Travesties

Travesties by Tom Stoppard
director: Richard Cottrell
Cast: Robert Alexander, Blazey Best, Jonathan Biggins, Peter Houghton, Rebecca Massey, Toby Schmitz, Wendy Strehlow and William Zappa

Sydney Theatre Company at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

Good ol’ Tom Stoppard. Who else could get away with such historical shenanigans?

A full house. $10 programme – a bit steep? Why do I buy programmes even when I know they’re full of ads and general rubbish? Ah, I think, I’m SUPPORTING THE ARTS! I wave my programme triumphantly in the air, it falls down the back of someone else’s chair, and so there goes ten bucks down the drain…me failing miserably to grapple in the dark to grab hold of the slippery pages in a cavity too small for my hand…

Robert Alexander and Jonathan Biggins in Travesties

Travesties explores the fractured and comic recollections of Henry Carr, general dogsbody of the British consulate in Zurich, 1917. There’s a war on, but he’s living it up in a season of well-cut suits as he attempts to win the favour of Cecily (Rebecca Massey), who works in the library. In his meanderings round Zurich, his story collides with that of James Joyce (Peter Houghton), Tristan Tzara (Toby Schmitz), Lenin (William Zappa) and his wife (Wendy Strehlow), though all is not as it appears.

When I was younger (and didn’t know better) I wrote a play (my very first, not that I knew then it actually a play at all) that, in hindsight, was a bit of an appropriation/homage to Oscar Wilde. I may have even known this at the time, which is perhaps why, even after finishing the play (and even at that age, going through several re-drafts) I decided to do nothing with it. I came up with some good one-liners and a ridiculous plot but in the end, who would want to see my version of Wilde when they could go for the real thing? I returned it do a dusty drawer and moved on.

But perhaps I shouldn’t have. After all, if it’s good enough for Stoppard, as they say…

Oscar Wilde looms large over Travesties. When I say “looms large”, I suppose I mean to say *is* Travesties. So what? Well, Stoppard is quite good at the old playwriting craft (and craftiness) and knows a thing or two about constructing a good night out at the theatre. He subverts but doesn’t upend the apple cart. He melds together historical and fictional “fact” and in doing so provides a good deal of theatrical oomph to the story.

Now I could get down to the basics of the plot, what happens in the play, but I’m not feeling particularly scholarly right at the minute. I saw this play weeks ago but somehow never quite managed to piece together enough to constitute a ‘sort’ of review. Not that this is a reviewing blog by any means, though it seems I am leaning more and more that way.

Biggins is quite clearly having the time of his life in this role, and it is hard not to get taken along for the crazy ride. Despite Carr’s foolishness, Biggins makes his decisions (clouded as they may be by Carr’s ageing memory, forcing everything from different times to collide on the one plane) seem logical. Heck, you’ve had such a good time care of his faulty recollections by the end of the play you don’t really care if he made it all up!

I particularly liked his acting in this short exchange:

Gwendolen: You were a wonderful Goneril at Eton.
Carr: Yes, I know but -

The change here of his facial expression was priceless, as Carr finally realised that acting could entail a whole wardrobe of fun. The combination of ageing Edwardian dandy at home in Wilde’s play but not his own was certainly entertaining, and Biggins captured this very well indeed. (Now I’m taking to ending sentences with “indeed”. I may as well call myself Bernard Shaw and have done with it!)

But sadly at the theatre, there is always more than one performance taking place. There is that which is happening on stage – the performance paid for – and that which is happening off stage in the audience – to all intents and purposes, free.

On this particular occasion, in the early scenes of Travesties something of immense dramatic import (and, possibly, irony) was happening in the row in front of me. I’m sad to say my attention was drawn in these early exchanges not by the witty repartee but by a man nearby picking his nose. Yes. That’s right. PICKING HIS NOSE.

Now I don’t ask for much when I go to the theatre, except maybe a theatre and hopefully people in it. But there’s such a thing as a divide between public and private, isn’t there?

There are people in public, I know,
who undaunted by lights or by show,
pretend that they’re in
their home or some inn
and let fingers pick to and fro.

(Apologies to Stoppard here, but I’m trying to get in the Joycean mood with a limerick of my own concoction. Incidentally the linguistic playfulness of James Joyce was nicely played in Houghton’s suitably madcap but understated performance.)

Back to the man with the spindly finger. Let’s call him Monsieur Nostril, taking the principle that everything sounds better in French (or pseudo-French). What had prompted him to entertain his fingers thus? Perhaps he was carried away by the cerebral repartee and so, in the interests of science, pursued the quickest route to the brain. This unhygenic digging was not, then, inappropriate. Why, it was this man’s desire for immediate introspection that did it – the brain tickled, not the nose! This avenue of self-exploration, sadly out-of-vogue in today’s world, was one lonely sniff in the face of propriety! His follicular fossicking was not an olfactory offence, but rather a cry of individualism!

If it was a single pick or two, perhaps I could have forgotten the whole sorry incident. But as the man continued to forage, hold the nostril amber up to the light and quiz it before rummaging again, I began to feel a combination of outrage and nausea. My inner teenager wanted to get up and cry “Ewwwwww! THAT’S LIKE SO TOTALLY DISGUSTING!”

But enough about Monsieur Nostril.  He’s had enough written about him for one day…

Blazey Best and Toby Schmitz in Travesties (credit: Heidrun Löhr)

The performances were equally strong across the board. Blazey Best and Rebecca Massey were well-matched as Gwendolen and Cecily. Massey in particular had excellent comic timing, and certainly gave Biggins a run for his money in the comedy department. Best and Massey were also terrific in the scene where, Gilbert and Sullivan-like, they had to sing to each other a spoof of another scene in The Importance of Being Earnest: “Oh Gwendolen, oh Gwendolen…” (In the text, this sing-song scene takes up over four pages!)

Schmitz’s Tzara was suitably smug and priggish, if not a little prone to over-shouting, but apart from that his performance was great.  (As an aside, after seeing him in Rabbit I’m beginning to wonder whether he runs the STC Casting Department when no-one’s looking…!) Incidentally, Schmitz is soon to be in Brendan Cowell’s returning season of Ruben Guthrie at Belvoir, and there have been questions about profit share/casting issues from last year’s B Sharp season, as mentioned here back in March.

I think it’s not said often enough, but there seems to be a tremendous wealth of design talent in the Sydney theatre scene at the moment. And when I say design, I mean sets, costumes, hair and makeup, sound, lighting – the works. The design of Travesties by Michael Scott-Mitchell was no exception: it was brilliantly thought-out – of course the STC has (I assume) a nice little budget to get the whole stage looking good, but anyway.

I was impressed by Luma’s dress in Baghdad Wedding but this feast of costuming brilliance designed by Julie Lynch was just extraordinary.  I was particularly taken with the winter coat Massey sports in the briefest of scenes (literally 10 seconds long). She waves a red handkerchief as Lenin and his wife leave by train. Seriously, the coat is worn for 10 seconds. But still someone took the trouble to whip it up on the old sewing machine or whatever. That’s commitment.

What else can I say about this one? The pace is quite fast: at first I was a bit “help!” but actually speed is imperative to Stoppard. He comes across as a bit ponderous to begin with in the opening monologue, but once Biggins got into it more the play really began to take shape.

If I were to find fault with the production at all, it’s this: the ending. Not that the ending itself it bad (it isn’t), but in this production it ended with more whimper than bang, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot. This may have been because Biggins didn’t quite emphasise enough the final part of his speech:

Carr: …I learned three things in Zurich during the war. I wrote them down. Firstly, you’re either a revolutionary or you’re not, and if you’re not you might as well be an artist as anything else. Secondly, if you can’t be an artist, you might as well be a revolutionary…

I forget the third thing.

The only request I make is that there should have been more of a pause before the final sentence, just a quick beat. But this is a very insignificant quibble.

There is something Stoppard does so effortlessly (or seemingly so effortlessly) that other writers just can’t match. I think it’s the ease with which he constructs a complex sentence. What skill! I loved the interwoven strands of The Importance of Being Earnest in Travesties. A nice appropriation. Stoppard’s very good at appropriations, but good in a way that makes them seem fresh, not derivative. He seems to pick out unusual elements from one text and transplant them in another. What skill!

***

And speaking of skill, I mentioned previously that Stoppard’s Arcadia is going to be produced in the West End this year with the playwright’s son, Ed Stoppard. Now of course I took all the promotional material too seriously and thought this meant Ed Stoppard would be playing Septimus – but no, it seems he’s playing Valentine (originally played by Sam West, son of Timothy West and Prunella Scales). As for the rest of the Arcadia cast, it’s quite a nice bunch of actors: Samantha Bond, Nancy Carroll, Neil Pearson, Dan Stevens and Lucy Griffiths were the names I recognised, but if the standard of this production is anything like Travesties, the whole cast should be excellent.  (more info on the production here).

The only problem with Stoppard is that, if he is done badly, the whole thing doesn’t work. I’m reminded of a production of The Real Thing I saw a few years ago that almost put me off his work completely, despite its cast including a particularly well-known actor!

Not Waving?

Floating, by Hoipolloi
Cast: Shôn Dale-Jones, Jill Norman

Playhouse, Sydney Opera House (Adventures: Shows that shape the world)

Video trailers are the in-thing now. That and Facebook. Oh, and Myspace. And Twitter.  Which brings me, in a round-about sort of way, to Hoipolloi’s Floating. I’d been keen to see this since I first heard it was coming as part of the Sydney Opera House Adventures series, rather ostentatiously sub-headed “Shows that shape the world”. But something was stopping me from handing over the cash and getting some tickets. I hesitated until I stumbled across Hoipolloi’s YouTube channel and an e-trailer for Floating.

