This is one I almost missed. I've seen three previous productions that director Daniel Kramer has directed - all revivals of plays that I love - Hair, Angels in America, Bent - and I found his vision to be uber gay and tacky. Question - how do you make Bent, a play about debauched homosexuals and Nazi concentration camps gayer? Have Daniel Kramer direct it and turn a few of the Nazis into raging queens, that's how.
Anyway, I have been a big fan of Joe Orton (Loot, Entertaining Mr Sloane, What the Butler Saw) for years, ever since I stumbled across a copy of John Lahr's biography of Orton Prick Up Your Ears in the mid eighties. SInce then I've read it numerous times and have been fascinated by the relationship between Orton and his lover/friend Kenneth Halliwell - what kept them together and the steps leading to Halliwell bludgeoning Orton in the head with a hammer in 1967. For me it has high psychological appeal.
I wasn't entirely thrilled with Stephen Frears film version of the story because it lacked balance. Halliwell seemed to be more of a foil than a major player and there was too much emphasis on the peripheral charcters and the writing of the biography. It was all very academic and high brow which is certainly not what Orton was all about. So, I was thrilled when I heard a stage adpatation was coming to the West End, then I was somewhat put off that Matt Lucas of Little Brittain fame was playing Halliwell. When I found out that Daniel Kramer was directing that nailed the coffin shut. Surely it would be a debauched, superficially gay review of Orton's life. I vowed not to attend.
What eventually got me to go along? First Matt Lucas dropped out for personal reasons, then, Con O'Neill (who I have seen in other productions - and most recently in the film Telstar which is a role he created on stage and was Olivier nominated for) was announced as the new Halliwell. Finally, they really dropped the prices for this transitional period. Well not so much dropped but there were a few offers out there that made it a very attractive proposition - fourth row centre for £15. Excellent. So I booked, I attended and it was excellent. It had all the elements - great script, excellent performances, good set and yes, even good direction. I was wrong to have stayed away.
On a single set that reproduces Orton and Halliwells single room Islington flat, with only three characters (the third being the stupendous Gwen Taylor as their downstairs neighbour Mrs Corden) Prick Up Your Ears managed to cover all the major points of their story from the time right before Orton and Halliwell went to prison for 'redesigning' library books to the murder. What sets this production apart from the film is it gives depth of character to both Orton and Halliwell. It charts the elements that caused friction between the two and helps us understand what their relationship was like, on a physical and emotional level. Halliwell is given an equal voice to Orton's, which oddly enough is what was not present in their lives at the time. He doesn't come across as the irritating and despised monster that the film depicts. In a recent interview Orton's sister remarked that Halliwell wasn't a hated man. I'm glad they put this right because watching Halliwell grasp at straws in various attempts to get Orton to make him feel worthy and needed gives the story a whole new perspective so you sympathise with him. I'm not condoning the behaviour but you understand why things happened the way they did.
All of this storytelling would be nothing without three strong leads. Chris New (who was also in Kramer's Bent and Richard Eyers The Reporter at the National Theatre) gives an energetic, bouyant and cheeky performance as Orton, and as I previously stated Gewn Taylor as the Mrs Corden pitches what could have been a stock performance of the cooky older femail neighbour just right. In fact, all those who know the story will recognise her character as inspriation for some of Orton's characters. This is fact and it's good that playwright Simon Bent picked up on it as well as other details from Orotn's life that influenced his work.
Another nice touch was the use of dialogue to get across background information. This technique is used alot but in this instance it works a charm. Not once do you feel pulled from the flow of the story to listen to lists of background information. It's all organic. Again, in lesser hands it could have been a disaster because however great I think the script is I don't think it's actor proof.
Although all three actors are strong, however, everything depends on the final moments - the murder of Joe Orton by Kenneth Halliwell. Con O'Neill came up trumps and then some. No over the top hystrionics were on display, rather he plumbed the depths of his very being and connected in a way that one rarely gets to witness. During Halliwell's final moments of the play, after the murder, I felt really choked up. I felt his pain. I know it sounds cliche but I was a bit shaken and was wiping moisture from the corner of my eyes. And, it wasn't just me, I heard sniffling from a few others around me as well. When the actors came out for the curtain call Mr O'Neill himself was really holding back the tears, as if a flood of emotions that were stockpiled in the character of Halliwell were trying to burst forth from him. It was then that I realised that he had gone to a very real place in his performance and that reality had a real effect on the audience. A rare treat. Another big plus for live theatre.
I really don't want to say much more about this. One reason is that it seems to have divided the audiences. In my row there were about four or five people who didn't return after the interval. After the performance I saw a woman crying, bu them I overheard someone saying that they 'didn't come to the theatre to hear people argue onstage' and one young woman said that she thought it would be a comedy as it was on at the Comedy Theatre. Hmmmm. On a plus side, Stephen Fry was in the audience and he tweeted later that night about how fantastic it was. He even took Con and Chris out to dinner after the show.
If you see it and I recommend that you do, you have to listen. It's deceptivey simple, the structure, the story, but in reality it's been meticulously constructed. You have to listen.
