LONDON TRIP REVIEWS

Jan/Feb 00

Noting that there was an unusually good crop of serious drama on offer in London, my partner and I decided to take advantage of British Airways' seat sale and hotel discounts to make a nine-day theatre trip. For the first time ever, we took the Canadian Airlines/British Airways daytime flight from Toronto to London.  Now having done so, I would not wish to travel to London any other way.  One does not have to pretend to have a good night's sleep on the plane and so arrives at night ready for sleep in a real bed.  There's no waiting around for the hotel to clean the room and the trip from Heathrow into the city is very swift since there is so little traffic at night.  The general effect is to minimize jetlag and make one's first day in London more useful.

        We bought the majority of our tickets six weeks before the trip to ensure the best selection of seats.  Our first play was THE LADY IN THE VAN at the Queens Theatre.  Maggie Smith as the title character was absolutely wonderful.  We had not seen her on stage since her years at the Stratford Festival in Canada and were delighted to see that her delivery and timing are as perfect as ever.  Nicholas Farrell and Kevin McNally, playing the two Alan Bennetts, were also excellent and the play as a whole was much more substantial that we had expected.  I admit that our main point in seeing the play was to see Maggie Smith on stage again.  I had worried that being based on real events in Bennett's life that the play might be too anecdotal.  As it happened, Bennett places the real life incidents in the larger context of a writer dealing with a highly unusual character both as the real person who must interact with her and as the writer trying to glean as much "material" as possible.  The humour thus derives not just from Maggie Smith's character but also from the interactions of Bennett with himself.  We felt our theatre holiday was off to a very good start.

        On Tuesday we saw COPENHAGEN in the appropriately intimate Duchess Theatre.  We were unhappy to have missed the play on our London visit in 1998 and were pleased that it was still running.  This is not an easy play and I would say our audience was about evenly divided between those like us who were excitedly following the ideas and arguments of the play and those who found the whole thing too difficult.  If all you are interested in in an evening of theatre is fluff, then I suggest you give this a miss and head for one of the megamusicals.  If, however, you would like an intellectual entertainment about some of the most central issues and ideas in the 20th century, then do not hesitate.  The acting of all three actors--David Baron, Corinna Marlowe and William Brand--is excellent.  This is a play of ideas that repays the very close attention you have to give to it.

        On Wednesday we saw the RSC production of OTHELLO at the Barbican Theatre.  The reviews we had read made this the raison d'être of the trip and it proved to be an overwhelming experience.  Not only was this the best production of the play we had ever seen, it was also one of the best productions of a Shakespearean tragedy we had ever seen.  The production was so well thought through, so clearly directed by Michael Attenborough and so well acted that innumerable lines, characters and actions that we had tended to ignore or gloss over now had meaning and each contributed to the cumulative effect of the play.  The play had such power and forward momentum that we felt physically drained by the end.  As people who see over 90 shows a year, this very seldom happens.  OTHELLO had previously never been one of my favourite tragedies, but this production by making sense of Othello's and Iago's actions and placing them in a larger context than usual showed us why this is a great tragedy.  In North American productions, Iago's hatred is almost exclusively racial.  Attenborough, however, looked at what the text actually says and saw that Iago's hatred is far greater.  He is jealous of anyone who is better looking, has more money or more power that he does, which includes not just Othello but also Rodrigo and Cassio.  Thus the various subplots finally made sense.  Ray Fearon as Othello and Richard McCabe as Iago were superb, but so was everyone even in the most minor roles.  Thus, with a director who clearly understood every line in the play and with a cast who could communicate this understanding, the force of the piece, once begun,  never let up. Seeing this production alone was worth the trip to London.

