The Sanctuary Lamp (Arcola Theatre 12/3/10) 21 March 2010

Here is a surprising gem. It's not what I expected but that's not a bad thing. Actually, I'm not sure what I expected but sometimes if you just dive in you can be surprised.

Surprises always abound when entering Arcola Theatre's Studio 1, you never know how it will be configured. For b*spoke theatre company' production of The Sanctuary Lamp you immediately feel as if you are in a church. The five or six rows of seats flank one long side while the other is half of a church interior, dimly lit - about six pews, a confessional, pulpit and the titular sanctuary lamp - with a smoky haze effect diffusing the light (design by Monica Frawley). There is also some wonderful sound design that hits you from the get go - a reverb, echo that gives the impression of being in a large empty place that continues throughout the production (sound design by Ivan Birthistle and Vincent Doherty). Subtle yet effective.

What happens then reminded me of getting involved in a good book. Harry (Robert O'Mahoney) an ex circus strongman meets the churches Monsignor (Bosco Hogan) and as he has nowhere to go is hired as a sort of a church custodian / security guard and one of his duties is keeping the sanctuary lamp lit by changing the candle.

Now, I didn't know what a sanctuary lamp was, it was discussed a bit in the play, so I looked it up, and to save you the bother:

'The General Instruction of the Roman Missal in the Catholic Church, for instance, states (in 316): "In accordance with traditional custom, near the tabernacle a special lamp, fueled by oil or wax, should be kept alight to indicate and honour the presence of Christ." The sanctuary lamp is placed before the tabernacle or aumbry in Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, and Anglican churches as a sign that the Blessed Sacrament is reserved or stored.' - Wikipedia

As the confessional is now used a storage cupboard, Harry takes to using the sanctuary lamp to confess his problems with his wife and his once close friend Francisco as part of a small circus that performs for private parties. This is a longish segment which initially worried me as it seemed the pace and story were going to be very slow going. I wasn't entirely sure where all the talk was going and I had difficulty seeing when the actual story was going to emerge. However, like in the recent Serenading Louie at the Donmar, the longish start pays off. All the information given in that beginning makes the rest of the story all the more powerful because you get a sense of who the character is and what his station in life has become.

Interesting side note - both Serenading Louie and The Sanctuary Lamp first premiered around the same time, the early 70's, and although from two different countries, have that same aesthetic, the longish opening segment whose purpose is not to necessarily dump you in into the story but to set the tone, give the audience a sense of the characters lives. This seems to definitely have been of an era as I can't remember any recent plays giving that sort of breathing space, everything seems to drop you right in the middle of the action. It made me realise how the theatre has pretty much gone the same way as film.

Have a look at films pre Jaws, they were well structured stories with great characterisations which were not so much concerned with the immediate hook but in allowing time to build the scenario which makes subsequent events resonate even more. Post Jaws, box office became more important and so did quick hooks and thrills. To an extent I feel that plays went this same route. I guess it also comes down to talent - it's difficult to write expository dialogue that doesn't give you the feeling of reading a quick summary or programme notes before the actual story starts.

But I digress. A second character is introduced properly, we've seen glimpses of young girl. Once found by Harry, we hear the story of Maudie (Kate Brennan) who has also sought sanctuary in the church. After many tentative steps Harry gains Maudie's trust and she reveals her secrets, the reasons why she has gravitated to the church. The final piece in the puzzle, a man (Declan Conlon) looking for Harry becomes the third in the triad of people seeking refuge.

On the surface it seems rather straightforward and predictable. At least that's what I was thinking when in fact this is furthest from the truth. Based on what was revealed early on, I assumed many connections and events that never came to pass. It's a play that never goes where you expect and doesn't set itself up to lead the viewer down the wrong path only to throw a spanner in the works. What evolves is very heartfelt and genuine, dealing with the complexities of forgiveness, truth, faith and spirituality versus religion and church. It's never heavy handed and never absolutely damning of one or praising of the other. It never preaches, it engages.

Like Arcola's last production Heldenplatz, there seems to be an agenda, something that the author has to say for or against something. In Heldenplatz it was Austria, in The Sanctuary Lamp the church and maybe more generally - organised religion. From what I have read this play caused quite a stir when it was first produced. Seeing how explosive and anti-church ideology can be today, I can imagine it could ruffle some collars. There is however, a big difference between Heldenplatz and The Sanctuary Lamp. Whereas Heldenplatz seemed to be created to condemn and work solely on an intellectual level, The Sanctuary Lamp's ideology is born organically from the characters while engaging the mind and the heart.

Considering the author Tom Murphy has also directed this production, I find the plays ability to 'argue' it's points in a balanced way surprising and is a testament to why it works. More often than not, there is a loss of objectivity when a playwright directs their own work. That's definitely not the case here. Just the opposite. Like reading a good book, or seeing an engaging 70's film, I got lost in The Sanctuary Lamp and it kept me thinking for a good few days after.