So I saw this video and thought, wow. This is going to be good. I’m so going to love this! This is the theatrical event of the year!

Floating tells the story of Hugh Hughes (Shôn Dale-Jones), intrepid Welsh explorer and storyteller. He has come to Sydney to share his adventures and recount what happened when the Isle of Anglesey floated away in 1982. The play takes the form of a self-conscious presentation by Hughes and his friend Sioned Rowlands (Jill Norman) as they attempt to recreate these spectacular events.

If I may, I’m going to coin a term. Any objections? Oh, there are objections. Still I’m going to coin a term. I would classify Floating (and Hoipolloi) as part of a larger movement. Let’s call it Group Hug Theatre. Now the aim of Group Hug Theatre, it seems to me, is to make the strongest possible connection between performer and audience that you can that borders on friendship. Now this might sound like a really strange thing to say, but bear with me for a minute. You’re invited into the space, the performer introduces him or herself, they’re wearing a cardigan. Everything is very homespun and homely – the only addition you could possibly need? A nice cup of tea.

For two hours they are your best friend, your confidante, you leave the theatre feeling a selection of the following:

How lovely!

I’m elated!

I THINK I’VE JUST FALLEN IN LOVE!

But if this description suggests Group Hug Theatre is comfortable, you’d be wrong. You know sometimes when you’re in a group hug and everyone is having a great time and you’re the one squashed in the middle? Well that’s one of the typical downsides to Group Hug Theatre. One person hogs most of the hug-time, another pretends to hug but is secretly afraid of other people’s germs, another still might be using the exercise to size up their competition or look for a date.

To set the scene a bit more, I was thinking how Floating was really trying to do a similar thing to what Kneehigh
Theatre does. Kneehigh is a funky theatre company from Cornwall in the UK that I’ve mentioned before. They specialise in this type of Group Hug Theatre – Tristan and Yseult is perhaps the best example. Now I do have to say that ever since I saw that show back in 2006 I have been hoping someone would bring Kneehigh back to Sydney to perform something else. That was in many ways a seamless production that, ironically, traded on showing you its seams. So we had a band on stage, balloons handed round to the audience to blow up and release at a specific moment during the show, propaganda thrown into the air to advertise the arrival of Morholt – “King of Ireland and Kernow” -…

Kneehigh's Tristan and Yseult

I was so haunted by one scene in particular in Tristan and Yseult, where King Morholt is reunited with Yseult. Okay, that’s what happens in the scene. But how did Emma Rice (the director) choose to stage it?  By getting Morholt to walk slowly down the stairs from the back of the auditorium towards Yseult to the strains of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Sweetheart Come. I don’t know what it was about this that I found so moving. Maybe it was its simplicity. Sometimes the best moments in theatre are when people say absolutely nothing.

So, my reason for mentioning Tristan and Yseult is just to say I’ve encountered Group Hug Theatre before, albeit with a larger budget and more whiz-bang showbiz stylings. Also, following the performance of Floating (as part of an “Artists’ Talk”) Dale-Jones mentioned that Hoipolloi was making a specific type of home-made, interactive theatre that was fairly new, and that in general he thought devised work wasn’t that common. He even cited Kneehigh Theatre as one of the leading proponents of this ‘movement’. Which was interesting, because of course as soon as he said this I began reminiscing about Tristan and Yseult. Obviously that wasn’t the intention.

But back to Floating…

The performance I went to featured a huge number of late audience members leaping into their seats during the course of the show. As this was one of those ‘let’s break the fourth wall’ productions, Hugh and Sioned stopped what they had started and began the show again. Other times they would break away from the narrative of the show completely and start asking questions of the late audience members.

I should put a disclaimer here, somewhere. The thing is I’m not the biggest fan of shows where audience participation is a requirement. Not that Floating required much exactly apart from passing round magazines, clapping and singing. I think it’s more to do with my own fears and insecurities than anything else, to be honest. A combination of being picked on by a rogue performer (rogue performer?) and laughed at by other people. Hey, I think, I’ve paid for a seat. I’m not one of the actors. You’re meant to supply the comedy, I’m meant to sit here.

Shôn Dale-Jones in Floating

In the end, though, there were no rogue performers. The problem was *sigh* the audience.

[ducks in anticipation of tomatoes]

Okay, thing is, I don’t mean that in a bad way. I like the idea of creating an inclusive theatre experience, and participation is great when it’s not over-used. But sometimes what participation leads to is one or two cocky members of the audience delighting in the sound of their own voice and showing a desire to upstage the people on stage. Hey, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead. But maybe do it when the theatre’s empty, and your attention-seeking comments don’t spoil the show?

I’ll give an example.

After fifty or so minutes (or maybe even an hour), Hugh Hughes noticed a seat empty in the stalls and began to wonder aloud. The woman next to the empty seat took this as her cue and so began a merry dance:

Hugh: I suppose we can start the show now. [pointing to an empty chair] They’re not coming, are they?
Woman: He’s coming but he’s late.
Hugh: He’s coming but he’s late?
Woman: He told me he’d be late but he’s coming.
Hugh: Right. Hang on, he knew he’d be late but he’s coming anyway?
Woman: Yes.
Hugh: Heh? He knows he’s going to be late but he’s coming anyway?
Woman: Yes.
Hugh: Okay… What’s his name?
Woman: Gary.
Hugh: What?
Woman: Gary.
Hugh: Gary.
Woman: Yes.
Hugh: Gary’s going to be late, everybody. When he comes in we should all go “nice to see you, Gary.” Can you all do that?
[murmours of approval from the audience]
Woman: Ooh it’s like Waiting for Godot!
[some snickering in the audience]
Another Woman: Waiting for Go Dot.
Woman: Godot.
[Hugh shrugs his shoulders, perhaps in bewilderment, perhaps in annoyance.]

So the show did not get off to a good start. But perhaps this was actually the point of Floating, in a way.  Hugh spent a good deal of the play talking about trying to make a “connection” – he even had a little laminated card in his pocket printed with the word – and maybe for other people there was one. But I guess I can only say how I feel (or felt).

Funnily enough, though the show’s advertised length was 70 minutes, it ran for over 2 hours. Now I wasn’t expecting Hamlet or anything but it’s nice to have a vague idea how long your show is going for, even if it’s got elements of improvisation. Actually, it was more than 2 hours if you include the post-show discussion I for some reason decided to endure. Sometimes for me theatre’s a bit “Eh?” and the explanation of the writer/director/actor can often make me see the piece completely differently. It’s a bit like in an art gallery where you’re confused by some contemporary “masterpiece” and you seek out that little plastic information book in the exhibition room and, after reading that, suddenly the whole thing makes sense. It doesn’t mean you like it, but at least you understand it better.

I do have to say though that Floating was inventive and playful, irreverent, perhaps even whimsical. There was a great atmosphere to the whole thing – maybe jaunty’s the right word? Jaunty but…not jaunty. Somehow it felt like a pirate ship going in the wrong direction, possibly even sinking because the crew (audience) are revolting.   But this wasn’t Mutiny on the Bounty, and sadly Marlon Brando was nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless there was something…I don’t know…exciting and disappointing about it at the same time.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the show. I did like it, in a peculiar sort of way. Actually, some moments were designed really well (and I mean designed, since they had a lot to do with the interactions between the actors and props). I particularly enjoyed the scene where Hugh and Sioned danced around projector screens to the strains of Suspicious Minds (Elvis Presley, no less. In fact, any production that uses Elvis always does a little bit better in my book.) Another great moment was when Hugh invited the audience to close their eyes while he counted to 10 (surely the longest count to ten ever!).   On opening my eyes, I discovered the stage had been transformed quite brilliantly, again in that home-made style, to a winter wonderland, in the centre of which Hugh was fishing. These were some nice touches.

Shôn Dale-Jones and Jill Norman in Floating

But by that stage the pace of the show was lagging, and I began to feel a bit bored. Maybe on another night it would have been snappier, and I would have absolutely loved it. It’s hard to say.

After the show there was, as I mentioned, an advertised “Artists’ Talk”.  Now, me being naïve I just assumed it would be Dale-Jones and Norman, the performers, talking to the audience. But someone had the idea of inviting ABC Radio’s James Valentine to chair this “informal chat”.  I couldn’t help tuning out of the conversation every now and then to wonder what particular product of shampoo he used to get his hair so full and bouncy.  Did he condition?  Did he air-dry?  Did he forgo product altogether?

Funny thing is, his coiffure wouldn’t have bothered/intrigued me so much if he were a bit more acquainted with the whole premise of the show.  Also there seemed to be a strange sort of tension between him and the performers as they sat on stage together.  Maybe this had something to do with him branching off into wild tangents about Broadway musicals or remarking “you probably don’t know this, but I host a radio show…”

In the Q&A a man in the audience said words to this effect:

It’s so refreshing seeing this show because in Sydney we get the same thing all the time, where the playwright or the writer is at the centre of everything and things aren’t interesting whereas your show is so refreshing because it’s doing something different. We don’t see this type of thing in Sydney. Ever!

Okay. First things first.  I’ve noticed a rapid increase in devised work lately – true, it’s often on the fringe but to say that the ‘writer’ or playwright is still at the heart of theatre making in Australia is, I think, a false statement. Of course we’re all still stuck in the tradition of text-based work, but I think if playwrights were really at the centre of this industry more of them wouldn’t have to work in the theatres themselves ripping tickets (i.e. they could live off their work). What I’m saying is that, hmmm, what am I saying? Broad sweeping statements are a bit unhelpful. I’m annoyed with other people making grand generalisations, and I go and do the same thing. Ho-hum.

Again at the Q&A one woman said (words to this effect):

I loved it because most theatre is really showing-off and it all goes over my head but I felt I understood your show because it wasn’t talking down to the audience.

