2014 Issue 3 Tuesday 15th April

NoisesOFF

Photo (c) Aenne Pallasca

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Today’s Contents3 Editorial

4 Reviews - Jerusalem

5 Reviews - Road

7 Reviews - Nothing

8 Reviews - The Duck Pond

11 The Attractions of Pornography

12 A Total Culture Secretary

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Editorial #2: ownership and imagination Andrew Haydon, Editor

British theatre, or perhaps just British theatre-journalism, thrives on spurious binaries. Perhaps largely because they’re so easy to knock up, and can then be used to create dynamic-seeming tensions in what is really just one long rolling news story which is: “Another Play Opens!”.

Consider the first five productions (on Red Route): Americana, Your Fragrant Phantom, Duck Pond, Jerusalem and Road. Leaving aside questions of success (and 4/5 being enormous successes is an excellent hit-rate). One one hand there are the postmodern patchwork shows about versions of America and a sort of Russia/Germany/Fairyland (Americana, YFP, Duck Pond) and on the other hand, the solid extant scripts about Britain (Jerusalem, Road). And then, within the two British plays there is the 23-year gulf between these two Royal Court state-of-England plays. A gulf which pretty much covers all the years that students at this festival have been alive. (Although I was reminded that for current students, even Jerusalem possibly already feels a bit like a “classic text from the recent past” as Blasted did to me when I was a student – something I’d never seen, but which already had a massive reputation. Ditto ENRON and Punk Rock later in the week, perhaps.)

Part of me wonders which difference is more interesting and/or significant: the fact that companies using “abroad” to explain their take on *now* to us use a whole raft of pastiche, postmodernism, and different registers, while the only plays explicitly *about* England are script-based; or, are the differences between Jerusalem and Road (aside from the fact that the acting in Road was even better than the acting in Pornography, while the acting in Jerusalem was less good than the acting in pornography) the bigger story?

All these differences were crystallised by a question in this afternoon’s discussion. A Festgoer

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Jerusalem possibly already feels a bit like a “classic text from the recent past” as Blasted did to me when I was a student

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asked the Americana company: “I’d like to know how many of the company have ever been to an American High School.” (The musical is set in one.) In the high-pressure environment of the discussion format, what Hungry Bitches Productions didn’t quite say was: “Well, in terms of our musical, while we’re clearly dealing with real-world issues and problems, our musical isn’t set in a *real* American High School; it’s set in the films, television series, pop music with which American cultural imperialism has ensured we are all familiar.” Americana is a work of the imagination. As such, it is more honest than any of the documentaries that the company used as inspiration and to research their roles as the hyper-real religious fundamentalists, jocks, Queers, goths, and so on.

Similarly – as satirised elsewhere in this magazine – withWings’s familiarity with human/rubber-duck transformation presumably remains entirely hypothetical and White Slate Theatre’s lives in the 1920s have been mostly made up.

On the other hand, playwright Jim Cartwright’s relationship with the north of England is a very real cornerstone to his work, and the cast of the original 1986 Royal Court production was peopled mostly with actors hailing from similar locations to the play (apart from Edward Tudor-Pole, who’s a

member of the Royal Family, isn’t he?). Similarly, Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem was based on some *real* local character the author had heard about/met.

While Road and Jerusalem are also, ultimately, both works of imagination, what I found most fascinating was the difference in how easily

owned by their respective student companies they seemed to be. Perhaps it’s just a matter that Jerusalem is “too soon”, but the fact that it had a near-identical set to last year’s student production, which had a near-identical set to the West End production – with diminishing levels of execution up to this year’s Johnny Byron living in

a papier mâché potato. Put simply, I just don’t get why anyone would want to do Jerusalem. And not just because I think it’s a lousy play (although it is), but because no one appears to want to do or say anything with it or about it. *Of course* there’s a life for Jerusalem beyond Rylance, but it depends on the director who takes it on not just wanting to be a less integral Ian Rickson (the piece’s original director, but also the man who commissioned it and worked closely with Butterworth on the drafts).

And I think this is a binary that does count: either you own your production or you don’t. And if you don’t, it fails. And ownership is an act of creative imagination.

Photo (c) Aenne Pallasca

Off the MarkBilly Barrett

Do you have to do Rylance to do Jerusalem?

Minotaur Theatre seem to think so. A young Johnny Byron does his best in this production, but his imitation inevitably falls short of the mark. Jonathan Moss is broody, but hardly enigmatic – clearly rural, but occasionally Welsh. He leads a game but uncharismatic cast, whose varying regional accents and uninspired direction make the play’s sprawling, three hour runtime something to be endured. Shakespeare’s cut for performance, so let’s not get too precious about Jez Butterworth.