Heldenplatz (Arcola Theatre 12/2/10) 14 February 2010

I've always wondered what goes on in the mind of a translator. Not so much the translators that immediately translate conversations from person to person but those employed to translate a literary piece of work from one language to another. Do they intend to keep the English version as close to the original as possible or do they translate the essence for the original into a work that's accessible to English speaking audiences? Either way, I find translations problematic. I can usually tell it something was originally in a different language, as there is usually a stilted quality about it, an English as a second language quality about it. There's nothing wrong with that but there are always elements that are either lost in translation or remain obscure to the likes of me unless I've done some proper research in advance.

All of these issues lie at the heart of Heldenplatz. It's very evident during the first long, almost monologue (clocking in at close to an hour). As the play takes place in Austria and is addressing social and political issues within the country, it makes numerous references to specific locations and buildings. Without any knowledge of these places and buildings I could only guess at what the characters were on about. Add to that very mannered and stilted dialogue and you have what I found to be an impenetrable play.

Before I go any further I have to confess that I didn't buy a programme (which was also a play text) so I have absolutely no idea who played who or what the characters names were. For the record here are the actors:

Hannah Boyde, Paul Brightwell, Daniel Curshoen, Andrew Hawkins, Caroline Horton, Petra Markham, Barbara Marten, Jane Maud, Clive Mendus and Holly Strickland.

Also, I think it fair to give you the description (from the leaflet):

'Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard
Translated by Meredith Oakes and Andrea Tierney
Directed by Annie Castledine and Annabel Arden

Austria, 1988. For the Schuster family - intellectual, Jewish, Viennese to the core - the country remains as uninhabitable as it was when they fled in 1938. Forty years on from World War ll, irrational hatred, neurosis and decadence still reign.

Bernhard explore the shared isolation of people who have lost their bearings along with the most of their illusions. Condemned in his homeland when it was first released, the play delves deep into Austria's historic alliance, exposing the right-wing sensibilities of some of the country's most prominent citizens,'

Without going into too much depth, the play is divided into three sections. In the first are we encounter two female maids in the household of the recently deceased boss - the Professor. The elder speaks to the other about the Professor and her life with him. He seemed to have hated almost everything and was always torn between a home in what I think is the name of a place and not a household in Vienna (and funny enough even after having it repeated at least, no exaggeration, a hundred times during the course of the evening I still can't remember the name - the word 'Ibuprofen' always comes to mind) and Oxford in London. That wasn't a metaphor by the way, but how the name translated phonetically in my mind.

Also repeated was the fervidly polishing of the Professors many, many pairs of shoes by the younger maid and the ironing of a shirt by the older maid while discussing how the Professor liked his shirts to be ironed. The shirt would get folded, continuing with how the Professor liked his shirts to be folded and then the maid would shake the shirt out, iron it again, then fold it again... you get the picture. What else were they talking about? That there were still Nazis in Vienna after all this time and that it's difficult to know who to trust.

Scene two - three more people, two women and an older man, who are also throwing Viennese names around so I had to guess that the two women were mother and daughter as they were always referring to father and grandfather. I finally figured out they were sisters and the old man with then was their Uncle, the brother of the deceased. They basically talked about the same things covered in the first part.

Interval.

Scene three - the meal after the funeral. Everyone from the first act plus some additions were in attendance. The maids set the table and their presence upsets the equilibrium a little (evidently, the elder female maid was left one of the Professor's houses in his will and the fact he had a will was a surprise to many). The discussion? Pretty much the same as in the first half - with the mention of 'ibuprofen' so many times, a friend and myself had to stifle giggles. The Professor's wife comes in, making a mini scene, she hears the sounds of the Nazis in Heldenplatz square (which their home overlooks) then abruptly dies in her soup.

End of play.

Imagine sitting in a pub in a Country you know little about with a few people you don't really know but who know each other very well. These people have a few issues they feel passionate about, mainly dealing with relatives and their fellow Countrymen. Over the course of the evening they have quite a few pints, loosening them up a bit, and the passionate topics of conversation get more intense. After the fifth pint and the umpteenth time around the subjects at hand your initial interest in trying to decode their conversation begins to wane as you discover they are just covering the same ground, over and over. That's how I felt during the performance. It was interesting to watch in the beginning, but then after hearing the same thing five, six, seven times I lost interest and began thinking of ways to make it shorter.

As you can probably tell, I didn't get very much out of it. I get the feeling this play is very much in a German tradition of playwriting of some sort. For me it had echos of Chekhov and I think there were echos of other literary traditions that I just didn't get.

Finally, the translation. Going back to what I said in the beginning, it seemed that the translators were very faithful to the original German. Was that wise? For me no. Or possibly yes. It depends on the audience. I guess there would have been only two choices in the matter - translate it as faithfully as possible or throw in a few things that would make it more understandable to the layman. Either way I feel to fully enjoying Heldenplatz would have required a good knowledge of Vienna, it's history, some German, classic literature and drama on a semi academic or 'really a big fan' level, or extensive notes in a programme. I don't really think that much studying should be done to enjoy a play unless the evening is being promoted as a form of theatre new to these shores. If the latter were true you would know what you were letting yourself in for and would take tit upon yourself to get clued up before attending. Otherwise, you could be, like me a little lost in translation.

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