I do understand her point. Didactic theatre is boring, of course (but why doesn’t anyone say this to David Hare? Eh?). Floating was definitely the kind of play that was about taking the audience on a journey with the performers, self-consciously so perhaps but guiding them through a narrative nonetheless. But I’ve got an issue with “talking down”.

What exactly do we mean when we say a show talks down to us? Generally, in my understanding, we mean that something is patronising. It’s saying we’re stupid, it talks slowly and labours the point.

But I can’t help feeling just a little patronised by the performance of Floating. And clearly that wasn’t the intention of the show. In fact, it seemed to be the complete opposite. As Dale-Jones and Norman suggested at the Q&A, their work is aimed at inclusion: it’s about making a “connection” with the audience, experimenting with a new kind of theatre and building and sustaining a rapport. They talked about trying to do things differently, bringing things back down to a scale that’s more intimate and that lacks the kind of pretensions you can experience in any average play-going night of the week. Their description of the process of making work and the reasons behind going for a “macro-theatre” approach in certain scenes was interesting. (By “macro-theatre” they meant bringing events in the narrative down to a more local size, e.g. showing the destruction of a bridge by dropping bolts into a bucket of water, or depicting a long and arduous ocean swim by making Norman dunk her head continuously into that same bowl of water a moment later).

Now this was all very interesting, and it certainly made me look at their work with a fresh perspective, but ultimately it didn’t make me change my mind totally about the show. I really did admire Floating as a piece of theatre, but I can’t honestly say it’s the best thing I’ve seen. I feel bad saying that because Dale-Jones and Norman quite clearly put a lot of love and effort into their shows. I even got a free badge at the end (a note to theatre-makers: free merchandise post-show is always a good thing.)

Generally, I worry that my reaction to things I see is so different to how other people respond – well, of course it’s my own opinion but maybe I missed something. To be honest the biggest laugh I had all night was when I perused a wrestling magazine from the 50s that Hugh Hughes’ gran had collected. There was a central photograph in there of two men wrestling that was somehow so hilarious, I wish I had it to illustrate my point, but you’ll just have to take my word for it – that picture was a work of comic genius.  So unexpected and ridiculous, or unexpectedly ridiculous.

And yet despite the wrestling magazine, I was disappointed.  I really really wanted to love this show. Funnily enough, and maybe this goes against everything I’ve written already in this post, but I’d like to see more by Hoipolloi, if only to look at Floating in a broader context. Interestingly Dale-Jones mentioned that the company are looking to develop shows with more actors and perhaps even an on-stage band in the future as they have secured more funding (I think it was about funding, anyway…)

All in all, what am I saying? Floating tried so hard to be cuddly and embracing, it tried so hard to make a “connection”.  And I applaud it for doing that. But I thought theatre was always about making a connection. Or maybe, like usual, I’ve missed something.

Same, same but…not the same?

Hot on my theatrical heels the Sydney Morning Herald has noticed that Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling is getting a production at the Almeida.

Bovell’s play Speaking in Tongues was the basis for Lantana, but this point is curiously absent from the Herald article.  Maybe I’m wrong?

[musings theatrical rummages through the internet.]

Aha, here it is.  On the Currency Press site for anyone interested:

This award-winning play has been widely produced both nationally and internationally, and was adapted for the screen as Lantana.

Not sure why I thought I needed to make a point about that, but anyway.

Still working on the other review.  Why is it taking sooooo long to write?

Ivanov Strikes Back (By Not Striking Back)

So I mentioned in my review of Ivanov at the Sydney Festival that in the end I wasn’t annoyed about missing out on Michael Grandage’s version of the same play in London because the Katona Jozsef Theatre production was such a theatrical feast.

Gina McKee and Kenneth Branagh in Ivanov (credit: Alastair Muir)

But then I came across these videos/interviews with the cast of Grandage’s Donmar production and I started to have one of those ”why don’t I live in London?’ moments.

The Donmar has an awkward main website but – and here’s the thing – they have a nice little archive up there (this is on their normal page by the way) of videos and interviews for previous shows (Othello, Creditors, The Man Who Had All The Luck) and festivals.  It’s something the National Theatre has been doing for a while too.  In fact, I am completely besotted with the NT off-shoot website called Discover.

It’s basically an online tour of the National Theatre, but it’s really fascinating.  You can follow Simon Russell Beale and Hayley Atwell to meet members of staff, or go and explore the building at the discretion of your own mouse.   There’s so much content on there I didn’t know where to begin, but after following the actors round the building I decided to take my own little tour, which included a series of workshops on voice (where I discovered some great warm-up techniques that actually work!) and also a tour by Nicholas Hytner of the theatres themselves.

For writers out there I found the videos about the Literary Department insightful (they talk about what sort of plays they put on, the process involved in selecting plays and so on).  Also, a big thing for me is always finding out what writers are saying about the places they work, and for this I found a great set of interviews with Matt Charman and Kwame Kwei-Armah (this is in the section under ‘Taxi to the Studio’).  The whole site is, I admit, one big advert and a bit of a theatrical love-fest but hey, it’s impressive in its scale and ambition.  In fact it’s really rather nice to be able to stroll virtually through the theatre.  I did go on a backstage tour when I was last there which included observing the  food props used in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (a papier-mâché hamburger was passed round), standing on the Lyttelton stage and doing my best impression of Richard Griffiths, which is not to be sneezed at.  But I have to say for its sheer convenience, hugeness and lack of questionable papier-mâché bread the Discover tour is the way to go (unless you like being sneezed at by American college students, that is.)

But don’t think London’s where it’s all at.  The Sydney Theatre Company seems to be doing its very best to get all hip-and-happening with vodcasts and the like.  I’ve watched a few on there, and they range from interviews with the directors to the actors to rehearsal footage.  The whole video thing is a great idea, giving a bit more insight into the process of putting on a play as well as the final product.  Sometimes ads in the paper, no matter how large and expensive, just don’t seem to have the desired effect.  So points go to the STC for starting the video thing, and making the company seem much more open and inclusive.

And yet still…  People keep reviving plays in London at a crazy crazy rate.  I was at the STC production of Travesties last night and wondered whether anyone was going to revive Stoppard’s Arcadia anytime soon.  And what do I find this morning?  News that there is to be a West End revival of the show starring none other than Ed Stoppard, the playwright’s son!  (It says “starring”, so I’m assuming he’s going to be Septimus – incidentally a role first played by Rufus Sewell, who himself originated the role of Jan in Rock ‘n’ Roll.  Confused?  I am!)

I’ll get round to a review of Travesties soon, but I’m having a bit of the old writer’s block about another show I saw.  This other show confused me.  People say Travesties is confusing but it was a piece of pie compared to the other show.  Help!  What am I saying?  This is getting all convoluted and more to the point I should get my thoughts together first before I enter a Joycean stream of consciousness about the whole thing.

Phèdre, with Helen Mirren (credit: Charlotte MacMillan)

Another thought.  Back at the National again, and they’re doing the whole filming productions thing under the banner of NT Live.  Anyway there’s going to be screenings in Australia of Phèdre starring Helen Mirren, recent Olivier winner Margaret Tyzack and ex-History Boy Dominic Cooper.  My guess would be a screening at the Sydney Theatre.  Of course I could be completely wrong (I usually am) but there’s my two cents.

Running round for loose change and writer Andrew Bovell seems to be doing brilliantly well at the moment.  He’s known for the screenplay of Lantana but not having seen that film (shame on me, you say?) I haven’t got much to go on other than other people saying he’s brilliant.  So there it is.  Anyway.  So why is he brilliant?  Well, for a start he’s having his new play When the Rain Stops Falling on at the STC this year.  But wait.  There’s more!  The very same play is being staged at the Almeida in London, a very hip and minimalist theatre (or maybe not minimalist, but everything seemed to be painted white) in a few months, directed by artistic director Michael Attenborough.  What’s more there’s quite an impressive cast for the London run: Australian theatre stalwarts Simon Burke and Leah Purcell are joined by Naomi Bentley, Jonathan Cullen, Lisa Dillon, Richard Hope, Tom Mison, Phoebe Nicholls, and Sargon Yelda (mind you, the actors in the STC production are, again, pretty impressive).

Is there a renewed interest in Australian drama on London stages at the moment?  There’s an interesting festival happening in May at the Soho Theatre and Riverside Studios called Origins, which is exploring indigenous stories from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US (see here for more info).  And the Jason Donovan-led Priscilla, which UK audiences seem exited about (why?)  Also, there was Joanna Murray-Smith’s The Female of the Species on last year (admittedly more comedy than drama, which on reading I didn’t hugely enjoy), but an Australian play nonetheless.

Geoffrey Rush in the original Belvoir/Malthouse production of Exit the King (credit: Heidrun Lohr)

For a bit of fun, and not wholly unrelated, there are some videos about the Neil Armfield/Geoffrey Rush production of Exit the King on Broadway.   Over at the New York Times you can hear Rush talking about the role.  I’m wondering if the production is timed to coincide with Tony-Award cut-off dates?  Hmm, since the cut-off date is April 30…and it opens March 26, it will be eligible for awards.  The only question is, will he bag a nomination?

Baghdad Wedding

Baghdad Wedding by Hassan Abdulrazzak
director: Geordie Brookman
cast: Julia Billington, Robert Mammone, Arky Michael, Yalin Ozucelik, Osamah Sami, Tahki Saul, Melanie Vallejo, Ben Winspear and Tim Walter

Company B, Belvoir Street Theatre

Melanie Vallejo and Yalin Ozucelik in Baghdad Wedding

Music sets the scene as soon as you enter the Theatre Upstairs for Company B’s production of Baghdad Wedding. Dancing! That’s what this play needs, I thought. Dancing!