        The following day we had nothing planned.  I thought we would need a change of pace after OTHELLO, and so booked tickets for a preview performance of the SWAN LAKE at the Dominion Theatre directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne.  Little did we know that this ballet would have as powerful effect as the play the previous night!  We have never been so caught up in the action of a ballet in our lives.  Normally the plot in a ballet is the least important aspect and is just an excuse for a series of set pieces which do not necessarily further the action.  Here, the plot, as re-imagined by Bourne, was totally engrossing, very funny and witty in the first act then veering toward tragedy, as it must, in the second.  Much has been made of Bourne's use of male swans, but men in feathery pantaloons look no more like swans than women in tutus.  Bourne makes absolutely clear that the swans are creatures of the Prince's own imagination.  Since they are played by men, they represent another side of himself wilder, freer and more aggressive than his life at court allows.  This makes much more sense of the story than any previous choreography we've seen and gives the work a psychological depth we never thought it had.  What makes the ballet so effective is that not only is it excellently danced, but also excellently acted, better acted in fact that one finds in many plays.  We were lucky enough to see Adam Cooper as the Head Swan and the Stranger, Ben Wright as the Prince and Isabel Mortimer as the Queen.  Never have we seen a ballet and thought we ought to go back the next night so we could get more out of it.  We hope see this production again as soon as we ever have the chance.

        Seeing two such extraordinary productions back to back took its toll on us as we found we were both extremely tired the next day, but tired in the very comfortable way one is after being delightfully amazed.  That evening we headed out to the Barbican Pit for our pre-booked performance by the RSC of VOLPONE by Ben Jonson.  We are great fans of Shakespeare's contemporaries and go out of our way to see plays by them.  As it happened, this was the only production of the nine we saw that we found disappointing.  Unlike OTHELLO, the director, Lindsay Posner, had not thought through the play to its finest details.  As a result there was a certain amount of huffing and puffing throughout to little effect.  The worst mistake was in not maintaining the pace of the action.  This is a play that depends as much on an inexorable forward momentum as OTHELLO does and to allow it to slacken ruins the necessary sense of danger.  The best performances of the evening came from Guy Henry as an exceedingly bizarre Mosca, Richard Cordery as a frightening Corvino and Claire Price as the put-upon Celia.  Malcolm Storry in the title role seemed strangely passive and the character underinterpreted.  Nevertheless, this production was the first I've seen to make sense of the Sir Politic Would-be subplot.

        On Saturday we had two shows lined up--THE REAL THING by Tom Stoppard at the Albery Theatre in the afternoon and LONELY LIVES by Gerhart Hauptmann at the Battersea Arts Centre in the evening.  We would normally not see two shows in one day, but there happened to be no tickets available for the Sunday performance of LONELY LIVES.  THE REAL THING is generally considered Stoppard's best play and I can't imagine a better production than the one by the Donmar Warehouse now playing at the Albery.  Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle have garnered the most attention as the central couple, but, in fact, every member of the cast is excellent.  David Leveaux's direction is seamless and witty and is reflected in Vicki Mortimer's clever design echoing the "House of Cards" theme that runs through the play.  The production convinced us that this is one of the best and most thought-provoking British comedies of the 20th century and a direct successor to Noel Coward's best work.

        On any theatre trip we take, we usually try to see some rarity or other.  Shortly after arriving in town, we opened Time Out to the theatre section, only to notice that one of their Critics' Picks for the week was the 1891 play LONELY LIVES by Gerhart Hauptmann in an English adaptation by Ruth Platt.  Seeing any play by Hauptmann outside German-speaking countries is a rarity enough, but to have it be one of five Critic's Picks made it a must-see.  We were worried about getting to the Battersea Arts Centre, but it turned out to be quite easy, requiring only a short train trip to Clapham Junction and a 10-minute walk to the theatre.  The play was held in the Studio Theatre 1 at the BAC which holds only about 50 people.  It reminded us quite a bit of the Court House Theatre at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario (which, however, holds 350).  The play itself was something of a revelation--a bit like Ibsen, a bit like Chekhov--but always dealing with characters and themes in surprising ways.  As the title suggests, the play puts forward an existential view of life (remarkably) about 50 years ahead of its time.  The first-time director, Eddie Marsan, drew finely detailed performances from most of the cast, though Robert Woods as the central male character John Vockerat, could not quite put across the complexity of motives found in his character.  One of my German play guides says that the play is about the suffocation of idealism by everyday existence.  In this production, however, an idealism that has no sense of reality is criticized as much as a reality that has no place for idealism except for religious clichés.  When the characters hope that this conflict will be resolved "in the 20th century", we could only cringe at how much that century would dash their hopes.  The play is so interesting we had much to discuss for the next two days and  hoped this might signal a revival in interest in Hauptmann elsewhere.

