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Lyn Gardner: Speaking Shakespeare in tongues
Are Shakespeare's plays more than their poetry? They must be – otherwise we would read them, not act them. If, for British audiences, it is the poetry that is paramount, then no one would ever go to see a foreign-language Shakespeare production. Yet we do in our thousands.
Shakespeare wasn't just a poet; he was also a brilliant and demanding playwright. Some of the best Shakespeare productions I've seen were in Romanian, Russian and Spanish – languages of which I have little or no knowledge. I may not speak Russian, but the acting was so luminous in Declan Donnellan's Twelfth Night that I felt as if I understood every word. Tim Supple's recent Dream mixed languages from around the globe with the language of physical theatre. And the late, great Ken Campbell performed Shakespeare in pidgin.
The recent reviews of Footsbarn's A Midsummer Night's Dream in east London's Victoria Park suggest that there remains a resistance to English-speaking productions of Shakespeare in which the emphasis is not entirely on the poetry or indeed the text. One reviewer, after pointing out some of the international cast's difficulties with the language, wrote: "The children in the audience and their parents loved it, as many foreigners must – how reassuring it must be to think that you can enjoy Shakespeare without knowing Shakespeare, without even listening."
The key here is in the title. It is not billed as A Midsummer Night's Dream but as Footsbarn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is an international company known for their affectionate irreverence for Shakespeare. Their production is rough and ready in style and offers the kind of commedia-inspired mask work and clowning that some adore but that gets right up other people's noses. I can't dispute the fact that some of the cast have real difficulty getting their tongues around the words, although almost all of them make up for these deficiencies in other ways. Are we really saying that, while we are prepared to accept Shakespeare in a foreign language, it is only the words that count in English-speaking productions?
If the poetry is sometimes mangled in Footsbarn's Dream, the essence of Shakespeare's play is not. For all its many flaws, the show is utterly joyful. The words "joyful" and "Shakespeare" are not often found together in British theatre. Instead, we are subjected to endless mediocre productions from directors who have no particular passion for the plays and often no real ideas, but who feel a duty to stage them. You might be able to hear every word perfectly, but the emotional poetry is massacred, leaving audiences with the impression of something antiquated and irrelevant. Footsbarn aren't killing Shakespeare, but keeping him alive.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsLyn Gardner: Speaking Shakespeare in tongues
Are Shakespeare's plays more than their poetry? They must be – otherwise we would read them, not act them. If, for British audiences, it is the poetry that is paramount, then no one would ever go to see a foreign-language Shakespeare production. Yet we do in our thousands.
Shakespeare wasn't just a poet; he was also a brilliant and demanding playwright. Some of the best Shakespeare productions I've seen were in Romanian, Russian and Spanish – languages of which I have little or no knowledge. I may not speak Russian, but the acting was so luminous in Declan Donnellan's Twelfth Night that I felt as if I understood every word. Tim Supple's recent Dream mixed languages from around the globe with the language of physical theatre. And the late, great Ken Campbell performed Shakespeare in pidgin.
The recent reviews of Footsbarn's A Midsummer Night's Dream in east London's Victoria Park suggest that there remains a resistance to English-speaking productions of Shakespeare in which the emphasis is not entirely on the poetry or indeed the text. One reviewer, after pointing out some of the international cast's difficulties with the language, wrote: "The children in the audience and their parents loved it, as many foreigners must – how reassuring it must be to think that you can enjoy Shakespeare without knowing Shakespeare, without even listening."
The key here is in the title. It is not billed as A Midsummer Night's Dream but as Footsbarn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is an international company known for their affectionate irreverence for Shakespeare. Their production is rough and ready in style and offers the kind of commedia-inspired mask work and clowning that some adore but that gets right up other people's noses. I can't dispute the fact that some of the cast have real difficulty getting their tongues around the words, although almost all of them make up for these deficiencies in other ways. Are we really saying that, while we are prepared to accept Shakespeare in a foreign language, it is only the words that count in English-speaking productions?
