Plays you love that you have never seen

Last week Guardian theatre blogger Alexis Soloski wrote a post about the work of a 10th century Saxon writer, whose work she loved but had never seen. Intrigued by the idea, Ruth Lewy and I discussed it.

Listen to my new podcast here:

Nicholas de Jongh, Michael Billington et al

Copyright Annie Mole through Creative Commons

Nicholas de Jongh is leaving the Evening Standard after 18 years as its main theatre critic. But, in the age of bloggers and online comments, who needs a professional critic anyway?

On the Guardian theatre blog Mark Brown argued that there are still a handful of critics, including the Guardian’s own Michael Billington and Benedict Nightingale of The Times who set the theatrical agenda. He concludes that de Jongh’s replacement will still wield considerable power in the theatrical community.

And, humble blogger that I am, I actually agree that professional critics are important, although I am unsure whether or not there will still be a place, and funds, for them in a decade.

After all, Time Out’s Jane Edwards took voluntary redundancy in January. She did, however, tell Press Gazette that she wanted to continue writing about theatre.

Either way, I think the role of a professional reviewer should not be undervalued. I heard Michael Billington speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival last summer and I was struck by both his encyclopedic knowledge of productions and his enthusiasm. In my opinion, the two coalesce in his reviews beautifully.

For, in my opinion, a good critic must bring context to every production he or she sees but they should also bring the hopes of audience: the desire for a production to be good, and the disappointment when it is not. It only when a critic shoulders this two-fold responsbility that he or she is worth reading.

May the job be passed on to a worthwhile candidate. Or me, whichever.

Ken Stott and rude teens

Last night I sat in the front row of Arthur Miller’s View From The Bridge with Ken Stott. Although this position would normally be something to relish, I spent most of the performance rigid with silent terror.

For, it was from those seats that Mr Stott expelled several theatre-goers last week. Mid-performance the actor stopped moving, let his Brooklyn drawl slip into his Scottish growl, turned to face the audience and announced he was not continue until the teenagers in the front row left the theatre. Shock. An interjection by the teacher that the sniggers were permissable. Mr Stott re-iterated his intent. Exit school party.

Last night the tannoy annoucement at the beginning of the performance listed a long list of don’t for the cowed audience including not to rustle paper. I took the battery out of my (already-off) phone and refused a mint to ensure I was not ejected for my uncouthness also.

It seems that we are an interesting junction for theatre etiquette: on one hand we have the folks at the Globe trying to re-claim the Renaissance experience of being a groundling (although I doubt many 21st-century patrons throw turnips at the actors) and actors like Stott refusing to play to a disinterested audience.

My mother was charmed by the story, saying that the bane of her life were school parties descending on GCSE favourites to munch and chatter throughout. Yet Stott’s behaviour raises the question of who is the most important person in the theatre: the actor or the audience? Parking attendants, policemen, tax officials, MPs all get grief for their jobs – is it fair in the gaga land of celebrity that actors do not?

Understudying Judi Dench’s ankle

Copyright: Ballistik Coffee Boy through Creative Commons

Calamity struck on Friday when the Donmar Warehouse announced that Judi Dench had slipped outside Wyndham’s, twisted her ankle and would be resting up for the weekend. Poor, dear, Dame Judi. 

Yet I can guarantee that wasn’t the phrase on the lips of Friday and Saturday nights’ audiences who were presented with the understudy of Mrs Brown, Queen Elizabeth I and Iris Murdoch rather than the old girl herself. 

Given David Tennant’s crippling back problems that prevented him performing on the West End earlier for a part of the Hamlet run in December last year, it seems that the past few months have not been kind to celebrity-spotters-turned-theatre-goers. 

But the question is, what should theatres do when they find themselves in this predicament? How can they handle disgruntled patrons without admitting that the celebrity star is the only reason they have come, leaving them open to calls for refunds?

