From an entity which may be about to
disappear from the West End [the Theatre Museum] to one likely to
remain there for some time to come:
The
Sound Of Music. The one criticism that everyone seems to
have in common is that Connie Fisher might benefit immensely from
having, at least at a few rehearsals so that she realises, her arms
tied to her sides. (This is neither a flippant nor a cruel
suggestion: I once went through a rehearsal with a strip of gaffa tape
– duct tape to Americans – on my lower forehead, so that I felt
physical discomfort every time I indulged in my own vice of acting with
my eyebrows. It worked.)
I remain suspicious of Fisher – “Fisher”, you’ll note, according to my
standard style of referring to practitioners by their surnames; unlike
most of the rest of the country, I don’t feel on first-name terms with
“Connie” simply because she was on a TV series. Reviewers have
reacted to the same vein in her performance, albeit reacted in
different ways, ranging from “the first real Maria I’ve seen” in
Nicholas de Jongh’s case to an accusation of defaulting to “Wide-Eyed
Sexless Rapture” from Alastair Macaulay. What I don’t agree with
is the opinion that she is significantly different from Julie
Andrews. Indeed, without having watched any of the television
series, it seems to me from the result that what was being sought was
not a new Maria but a new Andrews, with due allowances for cultural
changes in the 45 or so years since the latter first came out of the
Trapps. It’s the same brisk freshness refurbished for a slightly
different age, that’s all. (Oh, and a point of pedantry: a number
of reviewers refer to Maria as a novitiate. She’s not.
She’s a novice. Novitiate is the state or period of being a
novice, or a building which houses novices. It’s a lovely word,
but it’s the wrong one.)
Wobbly
One matter which no-one seems to have mentioned, but which hit me like
a slap in the face: do we not expect a major West End musical
production, in the Palladium of all places, to be able to steer clear
of the basic pitfall of wobbly sets? Praise has been given to
Robert Jones’s set design of a great disc of mountainside on which
Conn— sorry,
Maria is
discovered lying, almost perpendicular to the stage, and which then
swings down to only a few degrees off horizontal so that she can skip
across it, rhapsodising that the hills are alive. They certainly
bounce enough even under her relatively lissom feet to suggest that
they
are alive, because the
whole disc is fixed on one hydraulic axis only and is simply not firm
enough to avoid wobble. As with Bill Dudley’s digital cycloramas
for
The Woman In White a
couple of years ago, a beautiful idea counts for nothing if you can’t
make it work sufficiently well in practice. Contrariwise, I
almost gasped out loud at the sudden, simple yet shocking
transformation of the entire theatre into a Nazi concert hall as drapes
descended and guards took their places on the forestage walkway.
For me, that moment alone negates claims that Jeremy Sams’ production
is light on the threat of Nazism. In any case, by all accounts
the tills are alive; I give it three or four years. (Now there’s
a hostage to fortune…!)
Hohepunkt
As German or pseudo-German experiences go,
The Sound Of Music ran a distinct
third during this fortnight. It was eclipsed firstly by Thomas
Ostermeier’s production of Sarah Kane’s
Blasted, entitled in German
Zerbombt. My
Financial Times review of that
production is elsewhere in this issue. Not everyone agrees, of
course: on seeing Kieron Quirke after I’d read his review, I jocularly
remarked to him that he had no soul, whereupon he twice grabbed my arm
to stop me walking away while he continued his excoriation of the
production. In the “pro” camp, I suspect the person whom Maxie
Szalwinska heard responding audibly behind her was Paul Taylor; I say
this not to mock Paul in any way, but to testify to the power of
Ostermeier’s production, that it can draw vocal exclamations even from
such a potentially jaded spectator. One thing, though: after his
Nora (A Doll’s House) (which I was
almost the only British reviewer to rave about) and now
Zerbombt, I think perhaps, when he
brings his next show over, Mr O. might be advised to leave the stage
revolves at home for a change. Just because the revolve was
popularised by Max Reinhardt in Berlin, that doesn’t make its use
mandatory in all productions from that city a century later.
But the
Hohepunkt of my
German viewing was Claus Peymann’s magnificent 2001 Berliner Ensemble
Richard II, in Stratford for half a
week only. The central visual metaphor may be overdone: an
accretion of earth and water on Achim Freyer's spare monochrome set
rather belabours the point that faction and civil war are turning the
governance of England into a quagmire. Much of the delivery –
strongly declarative, from predominantly white-made-up faces – may owe
more to the company's Brechtian history than to Stratford
sensibilities. But it made its points (and, above all,
Shakespeare's) beautifully and powerfully. Michael Maertens may
be the finest Richard I have ever seen, Sam West and Kevin Spacey not
excepted. His is not a negligent king, simply an insufficiently
commanding one; he exudes a great emotional clarity at every instant,
and can find a wealth of resonance in a single word (only partly
because he sometimes has more syllables to savour: “Herunter” offers
more phonetic mileage than “Down”). Manfred Karge is a looming,
Machiavellian presence as the Duke of York, and there is even a running
gag in which Hanna Jürgens' oft-fainting Queen (looking oddly
reminiscent of Joanne Catherall of The Human League) is revived by
water. I caught a brief flash on the surtitles describing Thomas
Brasch's translation as "faithful to the original, with additional
wordplay". Boy, is there ever!
Love's Labour's Lost at its most
euphuistic doesn’t pun or romp as much as Richard's exchange with the
dying John of Gaunt. But it is shot through with a sardonicism
perfectly in keeping with a play from which no-one emerges
unsullied. A bleak, mordant delight.
Honour
I’m not sure what Aleks Sierz means when he says that the whips in
Whipping It Up “have no ideals
except for their own public-school loyalties”. (Amazing how many
reviewers mention not just public schools but the resemblance of the
Whips’ Office to a public-school common room. I wouldn’t
know.) It struck me that the sacrifice made at the end of the
play retains a kind even of nobility which, author Steve Thompson seems
to suggest, is anachronistic but far from undesirable; that the Chief
Whip exhibits
in extremis the
kind of honour which is alien both to the day-to-day running of the
office and to contemporary political culture as a whole. This is
what I think Quentin Letts misses when he says its portrayal of Tories
is out-of-date: far be it from me to teach an experienced Parliamentary
sketch-writer how to suck eggs, but the point seemed to me to be not
the various kinds of corruption and peccadillo being bandied around,
but the fact that political values didn’t enter the picture anywhere,
for either party. Quentin laments that it’s the Tories who are
the targets rather than Labour, but he hasn’t been in the theatre game
long enough to take account of Alistair Beaton’s
Feelgood back in 2001. A
number of reviewers say that Thompson’s play is nearly as good as
Beaton’s; if that were true, it would be a poor thing indeed. In
fact, it’s more than a little better. Although, when the
character of the blonde intern started simpering intensely, I couldn’t
help whispering to my companion, “Ah, Terry Johnson’s been directing
again…”.
Written for Theatre
Record.