tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53496282024-03-13T01:41:18.657+00:00Encore Theatre Magazine:: British Theatre: Polemics & Positions ::Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-70780347905294858342007-02-13T13:21:00.000+00:002007-02-13T21:03:00.701+00:00CHANGE OF ADDRESS<span style="font-size:180%;color:#3333ff;"><strong>Change of Address</strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffcc33;"><span style="color:#ffffcc;">We're on the move - please update your bookmarks to</span> <a href="http://www.encoretheatremagazine.co.uk/">http://www.encoretheatremagazine.co.uk/</a></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#ffcc33;"></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.encoretheatremagazine.co.uk/"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5031125504319860402" style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="379" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6UG1abpb1cDQP-sKH2YAB2qh0bHN-pEjdxVB2kf_eVaodcQX9EWKq5hxI02MV2w9jGRZ599f0wJx-3RkWrQA_hevHvmywJkrh2E9O-qyMrC18qtVxWdQBPspogBlHnl35C_5j/s320/frontpage.jpg" width="416" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="color:#ffffcc;">Blogger's reduced its functionality; we got bored of the look; a friend showed us how to get our own domain name; and we decided wanna go posh. </span><br /><span style="color:#ffffcc;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ffffcc;"></span><br /><span style="color:#ffffcc;">We'll bring over all the content over the next few months, but from TODAY this site is no longer functional and Encore is now master of its domain...</span>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-83133387099266797982007-01-21T23:43:00.000+00:002007-01-22T02:46:06.444+00:00Racist Culture<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Racist Culture</span></span><br /><br /><img id="image27" title="Jade Goody" alt="Jade Goody" src="http://www.encoretheatremagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/jade_goody_lead_203x152.jpg" align="left" />The year’s barely three weeks old and our culture’s been rocked by racism from top to bottom. From the hallowed heights of the ballet came the uncomfortable revelation that Simone Clark, principal dancer at the English National Ballet, has joined the far-right British National Party; soon followed the spectacle of Celebrity Big brother, in which Jade Goody (<em>pictured</em>), aided and abetted by her boyfriend Jack Tweed, model Danielle Lloyd, and ex-S Club member, Jo O’Meara, connived in the racist bullying of Bollywood star, Shilpa Shetty.<p>The BNP have tried to exploit this new addition to their ranks which led to the bizarre spectacle of 30 racists fighting for the right to go the ballet past a group of 50 anti-racist protestors. The left in the meantime has been up in arms about the affair. A similarly surreal non-event greeted Jade Goody when she was overwhelmingly voted out of the Big Brother house with 82% wanting her out. Fearing violent scenes, Channel 4 decided to hold a public eviction, so Jade bathetically tottered out to be met by Devina McColl (who, deprived of her audience and unsure how to play it, did her best to look both excited and grave at the same time).</p> <p>It’s a weird situation when the tabloids, who have so often whipped up racist fears about immigrants and asylum seekers, sitting astride their very highest horse over loudmouth Jade. The <em>Mail </em>for example published <a href="http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/bigbrother.html?in_article_id=430243&in_page_id=1894" target="_blank">a very sympathetic interview</a> with Shetty’s parents, bemoaning ‘the poisonous atmosphere of the Big Brother house’ and the horrifying ‘reality of modern Britain’. In <a href="http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=425586&in_page_id=1770" target="_blank">an interview with Simone Clarke</a>, on the other hand, the same paper<em>, </em>after some cursory criticisms of the BNP (mainly about how uncouth they are), all but endorsed her decision to join. Her reasons for joining ‘cannot be brushed aside as a foolish error, let alone ignored’ and indeed her worries about immigration reveal not her own ignorance and prejudice but ‘that something has gone badly wrong with democratic British politics’. Because, they insist ‘crime and immigration are real and understandable fears’ (how did ‘crime’ get in here?) and indeed ‘immigrants are arriving in Britain and the rate of one a minute’.</p> <p>In both instances, the arguments reveal our confusion as a culture about racism. While Clarke <em>(pictured) </em>is obviously fantastically naive and, frankly, a bit thick if she didn’t know that the BNP are holocaust-deniers, favour forcible repatriation, and various other policies she doesn’t believe in, it’s also disturbing to see how ignorant and demagogic the arguments have been against her and Jade Goody.</p> <p><img id="image30" title="Simone Clarke loves a man in uniform, apparently" alt="Simone Clarke loves a man in uniform, apparently" src="http://www.encoretheatremagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/r3588182048.jpg" align="right" />For one thing, does it matter what the private opinions are of a ballet dancer? The sad fact about the ballet world is that these men and women are trained from a very early age precisely <em>not </em>to express themselves, to evacuate their creativity, to become machine-like and merely to to execute - perfectly and beautifully - the steps assigned to them by the choreographer. In fact, they merely obey orders. (The perfect follower of fascism, in fact.) The idea that Clarke will be given a platform to express her racist views on the stage of the Colisseum is absurd. You don’t become principal dancer of a national ballet company by using the stage as a platform to express yourself. She only got a platform in the press because she was exposed. There is little evidence that she intended to make a public stand at all. And if it’s a legal political party - ah but that’s another debate - why can’t she join it? Is joining the BNP a notifiable act? If not, then we shouldn’t really have found out. It annoyed me to read that Peter Hall and Harold Pinter voted Tory in 1979. It doesn’t make me respect Frank Lampard very much to know that <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1639228.ece">he supports David Cameron</a>. But, hey, I don’t go to the theatre just to see myself on stage, I go to encounter other people, different people, to extend the limits of my experience and so of myself.</p> <p>Which leads us directly to Big Brother. In 1978, Germaine Greer wrote ‘Eternal War’, a brilliant article about August Strindberg. One might have imagined that Greer, the most famous feminist of the twentieth century might have little positive to say about the most famous misogynist in theatre history. But the article is a eulogy. Some men, she says, claim to be feminists, to understand what women want; they are soft, and caring, in touch with their feminine side. Bollocks to that, says Greer. This is just the co-option of feminism and nothing has changed underneath. Strindberg is the greatest playwright about the battle of the sexes because, she argues scarily, he is the only playwright who genuinely reveals what men really think about women. Implicit in the article is the belief that it’s better to face the horror of the world than to hide it.</p> <p>And if this is true, and we think it is, what’s wrong with Celebrity Big Brother? What that programme revealed starkly and clearly was what racism is like. We saw - as David Eldridge <a href="http://onewriterandhisdog.blogspot.com/2007/01/you-gotta-fight-shilpa.html" target="_blank">has pointed out</a> - the way that racism intersects with class envy and class hatred; we saw the way it expresses itself in crude paranoid fantasies (the housemates unbelievably believe that Shilpa Shetty is trying to poison them), its coded expression in sexist language (Shilpa has been called a ‘dog’ and a ‘cunt’), and the casual, ambiguous joking that can terrorise without exposing itself (’What’s her name? Shilpa Poppadom?’ quipped Jade; ‘I think she should fuck off home’ opined Danielle).</p> <p>Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, has demanded that Channel 4 admit that it mishandled the situation and called for its chairman, Luke Johnson, to be censured. It’s true that the episode has revealed some murky things about the relationship between TV programmes and the big celebrity agents but this isn’t what Trevor Phillips is talking about. So why censure C4? Because it showed racism? Because it brought some nasty people together and showed the result? Racism is a feature of current Britain. This sort of attitude is about two things (<em>a</em>) making you feel better about your own latent prejudices by identifying someone more racist than yourself, (<em>b</em>) a belief that if you ignore it and pretend it isn’t happening, racism will go away. The first is dishonest; it suggests that <a href="http://londontheatreblog.co.uk/?p=149" target="_blank">London Theatre Blog</a> may be right when it claims that under the radical protest lies a rather more conservative view that everything’s really alright; the second claim is not true and has never been true.</p> <p>If you believe that racism thrives in the oxygen of publicity - and perhaps it would - would it not be better to ask what there is in our atmosphere that could give life to such a hateful belief? Otherwise it’s like locking up teenage junkies for possession without stopping to ask why they are taking smack in the first place. Oh, hold on, we do that.</p> <p>The media and the performing arts are venues in which we can ask questions about the sources of human hatred, the forms of our ignorance, how we become the worst of ourselves. And the thread that runs through both of these unpleasant episodes is not so much race as <a href="http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2175017.ece" target="_blank">class</a>. Why is it so horrifying that Simone Clarke’s a neo-Nazi? Because she’s a <em>ballet dancer</em>. She’s in contact with high art, she’s probably middle class, she’s one of <em>us…</em> which is why it’s expressed as puzzlement, shock, confusion. Whereas Jade, the unacceptable face of the white working class, is a repository for the bourgeoisie’s hatreds and fears. Usually middle class liberal can’t admit that he or she is disgusted and terrified by the working class, so moments like this represent rare relief. Thank God she’s said something racist, and to such an emblem of cosmopolitan middle-class refinement, because now we can happily hate her and all of her chav scum kind!</p> <p>It’s nastily ironic that what we saw here was a lynch-mob mentality. And if you believe, with <em>Encore</em>, that racism feeds on irrationalism and ignorance, that the arts are at their best when they are fearlessly imagining the worst and the best that we can be, this has been a bad week for all of us.</p>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-40878868818214494362007-01-17T19:27:00.000+00:002007-01-17T19:58:14.891+00:00Jack Bradley<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jack Bradley</span></span><br /><br />A kind friend forwarded Jack's email announcing the sad news of his retirement from the post of Literary Manager of the National Theatre.<br /><blockquote face="georgia"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipXVT0PzqDa9I_f9q61JvY5UBawfWipGAiwYBrdjrp3dok4wYuOZiAk6nlRJhjr0YexqPxYkXOzk-Zrp18-oNePjKv8FaGv4dG8fZHSaYMswiIym5TCvaXg_xSFqywqtx4oFER/s1600-h/thumbnail.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipXVT0PzqDa9I_f9q61JvY5UBawfWipGAiwYBrdjrp3dok4wYuOZiAk6nlRJhjr0YexqPxYkXOzk-Zrp18-oNePjKv8FaGv4dG8fZHSaYMswiIym5TCvaXg_xSFqywqtx4oFER/s320/thumbnail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5021090410566101058" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:10;"><span style="font-size:85%;">After twelve very happy years at the National pontificating about playwriting, offering unwanted and sometimes unwarranted advice, I’ve decided to stop telling people how to write plays and I’m going to try and write some more of my own. Whether or not this will be for the greater good of Dramatic Literature, I suspect this humbling next step will be very good for my soul, not to mention the hapless victims of my more wayward views. All I can say is that I feel I have been privileged to read and learn from the work of my friends and peers. I believe the last decade will be remembered as a halcyon time. Not since the turn of the 16<sup>th</sup> Century has the South Bank and London Theatre seen such an explosion of talent. Long may it continue and I’ll see you in a theatre foyer soon!</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></blockquote>Jack has been one of the major positives of the last decade. In fact since 1994, he's nurtured countless playwrights, whether by offering them commissions, reading their work, meeting them, passing their plays to other theatres, getting them into the building, pairing them up with directors and actors. The National's always been a bit of a director's theatre, certainly after Olivier's departure. It's never been a writer's theatre; when it's tried to be, as in the mid-eighties, it's usually just succeeded in turning writers into directors. But the National has championed many important new writers in the last decade - Moira Buffini, Patrick Marber, Gregory Burke, Mark Ravenhill, Owen McCafferty, Shelagh Stevenson, Joe Penhall, David Eldridge, Nick Darke, Nick Dear, Samuel Adamson, Roy Williams, Conor McPherson, Simon Stephens, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Martin McDonagh, Gary Owen, Tanika Gupta, and many others - and most of them were seen on the National's stages directly or indirectly because of Jack's influence. The National has been much more of a writer's theatre during Jack's time. He reads a lot, goes to see new work a lot, and is very approachable. He likes a wide range of stuff, from Crimp to J T Rogers, from Stephens to Dear. He's been good news and <span style="font-style: italic;">Encore </span> contemplates the future of the National's literary department with some anxiety.<br /><br />Fortunately he's going back to playwriting. He rather nobly suspended his playwriting when he took on the literary manager role, believing that he couldn't really be critiquing other people's work when he was focused on his own. We wish him good luck.<br /><br />Now. Who's your top tip to take over?Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-36412708120681599062007-01-12T23:46:00.000+00:002007-01-13T00:10:18.456+00:00Happy Days Are Here Again<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102);font-size:130%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">Happy Days Are Here Again</span></span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGQh__teG8UPtUuKfVtydN6jegMWdMIhvbS7Sfl4S2ep5u16iTF-4gEWqeR5N2CV6T4pnJ4Gt0iYxZDbr2SXzQMcG0jna1QMNGqoiuHpLAlNRQ4d89Gtk4_oal6MOM64edrPA3/s1600-h/warnershaw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGQh__teG8UPtUuKfVtydN6jegMWdMIhvbS7Sfl4S2ep5u16iTF-4gEWqeR5N2CV6T4pnJ4Gt0iYxZDbr2SXzQMcG0jna1QMNGqoiuHpLAlNRQ4d89Gtk4_oal6MOM64edrPA3/s320/warnershaw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5019299950369548338" border="0" /></a>Back in the early 1990s, Deborah Warner decided to have a fresh look at <span style="font-style: italic;">Footfalls</span>. She and Fiona Shaw (<span style="font-style: italic;">both pictured</span>), reconceived the play, usually performed in a thin strip of light, around the auditorium of the dark Garrick Theatre, the voices coming at us from strange angles and we sat backwards on the old theatre seats and heard this curious theatre ghost haunting the old spaces. The Beckett Estate were outraged. It is, admittedly, annoying for writers when directors treat stage directions as ignorable but Beckett's work is often enough revived in faithful, even reverential productions (viz. the recent Gate Beckett festival), that a bit of theatrical reinvention would seem like a good idea. Indeed, if his work is to survive, one might think exploring its edges and folds and corners essential. But the Estate did not think so and banned Deborah Warner from ever getting another crack at Sam's Holy work.<br /><br />But they've clearly kissed and made up. The Beckett Estate had become, largely because of that incident (though there have been others), a by-word for authorial tyranny, and Deborah Warner has hardly been damaged by the controversy. So Warner and Shaw are back in favour again and have been given permission to do Beckett's <span style="font-style: italic;">Happy Days</span>. In return, one imagines, this won't be a total reinvention of the play, so all sides will be, more or less, happy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-dcCL3EzALPIe9goaq-CM9zxyUv_MN4BCCmugM3AXoXooS-PpQLcHlr-J4E9DTbSDeWJ0_v1cJkvjp-fOVJwx0UNxMTIUoNykgnULp-A5Dwet1kSGZy9Lt8sHyGV_U_zQYpU/s1600-h/HDfriends.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf-dcCL3EzALPIe9goaq-CM9zxyUv_MN4BCCmugM3AXoXooS-PpQLcHlr-J4E9DTbSDeWJ0_v1cJkvjp-fOVJwx0UNxMTIUoNykgnULp-A5Dwet1kSGZy9Lt8sHyGV_U_zQYpU/s200/HDfriends.