If the poetry is sometimes mangled in Footsbarn's Dream, the essence of Shakespeare's play is not. For all its many flaws, the show is utterly joyful. The words "joyful" and "Shakespeare" are not often found together in British theatre. Instead, we are subjected to endless mediocre productions from directors who have no particular passion for the plays and often no real ideas, but who feel a duty to stage them. You might be able to hear every word perfectly, but the emotional poetry is massacred, leaving audiences with the impression of something antiquated and irrelevant. Footsbarn aren't killing Shakespeare, but keeping him alive.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsShunt Times
We’ll be performing at approx 9:30pm thursday, friday and saturday. We are in a small room, through a door, off the long corridor. Our room has its own bar that will be selling whisky and beer all night, so get in early to avoid the queues and relax with a drink.
See you there.
Noises off: Content is no longer king in the theatre
Alexis Soloski: Theatre's new robotic star
Natasha Tripney: The etiquette of leaving the theatre mid-play
Rikki Beadle-Blair: Theatre that's Fit for purpose - tackling homophobia
Ajesh Patalay: What Barack's Campaign Can Teach the West End
Encounters Short Film Festival, Bristol
Now election fever is dying down, I guess Mr Obama has to cope with the massive weight of expectation currently bearing down on his shoulders. Lucky him - he’s got his job cut out.
We can all breathe sign of relief and return to our normal lives.
So here I am, in Bristol on a rainy Monday, uploading things to Flickr, updating my Myspace, and looking forward to a few things in the next week or two.
First up, Encounters, which is happening at Watershed and Arnolfini this week. This always seems to pass me by, so I’m making a concerted effort this year, and am going to the Opening Highlights tomorrow evening. It’s a pretty big festival now, and their brochure is like the telephone directory. It’s so heavy in fact that I dropped mine on St James Barton roundabout whilst cycling home the other week, so it’s a goner.
Also this week, two exhibitions at Arnolfini are opening… Supertoys: On Play, Affective Machines and Object Relations, and The Cover of A Book is the Beginning of a Journey, which includes performances by The Performance Re-enactment Society (Paul Clarke, Clare Thornton, and fellow Residence member Tom Marshman).
And finally, I’m also at the end of series one of The Wire. Now I know what everyone’s been banging on about for so long…
Over and out.
Maxie Szalwinska: Peachy Coochy is Just a Minute for performance art
Andrew Haydon: Is the Bulger case a suitable subject for theatre?
Lyn Gardner: Theatre should usher children into the real world
The Christmas theatre season is almost upon us and, as usual, we parents will be quite happily taking the children off to see traditional shows and pantos. As Carol Ann Duffy and Tim Supple demonstrated with Grimm Tales at the Young Vic in the 90s, once you wipe away the Disney glitter, many traditional tales are treasure troves of terror featuring murder, mutilation and horror. We don't think twice about packing our children off to see those shows – or King Lear and Titus Andronicus, for that matter – but if our kids were going to see a contemporary play featuring family breakdown, rape and cannibalism, we'd probably have them off the school coach before you could say "Sarah Kane".
I visited a school earlier this year where a member of staff vetted all of the plays attended by the GCSE and A-level theatre studies students. I find it odd that we happily embrace some shows because they are a part of our cultural heritage, yet we are so self-censoring about other theatre for children and young people. Last week, the annual Theatre Cafe festival took place at Southwark Playhouse and the Unicorn, offering readings and productions of European plays for young people. I saw one of them, This Child; it's a hard-hitting expose of child-parent relations, and I seriously doubt any British playwright would create a similar play for young audiences. Another play in the season was inspired by the murder of Jamie Bulger and explored issues of guilt, innocence and society's ways of tackling "evil". Written by Klaas Tindemans, Bulger toured schools in Belgium and offered after-show discussions for families. I can just imagine the kind of screaming UK tabloid headlines that would appear if such a play toured schools here.
