Linen Hall Library

Summer Drama and Autumn PreviewReview by: James SimmonsThe Linen Hall Review, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 10-12Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533927 .

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The ill-fated Lyric season came to an end with Moodie

from Manitoba, one of George Shiel's worst plays, put on with sad cynicism to bring in the legendary boneheads who are supposed to want nothing but kitchen comedy. It didn't work. The play was badly done and the crowds didn't come. With not entirely dissimilar motives The Lyric opened its new season in

September with Hugh Leonard's Da. Tom Jordan, the new Artistic Director, directed. He had shown his

willingness to meet the people at a press conference where he announced interesting new connections with The Ulster

Orchestra and Lawson Birch of The Arts Club. Most

important of all, perhaps, he has hired a professional PR

company to help bring in the audiences. You remember last

year several very good productions played to very small audiences. Sure enough the first night was a sell-out, there were new pictures on the

walls and guitar music in the

Foyer afterwards. It was a

good clean production with

Roy Heayberd showing real authority as Charlie, and the

peerless Joe McPartland

getting great mileage out of the

impish/pathetic Da. All the acting was good. There was an air of buoyancy. Catholic humour is like Jewish

humour, absorbed in the love/hate between bright children and conventional parents, but where Phillip

Roth is fierce and exciting Brian Friel in Philadelphia and Leonard here are low-brow and sentimental. Charlie points up all the big moments, telling us what to feel in a most undramatic way. The young heroes are so wet there are no confrontations, and in the end

they sneak off to guilty freedom. The centre of gravity of the play shifts alarmingly from painful subjectivity to social criticism; but there are some good one-liners.

Next month The Lyric plays host to Field Day for a new Stuart Parker play. Then there is a West End

hit, Orphans, which sounded really interesting in the reviews. Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca is reck oned to be a modern masterpiece. You will remember

Field Day's powerful production of his Boesman and Lena. Jordan hopes to do a daytime show over

Christmas, Hansel and Gretel, but before that we have another doubtful choice, Ustinov's Romanoff and Ju

liet, which I would have thought hardly worth reviv

ing. I hope they prove me wrong. I caught up; with two promising looking plays at the

Grand Opera House last May. John Godber's Up and Under had the reputation of being one of those exciting folk/working class plays that Charabanc does so well, but it turned out to be cheap and stupid. It is so sad to see that magnificent theatre half empty and not even in a good cause. Strangely enough it was also half

empty for Alan Bleasdale's It's a Madhouse. After his marvellous successes on TV and cinema you would have thought anything by him would play to packed j houses. Perhaps the management didn't advertise the | play properly. In the event it was a disappointing evening. All the usual rich painful material was there. Bleasdale may need a camera to focus your attention

on what is happening. On stage it just seemed messy. There were three types of madness on show, a terrified

boy with delusions of escaping to Hawaii, a young girl who had lost her baby and pretended she was preg nant, and a vicious old man who seemed to have been let down by his wife or daughter. He kept our attention because he was some sort of positive force even if only to torment the weak. In charge of these was a gay male nurse and a woman of some character whose husband

beat her. To these comes an

ordinary overstrained woman who needs rest and refuge. The male nurse despises her be cause she is not really mad, only tired and pregnant. He reckons he is gay because he

was raped in the army and used as some sort of male pros titute by his fellow soldiers. He thinks his female colleague

might help to straighten him out. She would like his tender ness and support, but can't bear to be touched by him. Her brute husband breaks in at the end. The pregnant woman

hangs herself. There was so

much painful and pressing human life, vet the olav was

dull.

Watching Graham Reid's

Billy plays on TV you can see how very ordinary material can be made fascinating by good acting and direction. It's pap really, but quick cutting keeps the attention. No matter how exciting and important the I

material is, if it is not shaped and presented the mind wanders.

I went down to The Riverside to see the Actors Wilde production of Ron Hutchinson's Rat in the Skull. Whatever the name of the company the same actors

keep turning up: Eoin O'Callaghan, who was so good in Mumbo Jumbo at The Lyric, John Hewitt, who was so

good in The Mikado at The Lyric; B.J. Hogg who was so good in The Year of the Hiker at The Arts; directed

by Ron Heayberd, who we have just enjoyed in Da. I think actors have a curious weakness for parts where

they can wear waterproofs, smoke cigarettes and address the audience at length. Perhaps it makes them feel like film stars, but that isn't what drama is about. There is much realistic Ulster speech in this

play, and a going over of the troubles, but it has a

dramatic vacuum at its centre. For all his intensity of

delivery I couldn't believe for a moment that Hewitt's meditations on the true situation really caused

O'Callaghan to break. They both knew it. It must be

purgatory for an actor to strive night after night for an

effect that cannot be achieved. These last few years the Ulster Youth Theatre has

provided popular treats for audiences in Belfast and around the province. This year my old segocia took ?

