PROMPT CORNER 13/2008
Black Watch / The Quiz
Various venues
June, 2008
I found myself marching out of step
with most critics in actually being better disposed to Black Watch on a second viewing
than I was first time out in Edinburgh back in 2006. On that
earlier occasion I felt, as some do now, that the movement sequences by
Frantic Assembly’s Steven Hoggett were too self-conscious, even
precious, in an otherwise physically brutal evening. This time
they didn’t worry me nearly as much, perhaps because I knew they were
coming. Also, a testimony to the length of time this company has
been together and the degree to which they have honed their acquired
skills: in my childhood, when we watched television coverage of the
Edinburgh Military Tattoo or the like, my father (now deceased) would
hark back to his own military days and pass almost invariably withering
comments upon the standard of drilling exhibited by even these showcase
companies. Ever since, whenever I’ve seen any such synchronised
movement, military or theatrical, I’ve inwardly heard my father’s wryly
disparaging voice. But in the Barbican, the Black Watch company shut him
up. That’s praise indeed.
I missed David Bradley’s performance in The Quiz on its first London
outing last month at the Rose in Kingston, but caught up with it in
Trafalgar Studio 2. It’s one of those endearingly bravura pieces,
which couldn’t help but remind me of my late friend Val Widdowson’s
signature performance in James Saunders’ (more or less) monologue Triangle – I wonder whether this
play’s author Richard Crane had encountered the Saunders piece. I
also wonder whether he encountered Bruce Myers’ performance for Peter
Brook in 2006 of the Grand Inquisitor monologue from The Brothers Karamazov which forms
the backbone of Crane’s play, and whether that experience inspired the
erratic conduct of the protagonist here...