DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Opened 16 January, 2007
***
The first part of Roy Williams' 90-minute triptych is quite, quite
brilliant. The playwright begins his RSC-commissioned "response" to Much Ado About Nothing on a Friday
night in Anytown, England, with the lads and ladettes out to get
bladdered, get laid and get shirty. The respective groups are led by
Ben and Trish, every bit as quick-tongued as Shakespeare's Benedick and
Beatrice but fully warranting the "strong language" warning notice
posted at the door of the Swan. Jamie and Hannah (alias Claudio and
Hero)'s burgeoning romance is threatened by a malicious rumour, but set
right again with the help of the local constables. The glory is not
that of Bardic craft, but of a universal story brought to immediate,
contemporary life and revealing sensitivity and beauty even amid the
alcohol-fuelled vomiting, steel-gated club doorways and burger stands
on Lizzie Clachan's promenade set.
Where Shakespeare's young men have just returned from an easily won
war, Ben and Jamie are about to leave for a far knottier one. The
second act begins with a video letter home from Ben, but soon finds him
and two comrades pinned down in an alley in Basra after a twitchy Ben
had "pre-emptively" opened fire, killing some Iraqi boys who had been
playing football. We enter Full
Metal Jacket territory, seeing how individuals survive in,
conflict with or are corroded by the demands of war for efficient
components in a military machine and no more.
Phase three, back home: a war-toughened Jamie is about to stand trial
for torture, and Hannah is trying to find a path for herself between
him, Trish, her family and friends. This ought to be the most trenchant
section of all, showing as it does how the anger, loss and
incomprehension of war can shape the lives even of those half a world
away. But I'm afraid the writing loses flow and focus just when it
should tighten. Director Maria Aberg's staging finds a little more use
for the promenade set-up than in the Basra episode; nevertheless, as we
gather round a chalked square on the floor into and out of which
characters step for their intercut arguments with Hannah (Claire-Louise
Cordwell), it resembles an in-progress workshop production more than a
finished RSC offering. A sad and frustrating falling-off after a
magnificent beginning, but I would love to see Williams finish shaping
it into what it could be.
Written for the Financial Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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