Baghdad Wedding is Hassan Abdulrazzak’s first play, but what an accomplished first play it is. Even with its flaws, it is still a remarkably moving account of the personal toll politics has on the lives of people caught up in war and chaos.

The stage floor is covered in sand, an element that is used (but not over-used) throughout the performance. It is there under their feet, in their clothes, a nice (if slightly clichéd?) visual cue, a geographical grounding. As buildings and lives are blown apart by military campaigns, the sand comes to represent the disintegration of an old way of life, an un-solid ground on which the Iraqis who have chosen to stay (or who have returned from ‘exile’) must rebuild their lives.

The play is billed as the story of Salim’s journey back to Iraq and the emotional/political minefield he encounters on his return:

A wedding is not a wedding in Iraq unless shots are fired.

Salim likes London. He got his medical degree, had an affair with a man and wrote a successful novel about it. But now Saddam Hussein’s gone and Salim’s going home to get married.

Sexy, funny and thrilling, this is life in Iraq as we never get to see it. Salim and his friends drink, love, argue, hope and tumble between escaping and succumbing as their country staggers to its feet again.
(Belvoir/Company B website)

While this is ostensibly the plot, it really doesn’t do the work justice. To me Baghdad Wedding was Marwan’s story, beautifully played with an understated elegance by Yalin Ozucelik. As guide and narrator Marwan takes us from student days at Imperial College, London to life in a changed Iraq. He is the anchor of the production – we feel his pain as he traces back through life during the American occupation, through the terrors of military action and the disappointments of first love. In Marwan’s journey we see that the heart can be torn and ravaged in the same way as the landscape outside: like heart-break the destruction of Iraq cannot be simply patched over and healed.

Though Salim’s experiences are more harrowing and he is generally the catalyst for the development of the plot, he spends at least half of the play either drunk, having sex or getting beaten up. But it is to Ben Winspear’s credit that Salim does not come across as two-dimensional: rather he plays him a gleeful nonchalance that turns from defiance to despair and back again. By the end of the play we sympathise with Salim – it makes sense why the lives of all the other characters hinge on his own. It was a dedicated performance, despite occasional lapses into an accent more at home in an episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo than the streets of Baghdad.

The accent problem also featured in Melanie Vallejo’s Luma, the woman caught between Salim and Marwan’s competing affections. Once or twice she began as if American before eventually curling the end of her sentences into the intended accent. Despite all this, she brought a lovely sense of Luma’s frustrations and knowing hypocrisy, moving from her free-spirited London days to her work as a hijab-wearing doctor. But although she changes outwardly, Luma does not abandon all her old beliefs. Her past feelings for Salim cannot be so easily concealed.

By the end of the play, Salim’s behaviour begins to make sense. It is not merely a defiance of order but a desire to be the opposite of what people expect. Nowhere is this more clear than his decision to write Masturbating Angels, a novel detailing the personal and sexual adventures of a young Iraqi man in England. Salim tells his friends that it was to challenge the preconception that he would write ‘about’ Iraq in the form of a sprawling post-colonial novel. He mentions the Booker Prize (or Book-er, as he calls it) and suggests that an Indian writer can only win if he or she includes somewhere the image of a mango. Was this a dig at Salman Rushdie’s chutney-prolific Midnight’s Children, perhaps? (Is there a Salim/Saleem connection?) Whatever it was, it was certainly a very handy way of illustrating Salim’s decision to write against expectation. He was not going to obey social convention – personally, literally, even politically. The latter was brought out strongly in the interrogation scenes between Salim and Lieutenant Colonel/Commander/whatever-his-rank-was Boothe (Robert Mammone). These scenes were only short but were key to showing Salim’s defiance in the face of external order: he would remain true only to himself. In these moments I particularly liked the choice (I’m assuming it’s Abdulrazzak’s suggestion) to have Mammone play both the American and the insurgent leader Ibraheem.

Robert Mammone and Ben Winspear in Baghdad Wedding

The night I went, some audience members had the habit of laughing at what seemed to be the wrong moment. Salim’s account of torture or Boothe’s lascivious discussion of Iraq’s geography were, I felt, meant to be confronting, disturbing and difficult, not a joke. The play had moments of comedy and humour, but it seemed to me as though some people found the more harrowing episodes amusing, and took the comic to be serious.

But…and speaking of hypocrisy…I laughed too at one point. Laughed at something that was meant to be serious. I couldn’t help it. Alright, maybe I could. But it just reminded me of an image I’d seen hundreds of times before in romantic comedies. I blame Richard Curtis.

The scene in question took place in London at Salim’s party. Here Luma and Marwan meet and soon become embroiled in an argument. After shouting they stop suddenly and look at each other (“gaze into each others eyes” might be a more appropriate description) before moving in to dance with each other. Yes, it was meant to be serious, a tentative connection between Luma and Marwan that will become a thread through the play, but perhaps it was just the staging of this scene that felt a bit…wrong. What is this? Love Actually? (Sorry Richard Curtis, really I don’t think you’re that bad…) I questioned the point of the dance and thought it was a ridiculous idea that wrecked the whole thing, especially since the play had started so well.

Or at least, that’s what I thought until the concluding moments of the play, where Luma and Salim dance their wedding dance. (Okay, so that was a spoiler.) The image of the dance was repeated and for a specific reason, not just because they couldn’t work out how to end the party scene (at least, I hope it was a specific reason). Salim has taken what Marwan wanted, and Marwan has let him: though he is the narrator, Marwan knows in the end the story of Baghdad Wedding is not his own anymore.

Overall the direction was very smooth. The pace dropped slightly in the second half but built up again once Salim re-entered the narrative. Geordie Brookman’s direction was not heavy-handed, but let the text speak for itself without adornment or pointless underscore. Things were clearly done for a reason. This was helped by Robert Kemp’s set design, Steve Francis’ engaging sound design and Niklas Pajanti’s inventive lighting. In fact, the elements of the production came together quite seamlessly. (Also, I was fascinated by the fight scenes, which were played hard and without sentiment – Kyle Rowling’s choreography looked and sounded bruising). And another thing: the dress worn by Luma at the end of the play was a breathtakingly brilliant piece of technical craftsmanship. Whoever made that deserves some kind of prize for the intricate beading and embroidery. I’m assuming Pip Runciman, the costume designer, was responsible for it. What skill!

I should say that the entire cast was uniformly excellent, and the play allowed even the supporting characters to have their own ‘15 minutes of fame’. I particularly enjoyed (heck, let’s list ‘em all!) Arky Michael as Kathum, Osamah Sami as Yasser and Sayef, Tahki Saul as Omar and Nadir, Julia Billington as Melissa and US Soldier and Tim Walter as Simon, US Soldier and Man in Hospital. I couldn’t even tell some of the actors were playing more than one part until they came on for their bow at the end – that’s how convincingly they captured each individual character.

The more I think about it the more I realise just how impressed I was by this play. I had read reviews of Baghdad Wedding back when it was on at the Soho Theatre in London in 2007, but hadn’t expected to have the chance to see it (or to see what all the fuss was about, basically). It was about ¾ full the evening I was at Belvoir, which was a shame. It is a striking, interesting and moving play, brought to life in a vividly created production, and deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

It is not a flawless play, and some parts of the production jarred.  But despite its faults Baghdad Wedding is without a doubt one of the best locally produced shows I have seen in a very long time.

[blog enters from the fridge.]

There blog, now what have you to say to that?

Not much.

[blog returns to the fridge.]

Decked Out

The Deck, National Theatre

For theatrical lovebirds, this one.  Not only are we brought Sunday matinees, performances on film and War Horse in the West End, but you can now host a wedding (your own, it seems) at the National Theatre.

The National Theatre’s summer functions venue The Deck has now been approved to host both marriage and civil partnership ceremonies.

From April 2009 you can hire The Deck for unique and memorable ceremonies. London’s skyline and the Thames provide the perfect photographic backdrop for couples seeking a ‘city chic’ wedding venue with a difference.

Once your vows have been taken you will step out onto The Deck’s private outdoor terrace where you can enjoy champagne and canapés with your closest friends and family, high above London’s vibrant South Bank.

Isn’t that nice?

The site lists a fee of £1,750 (plus VAT) which includes:

Hire of The Deck from 1pm to 3pm
Pre-ceremony access to The Deck for assembling guests
Use of integral sound system (CDs or Ipod compatible)
Chairs and registrar’s table

Now really, isn’t that nice?

Ignoring the fact you have to book your own registrar, it’s an absolute bargain.  Who doesn’t want chairs and a table thrown in at their own wedding?  And ipod compatibility.  How brilliant.

I know plenty of people looking for that “city chic” element to their wedding.  And only two hours?  That leaves enough time for the requisite wedding reception punch-up and divorce at, say, four o’clock.  Oh dear.  Maybe they should have called it something else?

blog neglect

Toby Jones in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at London's National Theatre (credit: Teri Pengilley)

I’ve been neglecting you haven’t I, blog?
As a matter of fact you have.
I’ve been busy.
No you haven’t.
Well I’ve been busy.
You’re just lazy. You’ve missed all this stuff!
What stuff?
People are angry.
At me?  I had no idea.
Not at you!  Honestly, it’s not all about you, you know.
Isn’t it?  How boring.
There’s been this sudden interest in the arts.  Should that be capitalised?  People up in arms.
Where?
London, of course!
You’re obsessed with London, blog.
I used to live there.
Really?
It was a long time ago now.
Good times?
The best.  Bean’s…
On toast?
Richard Bean’s new play.
Ah.
Getting people angry.
Right.
Caryl Churchill’s new play. Also getting people angry.
I see.
Anthony Neilson’s slightly-less-new play. Still getting people angry.  Got itself banned in Malta.
My word, I have missed a lot.
You have.
Well I can only apologise, blog.  I’ll try not to do it again.
You will. They always do.
I’m different. I have a high-level understanding for other people’s feelings.
You don’t care about mine.
You’re a…. We got any cheese?
Only the stuff in your head.
Thanks.
Compliments come easily.
I see that.
See this.