Far less controversial work often fails to get past those who are busy guarding what children should and shouldn't see in the theatre. When reviewing Pilot Theatre's excellent Looking for JJ, which is based on Anne Cassidy's best-selling novel about a girl who kills her friend, the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts said it had no place in a children's theatre such as the Unicorn. Similarly, a couple of weeks ago, the Daily Telegraph's review of Carl Miller's Red Fortress (another Unicorn show) took issue with a show for the over-10s questioning history and including a homosexual subtext. Dominic Cavendish wrote: "Once upon a time children's theatre was all about flying carpets and feats of wonder—now it seems to be about bringing children a down to earth with a disenchanted bump."
I often think that when it's comes to theatre for children and young people, we've not progressed much beyond the 1980s, when Norman Tebbit tried to stop Theatre Centre touring into schools because he didn't like the messages in the plays. As a result, we have very few really interesting playwrights writing serious pieces for the young. Theatres are so worried about upsetting parents and the media that they operate within a straitjacket of self-censorship. As Theatre Cafe demonstrates, you only have to look to Europe to see the difference in the quality of work being produced.
As a result, we are selling our children short in the theatre by offering what is – with a few brave exceptions – a diet of theatre (often adapted from best-selling books) that is indeed mostly "about flying carpets and feats of wonder". In doing so, we are giving them a distorted view of reality and theatre. The parental instinct to protect children is a natural one, but just as we must not be ruled by fear and must let our children go out on their own and make their own decisions, so we must let them go into that safest of arenas - the theatre - and confront the issues that they have to confront in the real world.
We must put great trust in those who are running children's theatres and those companies creating work for young people. We must also put much greater trust in our children themselves and their ability to engage creatively and emotionally with theatre. If a 12-year-old can deal with Romeo and Juliet, they can take Red Fortress in their stride.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsTransform blog: BEST OF
I've gamely tried to divide the list up into various categories but there is inevitably a lot of cross over so don't pay them too much attention. If the bad science, bad politics and bad journalism headings all seem a bit negative, thats partly because the good news blogs tend to be 'this is good *point*' and as such just aren't as interesting, and partly because at this stage of the campaign, theres sadly still a lot more bad stuff to critique than there is good stuff to celebrate. There's other categories: cannabis gets its own one, as does alcohol and tobacco, international news, a small one for scoops, and finally a miscellaneous category for all the best-of blogs that didn't easily slot in elsewhere
Thanks to all our bloggers, readers and those who have posted comments (even the trolls).
CANNABIS
In many ways a distraction from more pressing drug policy issues but, particularly with the whole sorry reclassification saga unfolding over the last few years, it has obsessed the media and correspondingly provided a rich vein of bad reporting, bad science and political idiocy that is hard for a critical drug policy blog to ignore. The Daily Mail and Independent on Sunday in particular have distinguished themselves, but they have been far from alone.
Daily Mail, Bad Science Drugs Deaths and Reclassification
Aug 06. The first blog to really critique bad science and misreporting of drug statistics. On this occasion linking cannabis reclassification with a rise in opiate deaths (that took place before cannabis was reclassified - Doh!).
'So Macho' Reverend wants police to arrest more kids
Oct 06. More silliness in the Mail about cannabis reclassification, this time featuring a self-righteous reverend funded through royalties on the 80’s camp disco smash – so macho. This one was picked up by the Guardian's diary column
Daily Mail gets confused on cannabis (again)
Jan 07. This time confusing arrest rates with prevalence of use
How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis
March 07. A masterpiece in poor journalism is forensically taken to pieces. Subsequently used in the Guardians bad science column and best-selling book of the same name
The Independent's born-again drug war: Round Two
Mar 07. More of the same
Independent on Sunday and cannabis - on it goes
April 07. Still more
More shoddy reefer madness reporting of cannabis risks
July 07. The Lancet fails to discourage poor reporting of statistics.
Media obsess over cannabis reclassification. Again
July 07. Fueled this time by ministerial revelations of former drug use.