charge and, failing to agree with Michael Poyner, who | had directed all the previous productions, on the choice of a musical, decided to bring future ambitions closer

by doing a straight play. For this she hired Nick

Philippou from the RSC and set in motion a production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, the very play that

inspired West Side Story, Romanoff and Juliet, The

Bonefire and so many other modern plays and operas

SUMMER

DRAMA

AND

AUTUMN

PREVIEW

L page 10

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and ballets. This was to be more modest in its commer cial ambition, a week and a half at The Arts rather than a provincial tour climaxing at The Grand Opera

House. Michael Poyner decided to go it alone and do The Boyfriend with other members of The Youth Theatre, most of whom are half way through drama school or university. Using his own money he toured the province and arrived at The Arts the week after

Romeo and Juliet. Here was a drama within a drama: would the new development outclass the old or would

they complement each other? Actually there was no

ill-feeling. Poyner was retained by the official team to direct fight scenes.

Romeo and Juliet was a great success. It played to full houses and the local newspapers wrote enthusias tic reviews. As with previous productions there was this happy sense of a team of young people displaying all sorts of theatrical skills. How much they enjoy being educated by professionals, not only the actors, but a technical team under Trevor Dawson! David

'

Sawyer wrote special music and rehearsed young musicians to play it. Helen Lewis and Mary Brady guided the footwork and choreography. It was a

pleasure to watch. Nick Philippou started the play with an introduc

tory mime in which a bunch of children creep into an attic and discover Victorian costumes, which they use to act out the play: even the croquet mallets and cricket

stumps are incorporated as weapons. They even make

disturbing use of a rocking horse. This gave the play a slow start, but it released the young actors from

trying to be too realisti

cally old, and it allowed

Philippou to emphasize the theme of parental domination more than

warring families. This sort of thing is only good or bad in so far as it brings the play to life. Here it

only really worked in the domestic Capulet scenes. I j have never seen the oppressiveness of Capulet come j across so strongly, killing his wife's spirit and driving j his daughter to desperate remedies. In the street

j brawling, the dance, the tomb, it had no particular ef- j feet at all. It was good fun to watch the actors

improvising weapons out of cricket stumps, and the j moving of Juliet from bed to tomb was beautiful, as was the invented nightmare scene where ogreish ;

parents turn up on stilts. The music was terrific. The faults are those I associate with the R.S.C. j

house-style over the years: ingenuity but little heart, j Romeo and Juliet is one of the world's great stories, but ? the young Shakespeare presents it more as a ballad than a play. There are beautiful parts that are not

always dramatically developed. There is also a gen eral excess of tricksy dialogue that does not cross the centuries. It is curious that in presenting a great love

story Shakespeare should spend the first few scenes

showing Romeo in love with another woman. This would be very sophisticated if developed, but Romeo

quite soon becomes a pious young man with the Friar, a joker with Mercutio, a fighter, after Mercutio's death. Romeo has no difficulty taking himself seri-

''

ously, which is, I suppose, a characteristic of youth.

Many of his speeches are marvellously ardent... 'Oh j

thou dost teach the torches to burn bright...' wild stuff

made of hunger for life and beauty and sex, and it has

to come over strong to keep the play going. There is so much more obvious interest in lesser characters like the Nurse and Mercutio. Unfortunately Philippou concentrates more on high jinx between the boys than the central passion between Romeo and Juliet. There are all sorts of things going on around the star crossed lovers that only find their strength when the centre is

strong. Turning the chorus into a figure of fate is quite plausible but beside the point. Fate indeed! John Paul

Connolly is a good juvenile lead for musicals, unpre tentious and charming and at ease on the stage, but even apart from his plumpness and his teddy-boy suit he is incapable of strong feeling, or the director couldn't bring it out in him. When he rises from that

steaming bed of their first and last night together, he

might be slipping on his jacket to go out and get the

Sunday papers. When he takes his poison (Thou

desperate pilot now at once run on / the rocks my seaside weary bark') he might be swallowing a nasty

medicine and settling down for a quiet night. He must have been hell for Susan Lynch to act with. She was

young, beautiful, ardent and desperate, a fine Juliet. Saddest of all was the Nurse. You know by her

body movement that Ruth Balmer can act, but she is almost encouraged to camp it up as much as her awful

side-kick, Peter. It was right to let all the actors speak in their own local accents, and for the Nurse to be broad

Belfast, but she was allowed to swallow her passion ate, funny, searing lines. She should have been a

powerful portrait of corrupted servitude, a warm

funny ignorant old woman who has lost her own child and brought up other

people s, who doesn't realise until too late that she has betrayed Juliet

by her weak spirit of ac commodation... 'Well if

you can't have Romeo

dear, go for the County Fans...' (my summary)

Friar Lawrence is a blurred moral arbiter who at first mocks Romeo for his shifting passions and then decides to go along with them in order to reconcile the

warring families, a trendy priest who can't deliver on

his advanced theories. Shakespeare is again unsure. He sets up Lawrence as a figure of exemplary piety, ex

poses him as a weak character and then lets him almost talk his way out of it. That is what I mean by this being a ballad play: Shakespeare makes what he

fancies out of the characters from moment to moment, he doesn't serve them. It becomes the director's busi ness to keep all this rough brilliance alive; but Philip pou was not content with this. He interposed his own

professional stage tricks which worked well enough in

themselves (very well), but allowed him to neglect more central matters. Mercutio's subtle speeches were ruined by far too much gratuitous by-play. Every time there was a sexual reference someone had to be

rolling round the stage clutching his groin or miming an erection or slapping someone on the behind, which

is anti-life in the end. I have said Capulet was good, the Prince was good, the Friar was good (perhaps they shouldn't have cut his early speeches so drastically).