[blog gestures rudely.]

That’s not very nice, blog.
Each to their own.
You want me to apologise.
That’s maybe.
Perhaps I should apologise. But the fact is I’m tired.
From doing nothing.
Well resting takes it’s toll too, doesn’t it?
You’re a disgrace to the blogging community.
I know.
You don’t even organise yourself a Twitter account for starters.
I can’t be bothered.
That’s the attitude!  Have you seen how many people read Stephen Fry’s Twitter?
No.
Hundreds if not thousands!
Have you baked?
What?
Hundreds and thousands.  I prefer plain icing but if that’s all you’ve got -
How am I meant to represent you?
I’m not claiming to be a boulangerie.
As a blog, how am I meant to represent you?
Oh, I see.  By sitting there I suppose and saying hello to people.
That’s your job!
Maybe I can’t think of anything to say.
You’re full of excuses!
So I should make something from nothing?
If that’s what it takes.
What does that mean?
Whatever you want it to mean.
It’s hard for me, blog. I don’t understand computers.
I’m not a computer.
I know, I know. I’m just trying to explain.  blog?
Go away. You’ve hurt my feelings.
I didn’t mean anything by it.
That’s what they all say.
I upset you.
Us computers don’t get upset.
That should be “we”.
I don’t care!
Check spell-check.
It doesn’t help with grammar.
You’re right.
I know I’m right.

[blog goes into the kitchen and makes a sandwich.]

Can’t we sort this out like gentlemen, blog?
We got any horseradish?
Maybe we could have a duel. How does that sound?
Where’s the horseradish?
You’re always eating.
There’s nothing else to do, is there? You don’t take me out anywhere.
That’s not true.
You only come home and report back. You never take me to the theatre.
You wouldn’t like it.
Why not?
It’s not made for your sort, blog.
I’d sit and keep quiet. I’d only beep occasionally.
We don’t want anyone smashing you to pieces though, do we?
Maybe you’re right.
I am right.
Would they really smash me to pieces?
It’s a distinct possibility.
That’s no good.

[blog eats.]

That looks good.
Tastes better.
I’ve been thinking.
There’s a first.
Maybe one day you can go too, blog.  To the theatre.
You think so?
Times are changing.
I wouldn’t pay full price.
You could get a discount.
I don’t take up much space.
Exactly.
Yes.  The theatre.  I’d like that.

[blog stares wistfully into the distance.]

I should think of something to write.
What?  Oh, yes.  You should.
Then I will.
Good.
Think of something.
That’s the general idea.
Maybe not straight away.
You’re being lazy again.
What’s wrong with that?  I think it suits me.

[blog wanders into the fridge.]

Ivanov

Ivanov by Anton Chekhov
director: Tamás Ascher
cast: Ernő Fekete, Ildikó Tóth, Judit Csoma, Zoltán Bezerédi, Adél Jordán, Gábor Máte, Zoltán Rajkai, Ági Szirtes, Ervin Nagy, János Bán, Erika Bodnár, Ferenc Elek, Vilmos Vajdai, Imre Morvay, Klára Czakó, Béla Meszáros, Réka Pelsőczy, Szabina Nemes, Anna Pálmai, Csaba Erős, Máte Zarari, Tamás Keresztes

a Katona Jozsef Theatre, Budapest production
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, January 2009

When the last line is spoken, the last action performed, and the lights fade down, I begin to prepare myself for the task at hand: constructing my applause, alongside fellow theatre-goers. Seated in our chairs in the auditorium, we are thrust back into the real world: the house lights come up, and the actors emerge from the wings to take a bow.

As the applause begins to trickle in, I join the ferocious hand-clapping. But I’m still in a daze, a little overwhelmed by what I have just seen. Others are giving a standing ovation, and a few more too, but not everyone. Do I stand up? What if I’m not sure yet if the production was good or not? I mean, I know it’s good, but how good?

If there was a way to provide a belated response to a performance, a kind of ‘mail-to-you’ standing ovation, then I would post one immediately to the Katona Jozsef Theatre in Budapest.

***

Last year, Michael Grandage, Artistic Director at London’s prestigious Donmar Warehouse, directed Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov as the inaugural production of the Donmar West End season at the Wyndham’s Theatre. It boasted not only an adaptation by Tom Stoppard (after Helen Rappaport’s literal translation), but something of a comeback performance from one Kenneth Branagh. Okay, admittedly not a come-back career-wise, but the first time on stage in a leading role since Mamet’s Edmond at the National Theatre in 2003. Around the same time there seemed to be a revival going on, a new appreciation for Branagh’s work.  It’s true that Branagh has been largely responsible for some of the best film adaptations of Shakespeare in the past twenty years, and his version of Sleuth starring Michael Caine and Jude Law, with a new script by the late Harold Pinter, was in my opinion, sorely underrated by critics. But on the other hand I was never fond of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – the less said about that the better.

Andrea Riseborough and Kenneth Branagh in Ivanov (credit: Tristram Kenton)

Grandage’s Ivanov was one of the biggest hits on the West End last year. Five star reviews almost everywhere. An outrageous success. Which would have been great, of course. If I was there. But as I sniffled through an umpteenth viewing of Much Ado About Nothing I bemoaned my own circumstance – why wasn’t I there to see the theatre sensation of the year? (Little did I know I would ask the same question while pouring over the reviews of the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet with David Tennant a few months later…)

Could anyone possibly hope to assemble a more superstar-ish cast than this for a production of Ivanov? Branagh, the brilliant Gina McKee, Kevin R McNally (soon to be Claudius to Jude Law’s Hamlet at the same address), Lucy “Mary Bennet” Briers, Malcolm Dealer’s Choice Sinclair, Andrea Riseborough (fantastic in Party Animals), Lorcan Cranitch (of Ballykissangel fame), Sylvestra Le Touzel (scene-stealing in Happy-go-lucky), and Tom Hiddleston (recent Olivier award winner for Cheek-by-Jowl’s Cymbeline)?

But even though I didn’t get to see the Donmar production, I’m not all that disappointed anymore. A few weeks ago I witnessed a production of such grace and energy, full of the most talented actors one could ever hope to assemble on the same stage. I didn’t know who any of them were; I didn’t understand the language they were speaking; I had a bit of a cold. But did any of this matter? Not in the slightest.

***

Ivanov, so the official history tells us, was Chekhov’s first play, written at the age of 27. It has the hallmarks, they say, of his later triumphs but contains within the uncertain gestures of a writer not yet in control of his own voice.

Rubbish. Who are these invisible people that tell us such things? Judging by this production, Ivanov deserves to be considered one of Chekhov’s best plays. Yes there are themes in Ivanov that can be found in The Seagull or Uncle Vanya, but when those themes are dealt with so sensitively and skilfully, does anyone really mind?

The play starts with Ivanov (Ernő Fekete) slumped over in a chair, his head almost touching the ground, a book splayed open on the floor. His friend Borkin (Ervin Nagy) enters, brandishing a gun. (Chekhov’s sly wink to the audience, then…) He stalks around the stage, then jokingly points the gun at Ivanov, assuming he is asleep. Suddenly Ivanov turns a page of the book, and Borkin gets the fright of his life. Without the aid of dialogue, Tamás Ascher allows the sentiments and future shenanigans of the characters to bleed into the opening of the play so that, from the very start, their actions and motivations are clearly set out. This contrast between Ivanov’s apparent ennui and the spirited energy of Borkin is played out again and again, such as when Ivanov rails against his own mental anguish while a succession of other characters choke or cough hysterically behind him. If he ignores such melodramatic gagging, then what chance does his more graceful but ailing wife Anna Petrovna (Ildikó Tóth) have of gaining his attention?

Ernő Fekete and Ervin Nagy in Ivanov (Sydney Festival)

It is as if Ivanov exists in a completely separate world, never wholly touched by the interactions he has with others. He calls himself a hand-me-down Hamlet, and there is something tremendously revealing about this allusion. From the start, it seems, Ivanov resigns himself to a fate or destiny already enacted in drama, and acts as though propelled by some superior force (ironically this generally entails sitting around in a chair). He rejects his wife, denying her any possibility of recovery from consumption; he allows Sasha’s (Adél Jordán) emotional attachment to him to expand to the point where it begins to consume her youthfulness, perhaps the main thing that attracted Ivanov to her in the first place; and he ignores calls to settle his mounting debts. Everything in Ivanov’s world is put-off, delayed, abandoned. But like Hamlet is his depression or madness more a cover by which to investigate the truth of his own reality? Or is he second-rate because he doesn’t really ever begin to know himself, even by the end of the play?

I was totally fascinated by this production, and am still completely in awe of the whole mechanics of the performance. I loved the way the stage curtain slammed down during the speedy scene changes, as if orchestrated by Ivanov himself, tired and grumpy with everyone else’s posturing. Now I know Sir Peter Hall is a revered theatre director and deserves respect, but he might want to consider taking a leaf out of Tamás Ascher’s book. The only reason I mention this is because I endured a series of interminably slow set-changes a few years ago during his London production of George Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell. Well yes, actually, I could. And I wanted it to stop (though this view was not shared by the critics…).