Brown on cannabis - it gets worse
Sept 07. The cannabis reclassification saga comes to a head, the new PM makes a fool of himself, and any vague pretense of evidence based policy making goes out the window once and for all
More Independent on Sunday reefer madness exposed
Oct 07. A case of grotesquely hyped misrepresented research and shock headline-mongering. The authors of the research question thanked us for this one (probably belongs under bad science)
Smoking stuff bad for lungs shock
Jan 08. Another one of those reheated drugs bad for you-shock stories.
the ACMD cannabis decision: stay in class C
Feb 08. After the ACMD cannabis hearings the blog speculates on the decision. Correctly.
Cannabis making politicians go all weird. Again.
April 08. Reactions to the ACMD cannabis report
Millions quit cannabis following reclassification
May 08. Satire – for some reason this has pulled in more hits than almost any other blog
There's been lots going on around the world - from crazy drug wars to inspiring reform news, the US being hardest to ignore of course, but it is the UN drug control agency’s struggle to come to terms with half a century of failure and a legal infrastructure no longer even remotely relevant to the challenges of the modern world in particular that has made for a curious brand of hard to ignore bureaucratic drama.
UNODC ramps up the weird drug warrior rhetoric
Nov 07. The UNODC director talks about ‘evil’, ‘junkies’ and ‘Britney Spears’. And says ‘fuck’.
What Darwin Teaches Us About the Drug War
Dec 07. Brilliant analysis from guest blogger Sanho Tree, on how enforcement acts as natural selection in the illicit drug trade, making the criminals ever more sophisticated, and violent.
UNODC Director declares international drug control system is not ‘fit for purpose’
Mar 08. Not a scoop exactly – but you heard it first here.
When all else fails: blame Amy Winehouse
Mar 08. Various big hitters from the Prime minister to Antonio Costa lining up to blame celebrities for the failure global drug policy. Buck passing on a grand scale. See also INCB prioritise celebrity tat over human rights abuses and mass murder
INCB annual report: even by their standards, this one's a shocker
Mar 08. The most dysfunctional agency within the failing UN drug control infrastructure puts out its awful annual report to a predictable gale of criticism from the NGO community.
The Council of Europe adopts convention on promoting public health in drug control
Oct 07. Included here because it’s important and everyone seems to miss it first time around.
Traditional coca use: caught in the cross fire
April 08. Some of the forgotten victims of the drug war
UN special rapporteur documents systematic torture of drug suspects in Indonesia
Sept 08. Horrible, but ignored by the media
US Congress celebrates 75 years of drug legalisation and regulation
Sept 08. All a bit hypocritical really
Drug Free America Foundation clash with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
Oct 08. A clear points victory for LEAP
BAD SCIENCE
There's plenty out there with old-school prohibition clearly requiring a monumental propaganda effort of it to keep itself propped up in the face of overwhelming failure, and sustained critique. A number of these blogs ended up featuring, occasionally starring in the Guardian’s regular bad science column (as did some of the cannabis stuff above).
At last! polonium 210 in cigarettes hits the news
Dec 06 We’ve been going on about the scandal of radioactive cigarettes and lung cancer for ages – but still no-one seems interested. You try.
NIDA fails to propagandise Wikipedia
Jan 07. NIDA naughtiness rumbled by intrepid bloggers
Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and 'Prohibition Works!'
Mar 07. Commentary on statistical tricks used by drug war propagandists
Mar 07. The normally sensible MHRA get in a spin over laughing gas.
Child drug vaccines: the worst idea ever
Feb 07. Mercifully they haven’t happened
How to spin drug prevalence data: a beginners guide
April 07. This one is linked from several degree courses around the world. Nice.
Is this the most pointless drug research ever?
Jun 07. Cocaine detected in the air, in Rome. Why?
Illegal cocaine worth more than gold, platinum, and human blood
Aug 08. Only because it’s illegal though
DRUG CLASSIFICATION
Watching the Government attempt to argue its way past sustained parliamentary critique of the classification system has been a bizarre and depressing spectacle - warranting its own bad science sub-category. It's an issue that shows no sign of let up with the upcoming miserable show down over ecstasy.
Classification and Deterrence - where's the evidence?
Oct 06. A detailed deconstruction of the Governement’s preposterous response to the Sci-Tech select committees suggestion that the deterrent effect of classification is un-evidenced.
