Men of the World (York Theatre Royal, 9th February 2010)

In Men of the World, I think John Godber has wonderfully captured  the atmosphere of the coach trip, in this case to the Rhine.  He manages to pick up the conversations of a set of characters who travel overland from their Yorkshire homes to Germany.  What he does well is portray the humour in lovely one liners.  Men of the World  follows the format of Godber’s Bouncers where three actors play a range of characters.   In this case the ‘men’ were actually two men and a woman, and much of the humour came from the fact that they were playing people of either sex.  I think there are some wonderfully funny moments in this production.   However, it is the drivers which are the most rounded characters.  The problem I had with the other characters was that they were too stereotypical and even though there were comments towards the end of the play that all the passengers were lovely decent people, it didn’t really change the fact that they had been played as comic types.  Personally, I found some of the characterisation was a little uncomfortable such as the landlords of the Bed and Breakfast and Martin the over mothered young man.  

With Godber’s work, you know what you’re going to get.  On the evening, I went to do see this production, the audience clearly loved it.

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Dial (York Theatre Royal, 27th November 2009)

I really enjoyed this short piece in the Studio at York Theatre Royal.  The play was set in a Call Centre and this seemed like a really good idea because working in sales is like, or even is, putting on a performance.  What happens here is that the edges of reality are slightly shifted so we are actually in a fantasy world.  The call centre supervisor motivates her team with team games and one ot ones, and the management speak is turned into an ironic commentary on office life and the world of cold calling and hard selling.

The Call Centre sells soul saving.  Customers are the desperate members of society – those in financial difficulty, having relationship issues, suffering bereavement.  They are all fodder for the sales team to sell a counselling sessions.  This is a commentary of the  customer service approach that has at the bottom of it a greed for consumerism.  In the Soul Savers’ world, is customer service about making sure people are treated with dignity?  No it pampers to them to sell them something.  In using the Soul Savers idea, the pressures of society today are wonderfully highlighted and that makes them a customer ready to be sold to is a fantastic idea.

The play introduces us to four stereotypes.  The male sexual  predator who thinks he can charm every woman and sex is his only interest.  A woman who flirts with her male colleague but wants to do a MA in Creative Writing and poor Johsie who easily falls down (literally and metaphorically to use a cliché).  The central character is Carol, recently promoted and determined to be at the top of the company’s sales board.  In the background, and never seen, there are a cast of characters, the callers to the call centre and Stuart, the previous team leader, who seemed to have had a human side.

Conversations with callers always begins with the statement ‘every call is confidential’.  The irony is that nothing is confidential.  Calls are listened into, mocked by the sales team and used for training purposes. The client list of the Samaritans has even been sold on, as a source to cold called.

The twist at the end of the play is wonderful and shocking.  We except Carol to have a human face, that we find she is actually a sensitive woman and can be moved to have to sympathy for the callers.   We expect the twist to be something we think we spot under the surface.   I won’t spoil the ending, but it is a good one, testing even our own responses to how we think we read and know people.

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The Hypochondriac (York Theatre Royal, 28th October 2009) and The Grapes of Wrath (West Yorkshire Playhouse 4th November 2009)

Over the last two weeks, I have seen two very different English Touring Theatre productions, one a comedy and the other a tragedy.  The thing about English Touring Theatre is you do know you’re on safe ground, and the story will come first and I feel with these productions that there is little ambiguity.

All of a sudden there are lots of Molieres around.  There was The Miser at Manchester Royal Exchange, The Tartuffe at York Theatre Royal, The Misanthrope about to open in London and this English Touring Company production of The Hypochondriac. This is great because with Moliere we know that we will be laughing in the theatre.

I like the aesthetic of the English Touring Theatre production of The Hypochondriac, and it made me think of all those eighteenth century French painting such as Watteau and Chardin.  It was very funny as well, though I am starting to understand the Moliere structure and finding it easy to work out will happen.  This was a good night out at the theatre.  For me, it was entertaining and not something that made me think about the issues raised.  I think what the company are aiming for is about good storytelling in the theatre and so there are no frills or risks taken, which can be a good thing at times, because a production can feel clean and clear.  