One of the truly remarkable things about this production of Ivanov was the obvious camaraderie between the actors. It is rare to witness such a united band of actors on stage all working together to create the best possible ensemble performance. I loved their stillness, the way they managed to say so much with the smallest of gestures. Even the actors who had no lines contributed brilliantly to the performance, every nuance telling us something about their character through their physical expression. I particularly enjoyed the moment where an elderly woman (played by Klára Czakó?) took a handful of food from Babakina (Ági Szirtes) and inspected it, sniffed it, before popping it into her mouth. After some prolonged chewing she gave a strained, withering look before turning it gradually into a smile. For that minute-long dumb show, carried out unobtrusively at once side of the stage, the actress in question gave some of the finest physical acting I have ever seen. Give that lady a Helpmann Award right now!

Ernő Fekete and Adél Jordán in Ivanov (Sydney Festival)

I should also mention just how funny this production of Ivanov is. Some versions of Chekhov fail to catch that sense of humour which moves perilously close to tragedy through the course of the play, but Ascher’s direction certainly kept up the feeling of an ‘any minute now’ collision of the comic and tragic. I also loved the way each character was so precisely drawn – again, I’m thinking of Kosih here, his mind always racing over the near-certainty (in his eyes, at least) of being cheated out of his winnings. While there has probably been some editing or tightening of the text (the programme lists Géza Fodor and Ildikó Gáspár as “dramaturgists”) there is a definite sense that each actor has been given the necessary background in order to build a three-dimensional character. (But then again, the role of the dramaturg is not universally the same around the world. I think in Europe the dramaturg has a more substantial role, for example, than the position the dramaturg occupies in Australian theatre…?)

A word must also be said for the design and décor (by Zsolt Khell) of the Drama Theatre stage. It brilliantly captured a sense of decay, of money lost, and dreams faded like the furniture. A small trough of water at the front of the stage, which the characters perpetually step in and generally ignore, eventually becomes dangerous, as Anna Petrovna, in her faded smock and slippers, violently slides across it after an argument with her doctor. What particularly thrilled me about this production was that each decision on the part of the director seemed wholly concerned with how the company could best service Chekhov’s original story. The clowning and physical comedy never overshadowed the beating heart of the text, but kept pushing the plot along while always providing a thoughtful contrast to the moody meanderings of Ivanov from one chair to another.

Ivanov (Sydney Festival)

Despite my confusion in another post over changing the setting of a play without grappling with possible linguistic issues or contextual problems, I went to see Ivanov in the knowledge that it was not set, as intended, in Russia at the turn of the century, but rather in Hungary of the late 1960s. In the programme notes, Ascher writes:

“I was trying to create a performance with a very strong atmosphere which, however, has nothing to do with the traditional, nostalgic Chekhovian atmosphere that we are used to. My Ivanov is played in a cold, depressing world very familiar to us… A typical setting from the 60s and 70s. This setting has nothing to do with the setting of the original play, however, it perfectly describes the ‘inner’ setting, Ivanov’s soul.” (from the over-priced Ivanov programme, Sydney Festival 2009)

It seems, then, that this directorial decision was not taken merely to make the play more accessible to its original Hungarian audience (though that would earmark its relevance straight away), but rather to underscore the “inner” life of the central character. By focusing the play on a series of badly furnished, worn-out rooms, Ascher deftly highlights just how out-of-touch Ivanov himself has become from his own reality – for Ivanov the only reality that matters is the one that exists in his own head. I think this choice makes sense, considering Chekhov has fashioned the play not at the start of Ivanov’s marriage to Anna Petrovna, but rather after five years of not-so-wedded-bliss. The marital home has become a kind of waste-ground, the wife shut-off in an upstairs room to practice music – even for the sick in Ivanov, entertainments have to be self-made. But while Ivanov is continuing on his own trajectory seemingly oblivious to the crises of others, other characters in the play also pursue their own course – whether it be Babakina trying to snare herself a husband, money and a title; Kosih (János Bán) determined to prove he has been cheated out of his card-game winnings; or Lvov.

Lvov, the doctor, is admittedly a difficult character, since he spends most of the play badgering Ivanov to let his wife travel to a warmer climate to improve her condition. But in Zoltán Rajkai’s performance, Lvov becomes finally sympathetic. Despite being physically strong enough to put up resistance, we see him caving in to Anna’s desire to spend one night on the town in pursuit of Ivanov. She is desperate to see her husband in the more social world of their friends and neighbours, and despite knowing it will most probably wreck her chances of recovery Lvov finds himself whisked into the middle of a marriage breakdown. Incidentally, there do seem to be rather a lot of medical men floating around Chekhov’s plays – is it too simplistic to see them as self-portraits?  Probably.  But what about Dorn in The Seagull and Astrov in Uncle Vanya? There is certainly a weight given to the things they say….either that or characters keep falling in love with them (or maybe the latter is just in Astrov’s case!).

***

I mentioned Kenneth Branagh’s performance in Ivanov earlier. Despite the five-star reviews he was not nominated last week for an Olivier Award for that performance. There was a brief outcry from one or two theatre critics in the UK. The list instead includes the great Michael Gambon and David Bradley for their work in Pinter’s No Man’s Land, Adam Godley for Rain Man and Derek Jacobi for Twelfth Night.  Full details for the Oliviers here.

But back to Ivanov.  Well done to Fergus Linehan and the Sydney Festival for bringing out the entire ensemble cast to perform Ivanov. It’s not often you see such a large cast on stage in Sydney these days (with the exception of soon-to-be-defunct STC Actors Company). The best performances of Chekhov I have ever had the fortune of seeing were thanks to the Festival – this production of Ivanov, and the Maly Theatre of St Petersburg’s outstanding production of Uncle Vanya in 2007.

***

If anyone is venturing out to performances at the Drama Theatre in the coming weeks, I should mention that the lobby is being ‘upgraded’ (i.e. there is no lobby!) Well, okay, there’s a lobby, but you have to wait to be ‘escorted’ by the ushers around the front of the Opera House itself, all the way to the backstage entrance and into the theatre from that way. An experience!

Check? Off!

I’m having a kind of Chekhov Festival of my own at the moment. Nothing over-the-top or fancy, just a little bit of respec’ for the man. Because for a long time I’d been, like Mr. Darcy, labouring under a misapprehension.

And the misapprehension was this: Chekhov was rubbish.

He was boring, aloof, unconvincing, cloying and, ironically, self-consciously theatrical in his attempt to be naturalistic. I had obtained this view after sitting through a particularly smug production of The Cherry Orchard a few years ago. It was well-reviewed in mainstream media, contained many stalwarts of the Australian theatre scene and was directed by an internationally renowned artist.

So what went wrong?

As something of a personal gripe, I find it frustrating when classical texts are updated into pseudo-contemporary vernacular. This particular adaptation appeared to contain a wild desire to ‘ockerize’, ‘cork-hat’ and ’sheep-shear’ the language away from its roots. As if everything was HAPPENING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

I would have thought that most audience members don’t need a play that is quite clearly set in another time and place to be transferred (and, it seems, purely linguistically transferred) into the modern. If the production had shifted the location, context, character names, costumes – anything to suggest we were not in the world of Chekhov’s original – then perhaps there would have been a clearer, overarching design to the whole piece. I enjoy the possibilities that updating classics gives to all those involved in the process, but The Cherry Orchard struck me as a production that didn’t fully realise the potential of such an update. It felt just plain wrong that these characters, so firmly rooted in a physical sense of place, were so detached from a linguistic sense of place. It doesn’t seem right for characters to speak in a way that separates them so completely from their costume, hair, their turn-of-the-century chairs, not unless there is some very clear raison d’etre behind this kind of juxtaposition, evident in the production as a whole. (I’m trying to sound like a proper reviewer now, throwing in French for good measure…)

If they were going for a more contemporary vibe, why not reflect the changes to the text in the physical world of the production too? In the process of this particular transformation, or de-mystification of the classic text, the original urgency and vitality that brought that particular work to life was lost. The text was stripped back to a bare centrality, which could, I think, have been the base of a very good adaptation; but unhelpful layers were added, to the point where a well made, thoughtful piece of theatre became ornamental. Something uncluttered was cluttered all over again.

I couldn’t help feeling that each of the actors had entered the stage from a series of completely different productions running simultaneously. Some played high comedy; others low tragedy; a few seemed totally unaware they were on stage at all. For this, a gesture needs to be invented, a secret-code between actor and audience. A visual cue, something that says I know you’re on stage and you’ve probably rehearsed that particular move a hundred times but do you have to keep sweeping your arms about like that every time you speak?

Maybe if Chekhov listened to Waltzing Matilda he would have written something different but the fact is he didn’t. If there is a strong desire to make clear the Australian experience on stage, then why aren’t these theatre companies reviving Australian plays (and by that, I don’t mean thinking David Williamson is sufficient to fill the quota) instead, or at least alongside works from the European canon? I don’t see the need to manufacture certain elements of The Cherry Orchard, or any other classic, to reflect Australia. Surely the fact that it’s being put on tells us enough about its relevance. If we push too much toward the obvious, we run the risk of losing the ability to see ourselves in any art that doesn’t immediately announce itself to the audience as being about us.

***

A year or so after The Cherry Orchard, I organised to see the Maly Theatre of St. Petersburg’s production of Uncle Vanya (directed by Lev Dodin) at the Sydney Festival. I hoped that, being performed in Russian by an internationally-respected company, Uncle Vanya stood some chance of proving the reason for Chekhov’s place in the pantheon of theatre greats.

