SUMMER 2001 ----------------------------In this issue--------------------------------------- Enter Laughing: Mel Brooks vs the Tonys Orchestra The Play's the Thing: To Update or Not to Update: That is the Cinematic Question The Best Plays of 2000-2001 Voices in Contemporary Theatre: A Woman's Voice is indeed unique, Women's Playwrights Festival at Perishable Theatre; Theatre Snobs rebuttal to last month's "From the Mailbag", Art at Trinity Rep Letter from London: Noises Off, a Shakespeare-free zone CyberTheatre Monthly: Tick Tick Boom, What's New on The Rialto, Casper the Musical Rubin's Corner: The Woman in Black What happened to Techie's Corner? TC-Writer Michael Powers is on medical leave. The column will return when he does. Our thoughts are with you, Michael. Take care. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENTER LAUGHING Everyone who knows me tiptoes from the room if the subject of Tony Awards acceptance speeches is raised. You see, I have this theory - SIT DOWN this won't take long - I have this theory that theatre people should have more class than that Hollywood riffraff that rudely play off award recipients that dare express their joy for more than 30 seconds. Actors, as a group, are an emotional people - they spend their professional lives tapping into their psyches for our entertainment. Having done so over a period of years and achieved this pinnacle of recognition by their peers, we allow them to be themselves and share their happiness and gratitude for a full half-minute. It is really quite a disgusting spectacle. This year everyone knew Mel Brooks and others connected to The Producers would be spending quite a lot of time at the podium, but I doubt anyone was prepared for Mel to use the occasion to wage an all-out assault on the timekeeper in the orchestra pit. Mel drew first blood when, accepting his first Producer's award of the evening he didn't simply ignore the orchestral grumblings, he played them like a true performer, using their swell, building in volume with them as he thanked his wife and kids, to set up with a flourish - A PUNCHLINE! (...and Id like to thank my parents but they're dead!) I'm not sure what happened next, I was too busy rolling on the floor laughing. Round 1 to Mr. Brooks. The next award of the evening - also to Mel Brooks. He came in from the wings, made smalltalk with the presenter, and did a few minutes of standup until the Orchestra tried again. He used that as a cue to BEGIN thanking people, and again used their music as punctuation to his comments. They stopped playing - It was glorious. He then proceeded to actually yell in their direction: knock it off with the music with ya - thanked everyone on his list at his leisure, and signed off with: I'll be back in a few minutes. Brooks 2; Orchestra 0 The baton with a Timex took revenge on poor Robin Wagern, the Producers set designer - who was visibly shaking before he even got to the mic. The orchestra browbeat the man mercilessly. It was embarassing, a bully beating up a weakling. I doubt the conductor ever has any friends in the room, but if he did, they abandoned him at this point and the victory was shortlived. The lighting designer who was up next flatly refused to yield when they tried to interrupt after only 5 seconds. With that there was a cease fire on both sides while many awards were given to the plays and revivals, and by the time Nathan Lane accepted for Best Actor in a Musical, the orchestra was cowled. They sat patiently by while he clowned with Matthew Broderick for several minutes, then sincerely thanked a number others - ah, but just as the orchestra gathered its courage for one final attempt to regain control, they began their melodic murmurings just as...NATHAN LANE MENTIONED HIS MOTHER HAD DIED. I actually felt sorry for the conduct at that moment. He probably felt sorry for himself, because he surrendered. Mel Brooks and his self-described "phalanx of Jews" took the Tony Award for Best Musical with a lengthy acceptance speech that didn't put the show a minute overtime. Bravo Mel ! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE PLAYS THE THING Hey TRE readers! Well, I am back again. Rebecca just thought she could get rid of me because of my hectic schedule lately. NOTE TO SELF: Trying to work on two shows at the same time can test the limits of sanity. I just completed working as the assistant director on "The Tempest" at San Diego State University and "Vita and Virginia" at the Globe Theatre in San Diego. Both experiences were worth the time and effort, even though my laundry piled up, email went unanswered and my social life disappeared. But hey, isn't that why we all love theatre...any excuse not to play Martha Stewart is fine by me, hahaha! This article is a follow-up to the three part series that Rebecca and I wrote called "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" for TRE. This article focuses on the films Titus, Richard III, and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. It is an inside look at the process that must be undertaken by directors when updating Shakespeare's plays on film. In the prior series Rebecca and I voiced our opinions. Now you get to hear from the directors and critics themselves in order to gain a better insight into the process of period-shifting, text cuts, and audience reactions to the films. Enjoy all...this piece turned out to be my own Love's Labour...only it is not lost! And don't worry kids...I will unlock Rebecca from the dungeon next month and let her return to the keyboard with me. See even I read TRE and I know all that she said while I was absent last month...and she is getting quite used to bread and water! To Update Or Not To Update: That is the Cinematic Question Shakespearean plays have traditionally been presented on film as Elizabethan costume period pieces. If it sounded like Shakespeare, it had to look like Shakespeare. The irony is that what we think of as the correct look for a Shakespearean play is not accurate. Shakespeare's fellow actors wore Elizabethan clothes, the same clothes worn in daily life, even when performing Roman characters. Shakespeare's audiences were not confused by the incongruity of the period and costume. Theatre stayed true to that idea and productions of Shakespearean plays have been placed in almost every conceivable time period or culture. Film, on the other hand, got stuck in a rut from the beginning. John Calhoun, writing for Theatre Crafts International stated, "Transposition of Shakespeare's plays to various periods has become