Meth is Class A - we can relax now.
Jan 07. The ridiculousness of the classification system laid bare
The Lancet and drug harms: missing the bigger picture
Mar 07. Nutt et al spell out their methodology for assessing drug harms – a step forward, but key conceptual errors mean they have missed the point: drug us harms and drug prohibition harms are not the same.
Ecstasy reclassification meltdown; it begins again
May 08. As the cannabis saga draws to a close a whole new world of stupidity opens up, but with a different drug.
BAD POLITICS
So much to choose from.
Playing SOCA with drug policy?
Jan 07. Discussion of why the Government’s new serious crime agencies drug brief is doomed from the outset, and the politics of why it was set up in the first
Home Office split: - dibs on who gets drugs
Jan 07. Apparently they drew Straws.
Yet another leaked government report critiques prohibition/calls for regulation
Feb 07. Still, the message doesn’t seem to be getting through. Politics and expert advice evidentely don’t make comfortable bed fellows in drug policy.
No10 drug policy e-petitions: a total waste of time?
Mar 07. The answer would appear to be ‘yes’
The War on Lemsip
April 07. The meth panic provokes some predictably risible knee-jerk responses
Drugs minister gives a masterclass in drug policy spin and evasion
May 07. He’s no longer drugs minister – having graduated with honours and moved onto bigger fish
Gordon Brown on Drugs: friend of the mafia, enemy of pragmatism
Sept 07. More prime ministerial drug policy hypocrisy
NZ drug warrior pwned by Dihydrogen Monoxide hoax
Sept 07. Desperate drug warrior antics exposed
Home Office refuses to release strategy evaluation research
Sept 07. An ongoing disgrace as the Home Office, in the spirit of informed debate, refuses to release independent analysis that might make it look bad. The FOI appeals on this are still rumbling on.
Number 10 website petition to end drug prohibition: the Government responds
July 07. And the blog responds to the response
Drug warrior interrogates drug policy expert with unsurprising outcome
April 07. An Australian politician makes a fool of herself in public
Why we need a cost-benefit analysis
Aug 08. The most reasonable policy call possible – but still they wont do it. I wonder why?
BAD JOURNALISM
For some reason illegal drugs are like a magnet for bad journalism. Beyond the reefer madness silliness there has been no shortage daft drug panics, shoddy reporting or utterly pointless make-up-a-story-from-nothing journalism.
The anatomy of a drug panic
April 07. Even the Guardian are not immune from a good drug panic story. This time its BZP.
Ridiculous magic mushroom non-story makes 'news'
April 07. Contender for worst drug story ever
Rubbish drug story of the week
April 07 dustbin sniffing is apparently sweeping the country. ridiculous
Aug 08. The same story recycled each year by lazy journalists.
Ketamine: badger tranquilizer
Nov 08. Where did the horse tranquilser meme come from?
ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO
Transform are interested in effective regulation and control of all drugs, and alcohol and tobacco are far from perfect.
Supercasinos, drugs and alcohol prohibition: more than a whiff of ministerial hypocrisy
March 07. Ministers fail the consistency test when it comes to regulating ‘vice’.
Another alcohol strategy: fine words, but spineless
March 07. critique of policy for one of the legal drugs
Why alcohol ads being pulled from kids replica kits is nowhere near enough.
April 07. We moan about this on the blog, the following month it changes. FEEL THE POWER. (unfortunately there is still somewhere to go)
Why Transform supports the smoking ban
July 07. Yes, sometimes prohibition is the appropriate and sensible response.
Government complicity in the alcohol marketing scandal
May 07. Government can’t seem to get the level of regulation right for some legal drugs either.
Pseudoscience tobacco advertising from the bad old days
Oct 08. A collection of the very worst, most exploitative tobacco adverts from 30s, 40s, and 50s.
THE OCCASIONAL MINOR SCOOP
When stuff gets emailed in, or stumbled upon, we’ll cover it.
Forget the war on drugs. Here comes the WAR ON GUMMI BEARS!