It’s odd that Jerusalem is so popular with student companies, since it depends so heavily on the magnetism of its older central character. Here the age gap between the fading Pied Piper of Flintock and his ragtag bunch of teenagers is far from obvious, and it’s difficult to see what pulls them to him in the first place. The play’s also shamelessly male-centric, a state-of-man-and-nation circle jerk with little time for its female characters. This is a shame for the company’s actresses, since they give as good as the boys here but barely get a look in.

Having an assistant director can offer another view and produce more dynamic work. Milli

Bhatia and director Benjamin Rogers clearly have an understanding of theatricality, but their two perspectives converge at the tedious middle of the road. The movement sequences are fun, particularly a military-style roll call and a strobe-lit forest rave before the opening scene – it’s just a shame this energy doesn’t carry into the play’s action. In essence, it’s a hazy facsimile of the show’s original Royal Court production, missing more than just a few chickens and a tortoise. There’s a dispiriting refusal to reinvestigate the text or break the rules of how the play is conventionally – and relentlessly – done.

Can a play survive a legendary first run? It’s difficult to know where to go with Jerusalem and how much blame to lay at this company’s door. A few people have suggested a cross-cast Jenny “Rooster” Byron or switching up the location – anything to give it back a necessary spark. But really, the best option’s just to give it a rest for a while. It seems we can’t stop the play cropping up in student circles at the moment – or at NSDF – but if you’re weighing up which Jerusalem to see, I’d put a big English red cross through this one.

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Photo (c) Aenne Pallasca

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The Straight RoadJoseph Schofield

Warwick University Drama Society’s production of Jim Cartwright’s Road is ably performed by its cast of nine, who mostly manage the multiple roles that the long list of characters demands, and there are some stand-out performances. Angus Imrie’s Skin-Lad, for example, is confident and vicious, yet his delivery shows some restraint in a scene that would be easy to play far more loudly. Sadly, not every character is quite so convincing, and while it must be difficult to play characters with such a breadth of age and experience when the cast are all students, the show would have benefited from more work on the physicality of the characters.

Performed in promenade, the company make full use of their space and, despite the usual problems of promenade, like trying to peer through the rest of the audience in order to see, the choice allowed for some great moments of cast-audience interaction. A particular crowd-pleaser is the 80s disco that lasts the duration of the interval, where the audience and the cast all dance together. This is a really great touch and an excellent way to occupy the space and make the interval something more than a toilet break.

WUDS stage Road well – excellently in fact – yet I was disappointed that a play so charged with emotion and universal human experience fails to speak to the present in any way. Road is angry. We stumble along the titular road, led by

the (mostly) well-intentioned Scullery, bearing witness to life at the bottom in Thatcher’s Britain. Cartwright’s play is deeply rooted in the North; we know that the road is in Lancashire but, beyond that knowledge, the ambiguity of setting creates a sense of the universality of

this shared experience – this is but one road, one collection of experiences, among a thousand similar situations. The characters, collectively, are angry, disappointed, scared, crushed, bitter and defeated. It may be cliché to draw comparisons between Thatcher’s Britain and our own recent economic troubles, yet

this production of Road seems to miss a huge opportunity to say something about our own time and our own condition.

There is a sense that WUDS don’t really know why they are doing

this play – maybe they aren’t doing it for any deeper

reason other than that they like the script – and so it remains very attached to the original context, diluting any message. Road is about

so much more than just the characters and their

individual stories; they aren’t archetypes, or stereotypes, but

their experiences are representative of a people betrayed. This production plays it straight and safe and this is its only real flaw.

Ultimately, Warwick’s Road is well-staged and well-acted, an enjoyable piece of theatre. It is a shame that they have played it safe, but the cast deserve huge congratulations for a believable and confident performance.

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Road seems to miss a huge opportunity to say something about our own time and our own condition

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Photo (c) Giulia Delprat

Acting PornAdam Foster

Forget poverty porn, this is acting porn. Warwick University Drama Society’s production of Jim Cartwright’s syllabus favourite Road boasts some of the finest performances I have seen at this level.

Cartwright’s play is a despairing snapshot of Thatcher-era poverty. Written for promenade, it follows the lives of a group of people living on the same deprived street in a working class area of Lancashire. Formally, it reminded me of the second act of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, in which the socio-cultural complexity of the time period is reflected in its looser form. Cartwright, too, deploys a looseness of form, dispensing with a clear narrative structure in favour of a succession of scenes and monologues. Apart from anything else, this is a form which lends itself perfectly to a showcase of acting talent, which this production has by the bucket load.

