Synopsis Writers come together to create a thrilling, unforgettable experience. Two towers. Ten years. Thousands of opinions. No-one can forget the moment they heard the news. September 11th, 2001 sent shockwaves across the globe. It was a day that was supposed to change the world forever. Ten years on, a team of major writers and thinkers explore our responses to the defining event of our times in this new production, directed by Headlong s Artistic Director Rupert Goold. We re turning a dis-used office building into an immersive theatrical experience, taking you from the tranquil setting of the River Thames to the bright blue skies of downtown Manhattan and beyond. This event takes place at St Katharine Docks. Tel: 020 7452 3000
Production Image from Decade. Photo credit: Tristram Kenton
Date: 9 September 2011
Headlong Theatre and director Rupert Goold's site-specific exploration of 9/11 and its legacy, Decade, opened last night (8 September, previews from 1 September 2011) at St Katharine Docks.
Decade follows Headlong's multi award-winning Enron and National Theatre co-production Earthquakes in London, which embarks on a national tour later this month.
"The sub-title of Rupert Goold's 9/11 theatrical cocktail is simple enough: 'Two towers, ten years, 20 plays.' … Although there are one or two structural devices to keep the show on the road… the evening cannot claim the coherent narrative intensity of Enron. The mood is more meditative and subdued … The old exchange floor… has been converted by designer Miriam Buether into the anodyne sky-high haven of the Windows on the World … The evening starts with Lynn Nottage's 'normal day' sketch in a neighbourhood store with racial undertones, thrums with Adam Cork's rumbling sound score, and ends with a litany of last minute text messages in a babel of despair … Emma Fielding and Charlotte Randle, both outstanding, registering various states of melancholy and hysteria; Kevin Harvey catching Barack Obama's sibilant rhetoric to perfection; and vivid cameos from Amy Lennox, Leila Crerar, and Tom Hodgkins as a hawkish Senator."
"The evening is stuntier than it need be. On arrival, theatregoers must walk through a mocked-up police check … The walls at either end show large, blue-sky vistas of New York city, just as it must have looked that doomed morning in September 2001 … Extensive use is made of a glass-walled, clerestory corridor through which we can see characters rushing to and fro … Some scenelets are more successful than others. Kevin Harvey uses his beautifully resonant voice in various parts … Tobias Menzies is excellent … Last time I reviewed the work of director Rupert Goold, he accused me of having some vendetta against him. Much as I would like to fuel his paranoia, I cannot. Decade is often moving without being mawkish. It has a gift for nostalgic hindsight … It is probably too long … But Decade is memorable and watchable."
"We sit comfortably at tables sipping drinks while the 15-strong cast offer, on a peninsular stage and at vantage points round the room, a variety of responses both to the catastrophe and all that has happened since. Little attempt, mercifully, is made to replicate the event. The show is largely reactions to it … Alecky Blythe has also come up with a fascinating item … Though not strictly factual, Simon Schama has written a piece, Epic, trying to see the events in historical perspective … Ella Hickson has a powerful item, very much in the style of Neil LaBute … Mike Bartlett's The Enemy reveals a journalist cynically cashing in on an interview with Osama bin Laden's killer. These stand out, however, in an evening that is half an hour too long. It is staged by Goold with discretion and flair … On this occasion, I craved either a purely documentary treatment or the response of a single writer with a powerful vision."
"Decade is an ambitious attempt to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 … The different contributions, which switch from documentary and historical exposition to pure fiction, are interwoven in a graphic and visually arresting fashion. This includes dance sequences and smart choreography by Scott Ambler. It can be hard to know where to look… and Adam Cork's detailed soundscape enhances the charged atmosphere … Bursts of earnest rhetoric and blind rage mix with wonky theories and confessional interludes. At times this is immensely affecting. There's some particularly deft writing by Lynn Nottage, Mike Bartlett and Ella Hickson. Samuel Adamson offers a poignant verbatim piece based on the words of Scott Forbes, who worked in the South Tower, and Simon Schama serves up a passionate paean to tolerance … Goold's production is fluent and artful … It may be possible to dispute the claim that 9/11 is 'the defining event of our times' and argue that Decade is overlong and doesn't tell us much we didn't already know, but this is a bold experiment in engaging with history, realised with flair."
"We are seated at tables in the Windows of the World restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre. The views across Manhattan are spectacular … This multi-layered drama from site-specific specialists Headlong Theatre attempts to make sense of the event and the subsequent reverberations across the decade … The ‘play’ – and I use the word loosely – evolves backwards … There are a handful of songs and some well-managed, though redundant dance sequences … While it is not entirely dramatically coherent, it is a series of brilliant snapshots of the after effects of one of the most spectacular atrocities this century … Headlong have… cornered the market in Disaster Theatre, with Decade now joining Enron and Earthquakes in London in their portfolio … I sympathised greatly with the waitress born on September 11 whose birthday is forever overshadowed by the event. 'Technically, it was my birthday before this global tragedy' she wails. I know how she feels. My own birthday falls on July 7, the date of the terrorist bombings in London."