so commonplace in theatre that one may forget the practice has never caught on in film."1 There have been several movies like Forbidden Planet and Men of Respect 2 that place the plot in a new period of time, but discard the Shakespearean text for a modern script. Slowly there emerged filmmakers with bold visions of transporting Shakespeare's works out of 'jolly ole England' and placing them in a more contemporary time period for a more contemporary audience. How does a director justify the period change? Are changes based on themes, text, and political climates? Is the updated version more satisfying to modern audiences? Comparing the film versions of Titus, Richard III, and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, three films that exemplify updating the 'original' time period, will provide the answers to these questions. When a theatre or film director undertakes the process of bringing a play or screenplay to life before an audience, decisions are made regarding the presentation style to be used. The style might include a change in the time period or culture. Updating Shakespeare's plays to a contemporary setting is one choice. Setting the play or film in another culture or a time preceding the historic setting is another option. This is often the case for Shakespeare's plays. A director should never arbitrarily make a decision to update a time period solely based on their desire to use clever costumes, sets, or cultures. The decision should involve finding parallels that exist between the original time period and the chosen setting. For example, a film version of Henry IV, Part I could easily be set in ancient Japan during its time of samurai battles for control of the empire. At the same time of the War of the Roses - the fight between the Yorks and the Lancasters for the throne of England and on which the Henry IV cycle was based - was brewing in England, Japan had a similar situation called the War of the Chrysanthemums, in which two of the top warrior families were struggling to gain the imperial throne of Japan. In this way a director can tie the themes of the play from one culture to another. Greed and ambition are the same in any culture. The method of achieving it might be slightly altered from one culture to another, but that is what makes it interesting: to be able to see the basic instincts of humankind reflected in the eyes of another culture. Another choice might be to overlay the story in some period seen as more contemporary or more familiar to a modern audience. With the given popularity of the television series Survivor, a director might consider a film version of The Tempest in which members of the court stranded on the island get voted off if Prospero does not forgive them. The audiences would understand the allusions to making tough decisions about survival, just as Prospero had to make when he found himself stuck on the island with a tiny girl, a monster, a spirit trapped in a tree, and all the various magical shapes on the island. He voted Caliban down as the ruler in order to become ruler himself. Prospero understood being voted out, for he was voted out, so to speak, by his usurping brother and other members of the courts of Milan and Naples. There are many choices that can be made. But, are they good choices? Can the director support the reasons for change without making changes for the sake of placating modern audiences. The directors of Titus, Richard III, and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet all had good reason for changing the traditional setting of their films. They cite political, thematic, and textual reasons for the changes. Julie Taymor, the director of Titus, is also a designer, as exemplified in her work on bringing the stage production of The Lion King to life. Visual images are connected very closely with the themes of the play. Therefore, she wanted to create a visual world that would capture the glory of an empire headed for destruction and the hellish journey of unending revenge. As the film poster states, "The Fall of an Empire. The Descent of Man." Taymor desired to blend both ideas through presenting the time period as a sixteen hundred year continuation of empires rising and falling, only to see that people have not progressed or evolved. At the core of existence is a bestial desire to conquer or vanquish one's enemies until no one is left standing. Bruce Kirkland writes; Taymor's visionary technique also speaks directly to her desire to read Titus as a universal political satire that spans centuries and cuts to the core of the human condition. In that case, it's appalling what condition our condition is in. The themes explored include cruelty, sadism, racism, rape, revenge, power, lust and greed. 3 An article in Maclean's magazine further added that, " . . . Taymor has thought deeply about the play: while she has cut a considerable amount of Shakespeare's dialogue, she has, in most respects, served its dark vision impressively." 4 The characters were seen as, ". . . unhappy, revenge-haunted humans - wearing a strange mixture of modern and period costumes."5 Director Peter Brook, discussing the play said that Titus Andronicus, "is about the most modern of emotions - about violence, hatred, cruelty, pain . . ."6 Taymor explains her concept best. In Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire, she explains the reason that this play in particular lends itself to a modern adaptation. She states: . . . the play speaks directly to our times, when audiences feed daily on tabloid sex scandals, teenage gang rape, and the private details of a celebrity murder trial, when racism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide have almost ceased to shock by being so commonplace and seemingly inevitable. Our entertainment industry thrives on the graphic details of murders, rapes, and villainy, yet it is rare to find a film or play that does not reflect on these dark events but also turns them inside out, probing and challenging our fundamental beliefs on morality and justice. 