Nima Taleghani, Beth Holmes, Ed Franklin, Charlotte Thomas, Victoria Watson, Angus Imrie, Tom Bulpett, Daisy Gilbert and Jack Perkins are all outstanding. In truth, I have rarely seen an ensemble of actors give performances of this calibre across the board. Collectively, they demonstrate versatility, spontaneity and an effortlessness so often found wanting in the realm of student theatre.

The biggest compliment I can give the director and the rest of the production team is that I barely noticed their presence. Ali Pidsley’s production navigates the demands of the promenade form with increasing clarity, but the production’s focus is clearly on the performances, which he directs with admirable selflessness.

Cartwright’s play is crammed with finely crafted scenes and speeches, but the two long scenes which bookend each act stand out, bringing

to mind the work of playwright Robert Holman on account of their length

and emotional precision. Joey (Ed Franklin) has spent a

week in bed refusing to eat when his girlfriend Clare (Charlotte Thomas) decides to join him in his protest. While they have no reason to starve themselves, they can see

no reason not to. Franklin and Thomas balance the

tragic reality of the scene with a cosy camaraderie, and

Franklin’s anguished scream at the end of the scene is gut wrenching in its intensity.

If the first act ends in desolation, the second concludes with a rallying cry of defiant optimism. Eddie (Tom Bulpett) and Brink (Angus Imrie) have brought Carol (Victoria Watson) and Louise (Beth Holmes) back to their house to ply them with wine, with the promise of “getting their end away”. It may be the longest scene of the play, but it’s a masterclass in understatement and feeling. What begins as a strangely familiar set-up moves beyond run-of-the-mill when they fire up the record player to play Otis Redding’s rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness”. As the record ends, they take it in turn to vent their rage until they are chanting, together, obsessively, “Somehow I somehow I somehow might escape.”

As is exemplified by its swift transition from stage to screen, Road is a play that would work perfectly well on television, but Carthwright’s call to arms confirms the enduring power of theatre and reminds us what a radical act of a group of people gathering in a room together can be. Sheer understated brilliance.

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Photo (c) Giulia Delprat

From Russia with DucksBilly Barrett

One of a cluster of companies making homespun, child-like theatre for adults, withWings have already made quite a splash with new show The Duck Pond.

This adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake recasts the white swan as Odin, a plastic duck who becomes a man under moonlight for our bachelor prince. Set between the palace and a backwoods-kitsch Russian fairground, The Duck Pond is a Little Bulb-y, Knee High-ish flight into the imagination, with fairytale quirk that steers well clear of twee.

There’s a crafty wonder to its staging; a glowing balloon on a stick stands in for the moon and a hole in the hook-a-duck pond lets Odin dive underwater. We’re very much invited to the party, being given a cake for the prince’s birthday and having to open a series of presents to unveil key props. Like a swimming duck, the cast’s hard work goes on mostly beneath the surface of this piece, and while the show glides playfully along it’s easy to feel they’re having as much fun as we are.

There are no swans and these aren’t trained dancers, but The Duck Pond is still a ballet – of sorts. The choreography’s a whimsical spin on the traditional, pulled off with amateurish joy and underscored by Tom Figgins’ dark, live soundtrack. Winking ballet take-off generally flows smoothly into emotive dance, though a sequence with the Queen straddling Seigfried feels a little crowbarred in – and Oedipal.

Knowledge of the source material isn’t required, but those in the know will pick up rippling divergences of its plot and set pieces. The duck’s a man, for starters, and his pas de deux with the prince makes a lovely image. Aside from the odd line, there’s refreshingly little dwelling on the fact this is a love story between two men – the real obstacle in their relationship is that one of them’s a sort of plastic were-duck.

The piece’s most admirable achievement is its ability to trigger gut-punching emotion with such outlandish material. The doomed pair’s fate is properly upsetting, getting this ballet’s balance of comedy and tragedy totally en pointe.

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Ducking MarvellousGeorgia Snow

Whoever thought Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake was inaccessible will have to eat their hat, along with some birthday cake, in withWings’ The Duck Pond; a reimagining of the classic ballet.

For his 21st birthday, Prince Siegfried receives a visit from Rothbart’s mysterious travelling fairground. The young prince (James Bennett) soon meets and falls in love with Odin (Tom Coxon), a man at the harsh end of Rothbart’s (Tom Figgins) evil sorcery, who transforms into a rubber duck by day.

The company are hugely watchable and are as captivating as the clownish travelling troupe as they are in the show’s more emotive moments. For an adaptation of a ballet, the dance elements contain a surprisingly eclectic mix of styles and influences, catapulting us into this upside down existence.

