Worth a Read: Theatre Books Round-up – Jan 2010
With so many alluring names in the casts of classic dramas in the West
End at the moment, scripts are the focus of this month’s round-up.
There’s Keira Knightley, of course, in Martin Crimp‘s sparky update of
Moliere’s The Misanthrope, now on at the Comedy Theatre, and
soon there’ll be Frank McGuinness‘ new translation of Ibsen’s
Ghosts, directed by Resident Evil actor Iain Glen, at
the Duchess. We’re giving you warning for this one because it caused a
stir when it debuted – dealing with a sexual disease, it was
considered an outrage.
Beckett, as the Haymarket’s Waiting for Godot, with Ian
McKellen, returns for an 11-week run this month.
Are we star struck? I don’t think so! We have a couple of gritty
intellectual books, without the overtly flashy names, to sink your
academic teeth into, too. Carol Martin, of New York University,
examines documentary theatre in The Dramaturgy of the Real on the
World Stage, while a collection of academics, including Phillip
Zarrilli of the University of Exeter, dig up cultural specimens – from
Greek tragedy to English pantomime – in a helpfully updated edition of
Theatre Histories.
Laura Silverman
Book reviewer
Scripts
The Misanthrope: in a Version by Martin Crimp by Moliere
Faber & Faber, £8.99
You might just have heard that Keira Knightley is making her stage
debut in this play at the Comedy Theatre in London, in a run that
stretches until 13 March. Isn’t that all you need to know? Must I say
more?
Martin Crimp’s doubly updated English translation of this French
satire – his first updated version was on at the Young Vic in 1996 –
is big on its punchy rhyming couplets. It’s daring and direct, with
lines of acerbic wit flying in all directions. It’s out with
seventeenth-century Paris and in with glitzy modern-day London for
Crimp, but Moliere’s bugbear, his attack on hypocrisy, is twice as
great.
Jennifer (Celemene in the original and here played by
Knightley), is a glamorous American film star, who flirts shamelessly
with her admirers just as they grovel slavishly towards her. Yet any
loyalty is purely for show. Only Alceste, a British playwright, seems
prepared to say what he feels about people to their faces, but he is
madly in love with Jennifer. Will he compromise his ideals in pursuing
her? This is a play to read more for the deliciously sharp put-downs
and character observations than, I would say, the plot, but it’s
thoroughly entertaining all the same.
Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen and Frank McGuinness
Faber & Faber, £9.99
‘Ibsen’s positively abominable play entitled Ghosts is… an
open drain: a loathsome sore unbandaged; a dirty act done publicly,’
cried the Daily Telegraph when the drama was first performed in
1882. It was ‘gross, almost putrid indecorum,’ it continued, ‘literary
carrion… crapulous stuff’. Written a year earlier by the Norwegian
writer of the A Doll’s House, Ghosts follows Mrs Alving
as she prepares to dedicate an orphanage to her dead husband. So far,
so appealing, but Mr Alving was a philanderer and their son has
syphillis. At the time when the mere mention of a sexual disease – let
alone suggesting it could afflict the morally righteous – was an
outrage, Ghosts evidently gave the audience and critics a bit
of a fright. Let’s hope their modern day incarnations have recovered.
A new version by Frank McGuinness, directed by actor Iain Glen, who
was in the Resident Evil films, and starring Lesley Sharp, will
run at the Duchess Theatre in London from 8 February to 15 May. The
script will be published on January 18 – just to warn you.
Terry Pratchett’s Nation: A Play by Mark Ravenhill
Corgi, £9.99
The Guardian‘s Michael Billington admits he had little idea
what was happening on stage when he went to see Mark Ravenhill‘s
adaptation of Nation, which is on at the National Theatre until
March 28. For Ravenhill, known for his audacity in the explicit, edgy
nature of his own plays such as Shopping and F******, has
ditched much of Pratchett’s original dialogue in the current run to
focus on the story’s theatricality: aweing his family audience with
storms, waves, a foul-mouthed parrot and ‘grandfather birds’ (whatever
they may be). After all, you can’t have the immensely imaginative
Pratchett, the creator of the Discworld series, in which a fantasy
world rests on the backs of four huge elephants who are, in turn,
supported by a huge turtle, without the fantastical.
Nation, an apocalyptic drama, is set in a parallel world in
1860. A tsunami destroys a black teenager boy’s village and leaves an
English girl shipwrecked on his island in the South Pacific. They come
from different cultures and speak different languages, but together
they rebuild a nation. Reading this script requires quite a bit of
mind-creativity to be able to see the scenes, but that shouldn’t put
you off. If you can’t make it to the theatre, a filmed version of one
of the National’s performances will be shown at cinemas nationwide on
January 30.
