by
Asclepias
IF
the Director has to put notes on the back of the programme it is
usually not a good sign, so I thought it might be ‘early doors’
for me when I went to see in Rochdale The
Curtain Theatre’s
current production of Amelia
Bullmore’s
play Di
and Viv and Rose.
Strictly
speaking I should say ‘we’ because there were four of us in the
party. With three in
their 70s
and the fourth a mere 55 we were a reasonable sample of a typical CT
audience.
It’s
1983; three young women go to university and share a flat. We follow
snippets of their life for three years. Rose is a pleasant young
woman who
cannot just say she likes sex, but seems to want to endow it with
some sort of transient spirituality. Di is a sport loving lesbian
who
cannot get round to asking the object of her affection for a date.
Viv is a sociology student who makes
clear she is
at uni to work not play.
The
memorable things are that Rose forgets to take the dirty clothes to
the launderette so they nearly run out of clean bra and knickers, Di
is raped in her bed by an intruder and a dream comes true for Viv
when she is offered a chance to study with an American professor.
Oh, and Rose gets pregnant.
If
this sounds flippant it’s because to this point both story and
dialogue seemed shallow. Three
of us could not work up the enthusiasm to find out what became
of
the
characters
in
the following thirty
years. This
was
to be revealed in
the second act. The
fourth stayed
having
left
a
coat
in the theatre.
As
one of our party said, ‘It’s
old hat’.
We’ve
heard it all before. The rape of Di isn’t one of those ambiguous
‘she
said, he said’
affairs, which made the response from the sympathetic lady at the
Rape Crisis Centre of ‘Its
not your fault’,
a
bit lame to say the least.
Perhaps
in the end this playing up of the nature of friendship between women
is a belated response to too many TV
outings
for Das
Boot,
The
Cruel Sea
or Band
of Brothers.
If
it is then it is misplaced. Comradeship and friendship are not the
same thing.
The
thinness of the play was more than compensated by the quality of the
acting. The original Viv had been forced to drop out of the role and
it had been taken by the director Jessica
Wiehler
who made a superb Viv reminiscent of a younger Marina Warner during
her ‘broomsticks
are
a symbol of women’s drudgery’
witchcraft
phase.
Ellaney
Hayden
was a well cast and utterly
believable
Rose. Molly
Stedman
as Di had by
far the
most difficult role in coping with a
poorly sketched character, some
weak
dialogue and a couple of not altogether convincing plot lines.
The
Curtain Theatre is fortunate in having so
many
talented performers to choose from and
I have watched many excellent productions. But oh how I wish the
annual programme paid less attention to plays which win praise from
the critics and
more to the catalogue of older plays. When Harold Brighouse’s 1914
play The
Game
was staged a year or so ago by
the CT it
made for a very
enjoyable evening out, though
it had languished in near oblivion for nearly a century.
The
art of theatre is to persuade the audience to suspend their
disbelief. Di and Viv and Rose failed
to do this.
*******
Posts
6 comments:
As CT Drama Director for the past 6 years, I've seen my brief to devise a programme to appeal to as many and varied tastes as possible. I've read dozens of plays in that time, conscious, in my choices, not to alienate our key mailing-list audience (mainly over 60)but eager to expand our profile amongst younger people, in the hope these will be the CT theatregoers for years to come. My self-filter ruled out many plays; ones with themes liable to cause offence or upset our audiences, ones too irretrievably dated or inert, ones too "difficult", with which people might've found hard to connect. The vast majority of my choices have had elements of humour, the most sure-fire way to win over most theatregoers.
"The Game" is a fine example of what I mean; a neglected 1913 piece, well-made, lively, often funny, but touching on modern themes such as morality in sport. It was well worth reviving this rarity. But so many plays from the first half of the 20thc do come across as wordy, windy and tricky to animate.
It's easy to settle for middlebrow, accessible stuff like Ayckbourn, Godber and a number of "warm Northern comedies" (not easy to find a good one or certainly one that the CT hasn't done). But I wanted to stage plays from the past 30 years or so, which have never had an airing and which are more ambitious than some of these safe bets. So we've revived "The Weir", "An Experiment With An Air Pump", "The Bright And Bold Design", "Skylight", "Heroes", "Peggy For You", "The Kitchen Sink" and "Di And Viv And Rose". Most are dramatically enterprising, thoughtful, sometimes political, often social commentary but all about people's lives and intermingled common experiences. Their programming was in the hope that our audiences could associate with some themes, be they work, relationships, past history, growing up or getting old.
I think your reviewer was rather hard on "Di And Viv And Rose" (particularly given that he/she walked out at the interval). I chose the play in order to "give youth its fling" and, in a rather male orientated season, allow the female experience to come through. All lives have their share of trivia and empty-headedness, and I reckoned that the girls' exuberant love of life and their different ways through it was funny and charming. The second half was darker, dealing with loss and the curdling of friendships, but your reviewer was purblind enough to miss all that element of the drama. Certainly, on the basis, of the CT's informal nodding-out "exit-poll", he/she seems to have been in a very small minority in sneering at the play.
Navigating your way through subjectivity and opinion about what constitutes a "good play" isn't a doddle. It takes skill to balance a season and appeal to as many as possible. But there's room for both good old three-acters and well-written, relatable new stuff.
My last play as DD is in June, Shakespeare's "Hamlet",for which I expect to be roundly condemned by purists, stick-in-the-muds and cool dudes alike.
When I go to the theatre I have, what I am sure will be in the minds of many people, a very unsophisticated view of why I am there, I want to be entertained. If I learn something or end up thinking about something the play brings to mind, that is a bonus. But above all I want to spend a pleasant evening being entertained.
For me this is achieved in one of two ways which are not mutually exclusive; sparkling, witty dialogue or an interesting situation which is set up before the interval and resolved after it. What I think I saw was a beautifully presented and very well acted piece which failed on both counts because it was a weak script.
As I found when I looked on the World Wide Web my view was not shared by reviewers of the play when it was presented in the professional theatre. This realisation is what prompted me to write my piece. What some people will view as avant-garde others will see as a touch of The Emperors New Clothes.
In our little group two had been attending performances for more than forty years, one for more than twenty years and one for about ten years. In other words at least two of these now older guests started when they were ‘young’. Judging by the faces ones sees regularly at performances the CT enjoys a similarly loyal following. Is it perhaps temperament not age which determines whether one is attracted to visiting the theatre initially?
It’s a long time since the days of my youth when I read plays for pleasure and I certainly would not have been able to judge whether a script would have ‘worked’ on the stage. In other words I would not have wanted to ‘put my head on the block’. Clearly some people were brave enough to do this which is why the plays were performed and ended up being published in book form so that I could read them.
Asclepias says...
'When I go to the theatre I have,... a very unsophisticated view of why I am there, I want to be entertained'
Does being 'entertained' in this context mean having an experience such as one would have in a Turkish Bath? Or at a Boxing Match?
Asclepias says...
'When I go to the theatre I have,... a very unsophisticated view of why I am there, I want to be entertained'
Does being 'entertained' in this context mean having an experience such as one would have in a Turkish Bath? Or at a Boxing Match?
Asclepias says...
'When I go to the theatre I have,... a very unsophisticated view of why I am there, I want to be entertained'
Does being 'entertained' in this context mean having an experience such as one would have in a Turkish Bath? Or at a Boxing Match?
Asclepias says...
'When I go to the theatre I have,... a very unsophisticated view of why I am there, I want to be entertained'
Does being 'entertained' in this context mean having an experience such as one would have in a Turkish Bath? Or at a Boxing Match?
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