Feb 07. No one can say we don’t break the big drug stories.
Home Office spin guide for the new drug strategy. Part 1
Feb 08. The Home offices very own guide to answering tricky questions on legalisation/regulation, leaked to the Transform Blog. Actual genuine scoopage.
UNODC director describes DPA event as '1000 lunatics', 'obviously on drugs'
Mar 08. Failed to win any friends by later refusing to apologise
UNODC director goes to Amsterdam: the lost report
June 08: SCOOP!
MISCELLANEOUS
Various other interesting stuff that didn’t fit neatly into any of the above categories
Feb 07. Another senior policeman calling for heroin prescribing makes a media splash (he and media apparently unaware it is already both legal and prescribed).
A tribute to Eddie Ellison
Feb 07. Eddie Ellison, Transform friend and Patron, a senior drug law enforcer who became an outspoken and eloquent advocate for reform, who died in January 07. See also Interview with Eddie Ellison, former head of the Met drugs squad
RSA Drugs Report - so near and yet so far
Mar 07. Transform’s commentary on the RSA drugs report
Arnie, Whitney and the Hoff say: "STOP THE MADNESS!"
April 07. Hilariously bad 80’s video demonstrating the dangers of using celebrities in anti-drug campaigns
Censored comments from BBC online drug debates
Jun 07. A look behind the curtain
Prohibitionist rant trashed in the FT Economists' forum (with some help from Transform)
Aug 07. Transform hangs with ‘the world’s leading economists’
Drug testing company welcomes expansion of drug testing - shock
Aug 07. With much poor science spouted in the process.
Support for reform: The Unusual Suspects
Jan 08. Various voices from the right of the political spectrum weigh in
Richard and Judy back drug legalisation
Jan 08. Yes, that Richard and Judy, the nations favourite TV couple
Transform in...wait for it...Take a Break magazine!
Jan 08. A truly momentous day
Clergy Speaks Out Against 'The War On Drugs'
Mar 08 Loads of old vicars and nuns who think the war on drugs is wrong.
The Daily Mail's occasional forays into drug law reform
April 08. Very occasional.
A 12-step program for drug war addiction
May 08. As with most treatment programs – it’s hard to vouch for the effectiveness of this one
How much tax revenue are we gifting to criminals?
May 08. New research from the Netherlands suggests: a lot.
The opium war's front line: Afghanistan, Iran and Hampshire
June 08. It’s an international problem, with an international solution
Is Drug Policy Climate Change Happening?
July 08. A new member of the Transform team reviews media from the previous few days
Drugs, knives and moral panics
July 08. Different issues, similar media driven panics
Why crackdowns on drugs in prison completely miss the point
July 08. Essay on how policy makers are missing the bigger picture.
A response to Ian Oliver's anti-legalisation comments in the Independent
Aug 08. A workman like Transform blog smack-down
Former Director of UK Anti-drug Co-ordination Unit calls for legalisation
Aug 08. One blog that pretty much wrote itself
How the Daily Mail dealt with the Julian Critchley story
Aug 08. Straight reporting by the Daily Mail gives cause for optimism.
Treatment - a new definition
Oct 08. Drug users as hazardous waste
photo: Guardian
Drugs Uncovered in The Observer
Drugs Uncovered 2008
or
Drugs Uncovered
Here at Transform we'd strongly recommend that, more than uncovering them, we should legally regulate them. To get involved, visit our web site: www.tdpf.org.uk
For those new to Transform, here are 10 Transform 'Blogs from the Archive':
Financial Service chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic support drug law reform
Former Director of UK Anti-drug Co-ordination Unit calls for legalisation
Why we need a cost-benefit analysis
Does James Bond support legalisation?
TV documentary: Prime Time Investigates: War Without End
Independent on Sunday and cannabis - on it goes
Loads of people taking drugs shock!
