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THEATRE REVIEWS
Do you ever read critics in newspapers or listen to what people say about films, plays, concerts, etc on radio or television? Do the opinions of critics affect you at all? If every critic said a play/a film was terrible, would that influence you not to go and see it? Discuss these questions as a class. As you read the reviews, work out their typical structure.
1)
“Sylvia”, a new comedy by the American boulevard playwright A.R. Gurney opens with a neat theatrical conceit: middle-aged financier (Robin Ellis), living in Manhattan apartment, finds stray dog and bring her home. The twist is the dog is played by Zoë Wanamaker, who scampers round the room, sniffs the furniture, climbs over the cushions and shits behind the sofa. That’s not in itself particularly funny. What is, is the way the financier talks to the dog and the dog talks back. One of the great platonic relationships has found its way on to the stage.
In Michael Blakemore’s polished production, the casting is good too: many actresses can play bitches, but few are as well suited to play this sort as Wanamaker. She has the dog–eyes, the pixie-face and the endearing ski-jump nose. When she muzzles and wiggles and stares imploringly you want to throw her a bone.
Not least because she hasn’t got much else to get her teeth into. Husband wants the dog. Wife doesn’t. Marriage suffers. The elegantly disdainful Maria Aitken, who somewhat impobably teaches Shakespeare to inner-city schoolkids, has the thankless role of the complaining wife. Sylvia to her is Saliva. It was a risky joke for the playwright to have made.
Having put a fresh spin an the conventional spin on the conventional triangular relationship, Gurney lapses into sketch-like scenes: trip to Central Park, late-night walk, showdown with the wife, and-yes, this is Manhattan – a trip for the three of them to the marriage-guidance counsellor. Along the way, Gurney touches on mid-life crises, the dog as wife-substitute and urban man’s need to get back in touch with nature. But the shows considerably less interest in these themes than Wanamaker shows sniffing round the lamp-post. We readily invest Wanamaker’s Sylvia with human qualities, but when Wanamaker returns from the vet after being spayed-no joking matter, we imagine, for a dog – the scene is played for its winsome comedy. This complacency has more bark than bite.
2)
The playwright Peter Whelan is establishing himself as our leading exponent of speculative – or “what if” – drama. In “School of Night” he dramatised the mysterious circumstances Surrounding Christopher Marlowe’s death in 1593. In “Divine Right” he made an 18-year-dd Prince William decide whether in the year 2000 he wanted to be King or not. (Answer: Not). In the “Herbal bed” he resurrects a case involving Shakespeare’s elder daughter, Susanna.
There are two Whelans at work in these speculative plays. The first is a tough private eye who constructs crafty old-fashioned thrillers. The second is a schoolmaster who raises the tone of the proceedings with lofty themes and explanations.
In “The Herbal Bed”, Whelan builds a remarkably convincing drama about puritanism and marital infidelity from only a few pieces of evidence. The central characters are not as intriguing as their situation. Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna (the slightly vapid Teresa Banham), is married to a Stratford physician, John Hall (played with brisk importance by Liam Callaghan). In 1613 Susanna is publicly accused by a reckless young gentleman, Jack Lane (raffish David Tennant), of having been “naught” with a local haberdasher Rafe Smith (an earnestly infatuated Joseph Fiennes). Despite the fact that Lane recants, a charge of defamation is brought at the diocesan court at Worcester Cathedral. Cue courtroom drama.
Whelan’s masterstroke has been to make the allegations neither entirely true or entirely false. Susanna can survive with her dignity intact if she economical with the truth. She tells the slow-witted Fiennes: “It’s only a matter of what you leave out”.
The trouble is that the tight-lipped Vicar-General, Stephen Boxer, wants to hear all the facts. Boxer has great fun, menacingly sifting through documents and delivering dusty rebukes. Elsewhere, in Michael Attenborough’s enjoyably taut production, there’s a gemlike performance from Jay McInnes, the diminutive wide-eyed maid, around whom the whole cross-examination collapses. I’ve never seen anyone carry bedding across stage with a greater sense of purpose.
3)
Finally, in “The Power of the Dog” at the Orange Tree, Ellen Dryden has written a brooding, complex portrait of female relationships that centres on Vivien (Joan Moor), a successful schoolteacher. She has a brlliant, difficult pupil, a mother in a wheelchair, a bullying aunt and a manipulative cousin. It’s rare to see female relationships explored in this depth-even if, sometimes, this multifarious play becomes submerged in detail. Director Sam Walters evokes this acrid genteel world with characteristic precision.
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