One of the joys of withWings’ work is the rawness with which the physical theatre is executed. The show is meticulously choreographed and structured, and it is within this that they are able to experiment with forceful and impassioned physicality.

It blends this physical theatre with live music in a way that has more than a passing resemblance to RashDash’s work. In a similar sort of way, it makes the swift transition from silly to serious, ensuring our emotions are invested even before we realise it ourselves.

Taking inspiration both from Swan Lake and from German folk tale The Stolen Veil, The Duck Pond uses its classical influences to connect with an audience familiar with both pieces, as well as reaching out to those for whom the story is less recognisable.

withWings play with Tchaikovsky’s musical theme with an intelligence that, while occasionally bordering on the ridiculous, is no less impressive in its originality. They manage to integrate a tender emotional development that goes from silly and clownish to incredibly moving in a mere 32 fouettés.

Wildly creative, it’s undeniable that the withWings’ touch brings something truly memorable to Tchaikovsky’s original, and while The Duck Pond could benefit from further development and a bit of tightening up, it delivers humour, warmth and bags of charm.

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Discomfort in NothingRachael Murray

Barrel Organ Theatre’s Nothing is a series of eight monologues, performed with the actors scattered throughout the audience, with the actors able to start, stop, talk over and interrupt each other as they see fit. The delivery of these monologues is incredibly strong throughout – all of them capturing the peculiar arrogance of young people explaining how a relatively common trait (whether it be obsession over tattoos, a non-specific anger at the world, or feeling invisible) is entirely unique and fascinating.

The running theme between each piece is “people who feel alienated or disconnected from the world around them”, and this is explored widely – sometimes more successfully than others. Film-Lover and Thief both come out with lines that sound a bit like the punch lines of a mediocre stand-up comic (“Their entire house was so … IKEA. Do you get what I mean? Haha, get what I mean?” “So I sent him a stripper dressed as a therapist, that’s funny, right?”), but ultimately told the quite sad story of two men isolating themselves by, frankly, being thoroughly unlikable and pig-headed.

The Patient and BFF both dealt with sexual assault in a brutal but compelling way, though I feel like I couldn’t appreciate the latter, as I could only hear the disembodied voice coming from behind a crowd of uncomfortable audience members. The highlight performances had to be Bryony Davies’ Vandal and Katherine Thorogood’s Stalker – both presenting flawed but at the same time also incredibly tender young women having trouble being comfortable with how they fit in to the world.

With the staging of Nothing, I feel like the company possibly fall a little short of their manifesto. They promise that “the audience

will be active”, but they really weren’t any more active than they would have been sat down in a traditional theatre space with the performers on stage. It would be brilliant if the characters

actually interacted with the audience beyond intense eye contact – entered into a dialogue with them, as I had been expecting them to.

There is, of course, an argument to be made that it’s up to the audience to use their initiative when it comes to participation, but it really never felt like we were

permitted to do anything but sit and watch as they performed. Of course, this isn’t really a bad thing – the performance was thoroughly enjoyable to watch and wasn’t lacking for lack of interaction – but I was left wondering why they had chosen to have the audience uncomfortable and self-conscious, sat on the floor under the house lights.

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It would be brilliant if the characters actually interacted with the audience beyond intense eye contact

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The Attractions of Pornography Catherine Love

What is it about Rooster Byron? For the second NSDF in a row – and only a little over two years after the show’s second West End run – a production of Jerusalem has found its way into the programme.

This is extraordinary enough given the sheer proximity of the piece, but even more extraordinary when you consider the critical acclaim of the original production and the towering performance of Mark Rylance as its idiosyncratic protagonist. Boots don’t come much bigger than that, yet it seems there are plenty of students wanting to fill them.

It’s not surprising that certain plays and playwrights crop up time and again in student productions. The school or university is a very particular context for making work, carrying with it certain demands; big casts are a plus, as are pieces that lend themselves to new interpretations. But while Jerusalem ticks the first box, it falters on the second. The original production is intimidating enough, but even just on the page Jez Butterworth’s play does not particularly invite directorial flourishes or daring reimaginings. That’s not to say that it would be impossible to break away from the production style established by the Royal Court, but it is not a play that asks to be radically reshaped in its staging.

A useful comparison is the work of student and NSDF favourite Simon Stephens, who is famously open to bold reinterpretations of his plays. Pornography, for example, is begging for directorial intervention – it cannot be staged otherwise. It’s surely no coincidence that the play

has already had two outings at NSDF since its 2007 premiere. It is also easy to see why Stephens’ output in general might appeal to student theatre-makers and audiences. His plays are vital, angry and absolutely rooted in the cultural, social and political landscape of the 21st century.

