of an author, at the Gielgud (28/09/08)

‘But only in order to know if you, as you really are now, see yourself as you once were with all the illusions that were yours then, with all the things both inside and outside of you as they seemed to you – as they were then indeed for you. Well, sir, if you think of all those illusions that mean nothing to you now, of all those things which don’t even seem to you to exist any more, while once they were for you, don’t you feel that the very earth under your feet is sinking away from you when you reflect that in the same way this you as you feel it today — all this present reality of yours — is fated to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?’

- Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello

  

Six characters is on the face of it a classic piece of meta-theatre.  Creative types, in this production film makers attempting to finalise a drama documentary on euthanasia, are rudely interrupted by a family of six characters desperate to find an ‘author’ to finish their story given that there’s has disappeared.  The film makers are engaged in an ethical debate about the reconstruction of footage and thus about the portrayal of reality.  What follows is at once a philosophical musing about the nature of reality and knowledge and upon the limitations of art and representation.

 

Our doomed characters convince the documentary director to allow them to act out their tale, creating our play within a play.  In truth, they are not in search of an author at all, they already have their story, but a director to stage it, as they are incapable of acting it out to completion on their own.  The characters tale is an interesting enough tragedy that muses on the nature of responsibility and the individual’s response to it.  A father abandons his wife to another man, taking his son with him.  The mother has two daughters and a son with the new husband before he dies, forcing them into poverty.  The mother takes a job repairing hats and the eldest daughter is forced into prostitution by the hat maker lest the mother lose her job.  The father returns, his near coupling with the daughter is interrupted by the mother.  Realising what has happened to the mother the father ‘rescues’ her and her three offspring and all end up living together, along with the elder son.  This is partly out of genuine concern from the father, but also so he can pursue the eldest daughter.  Their story ends with the accidental drowning of the youngest daughter and suicide of the youngest son. 

 

The mother abdicates responsibility by adopting the persona of the tragic and incapable widow, the oldest son by distancing himself from them all and losing himself in books.  The eldest daughter forces the story to be told out of disgust and yet revels in her self-destructive role and gives in without much of a struggle to the fathers advances.  While the father is ridden with guilt, only he appears to truly take responsibility, yet at the same time pleads innocence through weakness.

 

Further levels of ‘reality’ are added on top, the documentary film makers are in fact characters in a film about documentary making, which is actually part of a play about the making of said film (which ultimately becomes the play in front of us).  This melding of realities is brought home by the documentary director becoming trapped in limbo, invisible to all levels of reality and unable to break in to any of them.  It is this playing around with levels of reality and audience expectations that the production is about, rather than the story of the six characters, which is largely played, al be it superbly, for spectacle and entertainment. 

 

So far, so A-Level philosophy, a more ambiguous and post-modern musing on Descartes meditations.  It only reaches a more interesting level when the father questions the documentary director’s claim that she knows who she is and so knows reality.  He plays her footage of her a few years ago condemning euthanasia and stating with certainty that she could never come to support it.  He demonstrates that, given she is now pro-euthanasia, she cannot define herself in terms of what she believes as this is self-evidently changeable.  Nor can she define herself in terms of her physicality, her skin dies and is replaced constantly as is every other cell in her body.  The physical entity she is now contains not a single cell from the one that existed ten years ago.  So what is it that is ‘her’ if her beliefs and physical presence are not fixed but constantly changing?  She could, it is true, have deferred to cogito ergo sum but this has been thoroughly deconstructed and discredited by Nietzsche and others.  Still, this is a review of a play not a musing on such things.

 

Ian McDiarmid was near flawless as the Father, Denise Gough captivating and intense as the daughter.  The rest were rather too actorly and lacked clear characterisation beyond archetypes.  Whether this was a deliberate musing on the limitations of theatre or not is a matter for debate.  The production was slick, if a little too gimmicky.  The use of video, on stage fast-forwarding and voice over worked well but relied heavily on its unexpectedness and would not stand up to a second or third viewing.  The same is true of many of the jokes, clever and laugh out loud funny only on first hearing or sight.  That said, the production as a whole was enthralling, inventive and well paced, by turns poignant, hilarious and disturbing.  Perhaps it tried to do a little too much, sacrificing emotional connection and character development for spectacle and cleverness, but this seemed appropriate given the themes of the limitations of representation and subjectivity of perception