Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Luvvie Rage
I fear for the safety and sanity of Anthony Neilson. Neilson is a playwright and today in The Guardian he attacks British theatre. - 'We've been boring audiences for decades now, and they've responded by slowly withdrawing their patronage.' And: 'The most depressing response I encounter when I'm chatting someone up and I ask them if they ever go to the theatre is this: "I should go but I don't.' A decade ago, I wrote something very similar. I may as well have planted land mines in a school playground. The luvvies were incandescent, their outrage combined with sheer incredulity that anybody could even think such thoughts, never mind express them in print. The climax of this process was the recording of a radio show in which I sat alone on stage while 200 luvvies shrieked incoherent abuse from the stalls. It was, of course, a great boost to my self-esteem. But can Neilson take it? I am available for counselling.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
"I should go but I don't". That captures it perfectly. I don't know how many times I have uttered those immortal words. It's like going to the theatre is some kind of religious observance - I am a lapsed theatre-goer, a sinner. The thing is, when I do go to the theatre I find it inscrutiatingly painful to watch the acting. The acting may be fine, as acting goes, it's just that being in a theatre keeps reminding me it's acting - I can't lose myself in it. Also, and this is silly and absurd (and very much to do with my own monumnental insecurties), I become very worried for the actors, that they might forget their lines. Oh dear, what a wuss I am.
ReplyDeleteI had an uncomfortable experience a couple of years back when I saw John Hurt doing Krapp's Last Tape. I was in the third row and could see the whites of his eyes. He was brilliant and as convincing as ever, even for someone like me. But the problem was, I found it absolutely hilarious and nearly had to leave the theatre a couple of times I was laughing so much. As nobody else was laughing, I became very paranoid. I was also afraid Hurt might get distracted. Maybe I just don't understand Beckett. And maybe theatre is not for me.
On the contrary, Neil, I think you understand Beckett perfectly
ReplyDelete'of the mind of that strangely anonymous man William
ReplyDeleteShakespeare'
Is that a hint that Shakespeare may indeed have been Francis Bacon?
I don't do to the theatre often, but when I do, it is as much the demographic profile of the audience that is off-putting, as the fact that a quarter of them leave at the interval. In the case of Michael Frayn's 'Uncertainty Principle' the leavers rose to half, bored with his showy display of nuclear physics and Germans with moral qualms. Too many plays are like clever undergraduate debates, rather than presenting anything genuinely challenging, a long-ago play about interrogations in Ulster with a pre-Hollywood Brian Cox apart. Or they are just dialogues of what the journos cover by way of 'Tagespolitik' with no real attempt to probe the human condition in the 2000s. I suppose we still get Shakespeare and Schiller though.
ReplyDeleteHmm. I write as someone who will leave in approximately two hours to drive 2.5 hours to NYC to see the last two installments of Tom Stoppard's "Coast of Utopia" trilogy. I will be in the theatre from 2-11 p.m. with a break for dinner and... I can't wait!
ReplyDeleteAm I alone? Hardly. The Lincoln Center will be packed with people who don't find theatre either boring or irrelevant (and, as you know, Stoppard ain't an easy playwright). However, what the journo you link to did not note -- because this is so much less true in England -- is that the people surrounding me in the theatre will also be those who can afford to indulge in this now rarified art form: It's $100 ticket for each play and that ain't chump change.
There's a lot of good theatre, but it's not cheap. The cheap stuff, however, does tend to be the boring stuff: The politically correct plays beloved by the "luvvies" you're mocking. Those are usually off-B'way, or in little theatres all over. Sometimes they are on B'way (the very irritating play about Iraq by David Hare that I reviewed last year), but only with a special dispensation: Playwright is very famous or a star is on the stage.
I've seen some of the best theatre of my life in the last five years, from "Doubt" to anything by Martin McDonagh. No one has to be bored; they just have to pick the right play....
My apologies for the appalling spelling in that comment - excruciatingly bad! Busy in work the only excuse I can offer.
ReplyDeleteEr, I'm clearly uncertain about titles. I meant Frayn's 'Copenhagen' I think.
ReplyDeleteSusan, I fully agree. And I saw Stoppard's 'Coast od Utopia' all 3 plays in one day - so breaks for both lunch and supper. But imagine the two leads who were in all three plays in London!
ReplyDeleteYet, my next door neighbour, no slouch when it comes to nationl Theatre outings, left in the interval of first play. No accounting for tastes.
Neil, sorry, I really liked 'Copenhagen'. Moral dillemas and human issues dealt with with some philosophical panache. But then, I studied atomic physics (just for a year before switching to computers).
I reckon Neil's also right about Theatre being a kind of secular relgion (one of many, God knows). Somehow going to the theatre is seen as intrinsically virtuous, whereas watching TV or a movie is at bottom sinful. Perhaps it has something to do with the physical and mental suffering involved in going to the theatre (not to mention the damnable expense).
ReplyDeleteI was at some play a few weeks ago with Maureen Lipman and it was shit.
ReplyDelete