That performance was something of a revelation: Chekhov, I finally understood, was brilliant, alive, funny, sad, sweet, wonderful, and now. He was not, as that production of The Cherry Orchard taught me, turgid, slow, and humourless, despite the audience applause suggesting the contrary. Back then I could barely pat my hands together, like a seal without the nearby incentive of fish. I looked at the floor, audience members opposite me, the lighting rig on the ceiling – anything, in short, that was not the stage itself. I could have saved my money and spent the night wandering in the nearest Display Home with my iPod rolling through some Tchaikovsky instead. In fact The Cherry Orchard was, in my mind, not really Chekhov at all, but rather Cheek-orf, his rather unsightly antipodean brother who besmirched the family name after a few drunken years trawling the sea for scrap metal and who was now to be found in some Californian bungalow out Mascot way. All subtlety was lost – I couldn’t wait to hear the first sounds of the orchard being cut down.

The production of Uncle Vanya meanwhile was about stripping back the ornamental aspects of so many performances of Chekhov and releasing the emotional core of the narrative. Perhaps that production of The Cherry Orchard strove to do the same thing, but the results couldn’t have been more different. I’d write more about the Maly Theatre production of Uncle Vanya but I think the best thing to say is that, if you ever have the opportunity of seeing that fine company’s work, don’t miss it. It was, quite simply, one of the best nights at the theatre I have ever had.

As an aside of sorts, after criticising the ‘ockerisation’ of Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard, I’m wondering now what the alternative would have been:

• Attempting a pseudo-Russian accent?
• Going for an RP accent (English, received pronunciation)?

Or maybe not…
I suppose classic plays performed in England are generally done in English accents (or the regional accents of the actors). Ibsen is not generally done with a Norwegian lilt, however tempting. So maybe the choice was right, in the end.

But what happens in a production if some actors go for the whole RP phrasing and others don’t? Brothers and sisters in the same on-stage family can end up sounding alternately like children of Home and Away and the Royal Shakespeare Company. When so much time is spent on the period detail of the furniture and the costume, it is okay for the actors to just ‘do their own voice’ (or their approximation of their own voice), or go for their ‘acting voice’ (which is often different again)? If this is a directorial choice, shouldn’t it be evident in the production as a whole?

But that the whole accent/dialect thing wasn’t the only problem I had with The Cherry Orchard. I found the performance emotionally distant, mainly full of showboating performances where everything was very breathy and heavy, as if the actors were physically weighed down with all that literal meaning they were carrying around on their pin-tucked shoulders. Chekhov is the master of naturalism, they say; sure, but the acting ain’t.

I’m interested in how a similar problem might be used to advantage in Sam Mendes’ latest theatre venture, the aptly titled Bridge Project. Billed as an ensemble of British and American actors (the brilliant Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall, Ethan Hawke, Richard Easton and more…) the Bridge Project should, given its pedigree, be a hit.  It’s currently playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  For anyone interested I recommend Ben Brantley’s review of their production of The Cherry Orchard over at the New York Times, which discusses this issue of accents/competing voices – interestingly Brantley appears to heap more praise on the British actors…is it just the accents?

The Cherry Orchard (credit: Sara Krulwich, New York Times)

The Bridge Project is doing a selective world tour before ending up at London’s Old Vic (currently having problems of its own, if the reviews of Complicit and Richard Dreyfuss’ earpiece are anything to go by…)

I have to say, even though I’ve never have the fortune (or misfortune?) of seeing anything at the Old Vic, I’m pleased by their engagement with emerging theatre artists, particularly in their Old Vic New Voices scheme. There is also a particularly good resource on their website with plenty of information about new writing in the UK (PDF file here).

And, Matthew Warchus’ production of The Norman Conquests (Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy) is, according to whatsonstage.com, to be transferred to Broadway this year, complete with its original cast from the Old Vic (Stephen Mangan, Amelia Bullmore, Jessica Hynes, Amanda Root, Ben Miles and Paul Ritter).

The Norman Conquests (credit: Tristram Kenton)

After Complicit at the Old Vic there’s a new production of Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, starring Andrea Corr (from band The Corrs), Niamh Cusack (of the Cusack acting clan), and a number of other theatre stalwarts – Michelle Fairley, Simone Kirby, Finbar Lynch, Susan Lynch, Peter McDonald and Jo Stone-Fewings.  Sounds like a pretty exciting cast to me.  Playbill has more info here, as does the Old Vic site itself.

Dancing at Lughnasa (Old Vic cast)

Well, it’s sort of Chekhov, isn’t it?

Reviewing the Review

Happy Now?  by Lucinda Coxon
director: Thea Sharrock
cast: Olivia Williams, Jonathan Cullen, Emily Joyce, Stuart McQuarrie, Anne Reid, Dominic Rowan, Stanley Townsend
Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre London, January 2008

Rabbit by Nina Raine
director: Brendan Cowell
cast: Alison Bell, Geoff Morrell, Toby Schmitz, Romy Bartz, Kate Mulvany, Ryan Johnson
Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company, December 2008

Tom Stoppard has oft-quoted Christopher Hampton’s The Philanthropist, when pressed to define his thinking:

“I’m a man of no convictions.  At least I think I am.”

Well I sort of feel the same.  Not that I’ve read or seen The Philanthropist, but I’m in half a mind to agree with Stoppard – well, he’s Stoppard, isn’t he?  Best to give him the benefit of the doubt and all that.

I have always found it hard to immediately grasp my response to art.  I mean, sometimes you know, like a ping going off in an invisible microwave, that the play you just watched was amazing.  But other times it’s hard to grasp at a response.  That is to say you can more or less tell whether you like something or not, whether it’s good or not, but you can’t work out just how good it is.  Not immediately, anyway.

My over-use of words like “sort of”, “probably”, “maybe”, “might be”, and the seemingly ever-present “perhaps” (and, while we’re at it, “seemingly”) would indicate (“would indicate”!) that I am completely unconvinced by my own convictions.  I wonder how professional critics manage it, dishing out their capitalised onions…I mean, opinions, all the time.

The question I’m interested in is this (I think): Is my immediate response to a work of art my response for all time?

I’ve often found myself so very disappointed and bored out of my mind watching a production only to find, a few months later, that the show has stayed with me somehow.  Maybe the whole thing didn’t come together, but there were one or two elements that were actually, on reflection, quite clever.

I suppose the best example would be Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now? at the Cottesloe in London.  The National Theatre, the place that so often rocks my theatre socks, had let me down.  This was the apex of new writing?  Come on, Mr. Hytner, you can’t be serious.  This is a joke, right?

After scanning through a listing of shows, the blurb for Happy Now? intrigued me.

A chance encounter at a conference hotel plays upon Kitty’s mind as she struggles to balance personal freedom with family life, fidelity and a testing job. Her husband seems more interested in misplaced apostrophes than his marriage, her parents are looking down the barrel of oblivion and, although she might toy with joining a gym, Kitty’s running out of time for big changes.

“I’m wondering at what point it became acceptable for you to stand in this house on which I pay the mortgage, drinking the drink I bought out of the glasses I washed in front of the cake I baked and talk that fucking talk. All – and I think this is a lovely touch for which I must take full credit – while I’m wearing an apron.”

Lucinda Coxon’s Happy Now? dares to ask just that, in this painfully truthful, darkly comic take on contemporary life and how to survive it.

Comedy, I thought.  Excellent!  Hot new director Thea Sharrock at the helm?  Even better!  Fantastic cast?  I’m so there!

Happy Now? (credit: Tristram Kenton)

As I trundled down to the National Theatre – well, maybe not trundled…as I walked over the bridge with the lights of the NT building glowing their enticing purple at me, I was positively ecstatic.  But having not been to the Cottesloe before, I hadn’t the faintest idea how to actually get there.  Well, it turns out you enter the main foyer for a moment only to exit it again into the cold winter night and stroll around half the perimeter of the building to reach (after what seems like ages) the Cottesloe foyer.  Inside it was quite cosy.  It had a sort of jazz club atmosphere.  Weird, I know.  No-one else probably thought that.  It just had that kind of chilled-out vibe.

The program only cost 2 pounds – bargain!  (Or at least it was, until I converted it some time later into my own currency…)  The theatre itself was pretty snazzy inside – people complain about the Cottesloe being a bit squidgy and hard to sit comfortably in but after having sat in some pretty grungy Sydney theatres it seemed to me the nearest thing to Buckingham Palace a studio theatre could get.

And then the play began.  Out from one of the speakers as the lights went down roared the song Are You Happy Now? How clever, I thought!  Or was it?  Though the title tie-in was a cute idea, it eventually seemed silly and frankly just a bit unimaginative that snippets of this particular song came out every now and then.  Talk about setting a false context – I assumed we were being transported to some teenager’s angsty bedroom in the mid 90’s.  But we weren’t.  And though many of the adults were acting like teenagers, it seemed to me a peculiar choice to open the play in this way.  From memory the first scene was in a hotel, where Kitty (Olivia Williams) meets a mysterious gentleman (Stanley Townsend) and they begin a witty repartee.  Only it’s not witty and it’s not exactly repartee.  It was a little forced.  Maybe the music was going for that whole dodgy hotel room vibe?  Muzak might have done that better, somehow.  Or even a muzak version of that song.  I don’t know, everything just felt a bit too literal.

Before I continue I should point out that this was a preview performance.  I think opening night was one or two days later, and the reviews were quite positive, generally three or four stars.  But I didn’t get it.  At all.  It was all a bit like the world of the “smug marrieds” as lampooned in Bridget Jones’ Diary (the film, at least).  Smug.  Smug smug smug.  And yet strangely boring.  So her marriage was on the rocks, but on the rocks in that stereotypical English way where you know they’re going to realise they still love each other at the end of the play for the sake of the children and their mortgage and their expensive kitchen.

Ah, love in suburbia!

Was this, I wondered cynically, just an exercise in ticking boxes?

• female playwright
• female director
• central female character

No, there had to be more to it than that.  Someone must have genuinely liked it and wanted to put it on.  It certainly appeared to strike a chord with other people.  The rest of the audience were having a fabulous time, so there must have been something truthful about the play to get that reaction (or maybe the audience was drunk…?  No, surely not!  We’re talking about patrons of the National Theatre here!)

