PROMPT
CORNER 01-02/2007
Days Of Significance / The Seagull / Bash
Various
venues
January, 2007
Though actually, while I’m on the subject of absurd utterances, have a
look at the Daily Mail review
of
Days Of Significance.
The alert reader will have noticed that Quentin Letts’ writings
sometimes get up my nose like a little finger (which is somewhat
embarrassing, since I rather enjoy his company of an evening).
But this one, like those council decisions, is breathtaking. When
I read it, I actually rang up the Royal Shakespeare Company and
congratulated them on getting the kind of hyperbolical quote that most
would give their eye teeth for. Imagine it pasted up in front of
the theatre: “Treason – Daily Mail”!
The UK’s newspapers, broadly speaking, tend to be of a conservative
(with a small “c”, to say the least) ideological slant; its theatre
reviewers, broadly speaking, tend to be of a more liberal
disposition. Quentin is aware of the latter inclination, and
enjoys being a gadfly in that respect. The trouble is that, in
the context of his paper, he isn’t a gadfly at all. In fact, I’ve
never seen an example of arts reviewing in the free world which so
consistently prosecutes the overall political agenda of its host
outlet. It reduces reviewing to just another tool in the
editorial-political box, and in doing so damages it not just within the
confines of the title in question but in the wider field.
Let’s keep a sense of perspective: to call Roy Williams’ play
treasonous is clearly absurd, whether or not one has seen or read
it. But it’s the underlying implications that unsettle me.
There’s a suggestion there that artistic output has a civic duty to
chime with national enterprises, national characteristics… or with
matters that are declared to be so. And that’s not just wrong,
it’s chilling. It savours, in the fullest and most literal sense,
of totalitarianism. I’m sure Quentin would be among the first to
oppose any political system reliant on the diktats of commissars.
Unfortunately, he’s expressed his disagreement with (his
misinterpretation of) the sentiments of Roy Williams’ play in terms
which imply precisely that. And frogging and medals wouldn’t suit
him, honestly.
Top-notch
Just space enough for one “everybody else is right” remark and a couple
of “I can’t believe…”s. In the matter of The Seagull, Ian Rickson’s
production deserves all the praise it has been laden with. (In
particular, it’s gratifying to see Katherine Parkinson’s name being
filed for future reference by more reviewers; I know her future career
will justify the attention.) This has, in fact, been the first
production to make me understand why the play deserves its place among
Chekhov’s Big Four. It’s been a heck of a month for top-notch
openings: my Financial Times senior
Alastair
Macaulay, normally a man as prudent with his reviewer’s stars
as Gordon Brown with public sector borrowing, gave four five-star
ratings during January – to The
Seagull, Happy Days
(another beautiful production, with Fiona Shaw banishing even the
memory of Billie Whitelaw in the role of Winnie), the Sheffield
production of The Caretaker (currently
on
tour; we’ll be reprinting Alastair’s review when it arrives at the
Tricycle in March) and Uncle Vanya.
Which leads me to my first point of dissent: what has been praised as
the coolness and disengagement of Rachael Stirling’s portrayal of
Yelena I just think of as brittle mannerism in her performance style as
a whole. My other point is more specific. Normally I would
defer entirely to Rhoda Koenig in the matter of American accents: she
has the ear of a native, after all. But the praise in the closing
remark of her review of Bash is,
I’m
afraid, misplaced. Of the four actors, three suffered at some
point from the intrusive “R” so common to English actors trying to
speak American (Jodie Whittaker’s character, apparently, wore a gown of
taffeter; still, at least nobody mentioned Chicargo) and the fourth,
Juliet Rylance, spoke of being seduced by her teacher amid the
fishtanks in something called a Maradigm Center. Where they plan
for maradigm shifts, presumably.
Written for Theatre
Record.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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