7 Sir Ian McKellen and director Richard Loncraine co-wrote the screenplay for Richard III based on an earlier stage production of the same play. The earlier stage production modernized the period to a quasi-1930's war era Europe, enough like England or Europe to evoke the mood but not specific enough to be able to name the exact setting. Film critic Bob Mondello stated during an interview on NPR that the film, ". . . has been reconceived as a very 1930s affair with men in military uniforms, women in beaded cocktail dresses, and everyone sporting a cigarette holder."8 He comments on what he understood to be the reason for the time shift when he stated: As always, hunchbacked Richard has to wait until King Edward dies before he can wreck much real havoc. But in the movie the Edward he is waiting for isn't the 15th century monarch but the one who married Mrs. Simpson, the American divorcee. Annette Bening plays the king's wife, her U. S. accent seemingly perfectly appropriate under the circumstances, and everything else falls neatly into place once Richard starts slaughtering all her relatives except the daughter he plans to marry . . . . Now I'm not always in favor of updating Shakespeare, but in this case Loncraine and his all-star company made it deliciously right.9 Since Loncraine was brought into the process with the concept of shifting the time period already in place, one must turn to McKellen's explanation of the reason for shifting this play as he did. McKellen has always been interested in presenting Shakespeare in a more modern mode. During an interview on NPR in 1996, McKellen explained why he set it in the 1930's: Well, I always try to do Shakespeare in modern dress or modernish dress simply so that the audience can understand the story. They can understand from the clothes people wear what they do for a living, roughly how much they earn, their various relationships within the closed society that Shakespeare is interested in. Put everyone in medieval floppy hats and wrinkled tights and you really don't know who of them is a professional politician, for example, who's a civil servant, or in the military. There was no such thing as army uniforms in the Middle Ages. I think Shakespeare, he always did the plays himself in his modern dress, and I think that's a good cue for other practitioners to follow. Why the Thirties? Because we wanted to find the most recent period in English history when it would be believable that a senior member of the royal family might decide to take over the reins of government and the time of the Depression and dictatorship racing across Europe.10 Last is Baz Luhrmann's flashy modern presentation of William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet. Veronica Mixon, reporting for The Philadelphia Tribune, called the film "part urban nightmare and part cartoon fantasy," but also stated that: Baz Luhrmann says the themes of "Romeo & Juliet," the prohibited love and learned hate, always appealed to him. Indeed they are universal themes which are still very relevant to the world today. The director has created a violent, sexy, chaotic world where the gun has replaced the sword and voracious appetites of the eccentric wealthy is boundless.11 Chris Vogner, Staff Critic of the Dallas Morning News understands the reasons for reinterpreting Shakespeare in the modern age. He stated: In interpreting Shakespeare, an author who explores such timeless themes as love, loss, revenge, power, loyalty and greed, filmmakers have the canvas of their own times on which to paint. Today, the film industry rides the whirlwind disposability of popular culture to make room for multiple and often very different versions of the same story.12 Lurhmann's setting of the movie in modern, or semi-futuristic Verona Beach, was based on some decisions he made in relationship to what the text had to offer. He modernized it because it ". . . allowed us to put Shakespeare's inventive usage to work as a dexterous and ornate street rap. This game allowed us to justify all words even when the actual meaning was not immediately apparent."13 By that Lurhmann means that the word 'bad' can also mean 'good' or, "In a similar fashion Tybalt says to Mercutio, 'thou consortest with Romeo' with 'consortest' bearing a sexual inference."14 Since Lurhmann's approach was based on the text as the roadmap to the production, Lurhmann had to decide how to reshape the text to fit the fast and frenzied world he was creating. His solution was in taking "significant liberty" in: . . . restructuring and cutting. We felt it was very important to serve Shakespeare's ultimate goal of strong storytelling. He had to arrest the attention of a very noisy, disparate, savage yet honest audience not unlike those at your local cinema. To facilitate this he used all the devices at his disposal, the clash of low brow comedy with high tragedy, the use of popular song (pop music) etc. Similarly, we developed a specific cinematic language for Romeo and Juliet that transformed all of these devices into cinematic equivalents in order to achieve the same goal with our noisy, disparate, savage yet honest audience.15 What do modern audiences think of the changes to Shakespeare? Does presenting Romeo and Juliet as a pop video seen on MTV make it more accessible? Do the modern reinterpretations dumb down Shakespeare or does it add clarity? In terms of revenue from ticket sales, Shakespearean films tend to barely recoup the cost of filming, with a few rare exceptions. Lurhmann's version of Romeo and Juliet grossed $65m worldwide by then end of January 1997.16 Teenagers flocked to see a film that seemed to embody their culture, their fears, their anger, and their need to find happiness in a restrictive world. Thomas Pendleton viewed Lurhmann's "emphasis on reconstructing the story in MTV terms - and both in visual content and in camera work" as: . . .quite remarkable that all the spoken words (except the pop rock lyrics) are, so far as I can tell, Shakespeare's. At the level of the individual word of dialogue, Luhrmann and Craig Pearce's screenplay is punctiliously faithful to the text. In practice, however, this means little more than that they have managed to find words somewhere in the play for the characters to speak. For example, Benvolio's report of having seen Romeo "underneath the grove of sycamore,/That westward rooteth from this city side" (1.1.128-129) provides not only Sycamore Grove as a deserted amusement park, but also has "Ted" Montague's terse direction to his limo driver: "Westward from this city side."17 Pendleton noted that Lurhmann did a good job presenting the text, even though at times he "seems to be goofing, playing the enormous disparity between image and language for a laugh: The Montagues hang out in a mined theatre called the Globe; Friar Lawrence sends the message to Mantua by Post-Haste Dispatch . . ."18 Writer Judith Newmark recounts an exchange between herself and her teenage daughter regarding the film. Her daughter Jordan asked her, "a reasonable question," and inquired about