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5019298868037789730" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3IleZZ9kA2UCLtAuw56SujzcF3fOkVqXb9Ln71MAjFLOeOJhSd57UHR-JqAbjr5pHonKtlIApI6z_A2UnWQqfdpdlq6rXEHrQT98Vvze96VWuTjCkkMrBnB1YswIWahHDg7rV/s1600-h/HDstudents.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3IleZZ9kA2UCLtAuw56SujzcF3fOkVqXb9Ln71MAjFLOeOJhSd57UHR-JqAbjr5pHonKtlIApI6z_A2UnWQqfdpdlq6rXEHrQT98Vvze96VWuTjCkkMrBnB1YswIWahHDg7rV/s200/HDstudents.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5019298764958574610" border="0" /></a>The National seem oddly keen that you see it and have sent us two offers to pass on to you. We told them what a lot of ruffians and philistines you were but they wouldn't listen. So: if you are a <span style="font-weight: bold;">student</span> then you can see the play for a <span style="font-style: italic;">fiver</span> and they throw in a bottle of Corona. The wedge of lime costs £35 though. (Only joking about the lime.) If you're sadly not a student, but you're a <span style="font-weight: bold;">friend of Beckett<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span>you can still get in for £15. Not a personal friend, I presume. Just, you know, someone who likes Beckett. Not that you have to prove that. You don't have to recite <span style="font-style: italic;">Not I</span> or anything to get the cheap ticket. Details of how to claim are below. Students to the left, friends to the right. Click on the thumbnails to bring them up full size.<br /><br />We're guessing that if you mention that you came across this offer on Encore Theatre Magazine, they might do this again, so dropping our name can't hurt us or you.<br /><br />Let's just hope it's good.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-45947746871413711012007-01-12T16:23:00.000+00:002007-01-12T16:45:48.203+00:00Anonymity or Cowardice?<span style="font-size:130%;color:#333399;"><strong>Anonymity or Cowardice?</strong></span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBMqYvdt940Jn9gQyX4C7HpjfjjQ0Sx3M9m8a5w4XOYViAhpJYd-cam-5NDXQmjqy15G-9hkFWTAJsY9K0m9LwcvheCfpR00bn3Xlvg0eYrmEeSJFzJt188GSiRCzemLRJNIQa/s1600-h/DE_MR_Festen_1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5019185867448231938" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBMqYvdt940Jn9gQyX4C7HpjfjjQ0Sx3M9m8a5w4XOYViAhpJYd-cam-5NDXQmjqy15G-9hkFWTAJsY9K0m9LwcvheCfpR00bn3Xlvg0eYrmEeSJFzJt188GSiRCzemLRJNIQa/s320/DE_MR_Festen_1.jpg" border="0" /></a>David Eldridge (<em>pictured</em>, with Marla Rubin) has recently been the subject of a bruising encounter on the blogosphere. Not his own <a href="http://onewriterandhisdog.blogspot.com/">very wonderful blog</a> but on Fin Kennedy’s (also very wonderful) <a href="http://finkennedy.blogspot.com/">site</a>. An anonymous contributor made some very aggressive and personal remarks which David responded to in a characteristically forthright and pugnacious tone. This escalated until Fin was forced to suspend comments on the site. For a while, it seems, David contemplated giving up his blog.<br /><br />This set us thinking at <em>Encore</em> because anonymity is part of the problem. Most people are ruder about others behind their backs than they would be to their faces. If they are sure it won’t get back to them, they are ruder still. Internet comment-posting allows complete anonymity and some people have taken the opportunity it affords to be very rude to people, like David, who stick their neck out and write about themselves online.<br /><br />Of course, so do we. <em>Encore </em>has been very rude about certain people in the past. We doubt that Sheridan Morley or Toby Young or Sir David Hare are fans of our site. In a couple of weeks we think it likely that Quentin Letts will go right off us. We are also anonymous and this latest flare-up has made us ask again about the value of anonymity and examine our motives.<br /><br />We have always maintained anonymity because we want to be able to criticise institutions we may work in and people we may work with. We also want to praise these institutions and people without it looking like social climbing. If the objects of our praise don’t know who we are, we can’t benefit, which is important. Our independence is important to us. Theatre companies have written to us wondering if we could write about some show of theirs. We always say we might do but we won’t ever promise a puff-piece. Anonymity allows us to maintain that independence without consequence.<br /><br />Glyn Cannon, or someone pretending to be Glyn Cannon, <a href="https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=5349628&postID=115506047229037772">once argued</a>, very interestingly, that without authorship, comments have no authority. As we said at the time:<br /><br /><blockquote>It depends on the judgment; if I announce that Michael Frayn has a headache, the<br />value of that claim is devalued unless I am Michael Frayn. But if I announce<br />that Michael Frayn earned £2m last year and draw your attention to his public<br />accounts, does it matter to the judgement who I am? You might start wondering<br />why someone would want to reveal Frayn's financial situation. But you might also<br />wonder that if I named myself.</blockquote>We also feel passionately that ideas and debates don’t always have to be dragged down into interpersonal rivalry. As David Eldridge has put on his blog <a href="http://onewriterandhisdog.blogspot.com/2007/01/im-with-keats-mate.html">recently</a>, responding to us,<br /><br /><blockquote>I thoroughly loathe the inane modern certainties [...] that any action must be<br />motivated by reasons of ego, selfishness, emotional-indulgence or materialistic<br />gain and perceive them as such. </blockquote>We hope ideas can be appreciated in themselves and we don’t hope to gain personally from any of this. In fact, writing for this blog takes up time that probably should be spent on other things.<br /><br />What ‘Anonymous’ said about David on Fin’s blog was personal and irrelevant to artistic judgment and that's the difference. Maybe we’ve stepped over the line once or twice. We did mock Sheridan Morley’s beard a couple of times, which is probably not really at the heart of what is so objectionable about the old buffoon. But looking back over the various things we've written, we feel fairly happy that what we've written may have been written very savagely (and, no, we wouldn't enjoy reading such things about ourselves) but they are also usually <em>argued.</em><br /><br />Also - and does this need saying? - this is all the product of love. In the theatre, we ironclad ourselves against disappointment and failure, and from the horror and sadness that these rich and intense and joyful experiences pass and are over, the cast scattering to other shows, the sets dismantled, the attention dwindling, the show fading into the monchrome of distant memory. We harden our hearts and talk about making work, having a job, getting a gig, to disguise from ourselves the terrible joy of all this. If we didn't care about this work and - whisper it softly - deep down genuinely believe that the experiences that we make and witness are among the most important and profound experiences in our lives, we would not express our criticisms with such passion. So we are inclined to maintain our anonymity, risk crossing the line, and continue to honour and denounce with all the force at our disposal.<br /><br />Fortunately for the blogosphere, David Eldridge seems to have been persuaded to continue with his blog. So we can continue to follow the fortunes of his writing career, West Ham, and, of course, his dog. And hopefully soon we will find out what was in the <a href="http://onewriterandhisdog.blogspot.com/2006/12/thats-it-from-me.html">letter</a> he received before Christmas that made him weep tears of joy.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-62711675931081477922007-01-10T02:13:00.000+00:002007-01-10T03:15:52.867+00:00Billington's Blair<div><span style="font-size:130%;color:#000099;"><strong>Billington's Blair</strong></span><br /><br /><div>Michael Billington's put up a more than usually will-this-do?-ish piece on the Guardian's theatre blog. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1l3eL3n_yRW1QcV6g8HDZXWIthPJs5WSh6VgEBw_yjqx1Ga9j9Zr1OfEmilRK_2hyphenhyphen-GeWRcxugCNXAo5i5pQLtRxFcsrJB3JgrjbwLUHSUgRR6wCpzGNUFlS8SQJDlQwln8P/s1600-h/CopyofTonyBlair_RSSize(271x384).jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5018235006932251890" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 103px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 143px" height="172" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif1l3eL3n_yRW1QcV6g8HDZXWIthPJs5WSh6VgEBw_yjqx1Ga9j9Zr1OfEmilRK_2hyphenhyphen-GeWRcxugCNXAo5i5pQLtRxFcsrJB3JgrjbwLUHSUgRR6wCpzGNUFlS8SQJDlQwln8P/s200/CopyofTonyBlair_RSSize(271x384).jpg" width="111" border="0" /></a>Titled, for no very good reason, <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/01/how_do_you_solve_a_problem_lik.html">'How do you solve a problem like Blair?'</a> he uses the announcements of two 'Tony Blair on Trial' plays, <a href="http://www.channel4.com/more4/drama/t/trial_tony/index.html">one on C4</a> and <a href="http://www.tricycle.co.uk/htmlnew/whatson/show.php3?id=106">one at the Tricycle</a>, to observe that Blair so far 'has been seen on stage largely as a buffoon'. Instead, Michael longs for a play that 'takes Blair seriously'.<br /><br />Well, there is something to be said for this point. The kind of lampooning you get in <em>The Madness of George Dubya</em> or <em>Follow My Leader</em> makes those of us who opposed the Iraq occupation feel good but it doesn't add to our understanding. Nor, one might add, were they really meant to.<br /><br />But what does Billington mean by taking Blair seriously? He offers two definitions: one 'that examines Blair in all his psychological complexity' or 'one that even portrays him as a tragic figure'. What does this mean? Here Billington pads the article out with some very meandering thoughts but he seems to believe that Blair's tragedy is that he did the wrong thing for the right reasons, at least in his own eyes. By 'the wrong thing' he means enter into this murderous war (is that what he means by the reference to 'the accumulating corpses'? It was a <em>war, </em>Michael...). But it's utterly mysterious what he could mean by 'the right reasons'.<br /><br />Why did we go to war? Blair is fond now of claiming that he did so in order to depose the tyrant, Saddam Hussein. But this is a rereading of history. Blair took us into war on the basis of the WMD Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed and was seeking to develop. There is much l;ess talk about his oppression of his own people. If you look at the two main dossiers of information released to the press and public, the February ('dodgy') dossier and the September dossier, the great preponderance and primary focus of both is on the WMD intelligence. In the <a href="http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/page1470.asp">February dossier</a>, only three pages directly refer to the oppression of the Iraqi people; the long second section outlining the structure of the internal security apparatus seems largely informative and as much talking about, say, the role of the Republican Guard in defeating the weapons inspectors as in discussing the security's role in repressing dissidence. In the <a href="http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page271.asp">September dossier</a>, the one directly made available to the public, Blair's <a href="http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page284.asp">introduction</a> comprises 29 sentences, 15 of which relate directly to the threat posed by the WMD. In contrast, there is one reference to Saddam Hussein's 'dictatorial' behaviour. It is clear that it was the imminent threat to Britain posed by Saddam Hussein, not that of his own people, that was Blair's central argument in support of military action. </div><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div>This makes a difference because the kinds of questions you ask someone claiming self-defence (even anticipatory self-defence) are quite different from those claiming humanitarian intervention. <em>If</em> Iraq had posed a direct threat to the West, we would have been quite right to intervene militarily - once diplomatic routes had broken down. Few other questions would have been asked. If we had claimed it was a humanitarian intervention, other questions come into the picture: why now? (the September dossier lists human rights abuses going back twenty years) and why Iraq? (rather than, say, Zimbabwe, or North Korea, or any one of several oppressive regimes). By claiming the first ground, he avoids the second set of questions, and so he cannot change position now. It is a central plank of any 'just war' that you declare, beforehand, why you are embarking upon it. This Blair did not do.</div><br /><div></div><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMVwR8yAR6bBUl6tbtGE-quu6B4DSW9K6pSybwEHP7FAZuElgK6vYnxfiU12yczP5D4aFHBuXQUbYWDhsGcyEjniiWL7wwyE9IQvnTFyz16YMeCCfWj2XOkM5lW87XRjRXaFpH/s1600-h/Tony+Blair-big.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5018231373389919458" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMVwR8yAR6bBUl6tbtGE-quu6B4DSW9K6pSybwEHP7FAZuElgK6vYnxfiU12yczP5D4aFHBuXQUbYWDhsGcyEjniiWL7wwyE9IQvnTFyz16YMeCCfWj2XOkM5lW87XRjRXaFpH/s320/Tony+Blair-big.jpg" border="0" /></a>So if Billington means that for the right reasons (deposing Saddam Hussein) Blair did the wrong thing (went to war), he's seriously misled. And in any case, why would this be illuminated by presenting a rounded pictrure of Blair in all his psychological complexity? Answer: it wouldn't. It would be a distraction from the real forces that are at work here, and these are not psychological. They are an embedded Foreign Office doctrine that will not let us break with America, in a mistaken belief that we hold a balance of forces between the US, Europe and the Commonwealth. They are an ideological programme called <a href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/">Project for the New American Century</a>. It's our addiction to air travel, America's addiction to fuck-off cars, the emerging economies of China and India, and the need to stabilise the diminishing oil supply because the US presidency is bought by the oil companies.<br /></div><br /><div>Yes, I think there is some kind of tragic story here. Blair over-reached himself in believing that he could persuade the UN to get behind military action in Iraq. But he couldn't, because they didn't believe he had them, didn't really think he was obstructing the weapons inspectors, and saw the American aggression for what it was. Naked self-interest, a neo-neo strategy, the revival of Kissingerism, and that was never going to be good for the world. But to claim that his story is the one we need to see is to buy into Blair's own self-importance and a UK foreign office view of the world.<br /></div><br /><br /><div>To understand what has happened in Iraq, we must resist <em>Blair: The Tragedy.</em></div></div>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-13671659125053069582006-12-31T15:48:00.000+00:002007-01-02T01:02:04.061+00:00Encore Review of the Year 2006<div><span style="color:#3333ff;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Encore Review of the Year 2006</span></strong><br /></span><br />Thanks to everyone who wrote in with their suggestions for plays, productions, and theatre work in general that deserved recognition in 2006. This was an interesting year for the theatre with some of the most interesting new plays for a while, almost (dare we trendspot?) looking like a pattern, some radical new work at some very mainstream venues. It was also a pretty bad year for the critics who overruled their linesmen to ignore offsides, award penalties where there were none, and showed evidence bias to the home side.<br /><br />The plays that caught <em>Encore</em>'s eye this year took some brave risks with form. What was truly depressing about the critical response to Caryl Churchill's <em>Drunk Enough To Say I Love You?</em> (title of the year, by the way) was the way that most critics, whether they liked it or not, discussed the play as if it were a simple broadside against US foreign policy and the moral compromises that underpinned the 'special relationship' with Britain. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2118MUXWn28yneoVZa7NBhDMEW5gQrABo-Lbv8hBDfT0HegvPtklxqajPXqQ0md7uSJcSVgqXLGBZIenZZ0IFbyZeEHayG8B9SwawU5JY2k8cYqBYzEhDoNmg4VVatyzfzZor/s1600-h/Motortownposter.