Why This Is Hell

Another one of those, "I didn't realise he was still alive moments" - though, of course, now he isn't.

N.F. Simpson


http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/aug/31/nf-simpson-obituary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2011/aug/31/nf-simpson-english-dramatist?intcmp=239

I'm guessing I've seen each episode of the original sitcoms three or four times over the last (good grief) thirty years, although I probably didn't see them all on the first run. Curiously I've never felt them dated - even in the The Thick of It era - as some element has chimed with a news item either just before or after and become relevant again. But whilst it tapped into our belief about the intransigence of bureaucracy and the civil service, the joy was in the language. For me seeing it as a play was a bit of a fear - I get a very fixed view of voices, especially from the radio, and so (say), I didn't get on with film versions of Hitch Hikers Guide or The Lord of the Rings, because the voices were all wrong. Similarly, Tamsin Grieg remains a six foot tall leggy blonde, which makes watching her impossible. And with Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne both dead and Derek Fowlds old enough to play the Hawthorne role, recasting is necessary.

Henry Goodman is closest to the supercilious Sir Humphrey, perhaps too supercilious, where Hawthorne felt effortless, and he pulls off the various set piece long speeches with aplomb - and we are toyed with as a couple of long speeches get interrupted by Jim Hacker. David Haig plays Hacker with more anger than Eddington brought to the role of prime minister, but then he is in hotter water, but also more despair. He has to turn on a sixpence, as he moves from self-congratulations because he has been brave, to self-denigration because he has been brave. The stakes also have to be raised because there was a trajectory in the shift from Yes Minister to Yes Prime Minister where the more increasingly experienced Hacker got to win some weeks. And failure, of course, is funnier than success. Meanwhile Bernard, naive in the original and still with ethics, is here much more of a moraliser, and has fewer of the scene stealing lines than the original. Something about Jonathan Slinger doesn't quite work in the role - less likable somehow.

To fill two hours a more complex plot than normal is required: a prime minister in a coalition with a small majority, facing back bench revolts and hearing of an illegal immigrant on his Chequers staff, is chairing EU crisis talks. A solution is offered - an obscure former Soviet state is offering trillions of euros in return for promised purchases of oil and the building of a pipeline across all of Europe. The snag comes when their foreign minister requests an underaged girl to be procured for as the deal maker - will the state turn pimp to save its ass? In an age of extreme rendition and waterboarding, of duckhouse expense claims and free rail travel for mistressese, I'm not sure this would be as bigger jump as it might have been a couple of decades ago. All too often staire feels like documentary.

But the verbal and political battles are fun and interweave, even if I was ahead of the characters in one of the solutions which get explored. I felt sorry for the actor that had to come on quite so late and impersonate Paxman, although if this at least had been a Martha Kearny it would have added a second woman to the otherwise all male cast (Emily Joyce as the special advisor felt a bit of a weak link, and Hacker's wife is not mentioned). The self-congratulation after the live interview could, of course, have been undercut by Hacker forgetting his mike.

This is, I think, a play that works in its own terms, independent of the original, and I'm guessing Jonathan Lynn as director and co-writer was able to add lines at the last minute to reflect more recent events. However, I think the sitcom version is still sharper.

Sat 30 Jan 7.45pm David O’Doherty
Thur 4 Feb 7.45pm Pappy’s Fun Club
Sat 13 Feb 7.45pm Tom Wrigglesworth's Open Return Letter to Richard Branson
Thur 18 Feb 7.45pm Chris Addison
Wed 10 Mar 7.45pm Jo Caulfield
Thur 25 March 7.45pm John Bishop
Sat 27 Mar 7.45pm John Hegley
Sat 17 Apr 7.45pm Andrew Clover
Tue 20 Apr 7.45pm Katy Brand’s Big Ass Tour
Sat 24 Apr 7.45 Stewart Francis
Wed 5 May 7.45pm Morecambe - The Man What Brought Us Sunshine

Not quite a cultural day as planned - I caught earlier trains there and back so I was in London for 10.30, but in need of coffee. Not having found any Cafe Nerds in the Bankside vicinity (but two Starbucks) I failed to complete my loyalty card but did mark a third dissertation after two on the train (am slow at these).

Thence to Rodchenko & Popova, two Russian artists from the dawn of the Soviet age, who engaged in non-objective painting, sculpture and I guess typography. Lots of triangles and lines painted onto canvas - the sort of thing that makes you feel you could do this. Not exactly disappointing - worth the fiver it cost me avec Art Fund card - but I didn't feel I needed the catalogue.

Then, delayed by a 99, I have an hour to walk to Haymarket, and buy lunch. I had ten minutes to spare, and the Upper Circle feels vertiginous when you are winded from a fast walk. On the other hand, I suspect there was no Tube route that would have been that quicker.

I don't think I've seen Waiting for Godot since a school production, in the round, so it was interesting to see how a major production would handle it. The set looked like a bombed out tenement, all grays and shadows, concrete and a lone tree, on a rake. Didi (Stewart) and Gogo (McKellen) are the two bowler hatted tramps, not quite as Laurel and Hardy as they could be, and not quite as music hall in the patter - Didi is more performative, especially on his own, and in the second half. The post curtain call exit owes something to Underneath the Arches routines.