the movie's authenticity: "Mom," she asked, "is this really Shakespeare?" "Do they say all the words?," I asked her. "Yes," Jordan said, "they say all the words." "Then it's Shakespeare," I told her. And it is. Personally I have sat through enough Frye-boots Shakespeare productions to conclude that all that counts in one thing: Do they say the words? With that in mind, I am happy to have my daughters encounter Shakespeare in any version they like.19 There is also the daunting task of 'to cut or not to cut' text, scenes, subplots, or characters that get in the way of telling the story. Film is a visual medium. A picture, it seems is still worth a thousand words...or a few thousand words less than the original play contained. Cineaste magazine conducted a film directors' symposium and asked many of the top film directors, each of them having directed Shakespeare on film or stage, to participate, including Baz Lurhmann and Richard Loncraine. When asked how the individual director views cutting text, or revising it, the responses ranged from never touch it to change what you must to support the visual retelling of the story. Loncraine added, "We can communicate with pictures an awful lot of what Shakespeare expressed with words. Ian McKellen and I worked very closely together on the film. Ian was largely responsible for cutting the text and I was largely responsible for the imagery and styling and the communication of ideas that weren't in the play."20 Ian McKellen added to Loncraine's thoughts when he stated: Well, I am sure if I'd left every word that Shakespeare wrote under the title of Richard III, the New York Times wouldn't have enjoyed the movie. It is a talkie, of course, but there are elements of imagery, all of them springing from the text. This is a film, regardless of what it looks like, like no other Shakespeare movie that has ever been made. But I promise you, I can take every image you see on the screen and relate it directly back to the word which gave me the idea in Shakespeare's original text. It all holds together. But even so, Richard III is more susceptible, I think, to a cut text than a more mature play of his like Macbeth, say, or Othello or King Lear, where if you begin to remove one line then the whole edifice begins to look shaky because by the time each line, each word was interdependent on the one proceeding it and the one following it, and the message comes entirely through complicated verse.21 But there are those who disagree with McKellen's handling of the text. Thomas Pendleton, writing for Cineaste takes exception to McKellen's "tinkering with the language" of the original play.22 His complaints include such things as ridding the script of "archaisms so no thou's, thee's, aye's, or nay's" and that updating artifacts to the Thirties, "leads to Lady Anne telling Richard not 'put up thy sword' but 'put down thy blade' - a scalpel with which he has offered to kill himself." 23 The damage continued to be done by the scalpel that McKellen took to the scene with Lady Anne. Pendleton counted twenty-six changes in that scene alone and that at least sixty-five lines were cut. He poses the idea that this kind of editing, "seems to make little sense: if the intended audience requires such unremitting simplifying and modernizing that River's 'perferments' have to become 'promotions,' what can they be expected to make of the poetic density of speeches like Richard's opening soliloquy or Clarence's dream?"24 Pendleton's biggest challenge to the screenplay is that visual images can distort the meaning of the film. Even though McKellen said he could track every visual image to the text25 Pendleton thinks McKellen went too far with the visual/text connection. He states: The resultant clash between what the images and what the words say results in a radical incoherence. What is Richard III, the ultimate isolated egotist ("I am myself alone") doing presiding over a Nuremburg rally? What is Hitler doing relying on Lord Stanley, who - so the film's iconography says - commands the RAF? What are either of them doing at the end of the film, reprising Jimmy Cagney's death in White Heat, while Al Jolson sings, "I'm sitting on Top of the World"? McKellen has so grievously underestimated the power of the Nazi imagery that his film ends up telling a visual story different from and at odds with ostensible narrative of Richard of Gloucester. The effect verges on the creation of a kind of contra-Shakespeare film.26 Taymor, much like McKellen, approached text changes and adaptations based on a prior stage production she directed of Titus Andronicus. She stated that: Because I had done it as a play - the play is about three or four hours long if you do the whole play - so when I had done it in the theatre I had already cut an hour to an hour and a half out of it. So I started from there and then made more cuts, but not a huge amount of cuts because I had already gone through that process. For me. . . it's a pearl in an oyster.27 In order to find the pearl of the text she eliminated some text that could be better represented by visuals. However, she did not add anything to the text that would change the meaning of the original. At a lecture at Columbia University Taymor was asked if she had added to the text. Her response was: Oh god no, it's all Shakespeare. If I did anything I might have changed one word to make it a contemporary word, or if I felt it was totally incomprehensible, but mostly it's not. There's nothing that's added, not verbally, not in the text. What is added is the visual, the scenes . . . 