And that’s without even mentioning the extent to which Stephens’ work deals directly with teenage experience.

Jerusalem, on the other hand, is a feast of problematic – and decidedly male – nostalgia for an England that never really was. Other than his sheer charisma, what is there in Rooster Byron’s world that speaks to young audiences? Uneasy in its politics and potentially dodgy in its discussion of English nationalism, you would not have thought that Butterworth’s sprawling, wordy play would immediately appeal to the student groups presenting it here at NSDF this year and last.

This is not a play that asks to be radically reshaped in its staging.

Photo (c) Aenne Pallasca

Photo (c) Giulia Delprato

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Perhaps it is simply Jerusalem’s reputation and popular success that draw attention to it, but more and more I suspect that its acclaim had a hell of a lot (if not all) to do with Rylance.

Of course, opting for a play that has previously been a commercial and critical success does not necessarily mean that a new production will play it safe. Any text has the possibility of being exploded in a radical new version. Student productions of Jerusalem, however, seem to largely go in for diluted versions of the Rylance powerhouse, essentially replicating Ian Rickson’s original interpretation with the resources at their disposal.

The question this ultimately raises is why? A straightforward but brilliantly executed new version of an existing play can be an extraordinary thing in its own right, as Warwick University Drama Society’s remarkable production of Road ably demonstrates. But trying to simply match the performances in the original is an almost guaranteed way for companies to set themselves up for a fall. All credit to anyone ambitious enough to attempt moving out of Rylance’s shadow, but it would be no great shame if those feet were to refrain from walking upon England’s mountains green for a few years.

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A Total Culture SecretarySajid Javid, Culture Secretary, in his ongoing series about his experiences at NSDF. As told to Richard Dennis.

Innovation in business is a double-edged sword. Every new idea is a risk, and the first thought in an investor’s mind must always be: “Is there a market for this?” There’s no point making something if it isn’t going to appeal to the largest possible range of customers, because without customers there is no money, and without money there is no value, and without value there is no meaning.

It’s very much the same in the arts, as I’ve discovered in my three days at the NSDFs. If your show isn’t guaranteed to appeal to the largest possible audience, then where is the economic benefit? What’s the point of doing it? I hadn’t heard of the play Jerusalem until today, but I’ve been informed that the original production was one of the most financially successful British plays of the past ten years, so I salute the ingenuity of the Minotaur Theatre Company (MTC) in putting on their own version and cashing in on the strength of the Jerusalem brand.

The theatre industry seems to be remarkably open in terms of using other people’s ideas, and the MTC have exploited this gap in the market with precision. They’ve minimised their risks by choosing an already successful product to work with, and maximised their chances of brand recognition and revenue as a result. AAA credit ratings all round.

I have to confess, I was nervous as I went into the Ocean Room that I was about to witness a student take on the political situation in Israel. We’ve seen a lot of student “politics” in the news recently, and we all know how naïve and foolish students look when they try to tackle grown-up topics such as international relations, the deficit, austerity and privatisation.

So it was with great pleasure that I discovered instead that the subject of Jerusalem was a scathing look at the deplorable and pitiable lifestyles of the kind of benefit scroungers who prospered under New Labour and are breaking Britain. Rooster “John” Byron is a despicable

character of no moral worth or value. He lives in filth, supplies drugs and alcohol to minors, and even kidnaps a young girl from her devoted father. But it is perhaps above all his attempts to block the construction of new homes on his land that I found most objectionable, and selfish. Gloucestershire is a thriving county when it comes to the housing market, with many wealthy people retiring to the area, and city workers from London buying weekend houses there as well, increasing house prices and fuelling the economy. It is a crime that one awful man, who embodies nothing about the Great British spirit, could obstruct such economic progress, and I thank writer Jez Butterworth, the MTC, and the NSDFs for bringing attention to this issue.

The production itself was filled with knowing nuances and references to the lies these people call lives. I particularly liked the way the actor playing Rooster was wearing a brand new coat, jeans and desert boots, demonstrating how this character, supposedly too poor to even maintain his front lawn or caravan, could afford brand new clothes at a moment’s notice. That, I’m assured, is meta-theatre.

Overall, then, the MTC have demonstrated real intelligence and market awareness in their choice of play, and in their production they ably demonstrated what an awful, unsympathetic, criminal, disgusting, feckless, hopeless, violent, useless lot the poor are.

A shame the same can’t be said for Warwick University Drama’s production of Road, which I won’t say anything more about, apart from that it was absolute nonsense.