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015226645078586658" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 10px 10px 0px 0px; CURSOR: hand" height="333" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2118MUXWn28yneoVZa7NBhDMEW5gQrABo-Lbv8hBDfT0HegvPtklxqajPXqQ0md7uSJcSVgqXLGBZIenZZ0IFbyZeEHayG8B9SwawU5JY2k8cYqBYzEhDoNmg4VVatyzfzZor/s320/Motortownposter.jpg" width="188" border="0" /></a>That is the description of a newspaper article, not a play, particularly not a play which squeezed this story through a domestic relationship, told it through shards of incomplete dialogue fragments, depicted it (in James Macdonald's beautiful production) in a light-bulb-framed showbiz-mirror, wherein we (and the Public Theatre audience to come) see ourselves and the darkness around us. We don't yet feel we have understood or properly <em>felt </em>the force of those formal devices and this is a play that will haunt <em>Encore</em>'s imagination for some time to come. Ravenhill's bold two steps into new ground, <em>The Cut</em> and <em>pool (no water)</em> were treated very roughly by the theatre critics, though the latter play fared better with the more adventurous dance and performance art reviewers who are evidently better attuned to what new theatre is than the content-spotting first-stringers. Both texts were major achievements by one of our major writers and the critics really need to catch up. Simon Stephens dropped his trademark gentleness by showing us, in <em>Motortown (</em>pictured<em>)</em>, Britain through the hellish eyes of a returning soldier and in doing so allowed us to imagine ourselves as others see us; the sociological accuracy of the play is far less significant that the political and ethical importance of such an act of fearless imagination, in these times of all times. Anthony Neilson's <em>Realism</em> at the Edinburgh International Festival did not perhaps have the weight and force of <em>Dissocia</em> (finally coming to the Court, thank you Dominic Cooke), but showed further evidence of the vigorous, restless talent of this writer and the creative ensemble he has gathered around him. It was hard to watch <em>Catch</em> without spotting the lurching changes of style, but principally because we all knew it was cowritten. The subject was fascinating and resonant, Kathryn Drysdale as the precocious girl on work experience was a great discovery, but the play didn't seem to amount ot very much, and some of its plotting was shaky (why does Claire tell her fuck-buddy it's her on the video? why keep the bloody database on a chain round her neck, rather than, say, in a safe? At least put a bloody password on it...). Elsewhere at the Court there was less to be excited about. <em>The Winterling </em>was entertaining but a rushed first draft. <em>Rainbow Kiss </em>showed promise more than achievement. <em>Sugar Mummies</em>, <em>O Go My Man</em>, and <em>Piano/Forte</em> were stinkers, unfortunately. <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> we have already covered extensively.<br /><br /><em>Blackbird </em>got to London this year in a stupid production with immeasurably coarsened performances; that the play's daring and beauty still came across is a tribute to the hidden robustness of this delicate and evanescent work. <em>The Seafarer</em> on the other hand had a sublime production that more or less entirely hid the silliness of the play. But why discount acting? This was some of the best around. The same might be said of <em>Black Watch</em>; a great evening, but in its toying with verbatim form it seemed gorged on having its cake and eating it. 2006 was a great year for Peter Morgan with superb drama-docs on TV (<em>Longford</em>), film (<em>The Queen</em>), and stage (<em>Frost/Nixon</em>), the latter making a wholly deserved push into the West End, one of the few decent shows there all year. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0ioCURDJevCkpVa_AXjzfmhBot_Qi4JXtJdJI0bVk-9GzpCWz_ISFTQcfW6c5Cg9xhGZ9L9Db8VdiIEZR8KPwJG7gzF9NgLpUQ1t6s-hXwJ2k1VlofrYgWKpMz7USPavvUMW/s1600-h/vertical+hour.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015227418172699954" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0ioCURDJevCkpVa_AXjzfmhBot_Qi4JXtJdJI0bVk-9GzpCWz_ISFTQcfW6c5Cg9xhGZ9L9Db8VdiIEZR8KPwJG7gzF9NgLpUQ1t6s-hXwJ2k1VlofrYgWKpMz7USPavvUMW/s320/vertical+hour.jpg" border="0" /></a>Brenton's <em>In Extremis</em> was a more certain return to the stage than Paul, with more blood and spunk in the intellectual sinews. The Bush did not set <em>Encore</em> alight this year, even Steve Thompson's much-praised <em>Whipping it Up </em>seeming too boxed in by its narrative conventionalities. David Hare's new one, <em>The Vertical Hour</em>, opened on Broadway to mixed reviews - mainly at the expense of Julianne Moore - but in its pitting of British anti-war cynicism against American pro-war idealism, Hare seems to have hit upon an elegant structure to dramatise and complicate its audience's likely preconceptions. The play that excited us the most this year was probably Dennis Kelly's <em>Love and Money</em>, a full audit of the way we live and finding us morally bankrupt. The beautiful, spare, sympathetic production by Matthew Dunster (when are you going to write us another play, by the way?) was a perfect vehicle for Kelly's flinty, hilarious, edgy dialogue, his deep sense of moral decay, and the horror of how we are to each other. We hope, and if we prayed we'd pray, that this play will demonstrate to the critics that we don't have to be literal to write keenly and alertly about the world.<br /><br />There were some excellent revivals this year. London finally saw <em>Zerbombt </em>(pictured), Ostermeier's production of Sarah Kane's <em>Blasted</em>, a masterpiece of subtle observation, real time aesthetics, and then a spectacular and gorgeous transformation into another world, a world of light and emptiness, the kind of death-world into which the characters at the end of <em>Crave</em> gratefully fall. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_2BBkmsz-r3ju_cC1lDPoXiD_SEJw4NRuiuzWgMAeLWF1DO4NdQv7u0WE_Et9nNMwFBYltxqkoK0FOuxUKAeA11NDIsCIjM9hKakgxqgqYd9ME-5UVV6nnTW7mIJkfRKP3JOA/s1600-h/Blasted5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015173335944508690" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_2BBkmsz-r3ju_cC1lDPoXiD_SEJw4NRuiuzWgMAeLWF1DO4NdQv7u0WE_Et9nNMwFBYltxqkoK0FOuxUKAeA11NDIsCIjM9hKakgxqgqYd9ME-5UVV6nnTW7mIJkfRKP3JOA/s320/Blasted5.jpg" border="0" /></a>It was a good year for <em>Blasted</em>, with a terrific touring revival by Graeae (<em>pictured</em>) in the early part of the year, about to begin a deserved London residency at the Soho. <em>The Voysey Inheritance</em>, under Peter Gill's direction, was a spectacular redicovery for those of us who not already made it. The opening, with its Crimp-like interrupted dialogue, was stunning enough, but then one could only watch in horrified admiration through Granville Barker's remorseless eye fixed open on the beast that erupts within us when money enters our mutual relations. The Orange Tree's <em>The Madras House</em> was similarly admirable. Dominic Cooke's RSC <em>Crucible</em> was as good as this very over-rated play could ever get, unfussy, needle-sharp, and urgent. <em>Encore </em>hears good things about the RSC Complete Works season, though only saw the <em>Indian Dream</em>, which it faintly admired. Cheek by Jowl's <em>The Changeling </em>was oustanding at the Barbican . <em>Moon for the Misbegotten </em>was unbelievably, staggeringly dull, utterly without pertinence, resonance, or interest. The set, however, was very pretty with a rich blue in the surrounding cyc that suggests a new process. We must look into that. <em>Cabaret</em> was idiotic; Rufus Norris, brilliant though he is, has made a tit of himself by trying to bring out the politics of this musical: that <em>Cabaret </em>is actually about the rise of German fascism. Oh, you think? It is worrying that this must have been, at some point, a revelation to Norris himself. The crass evocations of Nazi thuggery and a particularly egregious Auschwitz routine were grandly patronising tautologies. The sixth-form moment where a humourless Nazi pushes over some concrete Kabarett letters actually inspired giggles around us. Other damp squibs included <em>The Royal Hunt of the Sun</em>, <em>Tom and Viv</em>, the ETT <em>Mother Courage</em> and the Sheffield <em>Caretaker</em>.<br /><br />There were some wonderful romps this year. <em>See How They Run</em> was note-perfect, a great reminder that farce, when it is done properly, is unique and sublime. The Chichester <em>Nicholas Nickleby</em> was romptastic, but more, it reminded us of an era of grand, generous, ambitious socialist playmaking and the final moments where the boy is rescued from the snow would stir any left-wing heart. <em>The Life of Galileo</em> was nothing to do with Brecht, but hell it's a good story and if you hire David Hare what are you going to get? Apart from the deeply embarrassing second-half opener (urban decadence created by people who take taxis to work), it was a good and vivid story. Patrick Barlow's retread of <em>The 39 Steps</em> is much funnier than the dour publicity leads you to expect. <em>Dick Whittington</em> was new and old at the same time and set a good tone for what will hopefully be an annual event at the Barbican.<br /><br /><em>Therese Raquin </em>was kind of a revival, kind of a new adaptation, and for us entirely failed. The set was totally misconceived; the room is supposed to be cramped with material from the shop - the 'dull compulsion of the economic' defining and distorting the bourgeois marriage. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiR-rSuzIicwXp8D9qsUT8ymnCibj0PAC7UClIcptNa_x8NRDFRktY1o9YoFeKipM3TwKcNPAqGBvzenUuGtnCKusDN-yV986TGsETZ_aQdBZL6-ahidUfeq-Iuq7IpCkVoJVV/s1600-h/THERESERAQUIN.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015231949363197250" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiR-rSuzIicwXp8D9qsUT8ymnCibj0PAC7UClIcptNa_x8NRDFRktY1o9YoFeKipM3TwKcNPAqGBvzenUuGtnCKusDN-yV986TGsETZ_aQdBZL6-ahidUfeq-Iuq7IpCkVoJVV/s320/THERESERAQUIN.jpg" border="0" /></a>That really kinda <em>is</em> the point, isn't it? Instead we got the cavernous mansion-like upstairs quarters of the Raquins and the pressure wasn't there. The attempt to make the relationship really sexy was intermittent and it takes more than passionate clinches to make us believe that two people would kill for love. Mostly one flinched at the embarassment of someone trying to hard to emulate Katie Mitchell - her favourite designer, her favourite lighting designer, her favourite leading man, a gratuitous movement sequence - when the latter would never have allowed the horrible stageyness of Grivet and Michaud, the psychological flimsiness, the sense that people were acting the way they were because that's how we do things on stage, rather than in life. We saw quite the opposite in Mitchell's own astonishing reinvention of <em>The Seagull</em> which got the critics' knickers in a right twist for its supposed vandalising of the text. Sadly the critics don't know their Chekhov well enough, despite having had a chance to shoot down at least five seagulls in the last few years; this was a wholly faithful rediscovery of the play, given the awkward and slightly juvenile work that it can seem in some hands, this was a rich, mature and deeply serious work, stripped of its accumulated archaisms, coming up fresh and clean and achingly true, this was one of the great highlights of <em>Encore</em>'s year.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkkzNhk_9THk2fnxnZp4AQnN8vcL5Cmbiacvh3sv52GzeYZwlyq_2n4-9C64gnjB1DBzJvyV89xhAIyhy6uGwuN-oKo2CoE3ks81qWiKuac_pmhZZXeEDA8NkpwaK4Qql2uLv-/s1600-h/Hitlerwrote.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015168572825777394" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkkzNhk_9THk2fnxnZp4AQnN8vcL5Cmbiacvh3sv52GzeYZwlyq_2n4-9C64gnjB1DBzJvyV89xhAIyhy6uGwuN-oKo2CoE3ks81qWiKuac_pmhZZXeEDA8NkpwaK4Qql2uLv-/s320/Hitlerwrote.jpg" border="0" /></a>New and experimental performance work was thin on the ground for us. The most exciting single performance we saw was a strange, adolescent, scurrilous and immature piece called <em>Hitler Wrote 20 Pop Songs... Have You Heard Them?</em> (pictured) by a theatre company with the unlovely name Theatre de Cunt. A savage political satire of a kind we have to call politically incorrect, though actually just seemed fearless. None of the pieties that throttle political discourse were observed here; the show was shapeless and overlong, the jokes were uneven, the suggestion that Tony Blair is somehow secretly in league with Adolf Hitler is absurd, but the show had energy and an iconoclastic joy that swept aside these criticisms. Punchdrunk's <em>Faust</em> was well realised but perhaps a bit overextended. Duckie's <em>The Class Club</em> was a strange event; was it really an exposé of class or just a reinforcement of it? Having wider seats in first class train compartments or the tiered pricing in most West End theatres would seem to expose and comment on class just as well. Though perhaps less enjoyably. Richard Maxwell's company had a welcome return to BITE with <em>The End of Reality</em>, adding stiffly awkward fighting to their repertoire of estrangement. Robert Lepage's <em>The Andersen Project</em> was breathtaking and full of heart as well as profound cleverness. The strangest evening of the year, as well as one of the best, was Katie Mitchell's <em>Waves</em> - strange only because it was so odd to see something so daring and experimental on a National Theatre stage, with a National Theatre kind of budget. This was one of the most beautiful experiences of the year.<br /><br />The performers who most stood out this year were young. We've mentioned Kathryn Drysdale in <em>Catch</em>, and the same show's Niamh Webb had a fiery intensity as the conscience-stricken fury. Pippa Bennett-Warner was a stunning revelation in the National's <em>Caroline or Change</em> claiming the stage with wit and verve like an experienced Broadway hoofer though the programme notes only that she's just finished her A-Levels. The great breakthrough was probably Daniel Mays in <em>The Winterling</em> and <em>Motortown</em>, playing a pair of British misfits. The first, Patsy, a city boy lost in the country, was a strutting Pete Doherty, all flash cash, mouth and skank. The second, Danny, was a hollow-souled Iraq veteran, sickened by the moral emptiness of the country he returns to. This was an awkward and defiantly unshapely play and it was given its moral authority by Daniel Mays's haunting performance.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5dMKKyCiLUPClxoXo9FEFffgYPMfmNZaKDYb8bBLRPUvqiXbI8VvSatHnvusXnEkxbKRjecftCmKdM6hsVuEpTruAv0Dt_Ez3LIVlI_tXXnljZB_Ryi4n6rJMfOI1GBbjccl/s1600-h/Gobbo.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5015169646567601410" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5dMKKyCiLUPClxoXo9FEFffgYPMfmNZaKDYb8bBLRPUvqiXbI8VvSatHnvusXnEkxbKRjecftCmKdM6hsVuEpTruAv0Dt_Ez3LIVlI_tXXnljZB_Ryi4n6rJMfOI1GBbjccl/s320/Gobbo.jpg" border="0" /></a>The great arrival of the year was the National Theatre of Scotland, which despite one or two stumbles, has planted its standard on the firmament of Scottish theatre, and, by turning down Hytner's appeal for <em>Black Watch, </em>has demonstrated a lively independence of spirit. Its misses (<em>Elizabeth Gordon Quinn, The Crucible</em>) have been more than made up for by its hits (<em>Black Watch, Gobbo </em>(pictured)<em>, Realism, Roam, Home</em>). It has pushed theatre right to the forefront of the culture and in England we can only watch its creativity and imagination with envious eyes. The Young Vic returned in style, with a gorgeous new building and great bar to hang out in. We said hello to Dominic Dromgoole at the Globe, who has made some impact, and wrote one of the most bizarre books of the year. We said goodbye to August Wilson, Clive Perry, Paul Ableman, Tom Bell, Julian Slade, Benno Besson, Mary O'Malley, Maureen Stapleton, Moira Shearer and David Halliwell. We also seem likely to lose the Theatre Museum.<br /><br />Nothing changed decisively in 2006 though there are signs perhaps that the vogue for verbatim is waning, that we are regaining confidence in using theatrical form, and not just content, to express our political engagement and ask our political questions. We saw a greater confidence with making connections between dance and theatre, art and theatre, radio and theatre, performance art and theatre. The writing was bold and imaginative as ever; it felt as though we have begun to find our way to take the temperature of the 21st century in the shape and texture of our theatre nights.<br /><br />That was <em>Encore</em>'s 2006. And look, we even said something nice about David Hare. We're having a facelift in 2007 but obviously we'll keep you all informed. In the meantime, why don't you tell us about your 2006?</div>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1165539588480931172006-12-08T00:51:00.000+00:002006-12-20T10:26:59.477+00:00Christmas Comes Early<span style="font-size:130%;color:#000099;"><strong>Christmas Comes Early</strong></span><br /><br />Toby Young - arse, philistine and talent-free dramatist - is ending his foray into theatre criticism. Such as it was. Young is apparently going to spend more time at home in the evenings - his wife is expecting a third baby - though <strong>Encore </strong>can reveal that the real reason is injured pride. The crown of Worst Critic of the Century, an honour for which Young has fought so valiantly, has been decisively snatched by Quentin Letts. Young has plainly realised that, philistine halfwit though he is, he never stood a chance of getting his pole position back while Letts was on the grid.