        Sunday we had completely free.  The rain rather wiped out any plans we had for sightseeing.  We did, however, notice on our various walks through town, that the Odeon Theatre on Leicester Square is the only digital movie theatre in Europe.  Curious about this new technology, we bought tickets to "Toy Story 2".  (This movie theatre has the added advantage of offering assigned seats.)  As it turned out, the experience was quite something since the images had absolute clarity throughout, no jiggling or wobbling, no blurs when objects move past.  The digital projection is a real leap forward and, as an extra bonus, the film was a lot of fun, too.

        For Monday evening we had tickets to DUBLIN CAROL, the latest play by Conor McPherson, the author of THE WEIR.  The play was being held at the Old Vic since the Royal Court, where it was to have opened, is not yet ready.  To simulate the intimate nature of the Royal Court, the audience sits on seats on risers on the stage of the Old Vic facing into the backstage which is fitting out as the "real" stage.  (Now we can tell people we've been on the stage of the Old Vic!)  In general, I would have to say that the play will suffer by comparisons with THE WEIR and be labelled "not as good".  That would be rather a pity since the playwright has moved on, as he has to, into new territory.  If THE WEIR was about the importance of telling stories, DUBLIN CAROL is about the importance of listening.  Unlike THE WEIR, which is in one continuous scene, DUBLIN CAROL is in three short scenes.  Just as the characters in THE WEIR come to a new realization through the act of telling stories, so the central character of DUBLIN CAROL comes to a new view of himself by finally allowing himself to listen to other people.  The play actually suggests that a saving grace is all around us if we only stop talking about ourselves and allow ourselves to hear it.  It's a rather surprising conclusion to a play set in a funeral parlour on Christmas Eve.  All three of the actors had mastered the understated, naturalistic style necessary for this kind of play.  As with Pinter, we have to pay as much attention (or more) to the subtext of what the characters are saying; but where Pinter's work has been called a "theatre of menace", I would say on the basis of THE WEIR and DUBLIN CAROL that McPherson is writing a theatre of healing.

        Our final play was a matinee on Tuesday, the day we left.  This was possible because we had booked the late night flight out of Heathrow to Toronto.  This we would also do again since seeing a play the day one has to leave certainly makes the departure day less gloomy.  In this case, we went back to the Barbican Theatre to see the RSC's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM directed by Michael Boyd.  A friend of ours in Toronto, who is in charge of the Du Maurier World Theatre Festival there, told us before we left that this is the one show in London we MUST SEE.  We could hardly believe it since we'd both seen so many mediocre MND's that we'd come not to care much about the play.  But this production completely changed our minds and was as insightful and mind-opening as the OTHELLO or SWAN LAKE earlier in the trip.  Instead of assuming, as most directors seem to do, that the play is self-evident and just needs to be stage-managed and put in new costumes, here the director went back to the play to see what the text was really saying.  As a result, the production was like seeing the play with new eyes.  At last, the Mechanicals' play was not the be-all-and-end-all of the show but rather took its place within the whole structure of the play.  It is supposed to be the entertainment to cap off the resolution of what has happened before, and what has happened before must be the central focus.  At last, we had lovers who were distinguishable from each other and not just rushing about shouting their lines.  At last, someone finally paid attention to the text and realized that, despite the title, most of the action does not occur in summer at all, but in winter! And why--because, as Titania says, the dissension between her and Oberon has reversed the seasons.  Only once the dissension has been resolved does summer return at the end of the play.  But perhaps Boyd's primary insight is to see the realm of the fairies as the secret realm of the human mind where private fantasies or fears are immediately acted out.  This he accomplishes by cleverly doubling all the humans of the Court with the fairies, so that the two realms seem not just parallel but different aspects of the same thing.  As with OTHELLO, lines that are so often cut or sped through, could be relished and their meaning allowed to add to the whole experience.  This was finally a production where the magic did not come from some sprinkles strewn about here and there but rather grew from the greater mystery of being mortal that underlies the whole play.

        We travelled to London hoping to see the kind of insightful classic theatre we seldom see in our area anymore.  We returned with more insights than we could have imagined!

Email: howard.clarke@utoronto.ca