In comparison to The Hypochondriac, The Grapes of Wrath  at the West Yorkshire Playhouse was also a very good example of storytelling on stage, and it was bleak and sad rather than funny like Moliere.   The approach to The Grapes of Wrath  reminded me of the Brecht I’d seen a couple of weeks ago in that it is episodic and we follow characters through lots of different situations.  I’ve never read the novel, and so I don’t know the story well, but I just felt that I knew where this was going.  As we followed the family on the journey and I felt that, like the Moliere, I could guess what would happen at the end, but I didn’t want to know because it would be heartbreaking.   The stage was fairly bleak with an interesting use of multimedia to portray the American Dream, which was an ironic commentary on what was actually happening.  The stage started as a wheat field and became a road, a barn and the camps.   The car which moved around the stage representing the long and difficult journey where death visits the family on the way to a kind of promised land which is really an illusion. 

I think English Touring Theatre’s approach has its place, but I feel it needs to be alongside other types of approaches to text-based drama such as Belt Up and Kneehigh, and what is happening at the National Theatre, Donmar and RSC.

Reviews and Previews: The Hypochondriac

Preview of The Hypochondriac in York Press
The Hypochondriac reviewed on York Press

 

Reviews and Previews: The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath at Chichester reviewed in The Stage
Evening Standard on The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath at Chichester reviewed in The Telegraph
WoS The Grapes of Wrath at Chichester

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Krapp's Last Tape (York Theatre Royal, Friday 23rd October 2009)

This was a very well-played piece, which worked beautifully in York Theatre Royal studio space.  The thing with Beckett is that you find yourself laughing when you feel maybe you shouldn’t.  A member of the audience felt that he has to leave early because he had a fit of giggles at the start of the performance, but I think that laughing when watching a Beckett play isn’t a problem at all.   There is some slapstick in the play with an obvious play on the old  banana skin joke.  Yet, as well as the comedy, there are also some very  serious moments, as the play explores growing old as an old man reflects on his youth and he is clearly now so very lonely.   The crackling of the tape as it reaches the end of the spool becomes a metaphor for the end of Krapp’s life.   The tape has finished, silence is approaching and at the end of the play Krapp leaves the stage looking so shockingly pale, we feel that we are witnessing the last moments of his  life.

When discussing playing Krapp, Harold Pinter spoke of the texture of the word ‘spool’ as the word  rolls off the tongue and the vowel sounds of the word are as delight to hear.   In this production, Kenneth Alan Taylor really makes the most of saying, ‘spool’ and demonstrating the wonderful texture of Beckett’s words.  There are some exquisite moments in this production, such as the dark shadow Krapp casts as he drinks off stage, and it felt so much like it represented the darkness that the drink brings to people’s lives, and that that drink has  literally overshadowed Krapp’s life. 

Though Krapp’s Last Tape is a short piece every word, action and pause is a delight to hear or see and this was really brought out in this production through Taylor’s lovely performance in the title role.

Reviews and Previews

Review in York Press of Krapp’s Last Tape
Preview of Krapp’s Last Tape in York Press
Krapp’s Last Tape in York Press

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The Trial (York Theatre Royal, 8th October 2009)

As I stand outside York Theatre Royal in the chill of the evening, I have no idea where I am going.  The interval crowd from Equus has inhabited the foyer bar and it is clear that Belt Up’s The Trial will not be using the front of stage of the Theatre Royal as mentioned on my ticket.  There’s only a few of us waiting outside with an odd smoker from the main house production.  Then the bowler hatted  little man  carrying his umbrella and brief case whistles as he walks by us.  We start to follow him and we must have looked like a strange group of people following this funny looking man down a street in York.  Of course this is Josef K and the story has just begun….

I don’t want to blog about this piece of theatre in the usual way, because the whole experience builds on tension surprise and challenging the audience.  To try and explain, or even offer my own thoughts on how I experienced this work, would spoil it for other theatre goers.  It was a piece of theatre which considered the use of space and the audience’s role in theatre.  It, like Shared Experience’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, made the story telling central to what it was trying to achieve.  I was gripped and would recommend anyone to see this production of The Trial if the opportunity arises.   I didn’t have nightmares, but the images keep coming into my head and I keep thinking that I might just see the little man walking by as he whistles on his way to work. and it will all start again.

Reviews and Previews

The Trial (Belt Up) Guardian review
York Press on Trial and The Tartuffe

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