28 Taymor further explained her addition of visual scenes. She stated that, "All of the non-verbal scenes are obviously not in the play so in order to make it cinematic and open it up I had to conceive of those scenes and how to create the world and make it more vivid."29 Critic Rhys Southan disagrees with Taymor's assessment of her additions or deletions of the original text. Taymor builds up the part of Young Lucius, the grandson of Titus Andronicus and has the young boy, "float through the play as a silent observer who is either supposed to represent the movie audience, the future inheritors of man's inhumanity to man or Taymor's gigantic ego."30 He notes that: Taymor even gives Young Lucius lines robbed from Marcus Andronicus (Colm Feore) to beef up his role, so that his constant appearances aren't completely ludicrous. . . .It's potentially a neat idea - "Let's pick out a character with 10 lines and make him the central character!" - but like Taymor's other changes, it doesn't work.31 At times it is not changes to the text that present a problem for the film Titus, but the changes in the intention of the text. Southan felt that Taymor sent mixed messages regarding the intention of the text itself. He cites the example of a scene in which, ". . . the dialogue in one scene expresses lust for a woman, but the action suggests homosexual and incestuous intrigue. Taymor first subverts Shakespeare's intentions and then subverts her own until there's almost nothing left."32 Cutting or reworking the text seems to be a necessary part of translating Shakespeare from the stage to film. Roman Polanski, director of the 1971 version of Macbeth explains that while cuts may be necessary caution must be used in adapting the text. He explains that, "I'm definitely not for rewriting scenes, unless there's really a possibility of making them clearer by some minute change. . . .If a change helps the clarity and does not spoil the verse, you may in some cases do that."33 Polanski goes on to state that cuts are necessary "just because of length" and that, "You may also rearrange the text sometimes, film it in a different sequence, without harming the play - in fact, you can sometimes help it."34 Franco Zeffirelli, director of film versions of Romeo and Juliet (1968), Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Hamlet (1990), agrees with Polanski and adds even more regarding deeper cuts in the text, like the necessity to eliminate some of the subplots of a Shakespearean play. Zeffirelli feels that: Anything created in another medium, like a novel or a play, had to accept certain rules when it migrates into the formidable medium of cinema - the length of the film, the language of images and so on. I cannot think of one novel or play that has been transposed entirely - apart from an exception like Branagh's Hamlet - because otherwise your film would last five hours. Adaptation is therefore inevitable, a necessity that no one can escape. Not just cutting obscure lines, which is automatic, because, if the audience doesn't understand the dialog, you must cut it or find other solutions. You must also deal with the redundance of verbal illustration, which is not necessary in cinema, and also the subplots. Subplots are all right on the stage, or when reading, but in films, subplots interfere all the time and they're very difficult to deal with.35 Oliver Parker, director of the 1995 version of Othello, lets the play determine the course of cutting and adapting the text. He doesn't have a definitive strategy regarding cuts to the text. As he sees it: I'm sure it would vary according to the particular piece and my vision of it. In the case of Othello, it was my intention to make a film that was fast-moving, vibrant, and accessible to a modern audience. Cuts and changes are therefore inevitable (the play uncut can run up to four hours). To present the plays in their entirety would be a disservice to Shakespeare. I'm sure if he were alive today, he'd be radically reworking the text for a new medium. His plays are colossal things, open to infinite interpretation. With Othello, I was moved and inspired to take a particular course and the alterations to the text came about as a direct result. I'm interested in remaining true to the spirit, not to the text, of plays.36 Film critics have varied opinions on the merits of the films. Titus suffered from a lot of negative criticism, most of which was based on the fact that it is not considered one of Shakespeare's great plays. Many of the critics also seemed determined to place the blame on Taymor's radical directing style. Trisha Kirk was able to see past the flaws and offered up reasons to see the movie. She stated that: Titus explores every conceivable aspect of human nature and the grotesque cycles of violence one act of vengeance can offset. Its excellent acting and artistic setting put the Bard back in the limelight. Whether or not spending $7.50 on Shakespeare is your idea of a good time, Titus is not one to be missed. 37 Bob Ivry saw both the merit in shaking up the scholars who scoff at modern adaptations of Shakespeare's work and the danger in producing a film that seems to be little more than an extravagant reworking of the original play. Ivry comments that while the film may be an interesting "experiment" but is, "not quite elucidating or emotionally involving." He even jokes that, "Shakespeare purists, who've had a rough time of it in the 1990's, will be outraged. That's a good thing." But ultimately he sees the director as the problem with the film: But aside from its laudable willingness to try just about anything, this Titus suffers from its director's willingness to try just about anything. Dream time can get mighty abstract. Obtuse, even. Titus is a lab project that offers touches of brilliance in a sea of incoherence.38 Desson Howe had the sharpest criticism for Taymor's efforts. He saw her attempted "directorial conceit" as Taymor storming in "brimming over with the kind of 'clever' postmodern zeal that was already passé when Peter Brook made the 1967 film The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade."39 But Taymor's passé zeal was not his only criticism. He furthered stated that: There's something hideously pretentious about the whole thing. This modernization-of-Shakespeare fever (so the MTV generation can appreciate the Bard's utter dudeness) has become so banal a filmmaker could practically earn the appellation enfant terrible by adapting a Shakespeare play without such frills. But not Taymor. She has too many Great Ideas about modern life to focus our attention on the play. For this she deserves hoots and howls from those cackling hyenas in The Lion King.40 Richard III faired far better with the critics. Some found flaws in the cutting of major scenes, like the scene between Richard and Lady Anne mentioned earlier. Richard Alleva stated that: Reviewing Olivier's version [of Richard III], the critic and scriptwriter Paul Dehn wrote, "Wherever the play was loose-jointed or ill-fitting, Sir Laurence has been its tinker and its tailor, but never once its butcher." Alas, McKellen and Loncraine have sliced and diced.41 Owen Gleiberman agrees with Alleva's assessment of the trimming down of the text when he wrote that, "At a lean and mean hour and 44 minutes, the play is practically a skeleton of the original, yet the actors give it flesh."42 Yet even though he is in agreement with the "sliced and diced" criticism of text cuts, he added that the fresh approach to updating the play makes it worth viewing because, "Whatever its flaws, the revelation of this Richard III is that updating Shakespeare may be even more ideally suited to the movies than to the stage. Better to shoot the works than fizzle in respectability." 