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1164806107762463212006-11-29T12:47:00.000+00:002007-01-01T04:14:35.764+00:00Surprise Surfuckingprise<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;"><strong>Surprise Surfuckingprise</strong> </span></span><br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#000099;"></span></strong>Yes, the Evening Standard new play award went to Tom Stoppard's <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em>. It's a terrible mess of a play - hell, it's not even a good Stoppard play; and why did <em>Motortown </em>and <em>The Cut</em> not even get nominated? Of course everyone - yes yes yes - is entitled to their own opinion. Maybe the panel just didn't like it. But there are patterns here.<br /><br />Slightly less incredibly, Nina Raine won best newcomer for <em>Rabbit</em>, which was okay, part of a miniature contemporary genre of plays by women trying to revive and rework the bourgeois drawing room comedy (think Moira Buffini's <em>Dinner</em>, Charlotte Jones's <em>The Lightning Play</em>). Raine's play is nicely waspish and the repulsiveness of the characters is balanced by the force of the revelations.<br /><br />But Stoppard, for fuck's sake? There is a real problem with our critics. <em>Encore</em> senses a change in the air, the feeble literalism of much of what has passed for political theatre in the last few years seems to be in retreat. Playwrights are using metaphor and aesthetic disruption not as evasion of contemporary realities but as a recognition that the nature of contemporary reality needs new forms, new experiences, new structures and plays. But the critics, almost uniformly, beg to differ. They prefer clarity of content, inconspicuity of form. And their vengeance against plays that break their rules. We've alredy mentioned the reviews of <em>The Cut</em>; the same happened to <em>pool (no water)</em>; look at the response to <em>Waves </em>('the production is a sterile piece of theatre about theatre' - Billington), <em>Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? </em>('This is far too fancy to succeed as a political play' - Clapp), and there are many more examples. If it engages in dialogue with theatre rather than just in dialogue with the world, they hate it. Plays with no artistic merit but which clearly delineate some important themes - like (sorry but) Ryan Craig's awful <em>The Glass Room - </em>they are endlessly tolerant ('confirms that big issues make for fascinating plays' Billington on <em>The Glass Room</em>, which got 3 stars to the sublime <em>Waves</em>'s 2).<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6427/177/1600/156761/34233_loveandmoney.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6427/177/320/405484/34233_loveandmoney.jpg" border="0" /></a>The one glorious exception is <em>Love and Money</em> (<strong>pictured</strong>), which has had almost miraculously positive reviews. But let's be clear, those reviews come at a cost. Perhaps misled by the programme notes which stress our debt society, some of the critics seem only happy to praise the play if they think it is a sociological snapshot of contemporary Britain, rather than the metaphorical, metaphysical play about belief, power and obligations to one another that the rest of us could see. The same happened with Churchill's <em>Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? </em>(<strong>pictured</strong>); whether they liked it or not, the critics have tended to write about the play as if it were a simple statement of opposition to US Imperialism. Well, maybe it is partly that but to say so involves blanking out the complexities of the form of that play, the disjunctions on the language, the delicacy of the relationship depicted, and the visual and spatial organisation of the production, and simply summarise what they feel is the content. This position damages these delicate plays in the rush to find a review-friendly 'theme' that can be captured in a paragraph. Such a position does not understand the play; it pays no attention to what is actually happening in front of them. And that, one might think, is key to the role of the critic.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6427/177/1600/917264/drunk460_1164138498.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/6427/177/320/595776/drunk460_1164138498.jpg" border="0" /></a>The battle lines are drawn. On one side we have the literalists like Billington and Hare, proponents of the creeping hegemony of verbatim theatre, the people who like their plays to be foursquare and clear, who want similes but not metaphors, who like neatly defined topics, and plays that are 'about' things (preferably important social problems). And on the other side we have the metaphysicals: the artists, the modernists, the experimentalists, the lovers of language and ethics and metaphor and image, the examiners of the roots of politics and love and power and the way we live together.<br /><br />There's a major skirmish on the horizon: in the Spring, the National is reviving Martin Crimp's <em>Attempts on Her Life</em>, directed by Katie Mitchell. This play is a rallying flag for the artists; it's not literal, it's wholly ambiguous, it unusually shares creative responsibility between writer, director, designer and actor. It's one of the great turning points in British playwriting, one of those moments when playwrights woke up, saw not just how they <em>could </em>write but how they <em>had to</em> write - because yes yes, the world was different, and Crimp had seen that, and he saw that our pens and keyboards have to move differently.<br /><br />What is that difference? What is the reason? Encore is not sure. It's something about the need to write plays that are not just about the world they see around them, that see beyond the way things are, that implicitly therefore do not share what Duncan in <em>Love and Money</em> celebrates as 'the absolute conviction that all this is right'. That represent the world in an alienated and formally distorted form that allow us to recognise but also to see as if for the first time, to see the world in its strangeness, not in its utter recognisability. Plays that do not engage in the tautologies of realism, that offer up a gap into which pours love and danger and difficulty and ambiguity and morality and metaphor and something other and beyond money and beyond politics and beyond all this all this all this.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1163424920676090982006-11-13T12:29:00.000+00:002006-11-13T13:35:20.803+00:00Standards<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#000099;">Whose Standard?</span></strong><br /><strong></strong><br />The Evening Standard Award nominations are out. Most of the categories are uncontroversial enough. But the Best New Play nominations are:<br /><br /><em>Frost/Nixon</em> by Peter Morgan<br /><em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> by Tom Stoppard<br /><em>The Seafarer </em>by Conor McPherson<br /><br /><em>Frost/Nixon </em>is fair enough. It's a very artful distillation of that famous encounter which gives the material weight and substance. <em>The Seafarer </em>is much harder to defend. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/thumbnail.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/thumbnail.jpg" border="0" /></a>It features, without doubt, some of the most utterly delicious acting this year. Jim Norton (pictured on the left) alone was worth the price of admission - a rich, wholly imagined, endlessly inventive comic performance. The wonderful sequence where Nicky arrives and is put in charge of the whiskey bottle is fantastic. Norton as Richard, amused by the anecdote that Nicky tells, gets increasingly desperate for a drop of the strong stuff, and his smile fixed on his face while he blindly and surreptitiously sticks a finger in his glass to see if it has been filled. Karl Johnson's long-suffering Sharky gives emotional weight to the show, his discomfort and genuine concern for his brother making a perfect foil for Norton's blind braggart. It's a hugely enjoyable evening. As a play though, the Faust plot that gives the evening its shape is a dreadful load of old cobblers; totally meretricious, a plot off the shelf, completely meaningless and vulgar. A flashily unthought-out piece of playmaking. The rest of the play is so enjoyable, we wish he'd found some other principle of construction than reaching for a hand-me-down myth.<br /><br />But why is <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> here? Well, it's obvious: because it's by Tom Stoppard and the critics are all in awe. But, Jesus, can't they see? It's such a bloody awful, boring evening. It's so wordy and pompous and half-baked. The ludicrous notion that rock 'n' roll is the real spirit of revolution: how on earth are we supposed to take that seriously faced with 'Welcome to the Machine' and 'Welcome to the Jungle'? With the horrible corporate rock of a 1990s Stones tour. Aren't we all bored now with Stoppard's utterly undigested research being spun out to us? The absurd subplot of the wife, purely and nakedly a function of Stoppard's etiolated intellectual structure. The pitiful mystification of Syd Barrett as Pan. Encore liked Syd as much as the next man (as long as that next man isn't Stoppard) but let's get a sense of perspective here. He made good music for a couple of years, and his decline was as sharp and total as Stoppard's musical taste.<br /><br />The problem is that our critics have developed a very bad habit. Everyone understands that it must be hard to be a critic; you need to write your review, based on a single viewing, within an hour. And of course, we need them to do that, because a review needs to come out early in the run. But this means that many reviewers clearly spend the evening thinking how to write the review rather than watching the play. The more waspish of them - yes we're talking about <em>you</em>, de Jongh - sit thinking of witty ways of using the play against the company. But all of them look for messages and subjects that they can expend a paragraph or two on. Billington is the biggest culprit here, usually spending more time on the fucking social problem that he has detected in the play's subject matter than he does on the design and lighting about which he rearely has anything to say. But it's universal. And what this means is (a) plays like <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> which drone on and on and on about a range of topics (what is revolution? how have we mistranslated Sappho? what is the history of the British left?) get full marks because basically they have half-written the review for them; (b) plays that do not have clearly identifiable social issues, or are deliberately ambiguous in their references get very bad ones.<br /><br />The obvious example of the latter - and it's the most astonishing omission from the list - is Mark Ravenhill's <em>The Cut </em>(pictured)<em>. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/3243.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/3243.jpg" border="0" /></a> </em>The play was slammed by the critics, absolutely hammered. And why? Because - <em>outrageously</em> - Ravenhill refuses to explain exactly what he is saying. He doesn't spell it out for the benefit of the critic who fancies an early night. In fact it is pellucid, clear, beautiful and haunting. It displays a new vigour and precision in Ravenhill's use of language. It sets out a political scenario with insight, wit and vigour. Who can forget McKellen's state torturer, eating his evening meal in the emotional cool of his marital home, asserting, with unconscious irony, 'I'm a good man. At the end of the day I'm a good man'. But <em>The Cut </em>is not on the list of nominations. A major play by one of our most important writers is ignored because it doesn't pander to the critics' working conditions and refuses to compromise its artistry just to make their lives easier. It is an extraordinary situation, since it is the play of the year so far, and will, <strong>Encore </strong>predicts, be considered one the plays of the decade. There are countless other examples of critics demolishing plays because they can't reduce their complexity to a single banal propositional sentence. After a week in which it took Berlin's Schaubühne to give London its first proper vision of <em>Blasted </em>on a main stage (the Court 2001 revival was a sorry affair), we should be reminded that the play lack of a single, obvious, stitch-it-on-a-cushion-cover, give-it-to-a-character-to-say message is what lay behind the critics' original ridicule of the play. It's a shameful situation.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1157311076417457992006-10-07T17:10:00.000+01:002006-10-08T18:56:34.730+01:00Posters at the National<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">Posters at the National</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;"></span></strong><br />The National's decision to <a href="http://www.ntposters.org.uk/">make available</a> a generous selection of its past theatre posters (at, let's just point out, scandalous cost) unfortunately reveals rather plainly the sharp decline of the design work recently. Look at the difference between these images.<br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Galileo1980-794468.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Galileo1980-782987.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Galileo-730207.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Galileo-703532.jpg" border="0" /></a>The poster on the left isn't all that imaginative. But it's a modern image, which already makes the connection Brecht is making with the technology of our age, and it is estranging in a certain sense: the earth seen from elsewhere, the earth displaced from the centre of vision, suggesting the object of Galileo's own struggle. The colours are muted but strong the lunar surface contrasting with the partially shadowed earth, struggling perhaps to emerge. The earth's vulnerability is suggested as is, faintly, an atomic structure that underscores the nuclear politics against which Brecht wrote his crucial second draft. Tonally, subtly, the poster suggests the dark polarities of the play. What does the 2006 poster tell us? It tells us that Simon Russell Beale is in the production and that's it.<br /><br />The National has through-branded itself across all its print material. The sans-serif font, emphasising and varying the letter design only with emboldening. It looks modern, and the diagonal arrangement is a subtle nod to a period of design from the late 1960s. Look at this poster:<br /><br /><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/EdwardII1968-795711.jpg" border="0" />It's actually from 1968, though it could easily have been used at any time over the past three years. The diagnonal lettering suggests a modernist era of design though the colour palette is contemporary. The starkness and clarity of the font is both accessible and imposing. These things are all appropriate to the theatre they represent.</p><p>But some less exciting principles also appear to inform the new designs. They almost all have human figures on them. Often the figures are looking at the camera and the viewer. Perhaps this is designed to make us feel connected to the image (if we are simpletons). Otherwise the images are very noise-free; no castlists as in the <em>Galileo</em> image, colour restricted to the lettering, the only non-essential detail being the names of the sponsors, which is a clear sign of the difference between then and now. While images from an earlier era show action, the body in motion, a moment of emotional intensity, conflict or abandon, the new human figures are usually in repose, not in the midst of some moment of, well, drama as in <em>Edward II</em>. The effect is to rebrand the image of modern, efficient, cool, streamlined, and very very boring. Look at these:<br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/alchemist1996-703473.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/alchemist1996-701117.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Alchemist2006-709894.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Alchemist2006-706174.jpg" border="0" /></a> The left is full of drama, life, colour. It tells us about the design of the show, that elegant metal loop linking the jaunty title to the comic image below. The sense of a plot, the absurdities of the alchemical processes are all captured. We know the kind of play it'll be and we have a sense of the production and vaguely of the kind of story. What do we know about <em>The Alchemist</em> in 2006? We know that it has Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale in it. Admittedly the whispering motif tells us something about the fraud plot that structure the play but this is rather cancelled out by Alex Jennings's steady gaze at the camera which seems faintly amused but is otherwise expressionless, an effect enhanced by the cool monochromaticism of the image. While 1996's poster could be accused of being too busy, ten years later we seem to have gone in entirely the opposite direction, the poster aggressively refusing to tell us anything about the show at all.