Didi is the more cheerful of the two, the one who risks being brought down; Gogo, on the other hand, is Northern grim, looking on the dark side, seeing the cloud to every silver lining. He's also got less of the gift of the gab, relying on repetition in the tennis match of dialogue. It's a dependent relationship, one can't live without the other, as they wait together for the unseen Godot. Always it's tempting to read for metaphor - the living each day as if it's the last, the risk of dying in a state of sin (why else the speculation on the fate of the crucified thief mentioned by two of the evangelists?). And yet - Pozzo (Simon Callow, perfectly cast) and Lucky (Ronald Pickup - you'd know his face if you've seen any Dickens, or any ongoing British crime series) cut across this. Another dependent relationship - the master who cannot live without his slave, though the slave has no agency but to kick. If Waiting for Godot is a play where nothing happens twice, and The Tempest where nothing happens once, then Lucky is Caliban. He knows how to curse - or at least to kick and stamp - and gets the longest speech in the play. It's a thankless part, but he did get a round of applause so maybe not. Are they an older version of Didi and Gogo?

If the play were pure fantasy we wouldn't seek for subtext.

Rewatching, it's striking how far Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are Dead lifts conceits and techniques, although it's tempered by the Hamlet intertext. Still, Hamlet feels like a ghost behind this play, in conversations about graves, in looking at clouds, in passing the time.

Then, after a slow exit (so many stairs), a march back to Charing Cross to catch the earlier of the two trains I'd scoped out, rather than going to the National to do the Picasso prints, or to the Haymarket Cafe Nerd. In fact, the previous train is still there, and I sneak on it, although without more than an apple and the dregs of water. I mark the remaining dissertation I have with me.

At Tesco (and here you need to insert the four letter f word, the six letter f word, at least two different four letter c words and a side order of seven letter c words, not to mention the b word (six, seven, and indeed nine) and even, I'm afraid, the twelve letter s word) to buy tea - and there are no tills. I am forced to use the self-scan; the first item won't. Five minutes later help arrives. Then I keep getting into a loop where it keeps asking for a Club Card - it cannot compute that the credit card is the clubcard but I want to pay with a debit card (and I wanted cash back). Fifteen sodding minutes. Leaving aside the queuing.

Thence to pub, and too many pints.

"I'm in my underwear, in the dark, smeared with mash potato, alongside a lot of very confused middle class people."

"That's the audience, they're used to that"




Well, what do we think we've learnt? That the Lee and Herring audience is aging badly? That the audience for the follow-up (maybe a couple of projects further than that) to Jerry Springer: The Opera makes the Radio 4 audience for Hardy, Hamilton and so on look positively young and vibrant? That you can attract a class of people by anything with Elizabeth in the title? Or that people of a certain tendency are less likely to leave in the interval than you might have expected. But it wasn't the audience I expected.

Coming with less than ecstatic reviews from Edinburgh, this is initially dominated by Sir Walter Raleigh (Miles Jupp) in a Letterman mode, complete with house musician Little Meat from Virginia, and a precis (a slide show) of his life and honours to date. This featured Jimmy Carr in the slides as clown Will Kemp, a remarkably satiric touch, and much celebration of the potato (including a musical medley, "All You Need is Spuds" etc.))

After a remarkably lengthy time, he introduces Elizabeth (Simon Munnery), expecting a proposal of marriage, but in fact getting a death sentence. This Elizabeth is clearly more historically accurate than the version in The Tudors will be if it gets that far, but owes a debt to Miranda Richardson Blackadder II rather more than Glenda Jackson or Cate Blanchett. We get the mangled Tilbury speech, in which further organs are added to the heart bit, and we get an acknowledgement of how if one's mother is executed by one's father when one is three it's hardly convincing that one has commitment issues.

The piece is hardly long enough to need an interval, but the flashback adds to the jokes about it being a play (Elizabeth also notes she is being played by a man; there is a distinct shout out to Ben Elton and Richard Curtis), but the second "half" brings a splendid re-enactment of the Spanish Armada, with galleons for hats. (Note to self: work on ten galleon hat joke.) The dry ice choked about half the audience, mind. The ending risks getting very dark - and is in part dependent on how well you know your history - but is wrnched around to laughter in the end.

Perhaps it needs to be noted that the funniest bits were (apparently) ad libs (reactions to audience behavioir from seasoned comedy performers) and local references (a pint of Spitfire, Raleigh's drawn and quartered body being spread across the campus and dumped in the Venue - the nightclub - to give real meaning to the term "Meat market".)

I've not read this play since, ooh, probably about 1990, but this was not the week to do so - although it was entirely suitable to watch a play about an academic selling his soul to the devil. The curious thing is that, having gained power to do want he wants, Faustus merely kicks Charles V in the arse, spits at the pope, snogs Helen of Troy and sells someone a soluble horse. It's not exactly a twenty-four year Reich.