The poor understudy left holding the show also has an unenviable task: half of the audience has probably made its mind up at the outset they don’t like you and have either not bothered to show up (the only reason I saw David Tennant in Hamlet was because the word had not spread yet that he was back on and no one else seemed that bothered about the Bennett chap) or glower from the stalls, muttering. 

In this light, celebrity casting does little for other actors: it may get more bums on seats but it risks alienating part of the audience from the rest of the production if the “star” is absent, preventing it from seeing each actor as a cog in a much larger machine. 

However, for all of you who have tickets to Madame de Sade (I couldn’t get one), I hope Judi returns shortly. And to Marjorie Hayward, the (un)lucky understudy – bonne chance!

Tragicomic Fringe

Copyright theedinburghblog.co.uk through Creative Commons

I fear this blog is becoming less about theatre at large, and more a timeline of the shrinking ship Edinburgh Fringe. 

The bomb continues to tick: this week Intelligent Finance confirmed that it will not sponsor this year’s comedy awards, some of the most prestigious on the comedy circuit. The awards – which may be better known to you as the Perrier Awards, which they were until 2006 – distinguish the wheat from the chaff of the festival itself but can also transform the careers of its recipients.

If you are a blooming comic, fear not, the comedy awards should go ahead with a different sponsor. But the fact that sponsorship has been snipped with so little to-do should strike fear into the hearts of venue owners and managers: if the big companies that buttress the arts throughout the nation dispose of their deals, the arts world will have to take a long hard look at the accounts books. 

And, needless to say, if a big company doesn’t want to stump up for the Fringe, can the organisers expect patrons to spend their devaluing cash on the event?

Ian Mckellen and Theatre with a capital T

The heady heights of the Today programme came under fire from Guardian blogger Elisabeth Mahoney last Friday for an interview with theatre heavyweights Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.

Jim Naughtie’s interview with the pair about their upcoming production of Waiting For Godot garnered was criticised because the interviewer, according to Mahoney, indulged the thespian, falling over every polysyllabic utterance of theatrical babble with gushing delight. Not the sort of behaviour you expect of hard-hitting breakfast news.

The problem is, theatre often lets loose the “conceptual” parts of people that we don’t want to see. Serious, even dour, individuals suddenly become filled with strings of words that mean nothing when they talk about the theatre, suddenly accountants laud “the conceptual arc of textual reinterpretation” and lawyers create a interval-ode to “the writhing mimesis of pain before us”.

It must stop. The theatre-going public at large seem to believe that theatre is not about experiencing something, but how many clever things you can think up to say afterwards. Think again. The only reason to spend money on a good seat is to be transported, and it doesn’t have to be somewhere where you know the longest word in the room.

The only response to these comments should be “Really? Oh DAAling, I think you missed the point completely”. That, or simply, “Nuff said”.

White, Black and Soyinka

Copyright yellow book ltd through Creative Commons

Never one to shy away from controversy, the National Theatre plans to stage Death and the King’s Horsemen with black actors “whited up” to play British colonisers. Given that the National came under fire for its portrayal of ethnic minorities in England People Very Nice, the decision may seem risky.

Yet, according to whatsonstage, director Rufus Norris says that he is staging the play in the manner it would be performed in Nigeria, the home of playwright Wole Soyinka. No political message at all, apparently. 

However, sweeping politics aside for the moment. Norris might have also pointed out the gesture’s literary merits: the plot is based on a real incident in 1943, but the play is also a powerful contemporary interpretation of the Greek tragedy, The Bacchae, by Euripides.

In the Greek plot, repressive dictator Pentheus refuses to recognise Dionysus, the god of wine and of fertility, as a deity. Pentheus is then lured to watch the town’s womenfolk cavorting on the hilltops, only to be torn to pieces by his mother. The tragedy suggests the importance of release, of controlled escapism. 

The plot of Soyinka’s masterpiece may not run in tangent exactly, but notions of ritual release, and constrictive power, encircle his characters in the same way. 

But back to “whiting up”. What does this mean within this literary heritage? On stage, the action should demonstrate two things: first, that people are essentially the same, only some pretend to have a mask of greater importance and, second, that the white mask of the coloniser blocks humane dealings and human release. 