</p><p>Look at these images; it's hard to imagine a duller series of posters, less inclined to give you the slightest sense of what the show is about:</p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/64023.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/64023.jpg" border="0" /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/60082.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/60082.jpg" border="0" /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/64331.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/64331.jpg" border="0" /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/60104.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/60104.jpg" border="0" /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/1600/60074.0.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6427/177/320/60074.0.jpg" border="0" /></a></a></a></a></a></p><p><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Iphigenia-703411.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Iphigenia-702493.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/UNInspector-788166.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/UNInspector-786192.jpg" border="0" /></a>The posters don't always simply advertise the cast. There are more abstract or intriguing images. But another constraint prevents these from being truly effective. The National recently signed a deal with Getty Images and most of the non-cast images are taken from the Getty archive. This is, no doubt, an extensive library. But since they can only use non-recognisable images, with that cool, affectless sheen, their choices are much reduced, and some of the matches of image to play are flimsy. For <em>Iphigenia in Aulis</em> (pictured) they used an image of a young girl, gazing vacantly into the camera. This is quite meaningless unless you already know the play, and even then it doesn't declare very much. For The UN Inspector (pictured), they used a rather more striking image, an almost Pythonesque bureaucrat with a suitcase on his shoulder, obscuring his head. This is a good image, nicely surreal and appealing. It sort of picks up the theme that the inspector is more a figure of their guilty imaginations than a real person. But it says little about the style or tone of the show. You might realise it was a comedy, but not that it was a farce. In fact nothing about the image suggests anything about period, genre, subject or style. When you compare it with the impishly witty poster for <em>The Government Inspector </em>(pictured below), it's clear how vague and imprecise the more recent poster is.</p><p><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/59759-744031.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/59759-742228.jpg" border="0" /></a>I suppose the role of the poster has changed. They used to be flyposted around the area. There's less passing trade now and the sources of information are much broader than they were twenty years ago. You rarely see a National Theatre poster anywhere except in and around the building. So it's largely to advertise what's on to people who have already made a commitment to the National by being there. Branding helps clarify the National's profile across all media. But it's a pity that the imagination that went into the posters has so dramatically dwindled. It places disproportionate significance on the actor; yes, everyone wants theatres to be full but if people are there to see the actor rather than the play, something will get lost from the experience. At their best, posters are a way of leading audiences into the imaginative experience of the theatre; just advertising who's going to be in it does not lead to any act of imagination at all, just to the experiencing of looking at a famous actor.</p><p>What's disappointing is that so much else at the National has changed for the better in the last three or four years. It's become a genuinely exciting place to go. Ultimately perhaps, the quality of the posters does not matter so much - maybe it's as trivial as worrying about the poor standard of the adverts on TV - but the posters do have a function of preparing an audience for the event they may wish to see, and in representing the National Theatre to the world and to memory. They impress themselves upon history and it would be a shame if the sheen of bland star-shots is allowed to characterise the National's current era. It also suggests that somewhere along the line, the National's marketing department has developed an attitude to its audience that is condescending to the point of contempt. It's a kind of virus and needs to be stopped before it spreads.</p>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1159110236607668632006-09-24T15:37:00.000+01:002006-09-24T16:03:57.006+01:00Two Marias<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">Two Marias</span></strong><br /><br />...is the title of an old play by Bryony Lavery, about two girls killed in a car crash. <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/EmmaWilliams-795650.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/EmmaWilliams-786141.jpg" border="0" /></a>Eerily appropriate for the continuing high-speed disaster that is <em>How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? </em>Having spent a month denying that there was an alternative Maria waiting in the wings to play at least half the performances, Andrew Lloyd Webber's company has announced that Emma Williams (<em>pictured</em> - and who we named <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/2006/08/con-trick-called-maria.html">six weeks ago</a> as the ringer) is withdrawing from the production, allegedly because she didn't want to be limited to two performances a week. So what was the deal? Emma Williams, let's face it, was never going to take a job as understudy. And now, of course, the callers are asking to see the one off the telly, so they reduced her role and she's backed out.<br /><br />It reveals, as clearly as you could imagine, that everything we have said all along is correct: that Lloyd Webber and the egregious Ian David always knew who they wanted and did everything to ensure she won. Last week <em>The Independent</em> published <a href="http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/news/article1705643.ece">allegations</a> that the show was rigged in other ways: <blockquote>There were rumours that the producers had hired a 'plant' to infiltrate the<br />show. Then there were claims of favouritism from two unsuccessful contestants after they learnt that Fisher was recording a CD to accompany the show before the final. Claims were made that the show, watched by 10 million viewers, was edited to put certain contestants in a bad light, and that some performers benefited from the choice of songs they had to sing.</blockquote>Which makes sense, because it would be crazy not to ensure that you cast the person you want - but, if that's what you're going to do, don't pretend that the public are in charge. The cash that this ludicrous and sordid show will put in the producers' pockets is precisely matched by the bad taste is leaves in our mouths.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1158250683350543152006-09-14T16:47:00.000+01:002006-09-16T09:40:01.413+01:00Sunday Plays<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">Something for the Weekend</span></strong><br /><br />Nick Hytner has announced that he'd like the National to open on Sundays. Or rather he still would like the National to open on Sundays, since he also declared this in <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/feature/0,,1792703,00.html">June</a>. For someone who is so keen to open his theatre on a Sunday, he seems to be doing surprisingly little about it, as BECTU claim that they have had no official approach. And BECTU are the only ones likely to drive a hard bargain since most theatre workers are contracted according to a set number of performances and it won't mean a contractual change as such.<br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/national-theatre-775993.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/national-theatre-773702.jpg" border="0" /></a>The Telegraph earlier this year <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/04/ntheat04.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/04/ixuknews.html">reported</a> that the National are offering themselves as a battering ram on behalf of the regional theatres who don't feel strong enough to argue it through with BECTU themselves. At an Arts Council meeting in October 2005 the National offered to spend eighteen months gathering information and costing out the proposal before introducing the scheme. The National, of course, has a very particular reason for wanting Sunday opening since it has an almost guaranteed audience; the redevelopment of the South Bank over the last few years means that there is now an established tourist walk that takes in the whole South Bank complex, from the London Eye, to Tate Modern and The Globe and then on past the Clink and off to Tower Bridge. The National, since its 90s redesign, is beautifully placed to become a stop along the way, but on a Sunday its eyes are closed. It is hard to imagine that the National wouldn't be able to fill at least a mid-afternoon matinee, perhaps a lunchtime and a late-afternoon matinee on a Sunday. Would most regional theatres have the same clear benefit from Sunday opening. You would expect double time, perhaps time and a half, on a Sunday. Are the audiences there to make that worthwhile?<br /><br />The union's scepticism is understandable but a scheme that allows days off in lieu, an either/or for Saturdays or Sundays, a healthy overtime rate, or some combination of the three, should put most fears at rest. Given that shopping is universal on a Sunday and that most galleries and museums are available, that the cinemas are open and football is now as likely on Sunday as Saturday, it seems hard to justify the theatre's six-day week. The old proposal has always been to trade it off against Mondays, traditionally a hard day to sell, though the cheap deals that have been Monday inducements (notably at the Court) would disappear under such a scheme.<br /><br />Of course, there have been some less sensible worries. John Roberts of the Lord's Day Observance Society (no, there really is one), <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/04/ntheat04.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/04/ixuknews.html">has expressed</a> the comments of his members with great clarity, pondering, 'It is fine going to see entertainment on a Sunday but what about the people working on the stage, backstage?' Which sounds like a humanitarian, even socialist concern. 'We are in danger of losing the concept of the family unit,' he added, as he carefully bolted the stable door.<br /><br />Why can't families go to the theatre together, one would like to know. One suspects that Christians hide behind the idea of the family get-together because even they are not brazen enough to complain that it'll stop people going to church. Because if the family unit is a relic, mass church attendance isn't even in living memory.<br /><br />There is something to be said for the communitas and sense of communal identity that comes from a shared day off, but this battle was lost a long time ago. The flexible working and 24-hour culture that we have been creeping towards over the last fifteen years mean that people find different ways of connecting, whether that be nongeographical forms of connectivity, virtual communities, or other ways of slicing one's identity to make connections that aren't mere accidents of birth. The theatre is, if anything, one of the more robust forms of collective cultural experience. More self-conscious and particular than cinema, less competitively-focused than football.<br /><br />Which is why <em>Encore</em> supports Sunday opening.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1157448504796071832006-09-05T10:14:00.000+01:002006-09-05T10:28:24.843+01:00STOP PRESS: Christian Hypocrite Arrested<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">STOP PRESS: Christian Hypocrite Arrested</span></strong><br /><br />Encore readers will, I am sure, be delighted by the news that Stephen Green has been arrested at the gay Mardi Gras event in Bute Park, Cardiff, after refusing to stop handing out leaflets condemning homosexuality on the theologically dubious grounds of its condemnation in Leviticus (officially the most ludicrous book of the Bible).<br /><br />Green, you will remember, organised a letter-writing compaign and pickets outside the BBC to stop the broadcast of <em>Jerry Springer the Opera</em>. He organised pickets outside the Cambridge Theatre to intimidate audience members from going in. He sent threatening letters around the country's regional theatres to intimidate them out of booking the tour of the show, with success in some places.<br /><br />So it is delightful to see that he has undergone his own road to Damascus moment. <blockquote><p><a href="http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press019.html">Speaking about righteousness, morality, sin, repentance and the forgiveness sinners can find in the cross of Jesus Christ may well offend the fragile sensibilities of homosexuals, but should the police have a partisan unit whose job is to round up Christian dissidents, treat them like thought criminals and trample on freedom of speech?</a></p></blockquote>It would be kindest to ignore his silly remarks about the police (who have, of course, never remotely targeted homosexuals to bump up their arrest figures...). That would be churlish. It is delightful to see that Green is now such a firm believer in freedom of speech. We look forward to seeing Christian Voice pursue its new policy with vigour and verve.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1157328623399430432006-09-04T00:13:00.000+01:002006-09-04T01:16:12.263+01:00God, Theatre, and Match-Fixing<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#3366ff;"><strong>God, Theatre and Match-Fixing</strong><br /></span></span><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/stephen_green-799512.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/stephen_green-798143.jpg" border="0" /></a>Stephen Green (pictured) is the head of Christian Voice, the organisation who largely failed to get Jerry Springer barred from regional theatres across the land. His arguments were non-existent, as you can see from <a href="http://www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/xtras/cvletter.html">the disgraceful letter</a> that he sent to regional theatres last March. What does he say? <blockquote><p>Having seen [Jerry Springer: The Opera], I can say with some feeling that the show is crude, offensive and blasphemous in the extreme. At the very least, it is not a family show and will damage the reputation of any theatre which puts it on.</p></blockquote>The first sentence is an assertion without evidence, beefed up only by an appeal to emotion. The second is a non sequitur (I can think of several theatres whose reputations would be damaged by <em>putting on</em> a family show). On this firm foundation, Green darkly reported his 'success' in London and demanded to know whether the theatre managers were planning to host <em>Jerry Springer</em>. Sadly, some theatres did respond to the intimidation: basically, the threat that lots of ghastly Christian nutjobs would be standing outside their theatre bothering paying customers. But only some: some of the responses like that of national treasure Gwenda Hughes of the New Victoria Theatre, Stoke on Trent, were <a href="http://www.mediawatchwatch.org.uk/?p=59">much better</a>:<br /><br /><p></p><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><strong>For the attention of Stephen Green </strong><br /><br />Sir,<br /><br />I have received your letter concerning JERRY SPRINGER, THE OPERA.<br /><br />Future programming is a confidential matter between employees and our Trustees until a season is announced and our brochure distributed. Details of our current season are available on our website. Should you wish to receive our brochure, published three times a year, please ring the Box Office number and we will put you on our mailing list.<br /><br />It is my responsibility to decide what plays, concerts and events are programmed at this theatre, subject to ratification by the Trustees.<br /><br />I will continue to programme as I see fit and appropriate for the organisation. Neither I, nor the Trustees, will change the programme or the programming policy as a result of threats, bullying or intimidation from any outside body.<br /><br />I hope this makes the situation quite clear.<br /><br />Yours faithfully,<br /><br />Gwenda Hughes </blockquote>Of course, all that fuss was a long time ago. But he's still around, and it might interest <em>Encore</em>'s readers to get a glimpse of some of the things he's been saying since the tour ended.