What the audience was applauding was R.S.C. meets Ulster youth. The skills were joyous, but the police as

Keystone Cops, a symbolic figure blowing out intermi nable candles, showy fight scenes, exact timing of

groups in a tug of war are no substitute for a serious

James

Simmons

oaae 11 I

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production of Romeo and Juliet Despite all three faults the production glowed with success.

Sandy Wilson's The Boyfriend came on at The Arts the following week with equal or even greater success.

This is a very slight musical, but Poyner understands it exactly and so did his talented team: Ian Bell, music,

Maureen Macauley and Ann-Marie Brady, choreogra phy, Ivor Morrow, costume design. The tunes are attractive and the plot good fun but they only exist at a secondary level of pastiche. In the most frothy old

musical you had to care a little whether boy met girl or the show went on. This one has to survive a series of

songs and dances with a little comedy. As such it could

hardly have been better: all energy and invention and

discipline. You wouldn't be surprised to see any of the

eight or so principals starring in the movies. What a reservoir of talent! My only complaint is that it started so strongly they were bound to run out of ideas by the third act. In the end I was reluctant to face yet another Charleston.

Some of the reviewers were suggesting that these amateurs had set standards the professionals would find hard to live up to. Well, none of our theatres can

hope to match the enthusiasm of young people doing a once a year show, guided by professionals with plenty of money and time, but they should be challenged by it. To be a true professional is to be able to produce that sort of excitement under difficult conditions. By and

large they must learn to work together more intensely; but by and large I enjoyed The Mikado at The Lyric last

year more than The Boyfriend at The Arts. The former was a much more mature and subtle entertainment. What these Arts Council groups are proud of is zip,

show-business and the smell of success, and certainly something happens to a show when the house is full of

well-disposed people. How did Imelda Foley and Ivan

Armstrong fill their theatre for ten days with Romeo and Juliet ? Nobody thought they would. All other

producers should find out their secrets. It can't just be time and money.

Belfast Civic Arts Theatre is offering this Autumn the sort of pot pourri I have an affection for. They are short of funds and the likeable manager Teddy Brown does not have high literary ambitions. This is where the darling of private enterprise, Michael Poyner is

putting on The Wizard ofOz at Christmas. So far his

reputation is really more for show-biz excitements than subtlety so he might find this metaphysical text a real challenge. Before that will come folk and pop concerts, an amateur H.M.S. Pinafore plus two

dramas. Actors Wilde presented Same Time Next Year on the 21 st September, 'one of the most successful

stage comedies ever written'. Another company, Theatre Ulster, employ more or

less the same actors to present Arthur Miller's All My Sons on the 17th October. This is certainly a modern

classic, interesting and moving and a challenge to all involved. I saw it last in the West End with the late

Colin Blakely, an actor of huge integrity who started his career as an amateur in Bangor.

The Opera House hasn't furnished me with its Autumn list, but already it has staged La Traviata and a concert recital by the fine soprano Victoria de los

Angeles. So what is in prospect for this Autumn is

likely to be much the same as last year, and why shouldn't we take it like Opera lovers, measuring new

productions against the old. It is thrilling to be in a

theatre. There are so many ways of entertaining people (a voice from the pub opposite is singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic). The challenge this year seems to be which theatres can reach out into the

community and involve people in their productions. At the last minute news comes in of my favourite com

pany, Charabanc. They have just opened a new play, Somewhere over the Balcony, in London. It is about Divis Flats. Later they will tour the province and come

up to Belfast for the Festival. They are my favourite

company, not because everything they do is perfect technically, but because they avoid the complacency of

The Lyric board and transcend the hype of the Youth Theatre productions. Their overheads are low, they look deep into the society they work for, they are

genuinely inventive because they need invention to get across what they have discovered, and people seem to have come to trust them so that they get good audi

ences, without the money and pretentiousness of Field

Day or the slick commercialism of The Opera House and the stumbling commercialism of The Arts The atre... though they might appear at any of these venues. When you think of the money they don't have and the countries they have been invited to, it might be a lesson for us all. The still small voice of talent and

honesty and good feeling may answer most problems. Professionals can be petty and vain, producers can be

lazy and complacent. Long may Charabanc reign. Which will also be only as long as they are willing to

learn. It would be stupid of me to idealise this modest

company. They can be slack and stupid, and they could learn a lot about P.R. and what is happening elsewhere in the world; but all the other companies could learn from them.

for all your origination needs...

...december

publications

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