43 Richard Corliss was equally excited by the updated version of the film. He saw the film as, "A political amorality play for the ages, this Richard is the dank, enthralling goods - the Nixon that Oliver Stone didn't dare make." 44 Corliss went on to say that: Here is Shakespeare's upper-class mass murderer updated as a clever fascist in the court of Edward VIII. The 1930's was a decade of ruthless strongmen, in both European politics and Hollywood movies. Gangsters, mesmerizing in their amoral ambition, were the men of the moment; they lent a sick thrill to the front page and entertainment section. This Richard is such a fellow: Scarface Hitler. From the opening titles, which explode in a blast of artillery fire, to the closing image of Richard laughing as he plunges into a cloud of hellfire, this is not just Shakespeare played on film. It is a movie - all movie, and fully as cinematic as its ancestors in the killer-comedy genre, Kind Hearts and Coronets and Dr. Strangelove.45 Baz Luhrmann's film version of William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet also encountered a split decision among the critics. Most of the criticism swirls around the argument that this version has been 'dumbed down' for a younger audience. Even the title has been altered from the traditional Romeo and Juliet to a more modern title with a plus sign replacing the word "and" in the title. Roger Ebert had some very harsh words regarding the adaptation: I've seen Shakespeare done in drag. I've seen Richard III as a Nazi. I've seen The Tempest as science fiction and as a Greek travelogue. I've seen Prince Hal and Falstaff as homosexuals in Portland. I've seen King Lear as a samurai drama and Macbeth as a Mafia story, and two different versions of Romeo and Juliet about ethnic differences in Manhattan (West Side Story and China Girl), but I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of Romeo and Juliet makes of Shakespeare's tragedy. The desperation with which it tries to "update" the play and make it "relevant" is greatly depressing. In one grand but doomed gesture, writer-director Baz Lurhmann has made a film that (a) will dismay any lover of Shakespeare, and (b) bore anyone lured into the theater by the promise of gang wars, MTV-style. This production was a very bad idea.46 Donald Lyons continues where Ebert left off. He comments that the film was "bested long ago by West Side Story (1961) and, more recently, by Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991)." He sees Luhrmann's film as the director's attempt to "render obsolete" the "classy British productions" and: What Luhrmann has accomplished instead is to define Shakespeare down to the tastes of today's youth, a culture so corrosive that it dissolves anything it comes into contact with. How innocuous, by comparison, seems Franco Zeffirelli's mildly hippified Romeo and Juliet from 1968!47 Not all hope was lost by the critics. Chris Vognar found merit in the film's updated look. He saw the adaptation as something even Shakespeare would approve of when he stated: Call it Natural Born Lovers. Baz Luhrmann's long-awaited adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is an all-out assault on the senses, part Fellini, part Oliver Stone, yet 100 percent William Shakespeare in spirit. So it's not quite how the Bard drew it up. But you can't help but think he'd be pleased. . . .Mr. Luhrmann has gone out on a limb and created a crafty, haunting, if occasionally overwrought film. If Romeo and Juliet is indeed timeless, this vision is just about perfect for its time.48 And so the debate continues. Critics and scholars feel that at times film directors can cut the heart out of Shakespeare's plays presented on film. They split their opinions on whether updating the period of the plays is good for the audience and good for Shakespeare. The directors attempt to justify their choices in updating, adapting the text, and substituting visual images for visual language. But what does this mean for the general audience viewing the films? Recent box-office returns on many of the newer films show that there is a decline in the amount of money the films can make. Some films, like Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, made quite a bit of money due to the teen audiences that flocked to see popular actors like its star Leonardo DiCaprio. The younger audience enjoyed seeing a classic play set in familiar contemporary settings. Taymor's Titus was only released in a limited number of theatres and tended to be seen as more of an art film than a night of movie entertainment. Loncraine's Richard III did fairly well at the box office, but seems to have done far better when released on video and DVD. Kenneth Branagh, whose films of Henry V and Hamlet did well, but his musical adaptation of Love's Labours Lost did just that - it lost out at the box-office even with Kenneth Branagh, Alicia Silverstone and Nathan Lane in the cast. Branagh intended to produce two more films, including a film version of Macbeth, but has recently announced delays in producing the films due to the lack of return on recent films' production costs. Is the audience, by way of the dollar, sending a message that too much tampering with Shakespeare's text, the use of too many modern filming techniques, and visual images replacing the beauty of the language leaves little more than a film based on the work of William Shakespeare? Have filmmakers made it too easy of young audiences to grasp Shakespeare while forgetting that most of their paying audience consists of those who prefer the full weight of Shakespeare as opposed to Shakespeare light? Have critics and scholars through their continued criticism of any form of tampering with Shakespeare's text made it difficult for modern audiences to appreciate the vast new interpretations that directors are presenting? Have we all forgotten that, as stated at the beginning, stage productions have employed to some extent the same adaptations and text cuts long before it caught on as a trend in film? The best thing for today's audience to remember is this: On stage the beauty is found in hearing Shakespeare and on screen the beauty is found in seeing Shakespeare, no matter what time period or text changes have been made. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VOICES IN CONTEMPORARY THEATRE A WOMAN'S VOICE -- IS INDEED UNIQUE! Emerging female playwrights do indeed have a unique artistic voice -- and that voice can be heard at the 9th Annual Women's Playwriting Festival. Produced by Perishable Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island, this our smallest state now possesses a "Theatre Voice" which is reverberating worldwide! Playwright Notiassaiu deGannes speaks loud (and occasionally not so clear) in her award winning script The Frangipani Door. This story of a young girl's quest for forgiveness and understanding is indeed touching and well staged. Angela Williams, as Rachel, steals the show with her performance and the set which serves many masters -- serves them very well! My only objection here was that the script had some major holes is it. There is a religious overtone that never comes to fruition and Rachel's search, although heartfelt and sincere, jumps from location to location without the needed transitional materials. I think this is an excellent "play in the making" rather than a finished piece. With a lot of hard work and more concentration on the transitions Ms. deGannes' voice will be one worthy of esteem. Mothergun by Christine Evans is a piece of theatre that demands the audience come to full attention! Superbly directed by Vanessa Gilbert, it takes place in "a gutted world, stretched between sky and mud" and is the story of all wars -- ludicrous, empowering, dehumanizing and palpable -- this is a script that works on many levels. I would like to think that no matter what ethnicity, generation or gender (one is a part of) the message here is undeniable -- war sucks! I found myself slipping into the mind-set of the Holocaust -- despite the fact that I had been told that the play takes place in "a refugee camp between Europe and Hell" and is the aftermath of a Civil War. There was much to remind us of the futility, devastation and pain of all wars -- the effect (direct and indirect) it has on each of us; and that we all have the capacity for betrayal, deception, revenge and madness. Mothergun forces us to face the reality of an existence in which we are nameless, soulless entities at the mercy of our own actions; reflected back at us through the mirror of history, our very language used as a weapon against us. Carol Schlink as "B" has the instinct to survive as well as to revenge herself on her captors. There are moments when she (the actress) is right on the mark; but only moments. Sean McConaghy as "D" or the Peacekeeper cum translator -- FYI, three of the characters speak different languages and are at the mercy of a translator -- is appropriately frigid and calculating as he conducts business in an inappropriate manner. He accurately translates only what benefits his purpose and lies about the rest. What makes this aspect of the script particularly interesting is that the audience hears the actual dialogue, and the translation in English, while made aware that each character is speaking in a language unknown to the other. Talk about "losing something in the translation," this is the ultimate illustration of that. Dan Goldrick as "C" is all energy and venom as he darts and dodges around the stage like a firecracker gone wild. His portrayal of this "soldier child" is mesmerizing. Michael Cappelli (a veteran of this Festival) as "A" (an injured soldier) is aptly convincing as a man who appears to be the only survivor of his military unit. What is perplexing in this production is, that if you do not possess a copy the 9th Annual Women's Playwriting Festival Anthology of New One-Act Plays, there is no way to identify which of the men portrays which character on stage -- perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be, after all this is the Women's Playwriting Festival, but I like to give credit where credit is due and this seems to be impossible by simply reading the program (unless of course you know the actors personally)! Then there was ExtraOrdinaire by Janet Kenney -- it's a shame that there is nothing remarkable about it; except for the performance by veteran actor Mark Peckham! The script -- not on a par with the other two plays -- is weak and fragmented -- feeding the audience lots of great lines, but no real substance. It is an unsuccessful rehash of the Peter Pan syndrome -- that doesn't quite live up to its potential. From personal experience, I know how difficult is to work opposite an actor as powerful as Peckham and to have two such actors on stage could be devastating -- don't worry, in this case that's not what happened. There was a single moment when Clare Vadeboncoeur, as Martha, could have stolen the stage from Peckham, but instead she let the audience know that it (the tipping over -- well almost-- of a major piece of the set )was an accident; not a staged moment. While Peckham was up to the challenge, Vadeboncoeur instantly stepped out of character! There are too many ambiguities in this brief one-act and not enough time or material to sort them out. Are they (Martha and Joey) husband and wife, brother and sister, friends, lovers, mother and son or all of the foregoing? Unfortunately, by virtue of the fact that the script left so much to be desired, I really didn't care! All in all, this Festival (once again) promises to be a success. The credit goes to a lot of people but it is apparent that Festival Director Vanessa Gilbert has earned the lion's share of it! Award winning Director, writer and actress, Willis-Whyte has performed Off-Broadway, in films and, on television. Named to Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities and Who's Who in American Advertising, Willis has published two books of poetry and is also the author of three one-act plays based on the lives of Susan B. Anthony, Clara Harlowe Barton and Anne Frances Kelly; a member of an all girl Confederate cavalry unit. Her latest book, Images of Nineteenth Century American Women, which integrates staged readings of historical biographies, original poetry, and art, is scheduled for publication later this year. A past member of AFTRA, Actor's Equity, and SAG, Willis (who is) a native New Yorker, now makes Providence RI her home. Theatre Snobs Rebuttal Last month we ran a "From the Mailbag" with the letter of one John Popa, ranting about what, in his admittedly not too humble opinion, is good and bad about contemporary theatre. We ran it to stir up some controversy. It worked. We promised Theatre Snobs, and indeed everyone else, equal time and space to respond this month, so let's