By Michael Coveney
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Hitting the headlines

No-one's rushing to announce who might succeed Michael Boyd as the artistic director at the RSC, or Ian Brown at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, or even Nicholas Hytner (eventually) at the National.

The big topic of national conversation is: who will succeed Fabio Capello as the England team football manager?

The people's choice is Harry Redknapp, the charismatic Londoner who currently manages Tottenham Hotspur and claims he can't read, write, or even sign a cheque book. Sharp as a pin but as illiterate as a navvy, our 'Arry is the working man's top gobshite geezer.

In a day of two halves, as the Independent front page headline described it yesterday, Harry was cleared of all tax evasion charges at Southwark Crown Court and, coincidentlly, Capello resigned in a huff at Wembley Stadium over the sacking of John Terry as the England team captain.

It wasn't so much that Capello, we understand, disapproved of the decision, as Terry is facing racial abuse charges; it was that he hadn't been consulted.

Anyway, fate could not have devised a more beautiful revolving door scenario for Harry and Fabio, and the Sun scored an absolute bullseye with its front page banner headline: 'ARRIVEDERCI.

Critics, on the whole, don't write their own headlines, though sometimes a sub-editor will extract a smart phrase to do the job for him. Kenneth Tynan got away with "Citizen Coon" when he put the boot into Orson Welles's Othello. One of my more recent favourites was Paul Taylor's suggested sub-title for Eugene O'Neill's alcoholic confession-fest, Long Day's Journey Into Night, which was played lighter, funnier and faster than usual: "Absolutely Bibulous."

With that play on the horizon once more, and with David Suchet treading in Laurence Olivier's footsteps again as the tightwad paterfamilias and clapped out leading actor, James Tyrone, you wonder how such dysfunctional domesticity will show up in a contemporary theatre full of nothing but fractured and unhappy families and marriages.

In my secondary role as a wig correspondent, I was unfairly merciless about Penelope Wilton's Mary Tyrone in a Young Vic revival as she played each act in a different hair-piece, culminating in an absurd tea-cosy arrangement that made her look like a neurotic wind-up doll. When hubby turned up with her wedding dress, the play became "Long Day's Journey Into Nightie."

There's no improving on Alan Ayckbourn's Absent Friends, smartly directed at the Harold Comedy by Jeremy Herrin as a showcase for a new generation of very funny actors.

Ken Dodd usually throws in a chorus of the song of that title towards the end of his stand-up marathon, referring to long gone relatives of the elderly and some of the elderly themselves who have passed on during the performance.

In the Ayckbourn, the lead character Colin has been absent from his friends' lives for three years. He himself has lost his fiancee in the meantime. But last night, the character we most missed, I felt, was the one who doesn't appear at all, the obese husband of Elizabeth Berrington's Marge, a butterball fire prevention officer who is becoming increasingly incapacitated at home.

The role is brilliantly written without ever actually existing. What I love about the theatre is that it is conceivable Aykbourn had him on the stage in an early draft but realised that the budget wouldn't stretch to accommodate an extra actor.

These things happen. Robert David Macdonald once wrote a wonderful play about the Jacobean dramatist John Webster. The first act was a virtually uninterrupted monologue for the lead actor. He then realised that they only had three weeks' rehearsal and he'd already supplied more words than could be learned in a year. So he devised a terrible accident and Webster was shot in the mouth and rendered speechless for the whole of the second  act: it was a brilliant dramatic coup and made the play even more gripping and mysterious.

Following Milton's example, perhaps the play should have been re-titled Webster Agonistes. And what are we to make of another misrepresentative title, Bingo, re-entering the lists next week?

Edward Bond's play, starring Patrick Stewart, returning to the role for the fourth or fifth time, is about the last days of Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, inert and disillusioned. Why Bingo? Because originally, Jane Howell, the artistic director of the Northcott in Exeter, where the play was commissioned, didn't want to frighten the audience, and suggested a title with popular appeal.

So Bingo it was, even when John Gielgud (who was about sixty-six, clickety-click) took over the role from Bob Peck when the play was first presented at the Royal Court. Maybe Alan Ayckbourn should re-name How the Other Half Loves, his dinner party play in two adjacent interiors, "Housey Housey."

One of my favourite Ayckbourn puns-in-performance was Michael Hordern's exclamation when he trod on a garden rake that shot up to hit him in the face and he acted "cool" with a distracted cry of "What hoe?!"

- by Michael Coveney

Any opinions expressed above do not represent the view of Whatsonstage.com nor any of its staff or contributors beyond the bylined author.

Related Content

Booking Tickets & Show Listings
	Long Day's Journey into Night Listing Page
	Absent Friends Listing Page
	Bingo Listing Page

Other Posts By Michael Coveney
	Michael Coveney: Big Apple bites and Manhattan memories - 22nd May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: New York honours Matilda with five big awards - 20th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: Tales from New York in Kinky Boots - 17th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: Finsbury hails its local Park Theatre opening - 15th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: Hooray for Halifax and Carrie's ENO debut - 13th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: All change at Trafalgar, Liverpool and Finsbury Park - 10th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: Critics come full Circle in centenary bash - 8th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: High old time with High Tide in Halesworth - 7th May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: Hytner steams on, Sondheim scintillates - 2nd May 2013 blog
	Michael Coveney: Theatre queens and Paris low-life - 30th Apr 2013 blog
	More...
Internal Links
	Review Round-up: Suchet & Metcalf triumph in Long Day's Journey - 11th Apr 2012 roundup
	1st Night Photos: David Suchet returns to Apollo for Long Day's Journey - 11th Apr 2012 photos
	Long Day's Journey into Night - 11th Apr 2012 reviews
	Year of the Producer: Kim Poster's Eureka Moment for Long Day's Journey into Night - 10th Apr 2012 interviews
	Show Pics: David Suchet & Laurie Metcalf take a Long Day's Journey into Night - 4th Apr 2012 photos
	'West End Rules!' in latest issue of Time Out magazine - 22nd Mar 2012 news
	Theatregoers meet Absent Friends at Whatsonstage.com Q&A - 7th Mar 2012 features
	1st Night Photos: Stewart plays Bingo at Young Vic - 24th Feb 2012 photos
	Bingo - 24th Feb 2012 reviews
	Absent Friends - 10th Feb 2012 reviews
	1st Night Photos: Ayckbourn greets West End Friends - 10th Feb 2012 photos
	Review Round-up: Absent Friends is a hit at the Pinter - 10th Feb 2012 roundup
	Ridley joins revival ranks - 2nd Feb 2012 blog
	Photos: Cast of Ayckbourn's Absent Friends in rehearsal - 19th Jan 2012 photos
	Photo: First Pic of Cast for Ayckbourn's Absent Friends - 4th Jan 2012 photos
	Tointon & Shearsmith Return to West End in Ayckbourn's Friends - 9th Dec 2011 news
	Cast: Bush Books, McCormack Heresy, Metcalf Journey - 20th Sep 2011 news
	David Suchet Takes Another Long Journey to West End - 28th Jul 2011 news
	Stewart Plays Bingo at Young Vic, Hamlet Dates - 31st Jan 2011 news