This was an amateur production with a cast of about thirty, most of whom were an ensemble of pyjama-clad post holders (stake holders?) who we first glimpse on stage humming before the start of the play, whilst a (black, female) prince of darkness stalks around like a refugee from Cats at the <ahem> Marlowe Theatre. Each of them doubles as students, deadly sins, popes, kings, people who want to buy non-soluble horses and so forth, but mostly they lumber (sorry) around the stage, sometimes being walls with their posts, sometimes being trees, sometimes (a nice touch) being stairs, and other times <gak> drowning out the dialogue by hammering on the stage. The battle with Alexander the Great was neat though.

Faustus didn't double but, although Tom Hughes is to be commended for remembering so much "dialogue" (I'll return to this), I never believed he was a smart man, never believed he was in agony and never cared he was damned. I'm sure you're meant to. He also botched his first entrance - although there were some kids who were very late so he might as well have started again. Mephistofeles, Lucifer and the prince of darkness were the one part played by their respective (female) actors.

When you cast the Devil, two fallen angels and all seven deadly sins as female and all the mortals (excepting Helen of Troy and Alexander's girlf) as male you wonder if there's a subtext.

As I haven't read the play since the 1990s I can't tell how far it was cut or reshaped (I can't say if it was A or B text even) but what struck me was it was more comfortable with spectacle than drama, with the posts dominating the stage and slowing things down (just short of 90 minutes, without interval). Faustus has monologues, rather than even soliloqies, and responses which I suspect were put in the mouths of named characters who came and went in the text are given to the chorus - save for the odd moment when they change pyjamas and became named characters. I wonder whether Marlowe was more exposed to masques than plays at King's School and Cambridge. (There surely must have been guild based mystery plays in the 1570s and 1580s - brisingamen would know - and they did have characters interacting.) Marlowe's tendency is to go for the long speech - stuffed with Latin and allusion - and clanks in comparison to the relative Pinteresque naturalism of Shakespeare (that Pinteresque is a joke, but only just). Most of the time, though, the iambs didn't pent.

In the end, then, disappointing: a Brechtian experience without even the consolation of much sense of thought being provoked.

We'd watched Glengarry Glen Ross a few weeks back - well, August, and a rewatch on my part. It's got a cast to die for: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey, plus Alec Baldwin in a cameo and, hey, Jonathan Pryce plays a role where he hardly gets to say a word. It's Death of a Salesman eighties styley - a group of salesmen trying to convert tired leads into confirmed sales, and only the successful can be given the decent leads. Lemmon's on a losing streak, hasn't closed for weeks, is desperate. Harris is fed up with all this bullshit - reckons someone should steal those leads, take them elsewhere, sell them. Especially after Baldwin gives them the motivational speech. ( Cut for Language )

After a certain amount of toing and froing (we'd seen it recently, plus I fancied Christian Slater in Swimming with Sharks or Mark Thomas on the last night of his stand up) I got tickets for this, and tried to pick them up the day before - apparently you have to queue on the night. This wasn't a problem - we wandered through Shaftesbury Avenue, and failed to find that pizza restaurant in Piccadilly, indeed actually found few restaurants (the only food-free block in the West End, as if it were owned by ex-Quakers who had turned to drink but frowned on eating), popped into a Soho bookshop to look at the remainders and got to the theatre to find we had been upgraded from balcony to rear dress circle. We'd been bumped.

The play is less frantic than the film - whereas there's a whole lot of the salesmen intercut on the screen, the first half here is a series of dialogues between paired characters, such that you wonder if, say, Jonathan Pryce is just in the one scene. There are long pauses as the set changes - a slightly different diner. I think I'd stage it a bit less we're-in-a-different-place, or at least tie it up with music. (I remember the scene changes in Sexual Perversity in Chicago when I ASMed it - and I remember being caught on stage when the sound man triggered the lights.)

But it's a masterpiece of dialogue - not quite ever overlapping but as tight as can be short of that. There's no space for blowing a line, or stumbling. It must take forever to learn it. I don't think Pryce was quite as strong as Lemmon, but he does do the saggy, tired, burnt-out case very well. Aiden Gillen managed to perform without too much of the ghost of Al Pacino behind him - and since he is a graduate of Queer as Folk, there was a frisson of amusement with his use of the word "queer".

In the second half we get to the office of the salesmen, after a break-in in which the good leads have been stolen. Everyone is under suspicion, and Pryce is ecstatic because he has made a sale. It shifts from dialogues to ensemble and back again, as Mamet seems more comfortable with the head to head. As in the film, there's a sense of hopelessness to it all, as nbo one can come out of it very well. And then there's the shiver running through the audience as characters light up cigarettes.

There is, alas, no motivational speech - that was one of the ways that the play was opened out - and in fact the whole thing is not much more than a hour in length. Of course, if this were Pinter, it would be two hours, and perhaps the amount of dialogue means that you wouldn't want much more.

I fell out of love with theatre some years ago, but this was a very enjoyable experience. Maybe I should try and see more of it.