Why George Michael shouldn't cop a plea for drugs
In Pursuit of Truth
Support for reform: The Unusual Suspects
Drugs prohibition is a 'policy of mass destruction' and the consultation document is a 'dodgy dossier'
For comparison, the last time the Observer Uncovered drugs was in 2002:
'Drugs Uncovered 2002'
Carrie Dunn: Am-dram can only benefit from the free theatre ticket scheme
Lyn Gardner: What to see this week
This weekend is your last chance to catch Kneehigh's Brief Encounter in the West End, and it really is worth it. Kneehigh are currently preparing for Don John, a new production based on Mozart's Don Giovanni, which opens at the RSC in Stratford in early December and will then tour the UK. I reckon the subject matter and the talents of Emma Rice and her company could be an exquisite match. If you can't wait until then, Athletes of the Heart's own take on Don Juan is at the Riverside Studios from next Friday as part of FeEast, a festival of central and eastern European arts.
Kneehigh are currently raising funds for a permanent but peripatetic home called the Asylum, a tent that can be pitched in a single day on any surface in one of five configurations. The company needs to raise £750,000 and when you think of the kinds of costs associated with buildings, it could be cheap at the price.
Building new theatres or refurbishing old ones is obviously an expensive affair, and when theatres reopen they often find that the costs of running the place have also spiralled. A few years ago, the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough came close to closing after its refurbishment; Hampstead, which has just announced its 50th anniversary season, has never really recovered from its move to a new theatre. The latest to get into trouble is Watford Palace, which has announced that its current position is unsustainable. From February 2009, it will cease to be a year-round producing house. Not good news.
I digress. It's a very quiet week for openings, but there is still some good stuff around the country. In London, it's your last chance to catch The Walworth Farce, which I know has divided you, but I loved it when I saw it in Edinburgh in 2007. There are two good platforms at the National this week: Clare Higgins and Bill Paterson, who should both be good value. Tracy Letts' huge Broadway hit August: Osage County begins previews in the Lyttelton next Friday. Letts' Killer Joe was a big success at the Bush in the mid-90s.
At Southwark Playhouse, Third Angel's Presumption is well worth seeing. It's a wonderful example of a show in which form and content are perfectly matched, as it dissects the relationship of a thirtysomething couple who are long past that time when they can't keep their hands off each other and have built a life of shared memories and shared furniture. A few arches along, in Shunt Vaults, the new company Goose Goose Gander will be presenting the London premiere of Transient. It's a fragile piece that's been developed since I saw it in Edinburgh; Shunt Vaults should be ideal for this promenade show.
I caught another promising site-responsive piece, Black Tonic, at a London hotel over the summer and now a more developed version is popping up at the Place Hotel in Manchester from Thursday. You can get tickets via Contact Theatre, where next week you can also catch up with Forced Entertainment's Spectacular before it moves on to Tramway. Down in Bath, Tim Crouch's England is at the Victoria Art Gallery at the end of the week. ETT's Far From the Madding Crowd, which Elisabeth Mahoney praised in Exeter, is at the Malvern theatre, and Alfred Hickling loved Council Depot Blues at Liverpool's revitalised Royal Court theatre. Don't forget Frantic's Othello at the Lyric and Footsbarn's Dream in Victoria Park. Finally, if you've got a three-to-six-year-old, or even if you haven't, Fevered Sleep's Brilliant is back in town from Wednesday and completely lives up to its name.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsWest End girl: Nun's the word
Hard Times
Hard Times is one of those novels where everyone knows the start (tyrannical schoolmaster Gradgrind and the definition of “horse”), but no-one seems to know the ending. Icon Theatre’s production remedies this deficiency, weaving a complicated, compassionate and grown-up tale of lives blighted by subjection to social and financial expedience.
The puppet children who populate the show’s early stages are symbolically apt, but strangely un-engaging: the show catches light when the actors pulling the strings finally step forward to play the roles themselves. The acting company of three do a remarkable job of fleshing out Dickens’ extensive, eccentric cast list, and their multiple personae are manipulated and juxtaposed with sensitivity and illuminating wit.
