:: Encore Theatre Magazine ::

Encore Theatre Magazine

---

::Front Page::

:: Sunday, August 20, 2006 ::

No Smoking

In Edinburgh, Mel Smith make a big song and dance about his 'right' to smoke cigars while performing a monologue about Winston Churchill, suggesting that the Scottish Parliament's ban would have 'delighted Adolf Hitler'. He declared his intention to defy the ban and light up a Havana during a performance of
Allegiance at the Assembly, though, after hearing that William Burdett-Coutts who manages the venue, would have been fined £1000, the venue closed down and most likely not relicensed for performance, he backed down.

Encore does think it is strange that you can't smoke fake cigars and cigarettes under the terms of the Scottish Parliament's ban, and thus refuses to see a distinction between fiction and reality that is crucial to the theatre's working, but Mel Smith's posturing is indefensible.

The reason for the ban is to prevent workers being forced to inhale smoke. The ushers, technicians and cleaners at the Assembly Rooms would have to have inhaled Mel Smith's cigar smoke for the duration of the run. This is not reasonable and it doesn't do anything for Mel Smith's case and credibility that he did not acknowledge this point. At no point as far as we could see did he make the case for being allowed to smoke a fake cigar. It came across, finally, as though he simply felt he should be allowed to smoke a cigar whenever he fancied it, an impression reinforced by his post-show puffs out of the window (for which there was of course no justification). Insofar as he did make an 'artistic' defence of smoking cigars, it was that cigar smoking is essential to a portrait of the man Churchill. But this is a weak defence for several reasons: first, Churchill did many things, including, by some accounts, farting constantly in cabinet during the 1950s; I didn't see the show but I doubt that Mel Smith would have cultivated farts with the same enthusiasm he reserves for his Romeo y Julietta; the director of the show, Brian Gilbert, protested, 'I am all for a smoking ban in bars but not to have an actor smoking while he represents a character in history who did smoke is absurd' But that argument is hopeless - the same argument would allow anyone playing Brutus to actually kill Julius Caesar; second, a real cigar is not essential to a portrait of Churchill. Look, here's a portrait of Churchill:

He's got a cigar, but it's not a real one. It's an image created out of paint. No one who understands anything about theatre can say that a production in which the props (including, therefore, the cigars) are mimed is any less accurate a portrait of Churchill than one that cleaves to naturalism as its method; third, is a cigar essential to a performance of Churchill? Is it absolutely central to any portrait? More important than a jowly face, lugubrious speech, and a body of Mel Smith proportions? Because, look, here's a portrait of Churchill that adorns the front page of the Churchill Society's website.

At least, I think it's Churchill. But he has no cigar so maybe Mel Smith would tell us it could be anybody.

Encore think the arts need defending, and defending against a blanket ban that does not respect the particularity of theatrical representation, but let's remember that the smoking ban was introduced in the name of public health, a cause as important as the health of the theatre. This kind of campaign does nobody any good.

:: posted by Theatre Worker at Sunday, August 20, 2006

...

Comments:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."
Amazing, the number of people who, like the confident writer of the comment, get confused between logic and reality - i.e. if something's logical it must also be true. That kind of thinking starts wars and religions. To be logic is not to be right, or even accurate in terms of reality, it merely means that one is not being self-contradictory in terms of one's logical schema of choice. The idea that one man smoking one cigar in one performance is seriously going to affect the health of even one audience member is bloody ludicrous and at the same level of profundity as the thinking of some blinkered little religious zealot. What about all the world's barmaids who might be led to perdition by the occasional whiff of alcohol? Let's shut down the pubs! We're talking public health here, he puffed. Let alone the preservation of one's immortal soul! And have one yourself, you bloody nitwit. Hitler was indeed delighted by, and prey to, this kind of thinking-by-numbers. Like all those who cannot differentiate between Churchill's farting and his cigar smoking, including our silly critic, he had, as Mark Twin might have put it, "all the confidence of a Christian with four aces." How people can be this stupid and still have the brains to reproduce is beyond me.

# posted by  Anonymous : 12/12/06 3:26 pm

 

Post a Comment