A powerful metaphor. Hopefully, Norris will use it.

Not udder my watch

Copyright theedinburghblog.co.uk through Creative Commons

The Udderbelly is straining its inflatable teets into the Big Smoke this year, according to The Stage and, as far as I’m concerned, its migration marks another nail in the Edinburgh Fringe coffin.

The Udderbelly is the inflatable performing arts venue in the shape of an udder that has graced Bristo Square in Edinburgh for the last few Fringes. For me, a lowly Edinburgh resident and passionate Fringe attendee, its purple prongs have become synonymous with the festival.

But this year the cow has been poached by the Southbank Centre for an eight-week season running from the end of May into the middle of July. The line-up will even include Fringe acts like The Terrible Infants that performed in the Udderbelly last year.

The problem with the south bank’s new arrival is that it dismantles another unique aspect of the Fringe: by bringing the Udderbelly to London, the skyline and the line-up of the Scottish festival becomes less unique, less appetising.

Given the Fringe’s massive ticketing problems last year, combined with this year’s recession and an increasingly lacklustre attitude towards the Fringe, it seems that this final move towards duplication might be the final straw for travellers. . why travel 400 extra miles if you can see everything in London?

And this is not the only move toward duplication: more and more shows are previewing in London or coming afterwards and London-based Fringe festivals, like the Camden Fringe, are keeping more acts down south.

The result can only be a smaller pool of performers and audiences. And now there are 400 extra seats on the South Bank in which to pack them.

Credit Crunch Theatre

I always know when there is a Chelsea match on. No, I am not an avid, blue-scarfed fan: I couldn’t name a single player on the team and, as far as I’m concerned, “midfielder” might be an agricultural term. I know because of the packed tube on my route home around once a week. Football is, after all, our national pastime. 

But, hey, change is here. The Credit Crunch blizzard has blown in and, according to research conducted by the Association of British Orchestras, Joe Public would rather by a ticket to a live arts performance than to live sport. The Stage, which picked up the story on Monday, noted that the research also showed that 53% of people believed the arts should be supported during the current economic climate. All pretty cheering, if you’re a theatre nut.

Although theatre-types will be thrilled to hear that the public are still willing to fork out cold hard cash for live performances, the government have a new scheme that is geared to easing the pocket-strain of just such a treat. “A Night Less Ordinary” offers under 26-year olds across the country the chance to see theatre for nothing. 

The scheme is being run by Arts Council England in association with your favourite early-morning-read Metro. There are tickets for shows across the country and the companies include the likes of the Old Vic and the RSC. It’s an impressive scheme to have launched in the middle of a credit crunch (the scheme began last month) and I just hope people try it. It’s not often a government gift horse like this wheels into town. For, credit crunch or no, live performance is an enlivening experience and we should protect and enjoy it in both hard times and good. 

Expect a review of my Night Less Ordinary Experience soon.

Frosty response to Nixon

There was only one shock announcement at the Oscars at the weekend: that Mickey Rourke was snubbed in the Best Actor category despite winning a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for his role in The Wrestler.

But it was not for him that I raised the cry of “Robbed!” first thing on Monday morning. For Frank Langella’s quiet, poetic performance in Frost/Nixon had also been snubbed. This was the performance that left me reeling for days after as if I could still see the pride trickling out the eyes of the man Langella elevated to the status of a Shakespearean tragic hero.

The film was one of the few occasions that I believed the transfer from stage to screen had almost been entirely successful. The camera picked up the ticks in Michael Sheen’s Frost, etching out both the presenter’s nerves and his temper with a fine nib. However, if the film had been made up of Langella’s close-ups alone, it would have held its emotional resonance. How an actor paints America’s fascination with money and power and a great man’s cannibalisation of himself whilst nominally trying to withhold information is beyond me, but he did it.

The Donmar Warehouse’s production of Frost/Nixon recently began a U.S tour. It has a new cast. May they live up to their predecessors, and bring some gongs home back from over the pond.