Monday, June 01, 2009

Theatre - The Luvvies March On

Twelve years ago I wrote an attack on theatre. Luvvies across the land stamped their feet, wept and fainted. I was even on a radio show recorded in a theatre with me on the stage and hundreds of incandescent theatricals in the auditorium. Good times. On Saturday, earnestly determined to entertain a friend from America, we went to see Duet for One at the Vaudeville. Juliet Stevenson's performance, I had been told, was magnificent and Charles Spencer, dean of reviewers, had called the show 'a masterclass in restraint and subtlety'. This was, no doubt about it, a hot ticket. It was, of course, crap. Stevenson's performance reminded me of an Eric Clapton concert I saw many years ago. He played his set - massively accomplished and boring - then did his encore. Plainly tired and bored by himself, he knocked out some bog standard, low life heavy metal. The audience roared. 'That's all,' I could see him thinking, 'it takes.' Similarly, Stevenson did loads of low life, coach party acting and the undemanding audience went home happy. That's all it takes. The play itself - a two-hander about a psychiatrist and a violinist dying of MS - was pathetic. Apart from Stevenson's histrionics and the psychiatrist's German accent and love of violin music (it is well known that all psychiatrists have German accents and love violin music), nothing happened. 'We seem to be back where we started,' said my American friend at the end, 'I think the writer could have done with another thirty days of deep thought.' At the end of which process, he should have taken up a new career. And so the luvvies march on, telling everybody that theatre is special, different, sacred while the rest of us watch House, read Geoffrey Hill and, on the advice of John Gray, William Carlos Williams - 'It is passion/earlier and later than thought/that rises above thought....'

12 comments:

  1. Isn't it terrible? We went with some friends and all four of us fell asleep. Forty winks for a £40 ticket did not strike me as a bargain

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  2. Many years ago I saw Yasmina Reza's Art, much lauded and the winner of Olivier's, Tony's etc. It was crap. I vowed never to visit a theatrical production again, unless of course it was a Christmas pantomime.

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  3. Can you not write a post now without involving God?! He, he, yes, probably the most boring guitarist ever to make the big time. Paxo is saying, go to the gallery, see pictures! I'm afraid House won't do...

    I went to the theatre once... it was like watching a 1950s tv drama on an iPod.

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  4. 1950s tv drama on an iPod.

    LOL, Ian.

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  5. Quite right Bryan. I spend a good deal of my life upsetting one of my greatest friends, a theatrical agent, by expressing my lack of due deference for the 'magic' of the theatre in which her clients do their 'best' work. It's a nineteenth century medium whose relevance is fast fading in the 21st century.

    Juliet Stevenson. Urrggghhh. She sums up everything that is wrong with an over-indulged chunk of British acting: The frantic over-emoting; the need to appear to have depth; the po-faced seriousness. For goodness sakes woman, you're just speaking someone else's words and wearing the contents of the dressing-up box.

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  6. I don't know much about Eric Clapton but I saw him on the telly the other night playing with Steve Winwood at the Albert Hall and thought the show was completely amazing. I agree Clapton makes playing the guitar seem effortless, but no way was he dull.

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  7. Hmmm. As someone who says he hardly ever goes to the theatre, you aren't really in a position to write off an entire art form, are you? Here, it's clear that you have a view about this particular play (and one I share, by the way) but I don't see how that proves that theatre is crap. Some theatre is crap. Some poetry is crap. Some art is crap. But you are in the same position as someone who declares that novels are crap having only read Jeffrey Archer.

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  8. I go rarely, but isn't most of the fun of theatre in the dressing up, the interval drinks, the atmosphere of the place etc? The play must generally be endured, unless it's funny.

    Much as I've loved reading Shakespeare (and some films are good) I don't think I've ever been to a live performance where I wasn't glad when it was over. That was my dirty little secret - your theatre-bashing article was liberating to read.

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  9. I LOVE the theatre. When it's good, it's very very good. When it's bad...Well, it's pretentious. But a big part of it has to do with your willingness to suspend disbelief while you're there. If you can't do that, you can't enter the magic.

    I can't watch "House" anymore -- that same plot just bores me to death. And I'm so glad I don't live in Princeton, N.J., where so many people get incredibly bizarre and lethal diseases.

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  10. I have had the longest and most miserable nights of my life in theatres.

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  11. I went to A Disappearing Number one Saturday in 2007. I was with a friend - a dear friend - and returning from somewhere decided to visit some old haunts in the City. We got to the Barbican, unplanned, just after 6pm, which is when we remembered what was on, so I went to check if there were any last minute tickets. They were just opening the desk and there were just two. Something like that. Nobody else had bothered to try because it was known to be a smash, with a very limited run.

    I didn't know any of that but I'd always loved the story of Hardy and Ramanujan. In this case, despite flashes forward to a sometimes cheesy modern-day love story, there was enough understanding of the math and sensitivity on the cross-cultural issues of 1913 - English/Indian, rich/poor, Anglican/Hindu, mathematician/other - to make one think deeply. Hardy's great line at the end, that after Ramanujan's tragic demise, whenever he was with someone pompous extolling his own virtues he used to think to himself 'But I was once in the same room as Srinivasa Ramanujan and was even able to follow some of what he said.' That was good, to be reminded of that single thought.

    I don't think I've ever expected great things of theatre. This is the exception that proves the rule. And I do miss Sarah. That was also unplanned, unheralded, unrehearsed. Maybe the best always has to be that way.

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  12. Last play I walked out of was the National's revival of the terrible Royal Hunt of the Sun.

    But last week I saw those old hams Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in Godot, and they came close to restoring my faith in luvvies. They even overcame the colossal handicap of having Simon Callow in the cast.

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