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press010.html">Responding</a> to Hurricane Katrina, he observed that New Orleans was due to host the 'Southern Decadence' event, an annual lesbian and gay culture and arts festival. He argued: <blockquote></blockquote><blockquote><p>Most would say a hurricane is an 'Act of God'. Hurricanes are named by a<br />system of rotating boy/girl/boy/girl names after the letters of the alphabet. By one of those co-incidences which only Almighty God can manufacture, the name 'Katrina' means 'purity'. A version of the name 'Catherine', it comes from the same root as a 'cathartic' or 'purifying' experience. Purity blew into New Orleans and purity broke the levees and flooded the city. When a hurricane has been particularly devastating, the name is retired. There will never be another 'Katrina' and that may mean that New Orleans may only have this single opportunity to respond to the awesome purity of God. God often gives only one warning.</p></blockquote>Unfortunately for this ambulance-chasing halfwit, the French Quarter, the centre of the festival and site for the festival's climactic parade, was the least affected by the disaster. The burden of the press release is that, by finding the strength to continue with the festival, even though scaled down and elsewhere, these survivors of a natural disaster were showing great disrespect for the dead. As someone once said, let he who is without sin, Stephen, cast the first stone. Or put another way, shut the fuck up, you stupid hypocrite.<br /><br />All of this is based on some very selective Biblical citations. No doubt even more fiendish is the exegesis that entitles Christian Voice to <a href="http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Alerts/alert001.html">rail against plans for road-pricing</a>, not a topic that casual readers will have noticed Jesus making much of. He's on more conventional ground when he <a href="http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press011.html">reports</a> on the prayer vigils that attended the first civil partnerships, noting, strangely, that <blockquote>Ordinary people would be revolted by the sight of two men or two women kissing in a parody of a marital embrace</blockquote>Intriguing. <em>Encore</em> is not quite sure what a 'parody of a marital embrace' looks like. Is it mouth-closed, both partners looking away and wanting to get it over with? Perhaps Stephen Green and John Beyer, Mary Whitehouse's successor as head of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, now rebranded Mediawatch, could demonstrate?<br /><br />Last week, though, Stephen Green really ramped up the hilarious craziness of his proclamations. Watching the recent Cricket Test between England and Pakistan, Green was disturbed at what <a href="http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press017.html">he calls</a> 'the way in which Pakistan were giving it large about Islam'. (What this means is members of the team talking about their Islamic faith. The swines!) So he did what any normal, ordinary, right-thinking Christian loo-lah would do. He prayed. Oh lord - we imagine it went - smite down these infidels, bringing their false religion into this Christian country. And lo, the Lord, according to Green, did indeed smite them down, with 'the sort of unexpected event which only Almighty God can bring about'. Getting Darrell Hair to detect ball-tampering by the Pakistan bowlers. Man, that really <em>is</em> moving in a mysterious way.<br /><br />What God is saying, says Green confidently, is that 'if we Christians place all our trust in Him, show Him our prayer is serious by doing the simple and obvious things which only we can do, we can safely leave the miraculous to Him. God will never fail to surprise us'.<br /><br />The utter, utter fuckwit.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1157130860130030812006-09-01T17:29:00.000+01:002006-09-01T18:15:31.736+01:00More Problems Like Maria<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;"><strong>More Problems Like Maria</strong><br /></span></span><br />It's real car-crash television isn't it? David Ian is a deeply unsettling and creepy figure, a kind of ageing roué with his strange and seedy remarks about the contestants. Andrew LW is just shockingly strange, his lower jaw gnashing away as he watches the auditions. In the <em>Daily Mail</em> showbiz hack Baz Bamigboye made some (rather mild) <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/bazbamigboye.html?in_article_id=402207&in_page_id=1794">criticisms</a> repeating some of the claims we made a month ago. Apart from picking up the rumours that Emma Williams has been hired to play the 'real' Maria, he also notes that an understudy has been hired. So there will be three Marias. How many shows is the TV-found Maria actually going to do?<br /><br />This seems to have rattled his Lordship who has <a href="http://www.andrewlloydwebber.com/sections/news/newsdb.php?article=14&section=news">defended the show</a> on his own website. Apparently stung by Bamigboye's suggestion that the show is 'tawdry' and that 'The idea of casting a major West End show through an end-of-the-pier type programme thoroughly debases the theatre', he notes that he has alternated leads on two previous shows, which only adds to our sense that he's been debasing the theatre for quite some time. In any case, as Mark Shenton points out in <a href="http://www.thestage.co.uk/newsblog/2006/08/the_news_according_to_the_blogs.php">his blog</a>, Maria is nothing like as demanding a singing role as Evita or the Phantom.<br /><br />Trevor Nunn has joined into the general kicking, which is significant, given that he directed Lloyd Webber's last show, <em>The Woman in White. </em>He suggests - reasonably - that it demeans the casting process, since we are invited to enjoy the performers' distress. And this is true: if you went for a job and the person phoned up and said, 'we've made a decision and the decision is [pauses for twenty seconds] you're out', you'd be entitled to be very angry indeed.<br /><br />Today's <a href="http://www.holymoly.co.uk/mailout.html">Holy Moly!</a> announces that 'The winner of the BBC's How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria? is only assured a month on the production. There is no guarantee about the number of performances she makes within that month, and she can be booted out at any stage.' When you think of the flood of complaints that Big Brother received when it put dangerously-disturbed-child-woman Nikki back into the house, one might expect some rebellion from the viewers when the waste of their votes becomes clear. Except that there aren't that many of them. The show's averaging around 5m viewers in a slot that <em>Doctor Who</em> was netting around 8m, which is respectable but hardly a smash.<br /><br />Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821156520502&PHPSESSID=24cbecde74738d">Whatsonstage.com</a> is reporting that Andrew has fallen out with his co-producer after Ian David was chosen to appear in the US version of the show, designed to find leads for a new production of <em>Grease</em> and called, with sickening inevitability, <em>You're The One That We Want. </em><br /><br />But perhaps this is all a smokescreen to mask the really bad news story. Andrew Lloyd Webber has announced that his next <del>act of cultural vandalism</del> musical will be an adaptation of <em>The Master and Margarita</em> by Bulgakov. For the love of God, somebody stop him.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1157140199924131182006-08-20T16:19:00.000+01:002006-09-01T20:50:00.136+01:00No Smoking<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">No Smoking</span></strong><br /><br />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'. <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/melsmith-759935.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/melsmith-757757.jpg" border="0" /></a>He declared his intention to defy the ban and light up a Havana during a performance of<br /><em>Allegiance</em> 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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 <em>did </em>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, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/5252054.stm">protested</a>, '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:<br /><br /><p><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Churchillcigar-739864.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Churchillcigar-738518.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />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, <em>is</em> 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 <a href="http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/">Churchill Society</a>'s website.<br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/churchill-701107.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/churchill-799987.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />At least, I <em>think</em> it's Churchill. But he has no cigar so maybe Mel Smith would tell us it could be anybody.</p><p><em>Encore</em> 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.<br /></p>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154973505755691062006-08-13T13:39:00.000+01:002006-08-13T13:52:29.090+01:00Encore Heroes # 5: Simon Stephens<strong>Encore Heroes # 5: </strong><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">Simon Stephens</span><br /></strong><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/simonstephens2-770346.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/simonstephens2-762033.jpg" border="0" /></a>One of the fifty readings that the Royal Court organised to celebrate its 50th birthday at the beginning of this year was of Robert Holman’s <em>Rafts and Dreams</em>. Near the front row, having a whale of a time was Simon Stephens. At the end of the play, as Simon sauntered out of the auditorium in high spirits, he joked with former colleagues from the Court that all he’s ever written has just been 'nicked' from Robert Holman.<br /><p>Looking at Stephens’ work, you might notice some plays being more Holmanesque than others (<em>Port</em> and <em>Herons</em> for example). They are often more drink-sodden and more violent and there are many other influences running alongside. Martin Scorsese’s <em>Taxi Driver</em> haunts his first Royal Court play <em>Bluebird </em>and his latest <em>Motortown</em> in equal measure. There are other film influences. There is Chekhov (particularly in <em>Christmas</em> and <em>On the Shore of the Wide World</em>) and there are Peter Gill and Tom Murphy. But Holman always comes through. In the bleak landscape of <em>Motortown</em>, the only hope comes from the relationship between Danny and Lee, a relationship that appears to be, for a moment at least, incestuous. This echoes the juxtaposition between the brutality of Kerry’s background and the harmony of Freya and Joachim’s existence in Holman’s <em>Holes in the Skin</em>. </p><p>As T.S. Eliot would say, Stephens steals rather than borrows and he soaks up his influences to make them his own. He absorbs them like a punk or country band rather than name-checking them like a hip-hop MC or Tom Stoppard. There is a great deal of Robert Holman about him, both in the depth and delicacy of the writing - there's an intense fragility in some of the relationships he offers us, and sometimes the daring of that is what is so moving - but also in the unexpected extremity of the action. <em>Motortown</em> begins as an <em>Edmond</em>esque satire on contemporary Britain, but it turns much darker in the central torture scene. It tears a hole in the play in many ways; the blank irony of the previous scenes does not prepare us for what we see and the sheer lack of authorial commentary (nothing in the scene hints to us what we 'should' be thinking or feeling) gives the horror a first-person directness. So searing is the sequence that perhaps it takes us time to adjust to the rest of the play. It's an astonishing formal rendering of cultural disgust and in its way is as daring as Holman's flood and ape and lightning. Without the delicacy of the relationships and affirmation of friendship and love, this could seem flashy and modish, but this writing goes a long way down.</p><p>Right now, Simon Stephens rocks. He is writer-in-residence at the National Theatre and is writing a musical with Mark Eitzel from American Music Club. He arrived on the scene at the end of the 'In-Yer-Face' period and took a while gaining the recognition he deserved but has over the last two years started moving out of studio spaces. He now has the opportunity to make the sort of impact on the modern theatre that Holman has not succeeded in doing for various reasons. He is, along with David Greig, David Harrower and David Eldridge at their best, among the most talented playwrights of his generation.</p><p>It's a shame that <em>Motortown </em>was not seen by more people, but it has toured to Vienna where it was received very well. Let us hope that the British theatre can hold on to Stephens and doesn’t let him become one of the many talented playwrights (Bond, Barker, Motton, Kane) who are lauded on the continent but sinfully neglected in their own country. </p><p><strong>Selected Plays</strong></p><ul><li><strong>1998</strong> <em>Bluebird</em> (Royal Court)</li><li><strong>2001</strong> <em>Herons</em> (Royal Court)</li><li><strong>2002</strong> <em>Port</em> (Royal Exchange)</li><li><strong>2003</strong> <em>One Minute</em> (ATC Tour)</li><li><strong>2003</strong> <em>Christmas</em> (Bush and Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton) </li><li><strong>2004</strong> <em>Country Music</em> (Royal Court)</li><li><strong>2005</strong> <em>On the Shore of the Wide World</em> (Royal Exchange and National)</li><li><strong>2006</strong> <em>Motortown</em> (Royal Court)</li></ul>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1155060472290377722006-08-08T18:18:00.000+01:002007-01-25T01:04:25.611+00:00Reader Meets Author<strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:130%;" >Reader Meets Author</span></strong><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);">Strange days on the Whatsonstage.com messageboards, usually one of the best discussion sites on theatre, where a well-informed and articulate group of regulars go at their theatregoing experiences with blood and fire. </span><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/DavidEldridge-716639.jpg"><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);"><img style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right;" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/DavidEldridge-708335.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);">A recent scalping of the National's <em><a href="http://www.whatsonstage.com/dforum/download_thread.php?site=whatsonstagecom&bn=whatsonstagecom_plays&thread=1150874190">Market Boy</a> </em>by 'Carl Linden' (it transpires that this is a pseudonym) for stereotyping and inauthenticity of the working-class traders of Romford market brought the author himself, David Eldridge <strong>(pictured),</strong> into the fray. Eldridge defended the authentic basis of the play, while insisting that it was never intended to be a documentary. His cheeky sign-off accused 'Carl' of 'bitterness and bile' which provoked a flurry of aggrieved replies from this critic, who added to his accusation of inauthenticity the assertion that it was 'a complete mess as a play' and accused the whole of being the one-dimensional world seen by the 'Liberal elite'. So, clearly handbags at dawn. Eldridge returned to the battle less to defend his play as to condemn the attitude of his would-be critic. Things spiral out of control fairly quickly as 'Carl' compares Eldridge to Pol Pot (how did we get here from there?).<br /><br />It's refreshing to see a playwright answering his critics, and there's no reason for believing critics should not be held to account whoever they are. But it's also not easy to see who gains by this. As in the Guardian's (</span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1519600,00.html"><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);">rather pompously fanfared</span></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);">) 'right of reply' section, no matter how dignified the expression, restrained the style, even-handed and fair-minded the approach, answering a critic back so easily seems like special pleading. Eldridge is rigorously restrained and dignified, well certainly in his first posting, but somehow he still seems to lessen himself. Now, his case is more complicated, because it seems that 'Carl Linden' is the pseudonym for a playwright, or ex-playwright, who does not identify him or herself. (Nothing wrong with anonymity; at <em>Encore</em>, we're quite partial to it ourselves.) Debate between theatre workers is usually more productive than debate between theatre workers and critics, though even here the intelligent and sensitive David Eldridge seems to get dragged into a conflict from which there can be no winners.