The Priory by Michael Wynne
Faber & Faber, £9.99
Kate, a writer and teacher, has invited a few close friends to spend
new year at a country retreat in an old monk’s priory – not the
celebrity detox centre/ hangout. In the words of her gay soulmate,
Daniel, ‘I love it that it’s called the Priory. It’s like our own
little rehab.’ It’s supposed to be a calm, intimate reunion – no
booze, no drugs – but, aside from anything else, that would make dull
viewing. Instead, this ensemble comedy consisting of set pieces
descends rapidly into farcical chaos. The once-gorgeous Carl, an
actor, turns up, unexpectedly, with his wife, Rebecca, a
child-obsessed TV executive. Ben, a travel writer, arrives with his
beautician fiancee, Laura, whom he met the night before. Even the
kindly Daniel, an architect, brings a boy he met on the internet.
Wynne’s character-led exploration of a group of lost
thirty-somethings, who judge each other by how successful they appear
to be, is witty and perceptive. It may not yield any astounding
revelations about human nature, but it’s enjoyable reading – and
viewing – all the same. The Priory, starring Tony-nominated
Jessica Hynes, is on at the Royal Court in south-west London until
16 January.
Memoirs and History
Samuel Beckett (New Interpretations of Beckett in the 21st
Century) by Seán Kennedy
Palgrave Macmillan, £55
Know the play about the luvvie in the wheelchair and his slave? Or the
two clowns passing time ‘which would have passed anyway’? The first,
in case you missed it in the autumn, was Mark Rylance’s take on
Endgame, which ran at the Duchess Theatre. The second, more
recognisably, was Sean Mathias’s Waiting for Godot, starring
Ian McKellen, which was the Haymarket’s summer sell-out, and which
will be returning there from 21 January to 3 April.
Unlike Endgame, this version of Godot was – arguably – a
straight interpretation of the text, but there have, of course, been
plenty of other readings. It’s been heralded as a religious statement
and a profession of Beckett’s existentialism. Others have claimed
that, above all, it demonstrates the symbiosis of relationships. Still
others have read it as protest against injustice and tyranny. In 1955,
Beckett is said to have remarked: “Why people have to complicate a
thing so simple I can’t make out.”
The ten essays in this collection, edited by Seán Kennedy, an
assistant professor at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia,
and Katherine Weiss, an assistant professor at East Tennessee State
University in the US, use newly uncovered archive material to argue
cogently against the prevailing academic idea that Beckett’s work
cannot be read historically. Instead, the Irish playwright should be
placed firmly in his historical context. Contributors examine the
impact of the Holocaust, as well as Ireland’s troubled past. A
fascinating intellectual read.
Theatre Histories by Gary Jay Williams, Bruce A.
McConachie, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei and Phillip Zarrilli
Routledge, £26.99
From Kathakali dance-drama to Japanese no plays, Theatre
Histories, outlines dozens of cultural practices worldwide from
medieval times to the present day, using a similarly broad range of
interpretative methods, from gender theory to studies in national
identity, to examine individual works close up. Encyclopaedic in
scope, this is a book for the serious enthusiast or student, rather
than an introductory text. Updated, with more illustrations and colour
than its previous edition, it has a new chapter on modernism and an
improved glossary with fuller definitions. This is a great teaching
aid, packed with anthropological observations, written by academics
from the UK and the States.
Theory
The Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage (Studies in
International Performance) by Carol Martin
Palgrave Macmillan, £52
Carol Martin, the associate professor of drama at Tisch School of the
Arts at New York University, brings together a set of insightful
essays, interviews and scripts, many unique to this collection,
looking at documentary theatre – drama created from interviews, photos
and evidence from history. Contributors pick apart examples from the
past, and look at its rise since 9/11. This is a timely, intriguing
book.
For Actors
Design and Popular Entertainment edited by Christoper
Frayling and Emily King with Harriet Atkinson
Manchester University Press, #45
I can’t say that the introduction of electricity to London theatres
towards the end of the nineteenth century ever concerned me much, but
once I came across the essay in this collection which considers its
impact in detail, I was intrigued. Perhaps it’s true of every
generation, but it’s tempting to see changes in technology today in
isolation, as if nothing had changed in the past until now. But what
about the industrial revolution? And then the invention of radio? And
the presence of film? And the development of pop art? And the
pervasiveness of TV? (The rise of nternet and mobile technology is
left for another time.) How did each affect its predecessors and our
way of consuming popular culture?
The nine essays collected here are by former postgraduates on the
V&A/Royal College of Art course, so yes, they’re academic. But while
the topics are sometimes specialist – the second contribution focuses
on Norman Bel Geddes, one of America’s key industrial designers in the
early twentieth century, while another looks at the rise of the title
sequence in relation to the emergence of independent film, focusing on
Bass, Preminger and Hitchcock (a recognisable name, at least) – they
don’t presume prior knowledge. They’re also neatly set out. Wallace &
Gromit even make an appearance in one of the full-page photos.
