Features

Worth a Read: Theatre Books Round-up – Feb 2011

It’s off to the playground – yes, the pun has been noted – this month
with the emergence of a school theme among the scripts. Aside from the
obvious Children’s Hour, which we’ll be reviewing in a future
piece once the attention on Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss has
died down a bit, we have Vivienne Franzmann‘s Mogadishu and
John Donnelly‘s The Knowledge – playwrights who have both been
teachers.

Our two study guides focus on Chekhov and Wertenbaker, while
top of the pile is a bit of light relief in the form of London’s
Theatres
by Mike Kilburn, which will furnish any would-be tour
guide or usher with an armful of information about the design and
history of venues to impress listeners. It also has plenty of lavish
photos of the interiors and exteriors of the buildings themselves.

On 22 February, the winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre
Biography will be announced. The contenders are My Life in
Pieces
by Simon Callow, The Reluctant Escapologist by Mike
Bradwell, Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim and Born
Brilliant – The Life of Kenneth Williams
by Christopher Stevens.
We have reviewed all but the last of these books (an oversight only
worth admitting to build up expection for the next round-up when we
will be returning to them and highlighting the winner). Our prediction?
Simon Callow is the obvious one…

Happy reading!

Laura Silverman

Book reviewer



Scripts

Plays Six by Howard Barker

Oberon, £14.99

Although rarely performed in the UK, Howard Barker‘s work has made a
distinctive contribution – in the challenging and controversial sense
– to contemporary drama. Often going straight for themes of violence,
sexuality and women, the prolific British playwright, born in 1946, is
a vocal proponent of tragedy on stage and is known for a reluctance to
tie everything neatly together. A House of Correction, set
before a war, and Let Me, set during barbarian invasions during
Roman times, both included here, are typical examples. The other three
plays in this valuable anthology are (Uncle) Vanya, written in
1991, in which Chekhov, the creator, of course, of Uncle Vanya
without the parenthesis, confronts his character with contempt; and
two twists on biblical stories: Judith and Lot and His
God
.

The Knowledge by John Donnelly

Faber, £9.99

Even as an English student at Leeds University in the late Nineties,
Donnelly made an impact, winning an award for the best new play with
(A Short Play About) Sex and Death. It was about football and
flatmates, things he knew about. He turns again to familiar territory
with The Knowledge, which has received rave reviews in its run
at the Bush Theatre (it’s on until Feb 19). It’s not about football or
flatmates, but about a teacher in a secondary school in Essex – and it
can be no coincidence that since his student days, Donnelly has been
in a classroom (teaching everything from literacy to sex education) in
secondary schools and in Essex. The characters and story – the play is
about a young vulnerable and flawed female teacher who gets into a
compromising sexual situation with a pupil – may be fictional, but
Donnelly’s knowledge of school-teaching demands from students and
colleagues is clear. The plot and dialogue are all the more engaging
for their realism and insight.

Mogadishu by Vivienne Franzmann

Nick Hern, £9.99

Inspired by the story of a friend, Vivienne Franzmann’s debut play
follows a white teacher wrongly accused of racial harassment after an
idea to protect a black student backfires. Franzmann, a teacher, has
said she wanted to highlight that teaching in an inner city school is
not all doom and gloom, however. ‘It can be really funny being a
teacher,’ she said. ‘That’s what I wanted in my play. Young people
laugh all the time.’ Mogadishu is on at the Manchester Royal Exchange
until Feb 19, before a London run at the Lyric Hammersmith from March
7 to April 2.

The Painter by Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Faber & Faber, £9.99

It seems appropriate that Rebecca Lenkiewicz‘s surname comes from her
stepfather, the late Robert Lenkiewicz, a Plymouth artist. Her new
work follows the life of the Romantic landscape painter, Joseph
Turner. Lenkiewicz has written history plays before (Her Naked Skin at
the National in 2008 was about the suffragetes) and about art
(Shoreditch Madonna at the Soho Theatre in 2005) was about the
underground art scene in East London today. What really binds her work
together, however, is the emotion. ‘I can’t see the point of writing
unless it is emotionally driven,’ she’s said. ‘If it is dry, it is
going to erode you.’ The Painter is on at the Arcola in East London
until Feb 12.

Oh, to Be England by David Pinner

Oberon, £8.99

When David Pinner wrote this play in 1973, no one would produce it
because of its presentation of political extremism in the UK. Times
have changed enough to allow a staging: it made its big splash last
month at the Finborough, where it came across as eerily up to date.
The play, which follows an arrogant middle-aged man who loses his job
and becomes dangerously xenophobic, is supposedly a dark comedy, but
as Pinner wrote Ritual, the novel on which the thriller The
Wicker Man
was based, expect the undercurrent to be seriously
coal-black.



Study Guides

Cambridge Introduction to Chekhov by James N. Loehlin

Cambridge University Press, £12.99

For those who know Chekhov through his major plays, it’s a surprise to
find that his most popular work during his lifetime was his fast-paced
vaudeville sketches. Here, James N. Loehlin, a professor of English at
the University of Texas at Austin, touches upon 50 of the Russian’s
stories and 15 of his plays. The four dramas covered in most detail
are, predictably, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three
Sisters
and The Cherry Orchard – and, if you’re studying
any of them alone, you’ll still want further debate. As an overall
introduction, though, this guide is clear, cogent and authoritative.
One warning: Loehlin is a Chekhovian devotee (he calls Chekhov a
‘modern saint’). Brushing aside biographical evidence that the late
nineteenth-century naturalist could be ‘irritable, vain or selfish’,
he says whole-heartedly that Chekhov ‘was deeply and deservingly
loved’. Loehlin makes a convincing case.

Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good by Max Stafford-Clark
and Maeve McKeown

Nick Hern, £8.99

Max Stafford-Clark is well-placed to write this guide to Timberlake
Wertenbaker’s Olivier award-winning drama, which is ostensibly about
prisoners in Sydney in the 18th century and metaphorically about the
transformative power of theatre. It was he who commissioned
Wertenbaker to write it (it was based on Thomas Kenneally’s novel
The Playmaker) in 1988 when he was artistic director of the
Royal Court, and it was he who directed its 10th anniversary revival
at the Young Vic and its subsequent UK tour.

As important as the historical setting is to the play, it seems a
shame that Stafford-Clark has spent half of this slim book on it when
his unique insight comes from the more practical side of developing
the production. Of much more interest are the sections and sentences
about his rehearsal methods, and the costumes, set and props he used.
There are some nice quotes from a recent conversation with Wertenbaker
scattered throughout, but the keen reader might want more: maybe even
a Q&A interview as a postscript. There’s some material here, but you
may well be wanting a couple of extra books to add your study-guide
bundle.



History

London’s Theatres by Mike Kilburn

New Holland Publishers, £14.99

At 157 pages, Mike Kilburn’s lavishly illustrated book is a
cross-between a mini-coffee table book and a travel guide. Using his
crucial experience as an English Heritage inspector of historic
buildings, Kilburn speeds through just over 50 West End and South Bank
venues, from the Adelphi to Windmill Theatre, outlining their origins
and design in a manageable-yet-informative two to four pages. There’s
all the need-to-know information, with handy boxes of dates of the
rebuilds, as well as trivia – the name Donmar, for example, comes from
the names of the theatre’s founders, Donald (Albury) an Margot
(Fonteyn). Plus, Zoe Wanamaker provides a ringing endorsement in her
foreward. Our advice? Read up on the relevant venue and drop in
details to impress/annoy fellow theatregoers during intervals.