<br /><br />The opportunity to respond that the <em>Guardian</em> offers has been taken up almost exclusively by theatre workers. There are a couple of film makers, a dance impresario, a curator and a composer, but two-thirds of all the replies are by theatre makers. The reasons for this are fairly obvious: theatre shows usually have limited runs and the temptation to draw the poison of a bad review quickly is very strong. If we get our rebuttal in before the weekend, it seems to say, we can neutralise the impact of that two-star notice. The reason why no novelist has written a rebuttal for <em>The Guardian</em> is that they know their book has a couple of years to make its impact.<br /></span><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/billington-721943.jpg"><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left;" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/billington-717968.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 204);">It's less obvious why it never works. But here's <em>Encore</em>'s view. Is it perhaps because it feels beneath an artist's dignity to engage with a critic? Of course we know that reviews are very important, but why are they important? I think we all yearn for a critical response that recognises the nature of the creative work you're engaged in, the context you're responding to, a response that can genuinely open up a debate that feels interior to the project of work. But critics hardly ever supply that, especially in their - let's be fair - one hour deadline and 400 words. Responding genuinely and openly to creative work is very difficult, which is why many critics don't bother and either review something else, like Billington (<strong>pictured</strong>) forever turning plays into sociology, or allow personal judgments to harden into a bunker mentality. It <em>can </em>be aggravating when the critics - <em>en masse</em> - misunderstand a show and set its reputation off in quite the wrong direction, causing puzzlement to audiences who've read the papers and creating the conditions for the backlash later on. But there is usually time for that impression to be changed, and it is pointless trying to shift that view within three days of the press night.<br /><br />The truth is that the critics' only practical significance is that they get the word out, more effectively than most advertising, that the play is on. Anyone who's worked in theatre knows the strange phenomenon that even after quite poor reviews, audiences generally go up. Engaging with what they say, therefore, is simply giving the critics more significance than they deserve. And because of that, when you see that an artist has bothered respond, the reader thinks, 'they must be desperate', which demeans the artist and gives curious credence to the original criticism. So the right of reply never works.<br /><br />When we're there, on a first night, watching the critics filing in, don't most of us think, 'if I just met you at a party, I wouldn't like you; I don't respect your opinions, nor your ability to articulate them; why should I care what you think'? Let them write their reviews, but please, please, let's not waste time answering them back.</span>Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154685861390727962006-08-04T10:06:00.000+01:002006-08-04T11:13:23.406+01:00Don't Cry For Him<strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#3333ff;">Don't Cry for Him</span></strong><br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/lloydwebber-763511.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/lloydwebber-762820.jpg" border="0" /></a>Most people develop opinions because the world presents them with options. Lord Lloyd Webber seems to have opinions only when he's got a new show on. His latest off-the-peg rant is about the state of the West End. Yes, you heard me right, <em>the state of the West End</em>. The man whose horrible shows squatted a sizeable portion of it for the last twenty years and still owns seven theatres (including Drury Lane, The Palace, and the Palladium) think it's all up the spout.<br /><br />First, he says in an interview in the <em>Radio Times </em>to publicise his naff and <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/2006/08/con-trick-called-maria.html">slightly fraudulent</a> reality TV show, that only <em>Billy Elliot</em>, <em>The Lion King</em> and <em>Phantom of the Opera</em> are making money. First, as is well known, <em>The Lion King</em> probably <em>isn't </em>making money: its presence as a stage show is a loss leader designed to encourage us to buy other Disney<sup>TM</sup> products . Second, surely there are other shows that are making money. What's the point of <em>Mamma Mia!</em> if it's not making money? What about <em>Les Mis</em>? And, ahem, Andrew, haven't you just opened <em>Evita?</em><br /><em></em><br />The problem, says Lord Webber, is the lack of innovative new shows. What like <em>Evita</em>? Or <em>The Sound of Music</em>? He wants shows with a feelgood factor. Presumably he hankers after the old days of the musical when it was referred to as musical comedy with the emphasis on comedy. There are too many shows that pass almost the entire evening without a good joke, relying on ponderous adaptations of old novels, the score filled with unhummable pastiches of Puccini to show that you're a 'serious' composer. <em>Woman in White</em> anyone?<br /><br />But then he gets to the nub of the matter. The West End is not commercially viable. Why? Because many of them are listed buildings. TheTheatre Royal, Drury Lane, which he owns, needs airconditioning as part of an extensive renovation. Because it is a Grade I listed building, it will cost £20 million. 'If it wasn’t listed we could do that for £1million. No commercial person can find that sort of money and the theatre could never generate it, so what’s the future?'<br /><br />Listing a building is intended to preserve that building for all of us. So all of us are entitled to wonder why you bought the Theatre Royal if you were unprepared to maintain it. Last year, when he was in the process of selling four of his theatres, he <a href="http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/news/ALWsale.htm">insisted</a> that<br /><br /><blockquote>I have always been keenly aware of the responsibility that comes with ownership of such valuable national assets, and throughout this process, have taken great pains to persuade my partner, Bridgepoint Capital, that we must sell only to someone who understands the particular nature of theatre and who will protect and preserve these very special buildings.</blockquote>What's the point of the private sector running theatres - and boring us endlessly with the rigours of the box office - if it's going to bleat on and on about how expensive the whole business is. You basically want the buildings delisted and probably some kind of grant from Westminster council or the Historical Buildings and Monument Commission. In other words, the private sector, as always, wants the laws changed and a handout - so you can make more money. Because in fact how far have you 'protected and preserved these very special buildings'? The Palace got a nice refit, but Drury Lane and The Palladium are a shambles. What you did to the Adelphi was hardly about protection or preservation. The Duchess, The Apollo, the Lyric and Garrick hardly flourished under your care did they?<br /><br />Any in any case, why should we bail you out? May we remind you, Lord Webber, that you're a very very rich man. According to the <a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,20590,00.html">Sunday Times Rich List 2006</a>, you are the 87= richest person in Britain. You are apparently worth <strong>£700 million</strong>. If you love these theatres so much, put your hand in your bloody pocket.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154535928536792642006-08-02T16:59:00.000+01:002006-08-02T19:25:00.020+01:00Nurse? Simon Reade's Out Of Bed Again!<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Nurse? Simon Reade's Out Of Bed Again!</span></strong><br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/SimonReade-782319.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/SimonReade-781106.jpg" border="0" /></a>His second career as a columnist has gone to Simon Reade's head. Fresh from his peroration on the work-life balance, he has now announced that he is contemplating voting Tory. And just like one of those fucking awful Sunday columnist who sit next to someone at a dinner party who also has a Latvian nanny and therefore writes a column about how the whole of Britain has gone crazy for Latvian nannies, he thinks his political wobble is being replicated across the country.<br /><br />Unlikely, I would think, unless the whole of the arts world has had an attack of the stupids. Because what's his argument? Here he is, cutely addressing Tony Blair. <blockquote><p><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>When I voted for you nine years ago, you seemed keen, eager, enlightened. You were the right man to lead us in a liberal, secular age. You listened to your children when they told you to champion green issues. My children loved you for that. You were a pioneer of the work/life balance by bringing your family to live with you at the office. You encouraged ethical foreign policies. You were pro-European. You brought in the Human Rights Act. You were an inspiration.</strong></span></p></blockquote>Right, well, I certainly remember the exhilaration of kicking out the Tories, and there were good things about the incoming Labour Government, but did we ever think Tony Blair was a genuinely progressive politician? The attachment to green issues seemed paper-thin (where was the evidence? where were the policies?); the encouragement of ethical foreign policies was more associated with Robin Cook than Tony Blair; his role as a champion of maintaining a good work/life balance is a Reade bugbear so let's not be detained; and if you thought he was 'secular', you weren't paying attention.<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>And you settled a great deal on the arts in exchange for access and participation, cultural diversity, education and equality, ideals we all cherish and foster and champion in our non-partisan way.</strong></span></blockquote>Fair enough. New Labour was partly about cultural renewal and he wanted the cultural industries (death to the inventor of that term) on side. Indeed, let's not be grudging: Labour after 1997 was financially good for the arts. Let's be even less grudging and note that the introduction of the National Lottery in 1994, under the previous government, helped too.<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>But then you rapidly went rightwing - on university fees, on the NHS, on pensions, on civil liberties and so on - reneging on all the trust we gave you. </strong></span></blockquote>You put trust in him not to be a hardline ideological free-marketeer? Some people can't be trusted to place their trust wisely.<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>You may call it cross-dressing, but I call it neo-conservatism in disguise.</strong></span></blockquote><em>Does</em> Tony Blair call it cross-dressing? I think it's unlikely. 'I'm going to part-privatise the NHS; don't think of it as a drift to the right, just think that your prime minister is slipping into a pair of frilly pants'. Hardly sounds like an effective political strategy. And while we're at it, why do you think it's neoconservatism in <em>disguise</em>? What disguise? But now he moves onto the main burden of his argument:<br /><blockquote><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Although I have voted for other parties, I have never voted conservative in all my 40 years. But I fear I may have to consider following the route pursued by Peter Hall and others who voted for Thatcher in 1979. He believed that, if he didn't, "our present decline into a land without opportunity will continue". I am not blaming Sir Peter. I admire the honesty of his May 1979 entries in his seminal Diaries. The arts world voted Tory for all sorts of reasons - and later regretted what was unleashed on the nation for the next 18 years. </span></strong></blockquote>Can you follow the logic of this? Try reading the sections of this backwards and you'll see how pitiful the logic:<br /><ol><li>Lots of people in the Arts regretted voting Tory in 1979.</li><li>I don't blame them.</li><li>I'm thinking of doing the same.</li></ol><p>People like Peter Hall did not turn against Labour because they were too right-wing. If anything, they wanted the smack of firm leadership; they wanted a more authoritarian government to deal with the unions (Sir Peter's diaries are full of his troubles with the highly unionised National Theatre technical team - though it would be interesting to read <em>their</em> diaries of the same period. ). So what is the relevance of quoting Peter Hall's silly lament for a country without opportunity? But he recognises the differences:</p><blockquote><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">the late 70s were different after all. In our present land of opportunity it is easy to forget the challenge Thatcher had in crawling out of an era of three-day weeks, of blackouts, of Murdoch toughing it out with the unions at Wapping, and of Peter Hall himself facing action from staff at the National Theatre. </span></strong></blockquote><p>Excuse me? Are you saying Thatcher saved Britain? So should we in the arts regret voting for her or not? Hold on, let's calm down, he can't really think that Thatcher was a good thing. </p><p>Oh, hold on, he can. </p><blockquote><p><strong><span style="color:#ffffff;">Callaghan had been weak, taking over from Wilson mid-term, never elected as prime minister in his own right. But maybe you have morphed into Callaghan from your own Wilson, Tony - metamorphosed into a Major when once you were a Thatcher.</span></strong></p></blockquote>If you once thought he was a Thatcher, why are you surprised when he appears to be very right wing?<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Your politics are retreating into the refuge of the reactionary. </strong></span></blockquote>Is it just me or is this turning into internal monologue?<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Your apparent lack of interest in the arts makes me sad.</strong></span></blockquote>(By now Tony will be sobbing into his cornflakes.) <blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>I know you have appreciated music, theatre, poetry in the past. So are you really going to squander nine years of investment and growth in the arts with a measly spending review settlement that threatens all the economic and social benefits of the UK's artistic renaissance?</strong></span></blockquote>Aha, at last, a good point. And now would be the moment to draw a line in the sand between the right-wing bean-counting utilitarian approach to the arts and something more stirring, bolder, more visionary. <blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Many of these benefits are quantifiable.</strong></span></blockquote>I <em>said</em> - oh, forget it. <blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>But you of all people ought to be able to understand the added value of people having a good time, of the intrinsic, spiritual value of the arts. </strong></span></blockquote>The 'added value' of 'having a good time'. Is that <em>seriously </em>the best you can do? And precisely what the fuck does 'intrinsic, spiritual value of the arts' mean? Do we do ourselves any favours by draping ourselves in this kind of woolly crap?<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>And the rest of your current agenda is unnerving. Nuclear power? Iraq? Criminal justice? No wonder Cameron upstages you when he entreats us all to care for hoodies or to go green. He is an opportunist and yet, crucially, he captures the public mood.</strong></span></blockquote>It doesn't help Simon's case that he is so inarticulate about these things. Nuclear power may unnerve you, but are you actually aware that 20% of your current electricity use comes from it? What aspect of criminal justice unnerves you? Could you say more than 'Iraq'? With such banalities on the tip of your tongue, it's not surprising that hug-a-hoodie seemed like serious policymaking.<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Since we know you're going, please go. The longer you stay, the longer you strengthen Cameron</strong></span></blockquote>This is turning into <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. Remove the ring of power, Blair, the longer you wear it the greater in strength grows the Dark Lord...