Libby Purves The Times ★★★
"The opening chills the blood. In the 107th floor restaurant where we seem to sit, a hostess greets a smiling, silent guest … All is flashing and darkening and noise: above us, behind high glass windows, office workers look down in frozen horror. That sequence, and much else, is the direct creation of Rupert Goold and Robert Icke, for Headlong … Nineteen writers contribute playlets, and an ensemble of 15 actors perform them, interspersing naturalistic conversation with declamatory speeches, outbreaks of vivid dance and often inexplicable synchronised mime … They vary from the almost comic, like Ben Ellis’ troubled speed-daters, to Matthew Lopez’s touching sequences scattered through the evening in reverse chronology … Vast backlit photographs show the New York skyline on a sunny blue 9/11 morning. We are in the ghost of the North Tower restaurant. It all happens around us, sometimes with blinding success, sometimes not … Bravely, it reflects not only grief and anger but weariness: the admission that one grows tired of endless commemoration, conspiracy theories, vengeful anger and liberal forgivingness alike. An odd evening, not easily forgotten."
The sub-title of Rupert Goold’s 9/11 theatrical cocktail is simple enough: “Two towers, ten years, 20 plays.” And his three-hour production for Headlong, conceived and developed with Robert Icke, produced in association with Chichester Festival Theatre, brings that momentous day alive in a number of ways.
Although there are one or two structural devices to keep the show on the road - three widows meeting in a coffee shop on each anniversary; Pina Bausch-style processional and aggressive choreography (by Scott Ambler); an accumulation of dust on jackets and shoulders - the evening cannot claim the coherent narrative intensity of Enron.
The mood is more meditative and subdued. Partly this is down to the kaleidoscope of voices, and partly to the fact that the show is divided between recreating the shocking poetry of the event and the spin-off into some very good diversions: Beth Steel’s portrait of the American female torturer of Abu Ghraib; Christopher Shinn’s encounter between a psychoanalyst and her patient; or Simon Schama’s disclaimer that professors “historicise” while people “remember.”
The old exchange floor in an office building in St Katharine Docks by the Tower of London has been converted by designer Miriam Buether into the anodyne sky-high haven of the Windows on the World (“Roast beef hash with poached or fried egg $9.25,” but no service, alas) with its stunning views of the Hudson River and the Empire State Building.
Along the top runs a corridor with large windows: these serve as a poignant cage for office workers, the cockpit of one of the aeroplanes, or the walkway for visitors at Ground Zero. After the tours, Ella Hickson gives us the chilling sight of a Panamanian lothario passing himself off as an Arab and picking up susceptible tourists for sex.
The bodies of the women are left spread-eagled on their chairs. The evening starts with Lynn Nottage’s “normal day” sketch in a neighbourhood store with racial undertones, thrums with Adam Cork’s rumbling sound score, and ends with a litany of last minute text messages in a babel of despair.
A dozen actors range from Tobias Menzies quietly delivering Samuel Adamson’s testimony of the electrician who took the day off and was disturbed by the “power down” on the day before; Emma Fielding and Charlotte Randle, both outstanding, registering various states of melancholy and hysteria; Kevin Harvey catching Barack Obama’s sibilant rhetoric to perfection; and vivid cameos from Amy Lennox, Leila Crerar, and Tom Hodgkins as a hawkish Senator.
I had high hopes for this production, and indeed the production values, and visuals, were effective. But for starters, making you walk DOWN into a Windows on the World recreation taxes your suspension of disbelief. Also, might I mention that it was in poor taste to 'become' a pretend restaurant patron who will, ahem, be dead in two hours. Instead of being dead, we are clapping and smiling in two hours. Tacky.
The actors were all exceptional, given the very uneven material. But some of the American accents were very uneven. Decade hired an accent coach. Clearly it worked for Charlotte Randle (3 different Brooklyn accents), Jonathan Bonicci, among others .But it appeared that no one worked with Claire Prempeh on accents. Her waitress character's accent (really, several different accents, ranging from African American Southern older woman, to young white Valley Girl) was absolutely abysmal. Absolutely embarrassing. An otherwise touching monologue by playwright Harrison David Rivers, on having a 9/11 birthday, was ruined by her meandering accent! I also don't understand why Harrison Rivers made his character say the words "01" as "aught one." Very few Americans say it that way -- it sounded like Prempeh said it the British way ("naught one"). I believe some African Americans in the south may say the word "aught', but I don't believe his written character was specifically meant to be African American -- and that certainly was not made clear by Prempeh's young white Valley Girl accent that permeated much of that piece. Her character as waitress was meant to bookend The Sentinels (9/11 widows) piece sprinkled throughout the show, by announcing 9/11 dates in different years. So this very important bookend was ruined, in my humble opinion, by Claire Prempeh's lack of American accent skills.