The Offical Prick Up Your Ears Website
You can also follow me on Twitter @thisbarry.
Prick Up Your Ears (Comedy Theatre 29/10/09) 30 October 2009
The Spanish Tragedy with Dominic Rowan (Arcola Theatre 26/10/09) 27 October 2009
Deja vu - on so many levels. Where to start? There are three things that prompted me to see this. 1. It was at the Arcola which has done some great things and it's in my neck of the woods. 2. The image of a young girl in a party dress with a bloody axe was intriguing and 3. I have heard great things about featured actor Dominic Rowan. On a basic level I wasn't disappointed. I always like going to Arcola, wondering how the designer would get around the pillars in the Studio 1, there was a bloody little girl and Dominic Rowan pretty much lives up to his promise as the next big thing. What I had to contend with were uneven performances, not very visceral direction, and derivative design and storyline. Well, that last bit - derivative storyline - was the biggest issue. How was I to know?
From sometime between 1582 and 1592, this Elizabethan tragedy by Thomas Kyd was written in, you guessed it, language familar to Elizabethan's (and those with an ear for Shakespeare which I have mentioned in other posta can be hit and miss). For some reason this didn't click when I was reading the description so it turned out to be a rude awakening.
As those who have seen many Shakespeare plays will say, there are good versions and bad versions. For me, much of what determines good or bad is the delivery of the spoken word. It doesn't matter how many Shakespeares an actor has done or how much they have trained in Shakepeare, it all comes down to whether or not you can understand what they're saying. This was the biggest issue.
There were five different styles of delivery -The classically trained verse speech which lost any meaning or comprehension, the 'if I speak really fast it will sound like regular speech' method which again you can only get bits and pieces, the 'I'm not really sure what I'm doing but I will give it a go' method which surprisingly enough was more effective than the previous two, the 'I'll speak very quitely and slow' method which - well you can figure out how effective that was and finally the I know how to speak this language to make it understandable and emotionally satisfying. My favourite.
Keeping all this in mind, it took me a while to figure out what was happening and who was who. As it's set in Spain, and all the actors were suits, trying to figure out who Hieronimo was as opposed to Lorenzo and Balthazar took some work. Due to the variances in performance I only caught bits and pieces of what was going on however I did get to grips with the basic storyline. Someone died in battle, the love he left behid - Belimperia, falls for the son of Hieronimo who was one of the men responsible for saving the Prince in battle. The Prince falls for Belimperia, her brother orchestrates the murder of Hieronimo's son so Belimperia would be free to marry the Prince. Hieronimo vows revenge and gets it at a performance of a play within a play. There are a few more intrincacies to the story but that's basically it. There were also a few oddities which I couldn't figure out.
The girl in the bloody dress was there talking to, I think, the ghost of the Belimperia's original flame. They were always in and out saying things I couldn't catch. Also there was a show, puppet like but using the actors bodies with someone elses arms sort of thing. I think they may have been giving some background, didn't catch that either. However It was visually effective in its own way.
The space was set up with the audience on either side. Pendulum lights hung over the main playing space, there were two heavy black doors at either end and a working garage door with an additional playing space behind it. All actors were in modern dress, mainly dark suits (but why a few of them had brown shoes defied explanation). In addition to the story line this was another deja vu factor, this set was very reminiscent a production of Edward II I saw at Battersea Arts Centre - suits, pendulum lights used to focus light on specific scenes. I looked into it - not the same designer.
Directorily it was laclustre. I think the director, Mitchell Moreno, never really conquered the playing space. What seemed like intimate scenes between two characters were played with the actors as far apart as possible. There were big gaps between scenes, someone would exit at one end and there were a few too many beats before someone else entered, leaving the audience to keep watching the doors at either end to figure out where the action would resume. The play within a play at the end was very well done and very effective with the use of hanging mics and music however the murders got messy and the focus was lost.
I don't feel the actors were very committed to the production. They rose to the occassion when it was needed but there was something missing. I think it was a connection between the actors and as a result, the characters. Dominc Rowen was really good as Hieronimo and Patrick Myles as Belimperia's brother, orchestrator of all that is bad was also very good. Otherwise, it was akin to watching a summary of a story. The little girl who played the little girl was most effective as a visual incongruity but vocally was incomprehensible.
Later that evening Iooked the play up online. Ahhh, ok now I understand why it seemed so deja vu-esque. The Spanish Tragedy predates Shakespeare and establised the revenge play as a new genre in English Theatre. Shakespeare's Hamlet is said to have it's roots in the play citing the ghost figure (Also, I found out that the girl is the embodiment of revenge and she along with the ghost are discussing how revenge will be taken on all those involved in his murder. The fact that it was a little girl was a device invented for this production. Why? Who knows).
Although the production isn't entirely succesful, kudos to Doublethink Theatre for mounting a play that is rarely seen and trying to bring something new to it. Unfortunately, it ends up being one of those plays that is most effective if you know where it sits within the history of theatre. Deja vu.
The Spanish Tragedy Online
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