<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>But before you go, Tony, you've got a chance to redeem yourself. Do the arts a small favour: don't let the well-being of society flounder by disinvesting after all that's been achieved. </strong></span></blockquote>The problem here, Simon, is that you're falling into the same trap with Brown that you fell into with Blair. Who do you think ordered the spending review? Brown. Who supported the Iraq war? Brown. Who has been championing Public-Private Partnerships in health, education and transport? Brown. Who is the economic architect of New Labour? Brown. Who has been standing up in defence of civil liberties, against nuclear power, and in favour of high levels of arts subsidy? Erm, certainly not Gordon Brown.<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Then do the world a big favour - and this is my personal view</strong></span></blockquote>...does this mean that the rest of this article is official policy of the Bristol Old Vic?... <blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>stop kowtowing to Bush's isolationist foreign policy.</strong></span></blockquote>Isolationist? <em>Bush?</em> What are you <em>talking</em> about? Bush is anything but isolationist. His foreign policy is neo-realist and interventionist. Iraq? Afghanistan? Syria? Iran? Cuba? Have you been following?<br /><blockquote><span style="color:#ffffff;"><strong>Then you can go. Because if you carry on the way you are, I and others like me, might be seduced into voting for someone who could unleash who-knows-what over the next 18 years.</strong></span></blockquote>But if you <em>know </em>that you're being seduced into it, if you <em>recognise </em>that they could unleash who-knows-what, then don't do it. There are other parties if you want to express a protest vote. Above all, Simon, let us make this very clear: if you are cross at having a right-wing government, it makes no fucking sense to vote Tory. Is that clear enough for you?Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154428116370865092006-08-02T10:40:00.000+01:002006-08-02T16:59:04.100+01:00A Con-Trick Called Maria<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">A Con-Trick Called Maria</span></strong><br /><br />Fifteen years ago, David Bowie announced that the playlist for his upcoming tour would be chosen by the fans and he opened up a special phoneline for people to request songs from his back catalogue. Naturally, this was abused, the <em>NME</em> running a campaign to get people to phone in for 'The Laughing Gnome'.<br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/sound-of-music-726946.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/sound-of-music-726135.jpg" border="0" /></a>Surely <em>How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria</em> is ripe for the same treatment. The producers of the show claim that the public is going to be permitted to choose the actress who'll play Maria in Andrew Lloyd Webber's forthcoming revival of <em>The Sound of Music</em>. Really? What if the public get a fit of mischievousness and decide to vote in large numbers for a totally inappropriate candidate? Let's face it, with these shows, there is a high level of caprice visible in the voting. Throughout the various series of <em>Big Brother</em> anyone who looks likely to get a shag gets eliminated with the same puritan ruthlessness of Jason in the <em>Friday the 13th</em> franchise. Other shows have had similar peculiarities; the singing vicar who stayed in for ages, the tone-deaf Indie kid on <em>Fame Academy</em>, Michelle McManus, etc. In fact, it would be rather wonderful if How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria were merged with the current Big Brother, since surely - <em>surely</em> - we'd all like to see a Maria with Tourettes: 'Doe - a deer ('e's a man!), a female deer (hoo hoo wankers!)'. If, as is likely, Lloyd Webber and the ghastly Ian David allow only twelve interchangeable Marias into the final rounds, the public won't have much to watch. There must be televisual pressure to put a couple of eccentric figures into the finals and if that happens bets are off.<br /><br />But it seems that the producers have thought of this. Because this Maria, chosen by the public, is barely going to be in it at all. Recent reports are that Scarlet Johansson was offered the role but the negotiations foundered on the Hollywood star's 'excessive demands'. Who knows what really went on but we enjoyed the report that her management team: 'couldn't understand why she would want to appear in the West End for $18,500 a week when she could be earning $10 million for a movie'. Among the demands, her representatives wanted two minders backstage at all times. <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/ScarletJohansson-737953.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/ScarletJohansson-732762.jpg" border="0" /></a>Now, this is hardly a requirement of the J-Lo school (who demanded three personal chefs, a white microphone and stand, coffee stirred anti-clockwise only, the smell of gardenias everywhere she went, Egyptian cotton 250 thread count sheets, and ten rooms all decorated in white for her sixty staff - and this for her performance on <em>Top of the Pops!</em>). A major star probably does need a minder to keep the nutters away (though on just under £10,000 a week, you'd think she could pay for them herself). But, if we are to believe the producers, the failure of these negotiations led to the brainwave of publically auditioning for an unknown. They announced this scheme in November 2005, so why are they raking up this old story (Hollywood Actress Not Cast In Show - Exclusive!). Publicity for the show? It seems pretty rank to try to muddy Scarlet Johansson's reputation just for some free publicity, especially since it appears from the stories that the real reason that she couldn't do it was a prior filming commitment.<br /><br />Unless those negotiations were more recent and Johansson was being lined up as the real star of the production. Because this is what they're doing anyway: casting a professional musical theatre actress in the part. The latest rumour is Emma Williams who opened the current production of <em>Chitty Chitty Bang Bang </em>as Truly Scrumptious and that she'll play two of the performances each week. This makes no sense. Why would Emma Williams take it? - unless you assume that the slated two performances for Williams and six for the unknown will quickly switch around if the public vote for the 'wrong' person. And who will do it on press night? Why would an established actress not want to do press night and get the reviews? On the other hand the producers are bound to be weighing the extra publicity and news value of having an unknown preparing for her opening night at the Palladium. Perhaps they'll do a split version for the critics: unknown in the first half, Williams in the second.<br /><br />So, what do we have here? The search for an unknown is simply a publicity stunt; they're going to eliminate any wild cards in the first round; the producers are using executive privilege to put people into the next rounds who have been rejected by the judging panel; they've got a professional standing by in case it all goes Pete Tong. This is a sham, innit?<br /><br />But then, to be fair, despite thousands of phone calls, on his world tour Bowie never sang 'The Laughing Gnome'.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154454162534723012006-08-01T18:34:00.000+01:002006-08-01T18:44:42.976+01:00Max Stafford-Clark<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Max Stafford-Clark</span></strong><br /><br /><a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/MSC-768540.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/MSC-729690.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821154348777">What's On Stage</a> is reporting that Max Stafford-Clark has suffered a stroke and is recovering in North London's Whittington hospital after being fitted with a pacemaker. He recently directed <em>The Overwhelming</em> by J T Rogers for the Cottesloe followed by a National tour. He is still expected to direct <em>King of Hearts</em>, Alistair Beaton's new comedy about the royal family, in the late autumn. We would like to send him, his friends and family all best wishes for a quick and trouble-free recovery.<br /><br />Photo by <a href="http://www.grahammichael.co.uk/photos.html">Graham Michael</a>.Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154074532895386092006-08-01T10:39:00.000+01:002006-08-01T10:39:18.273+01:00Playwrights and Playwrongs<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">Playwrights and Playwrongs</span></strong><br /><br />There's <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1830395,00.html">a very good and intelligent piece</a> by Philip Hensher in <em>The Guardian</em>, talking about the difficulties that novelists have writing good plays and that playwrights have writing novels. Hensher's a critic, a novelist, a journalist and a librettist, and so when <em>Encore</em> saw the opening, we feared the worst. <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/amis2-793791.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/amis2-791966.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />There's a daft view around that's been voiced by people as diverse as Bryan Appleyard and Martin Amis that (<em>a</em>) plays are easier to write than novels, (<em>b</em>) playwrights are therefore lesser writers than novelists. I remember Appleyard claiming this on the rather stupid basis that there were far fewer words in the average play (which is an argument that should startle most lyric poets). Martin Amis, meanwhile, in his 1995 novel <em>The Information</em>, offered an acerbic guide to the field: <blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>Richard was obliged to review, one after the other, the fiery mediocrities of the London stage. No famished bard, no myopic storyteller. Instead, an elaborately quenched Marxist in black leather trousers. Richard had hated all the poets and novelists too, but the playwrights, the playwrights . . . With Nabokov, and others, Richard regarded the drama as a primitive and long-exhausted form. The drama boasted Shakespeare (which was an excellent cosmic joke), and Chekhov, and a couple of sepulchral Scandinavians. Then where were you? Deep in the second division. As for the dramatists of today: town criers, toting leper bells, they gau<a name="BM_1_"></a>ged the sickness of society by the number of unsold seats at their subsidized Globes. They were soul doctors demanding applause for the pitilessness of their prognoses. And also, presumably, and crucially, they made a lot of money and splashed their way through all the actresses (p. 360).</blockquote>Now, of course, as theatre workers, and obviously very alert to the differences between author, narrator and character, <em>Encore </em>assumed that Amis could be talking in character, and that the ignorance and prejudice expressed by the text at this point was part of Amis's attempt to sketch the character of a minor and resentful novelist. However, Amis has said much the same sort of thing in interviews. Fortunately for us all, Amis hasn't attempted to raise the level of the stage by writing for it - one can just imagine what his overheated prose and prissy literary hardboiledism would sound like in the mouths of actors.<br /><br />Hensher's piece, though, is commendably even-handed. He observes that the intensity and immediacy of stage dialogue can sometimes seem flat and meretricious in a novel. Somehow, the stage places such intense scrutiny on language that good writers learn to effect a dense economy in stage terms that becomes overheated and clotted when read at a novel's pace. But he also observes the long history of novelists failing in the theatre, with Henry James's <em>Guy Domville</em> being the most glittering example. These novelists failed because they could not live without their prose descriptions, their access to the internal spaces of their characters, their ability to cut around the action. While Hensher perhaps understates the stolidity of contemporary playmaking, his basic point is sound and well expressed:<br /><blockquote><p>A novelist and a playwright might seem to be doing similar things. In fact, the tasks are quite different. Dialogue and external action are only two of the novelist's tasks; they have to flesh out the world with evocations of place, of physical appearance, the sense of time passing. A playwright's task is more austere. There's no alluding to people's thoughts in the lazy way of novelists: playwrights have to do everything through the way their people talk, and the way they move and act in tangible ways. A playwright venturing into the novel won't necessarily know how to write a description, where you can usefully allude to something unseen, or how to move from place to place. A playwright's tools are more refined; a novelist's toolbox is bigger.</p></blockquote>Given the abject place the theatre has in the affections of most people writing in the literary pages of our broadsheets, this is a surprisingly smart and sympathetic piece.<br /><br />On the other hand, we're not quite sure what Mark Ravenhill's on about in <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1834021,00.html">his latest piece</a>. <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Product-747076.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/Product-743335.jpg" border="0" /></a>To be fair to him, it has been subedited, on the front page of the website anyway, with the title 'Mark Ravenhill on why teaching playwriting is a waste of time' - an assertion that, to his credit, Mark doesn't ever quite make. Of course, some kinds of playwriting teaching is a waste of time; much of that McKee-inspired structural stuff seemed designed to suck the joy out of any would-be playwright turning writing into a kind of feng-shui. (Sadly, this seems to be very widespread in the US.) But all? Midway through his confessional, Ravenhill declares: <blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>The trouble is, the more I write, the less I feel I know about writing - certainly, the less I feel I can articulate what is going on when I'm doing it. And the more suspicious I become of anything that pretends to be a rule of playwriting. But tell a workshop participant that there are no rules, that they need to discover what a play means to them and write something that is unique to their sense of the world, and you are likely to be faced with a sullen customer who feels they aren't getting their money's worth.</blockquote>Much of this is right, about the lawlessness of creativity and the consumerist mentality of students, but he's confusing teaching with teaching rules. It may be a value to teach the very things that Ravenhill passionately presents here as key to writing.<br /><br />It turns out that his article isn't actually about whether you can teach playwriting. It's about the workshop culture created by funding arrangements. Whether Rose Fenton is right in the article to be so supine before the funders -'It's not us who wants the workshops. It's the funders. They demand them, so what can you do?' (as if she hadn't put a programme of workshops on the application form in the first place) is unclear. Certainly workshops, as it seems in Mark's case, whether the workshop leader doesn't know why they're doing it and has no faith in the point of doing it, are doomed to failure. But <em>Encore </em>isn't sure we needed an article in the Guardian to tell us that.<br /><br />Philip Hensher's article, in fact, seems to me to express some simple and important truths about writing for the stage. I wonder if he does workshops?Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5349628.post-1154284759809225612006-07-30T19:32:00.000+01:002006-07-30T19:41:26.356+01:00The Stoppard Debate # 3<strong><span style="color:#3333ff;">The Stoppard Debate # 3</span></strong><br /><br /><strong>Merry Hell</strong><br /><br />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 <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> and, to a lesser extent, Terry Johnson’s <em>Piano Forte</em>. What is significant about <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> 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 <em>Forty Winks</em>, 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.<br /><br />That <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> is a very different play to <em>Motortown </em>is something of a no-brainer. <a href="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/stoppard1_1147201458-714654.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://encoretheatremagazine.blogspot.com/uploaded_images/stoppard1_1147201458-713291.jpg" border="0" /></a>That <em>Motortown </em>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 <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> 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 <em>Rock 'n' Roll</em> fundamentally fails to do this.<br /><br />'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.<br /><br />There were also moments of merriment brought about by misunderstanding, such as Candida’s comment that in the late 1960s, her boyfriend was 'a <em>Black Dwarf </em>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.<br /><br />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!Theatre Workerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10656722713667714967noreply@blogger.com7