Maybe it talked about being British and middle-aged and middle-class in the 21st century in a way that was all a bit too much for my colonial brain – but there was something (to sound all teenage angsty for a moment) like, majorly wrong!  I didn’t find it particularly funny, or interesting.  And just what was so theatrical about it in the first place?

25 pounds I spent on that seat!  But before shouting refund!  refund! in the interval I decided to brave the second half.  Still slightly confused.  I clapped, yes, I clapped like the rest of them.  But it was all a bit too much.  It felt a little like something I had seen once on television…

I should say the acting was very good across the board.  (see how I’m trying to sound like a genuine reviewer?  “Across the board”!  “Pitch-perfect!”  “Sensational!”  “Gripping!”  “Edge-of-your-seat!”)  But – and here’s the thing…  Almost all of them were underused:

• Anne Reid was only in two scenes – terrific in them, but I couldn’t help wondering if her character (Kitty’s mother) would have worked better off-stage, like the children?  What were these scenes doing exactly, except setting up the whole ‘Kitty has a problem past’ storyline?
• Dominic Rowan was great as Miles, and deserved his own round of applause for jumping down onto the stage from a very high balcony.
• Jonathan Cullen captured Kitty’s husband Johnny very well indeed.  He also provided my favourite scene in the whole play, where Johnny teaches his class at school how to the change meaning of a sentence by inserting commas.  A whiteboard dropped down from the ceiling and as he began to write, it became clear that his class is in fact the audience.  For some reason I admired this touch of opening out the play a bit.  And it also made sense in regards to the decision (whether Coxon’s or Sharrock’s) to keep Kitty’s children off-stage at other points in the play.
• As an aside, Olivia Williams deserves extra points for being able to throw packets of crisps off-stage to her ‘children’ with the blinding force of an Olympic shot-putter, as well as being the speediest cake-decorator on stage I’ve ever seen – actually, the only cake-decorator I’ve seen on stage.

One concern I had was with the depiction of Carl (Stuart McQuarrie), the gay best friend.  He seemed to function mainly as an emotional punching bag for the other characters.  “Oh, I can’t do this – I know!  I’ll get my gay best friend to do it for me!” And the directorial decision to get him to let go of a balloon as an externalisation of letting go of the pain of a failed relationship was a little too Disney, I thought.  (The West End Whingers also seemed to have a problem with this balloon trickery…)

Why was this character defined by his sexuality? Hang on, maybe Happy Now? was actually defining every character by their sexuality.  It was a relationship drama, after all.  And maybe that’s what relationship dramas do.  I had no idea.  I wanted the play to be good, but I just couldn’t get it.  I admired and still admire some of the directorial choices, which I think were ingenious; the stage design was technically brilliant, especially the way kitchens and cupboards sprang out from doors in the wall; the mini-revolve on stage, a sight usually contained for the Olivier stage was clever; and the valiant acting from all concerned was appreciated, even if their parts were limited to the nodding and smiling variety.

Happy Now? was quite imaginatively done, and on reflection it was enjoyable in its own way.  I wouldn’t mind finding the play again to re-read it, and see if the text is the same on the page as it was in performance.  But I’m not sure I’d see it again if it were mounted in Sydney somewhere.  In the end despite some positives, it didn’t end up doing what I suppose I wanted a night out at the theatre to do.  I wasn’t thrilled.  And maybe that was even more disappointing because I had expected something brilliant.

Happy Now?  Not really…

The National Theatre does have quite an interesting list of new plays opening this year, including Richard Bean’s expansive England People Very Nice and Matt Charman’s The Observer as well as the man who rejected a knighthood, Alan Bennett, whose new play, The Habit of Art, concerns the friendship between W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten.  Hopefully these will restore my faith in their literary department!

***

Perhaps a part of my reaction to Happy Now? is that I was expecting the highest calibre of new writing on the National Theatre stage.  But I was left with the distinct impression that the kind of new writing theatres want to commission (and especially, it seems, from female writers, though there shouldn’t be a distinction between the genders – someone’s a writer, that’s it) is relationship drama, angsty-type work.  It seems to be in vogue at the moment, which is strange.  I thought theatres hated that kind of writing?

I had a similar response to Nina Raine’s play Rabbit which I saw recently at the Sydney Theatre Company, directed by Brendan Cowell.  Here was another play that I’d been looking forward to.  Raine won a few prestigious awards for Rabbit on the London circuit.  As well as being a playwright, Raine is also a director, and will be at the helm of a new play, Shades, by Alia Bano as part of the Royal Court Young Writers’ Festival this year.

But what about Rabbit?  I spent most of the play sitting there wondering just why it was called Rabbit.  There was a stuffed toy rabbit given as a present in an opening ‘montage’, but not until the last seconds of the play was the reason for the title made more explicitly clear.  And even then it felt a bit…I don’t know, not quite cohesive?  So it was a play about Bella (Alison Bell) having a party in a pub for her birthday with a few friends, apparently none of whom have met each other before, while her father is in hospital dying of a brain tumour.  Not the most sympathetic of starts for the main character, then.  I enjoyed some of the dialogue, and the discussion that were taking place, but there was never a sense it was leading anywhere.  Interestingly, the point where Bella notes that all her favourite authors are men struck a particularly poignant note in the play, but as it came sandwiched between so much other dialogue that consisted mostly of people talking at each other it lost some of its impact.

Rabbit in rehearsal (STC)

To me at least it wasn’t saying anything I couldn’t find out during an ordinary night out, but then again, to someone else (perhaps of another generation) it may have been exhilarating.  Certainly in the row behind me were a group of women similar to Bella’s age I’d guess, who were clearly enjoying the play, and during the interval were talking in such a similar way to the characters on stage that I couldn’t help but wonder whether they were extras hiding in the audience until the second act.

But the thing that concerns me with a play like Rabbit is the way it presents the experience of a group of characters as something generational.  It’s wrong to assume a piece of art ’speaks’ for a generation.  It’s the same as defining the late 60’s-70’s with Woodstock and assuming everyone around then was either there or into the whole hippy scene.

Where am I going with this?  Not far, it would seem, since again I’m getting tangled up in competing responses to the same piece of work.  I enjoyed the way Raine attempted to get to the emotional heart of Bella through the course of the play, but ultimately I felt all the characters were untrue in some way.  Whether this is down to the text itself or the production I’m not sure.

Obviously the play struck a chord as its season was extended by a number of weeks.  I admired the STC taking a chance on programming a new writer, especially a new writer’s first play.  But it is disappointing to think that this is the only play written by a woman to be on at the STC this year, with the exception of Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage, which is translated/adapted in any case by Christopher Hampton (he seems to be everywhere!).  I know, I know, I wasn’t meant to go on about writers according to gender divisions, but honestly sometimes it really annoys me.  Female playwrights are terribly under-represented in the theatre industry.  Or, to be more specific, under-represented when it comes to productions being made of their work.  Often women outnumber men on writing courses and shortlists for awards, but their work somehow doesn’t make the transition from page to stage in quite the same numbers.  I always wonder about this.  Is it just that women are, like Bella says in Rabbit, a bit rubbish?  That can’t be right.  There is a bias somewhere, though based on what I don’t quite know.  Gender?  Age?  Looks?  Do people take an interest in female playwrights only when their work is very personal, deals with personal experience or relationships or something hitherto regarded as female territory?

In any case there were things I enjoyed in Rabbit.  Cowell tried to give the performance a sort of indie-kids vibe, what with playing Peter Bjorn and John’s Young Folks straight after the interval, and having the actors jumping around rather drunkenly.  It sort of worked.  My main concern, however, was Cowell’s decision to re-set Rabbit in Sydney, not London, as was the original context.  Kevin Jackson has written about this over at his blog, but I also want to add my two cents.  By setting the play in Sydney quite a lot of subtext about class and rank was lost (I haven’t read the play but I could hear it there in the dialogue, sitting uncomfortably, perching between the sentences). It was jarring that some aspects were shifted and others weren’t.  For example Romy Bartz’s character is a writer and goes to observe people in shopping centres and food halls.  She justifies this by claiming it’s “where the working classes go” (or words to that effect).  Somehow the term “working classes” didn’t fit in the new context – why hadn’t another word been substituted?  Consult the Neighbours or Home and Away lexicon for a moment – surely a word like “bogans” (as much as I dislike that word) would have been, in the context, more appropriate?  I know this is a rather pathetic little gripe but the line didn’t have the impact it may have done in the original script, and to be honest I’m not sure there would be all that many twenty-something Sydneysiders peppering their dialogue with “the working classes” on a night out at a pub.

I suppose the setting was changed in order to make it appear more relevant to Sydney audiences.  But I really, really don’t understand this ploy at all.  As a technique it can be quite useful if it then opens up a new possibility for the play, but in this case Cowell’s version of Rabbit seemed to be deliberately straying away from the perimeters that Raine had presumably spent a while setting up when writing the piece.  It didn’t tell me anything new about the play – the shift in context seemed quite flippant when compared to the interesting use of contextual change in the Katona Jozsef Theatre’s production of Ivanov at the Sydney Festival, for example.  (A review of that to come).

And yet having said all that…perhaps my opinion of Rabbit will change.  It’s happened before with things.  My immediate reaction to Happy Now? certainly softened to thinking that actually, it wasn’t too bad at all.  I suppose what I’m trying to say is that even when a play is disappointing, there is always something you can take from it.  And I don’t mean pilfering the set when the lights come up.  Then again, sometimes the marvels of the set are the only things that keep you from daydreaming.

I should read The Philanthropist.