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Encore Theatre Magazine
::Front Page::
:: Sunday, July 30, 2006 ::
The Stoppard Debate # 3
Merry Hell
The two-tier tradition of the Court that the previous correspondent identifies is a massive oversimplification. The Court has changed enormously depending on the artistic directors it has had over the years. One of the defining aspects of the Rickson era has been the complete lack of revivals of any sort. The only revivals in the 50th Programme are not by the English Stage Company but drama school or NYT productions. Because of this there has (financially) been a greater need than ever before to stage a commercially successful new play once or twice a year. In the 50th Anniversary year, these are Rock 'n' Roll and, to a lesser extent, Terry Johnson’s Piano Forte. What is significant about Rock 'n' Roll is that it is both written and directed by Royal Court outsiders in the form of Tom Stoppard and Trevor Nunn. While it is difficult to define what makes a Royal Court writer, Stoppard is certainly not that. In the cases of Hampton, Elyot, Johnson and even O’Brien, their plays were (and are still) staged partly because the Court felt a sense of loyalty to them and partly because they were expected to produce hits. In some cases, this didn’t happen: Kevin Elyot’s Forty Winks, was a tremendous box office flop despite a strong production by Katie Mitchell. But the Court has no reason to feel any loyalty to Stoppard or Nunn because they have absolutely nothing to do with the Court.
That Rock 'n' Roll is a very different play to Motortown is something of a no-brainer. That Motortown is a quintessentially Royal Court play is also quite obvious to anyone who has seen it (taking nothing away from a fantastic play). But what is striking about seeing something like Rock 'n' Roll at the Royal Court is that it is firmly placed within the drawing room comedy tradition of the British theatre that takes in Coward and Rattigan – precisely the tradition which prompted the rebellion upon which the Court’s very foundations rest. It is possible that one might come out of this play with a greater understanding of Czech politics and the respective roles that intellectuals like Havel and rock bands like the Plastic People of the Universe had within the counter-culture, but is a play the best place for finding these things out? Surely, you could become more thoroughly informed by reading a historical account, Havel’s prose or watching a documentary on the subject. What a play can do far better than a television documentary is to tell you something about yourself you didn’t know and Rock 'n' Roll fundamentally fails to do this.
'The incongruous merry laughter' that echoed through the austere home of the English Stage Company was certainly not of the type that has ever been heard at the Court before. Why? Because it was 'Tom Stoppard laughter' – a rare breed (though not unrelated to Michael Frayn laughter). It is not an instinctive, visceral reaction to a situation or a turn of phrase but the sound of someone letting everyone else in the audience know that they got a joke. It is like some massive free-for-all of oneupmanship.
There were also moments of merriment brought about by misunderstanding, such as Candida’s comment that in the late 1960s, her boyfriend was 'a Black Dwarf cartoonist'. Why do the audience think this is funny? Because they think her boyfriend was a black dwarf who also happened to be a cartoonist? There is also merriment brought about by snobbishness, such as the hilarity induced at the idea of the uneducated Esme harbouring an ambition to be a lecturer on Swann Hellenic Cruises – that really brought down the house.
There are good moments in the play, though I would argue that Pete Sullivan as Ferdinand was the real star of the show. Sewell is good but uneven and Cox just spends his whole time bellowing at everyone. The best scenes in the play by some way were between Sullivan and Sewell. The first few scenes, including the interrogation, are too short and of little dramatic interest and the dinner party scene is appalling. Very little sense of the relationship between Esme and Jan is built up, so the final twist in the story has very little power despite the fact that it comes at the end of a three-hour play. It is not a terrible play, but it is not a great one nor a particularly good one and, if it had been written by an unknown, they would probably have been asked to do a fair bit of rewriting, but presumably because it was Stoppard everyone was terrified of not getting something and looking stupid – the fear of not having got the joke!
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