The two men in the cast don’t have much joy as gargoyle-ish Victorian patriarchs, but they both have the knack of making good characters interesting. Tom Peters as Stephen Blackpool unearths a seam of humour that warms the persecuted mill-hand’s self-destructive integrity, and James Hyland’s Mr. Sleary makes an understatedly humane appeal for the necessity of circus tinsel among the chimneys of the industrial north. Raewyn Lippert’s Sissy tends towards the clownish, but her Louisa is gravely thoughtful, regarding a repugnant marriage with chilling impersonality, belied by the painful tautness of her deportment. Nancy Hirst’s intelligent choreography makes her a clockwork doll in a bridal veil, the stitching of her wedding clothes fusing diabolically with the Coketown rhythms of sweated factory labour.
Angeline Ferguson’s eerie cut-out projections flood the stage with a phantasmagoria of circus riders and bank robbers, while Christopher Warner’s score seductively maps the show’s descent from the relative innocence of the fairground to the gaudy temptations of more dangerous adult vices. Psycho-balletic dream sequences (very Agnes de Mille) help to maintain narrative fluidity, and offer fleeting glimpses into the repressed secret worlds of characters desperately struggling to subdue their desires and passions to the demands of a bankrupt moral economy. Hard Times is a small show with very big ambitions, which transcends the limitations of some thrifty production values to achieve a genuinely epic quality in its storytelling.
Production Information
Hard Times is at the Warehouse Theatre until 16 November. Visit the Icon Theatre website for information about the company.
Photo Credits
Top photograph:
Michael Billington defends political theatre
Whatever you think about David Hare, he certainly stirs it up. His new play, Gethsemane, may have opened to mixed reviews but it has got people talking and columnists pontificating. In the Daily Telegraph, Charlie Spencer's hostile overnight notice has now been followed up by a think-piece from Dominic Cavendish that makes three key points: that Gethsemane, in dealing with Labour funding, is already out-of-date. That political theatre has lately been "ineffectual as a podium for oppositional thought." And, that left-wing dramatists are ignoring the daily issues that affect people's lives. So let's look at all three points.
First, topicality. Plays are inevitably written after the event but that doesn't invalidate them. A classic example was Hare's own The Absence of War, which appeared in 1993 a year after Labour's fourth shattering electoral defeat. Everyone, myself included, saw it as an ephemeral journalistic-play about Labour's failings under Kinnock. I've since seen it revived and it stands up as one of the best, most prophetic political plays of recent times. It argued that Labour would become more like the Tories since "they always win." In short, the play transcended immediate circumstances to suggest all parties would gradually converge on the centre-ground. What Hare saw as a tragedy, Blair seized on as an opportunity. Just as events vindicated The Absence of War, I suspect Gethsemane has been misjudged. Writing in haste, I misleadingly called it a cry of despair. Actually, as the title implies, it's about the need for the liberal left to overcome their doubts and to keep the faith.
Cavendish's second point is that political theatre has changed nothing. That's only true if you take the narrow view that drama leads to legislation; which it never does. What political theatre has done astonishingly well in recent years is heighten awareness and articulate feelings. The Colour of Justice at the Tricyle in 1999 opened our eyes to what was later dubbed the "institutional racism" of the Metropolitan Police. Justin Butcher's The Madness of George Dubya, even before the Iraq invasion had started, satirised its illegitame folly. A succession of plays by Roy Williams and Kwame Kwei-Armah have destroyed the myth of the "black community" and charted the deep divisions between Brits of African and Caribbean origin. Instead of bleating about the "ineffectualness" of political drama, I think we should rejoice that we have a theatre that actively engages with society.
I would concede there may be some truth in Cavendish's third point. We certainly need more plays that deal with the bread-and-butter issues of health, education and finance. It is 21 years since Caryl Churchill wrote Serious Money, which examined the impact of de-regulation on the City and all the computerised spivvery and reckless gambling that followed it. Clearly it is time for another play that analyses just how we got where we are today. But, to deduce from this that plays like Gethsemane about the corruption of Labour's soul and the compromises of office are irrelevant, strikes me as absurd. Hare may not be right about everything. But he has a far greater instinct for the times we live in than most of the critics who so routinely abuse him.
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