For a production in which many if not most of the playlets needed American accents, and given that this was about one of the most important tragedies in American modern history, it was a crying shame that Rupert Goold could not get it right and either hire actors with genuine North American accents, or make sure their accents were perfect. Shame on you, Decade. - Jeremy
07 Dec 11
After passing through the security scanner it is immediately necessary to suspend disbelief as you are "interrogated" by a US Immigration Officer who, in my case (Emma Fielding) seemed to have a remarkable knowledge of the current Health and Social Care Bill. You are then greeted by the restaurant hostess and have to pretend not to recognise her as Charlotte Randle and shown to a table in a brilliant recreation of the Windows On the World restaurant. Decade consists of playlets by around twenty different writers reflecting on the events of 9/11, the aftermath and the effects on survivors, families and others. Hardly surprisingly some are better than others and, without a playtext, it's difficult to be absolutely certain who is responsible for what. One of the best is right at the start concerning reactions to a Muslim running a small grocery in the shadow of the twin towers and Matthew Lopez contributes a strand running throughout the evening showing a reverse chronology of three widows meeting for annual mournful reunions. I particularly admired Mike Bartlett's imagined confrontation between a journalist and the soldier who shot Bin Laden but Ben Ellis' psoriatic speed-dater misfired completely. The small cast convey their large range of characters brilliantly and, as always with Rupert Goold, Decade is packed with extraordinary ideas and flourishes although the outbreaks of random dancing are less effective than in Earthquakes. . . Decade provided a remarkable evening of theatre but it didn't move me emotionally as much as I had expected until the final barrage of text messages from victims horribly aware of their fate, culminating in three men starkly framed in a window looking down on the wives they left behind. A remarkable closing image to an evening which will live long in the memory. - David Baxter
12 Oct 11
Really dull unimaginative setting and weak 'immigration screening' at the start followed by a really dull and unimaginative collection of Fringe standard playlets and super-clunky jigging about. Not funny or clever. - Coral
30 Sep 11
Great idea, high intensity, brilliant actors, but the material was lacking. I heard Tony Kushner was one of the writers; if true, I wonder why his playlet wasnt included.
I would have liked to see material with clearer reflections on British relationship with 9/11, and with 7/7. Tobias Menzies as real life Brit Scott Forbes who questions a power-down, was formidable. But a formulaic choreopoem about 7/7 and transportation was predictable.
Being set in NYC, the play attempted more than it should have by placing itself in Windows on the World. Why?
I wonder how many London-based American actors (there are many) they auditioned for this play. Because some American accents of this all-Brit cast were very uneven (Claire Prempeh in particular; but with hiccups in every 'New York' accent). Very much a shame, for a production attempting to talk about a huge historical event. - Jon
28 Sep 11
Had high hopes, but found Windows on the World set in poor taste.
Excellent choreography by Scott Ambler, with very able cast. Jonathan Bonnici was brilliant as seductionist/souvenir seller; Tobias Menzies measured and strong as Jonathan Forbes, a real British computer programmer; and Kevin Harvey as a Navy Seal who shot Bin Laden.
But American accents were shaky with some cast (Emma Fielding's NY widow accent, and Claire Prempeh's wandering waitress accent, most notably). The shakiness was unexcusable, given the nature of the historic event.
- Irene
28 Sep 11
This is by far the best piece of theatre that I've seen this year. Rupert Goold is so good at combining great writing, great acting, dance and music to create a piece of totally watchable theatre. This didn't seem like it had been written by a number of different writers, but seemed like a cohesive whole that examines the events and repercussions of 9/11 over the last 10 years. - Steve
25 Sep 11
The space is superbly theatrical. A large rectangular room with picture windows at both ends, restaurant booth seating on three sides & a bar on the fourth and a long elevated corridor on one side overlooking the main space, which contains an oval platform surrounded by tables and chairs. We’re in Windows on the World, a restaurant at the top the World Trade Centre, another one of Miriam Buether’s extraordinary designs and the most comfortable place I’ve ever seen ‘site-specific’ theatre!
A large number of ‘playlets’ take place (sequentially not concurrently!) on the platform, on tables, in booths, in the elevated corridor and on the floor. There’s a fair bit of ‘dance / movement’ between scenes (and sometimes part of them) with fine choreography from Scott Ambler. There’s a superb cast of 13 who play many more roles than that. In conception and execution, it’s all wonderfully theatrical. The trouble is the material…..
……..I was expecting interesting and objective responses to 9/11 from many perspectives, but what I got were some rather slight sketches, few of which said much on their own, let alone together. Regular visits to the annual meetings of 9/11 widows (backwards in time) provides the only link, but not enough was made of this clever device. Many were monologues whose dramatic inertness was amplified by the theatricality of the space and staging. It didn’t educate or enlighten me, it didn’t illuminate anything and it didn’t really entertain me.
I suspect the multiplicity of writers doesn’t help; six more than there are actors (look what three did for Greenland!), but the key issue for me is that it just isn’t bold enough. It seems to be hinting at and skirting over issues rather than tackling them head on. I admire the ambition, but the rewards are limited.
- Gareth James
17 Sep 11
Easily the best and most chilling piece of theatre I've ever seen. Incredible and incredible that it's on now. So up-to-date. Don't miss it. - John Hortins
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