get right to it... First, let me answer the subset of letters asking "Who the hell is John Popa" A. I have no idea. He's obviously some guy who feels so strongly about theatre he took the time to write up this lengthy diatribe and send it to everyone he knew. Granted, as some of you pointed out, he seems to be writing in order to get a handle on his thoughts for his own benefit, not to communicate them to others, but y'know, passion is passion. People don't always think clearly in it's grip. At the end of the day, we at TRE like people who feel passionately about theatre even if they're talking total drivel. Next: Why did TRE print it ? A. Why not? Not only is this guy thinking, at considerable length if not with any particular insight, about the state of live theatre in America, his rant got quite a few of you thinking about it as well. That's a good thing, no matter how you look at it. Since my days on MSN, I've encountered a curious phenomenon. Friends and colleagues encountering an outrageous idea they know to be wrong instead of just shaking their head in pity or arguing the jackass down themselves, call it to MY attention so I can take up the argument for them. Now I'm flattered that my friends consider me a hired gun, although I suspect it's not my intellectual ammo they want to hire but my Sicilian instinct to go for the jugular. But c'mon now, none of you need ME to take on some guy on the internet saying Sondheim musicals are poorly written. You can all figure out for yourselves that when he says "the audience" gets lost he means that HE gets lost, and you can all see that when he insists that's not because he's stupid, but because Sondheim isn't a good communicator that clearly this guy's idea of a great communicator would be Barney the Dinosaur. He likes Disney Musicals, He likes Jekyll and Hyde, and he wants to think he's just as good as people who enjoy the stuff he doesn't understand. So what? We who are proud to call ourselves theatre snobs, who appreciate more sophisticated material, spend enough time bashing the stuff he likes. He did a bit of the same. Who cares? What's important is that we all continue to support the kinds of theatre we do enjoy. We the snobs should certainly stay out of the shows Mr. Popa frequents, as our snickers would undoubtedly disturb their enjoyment of the bright shiny objects. They should stay the hell out of our shows, cause their snores will undoubtedly disturb our enjoyment of, y'know, theatre. Art Yasmina Reza's stylish hit "Art" first opened in 1996 and has been charming and enlightening audiences all over the world ever since! Now on stage at Trinity Repertory in Providence, RI, this production sparkles with wit, intelligence and charm without loosing a beat! It is an emotional roller coaster ride for the three friends who are embroiled in a judgmental and hilarious debate about what makes art, art. And what makes friendship worth the sometimes overwhelming struggle. Both of which this writer is still pondering. The play is a delightfully funny and psychologically perceptive attack on modernism in every sense of the word (s)! Which, by the way, even in translation (adroitly done, from the French, by Christopher Hampton) loose(s) nothing! Directed by Leonard Foglia "Art" moves along at an alarmingly fast pace -- in some cases reminiscent of true French Farce and facilitating the basic tenant of the play -- what is art? -- and what is friendship? The set, designed by William Lane is superb and appropriately Spartan, sound by Peter Sasha Hurowitz and lighting design by Russell Champa are of the caliber we have come to expect from Trinity, nothing less than excellent. Then there's the acting!!! It's about as close to flawless as this writer has ever seen! Timothy Crowe (Marc), Fred Sullivan, Jr. (Serge) and Dan Welch (Yvan) all in top form! All incredibly talented and all even more incredibly believable as friends who at the drop of a paint brush challenge their perceptions of friendship! The story line is short and sweet (as is the play which runs approximately seventy minutes) -- An all white painting bought by Serge for two hundred thousand francs (somewhere around $30,000 US dollars) is seen by Marc as ludicrous and a threat. Yvan, always trying to placate everyone, adds fuel to the fire and puts their friendship to the ultimate test -- that of being completely honest with one another. Friendship is a loaded gun and the painting becomes its trigger! This canvas is only an object, but is it art because the artist says so? Or is it art because the individual draws meaning from it -- meaning that may only be relevant to his or herself...something exquisite and profound...and is friendship that as well? "Art" from the initial conflict, over the painting that Marc calls "a piece of shit", to resolution, the realization that real friendship is more valuable that anything else; works. It works in such a intense and startling way that it (in and of itself) is indeed ART, in a form which speaks to the heart and energizes the mind! Award winning Director, writer and actress, Willis-Whyte has performed Off-Broadway, in films and, on television. Named to Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities and Who's Who in American Advertising, Willis has published two books of poetry and is also the author of three one-act plays based on the lives of Susan B. Anthony, Clara Harlowe Barton and Anne Frances Kelly; a member of an all girl Confederate cavalry unit. Her latest book, Images of Nineteenth Century American Women, which integrates staged readings of historical biographies, original poetry, and art, is scheduled for publication later this year. A past member of AFTRA, Actor's Equity, and SAG, Willis (who is) a native New Yorker, now makes Providence RI her home. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE BEST PLAYS OF 2000-2001 ESSAYISTS INCLUDE BRUSTEIN, DOLEN, NOVICK, WEBER HIRSCHFELD ILLUSTRATES NEW YORK - Continuing a tradition that dates back to 1920, when Burns Mantle founded the annual Best Plays theater yearbook, the Best Plays of 2000-2001 were announced today by editor Jeffrey Eric Jenkins. For the current edition, the annual chronicle of United States theater honors ten dramatic works. In addition to the Best Plays of 2000-2001, the book will also continue to honor regional plays cited by the American Theatre Critics Association in the American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Awards and Citations competition, and will provide a compendium of facts and figures about the year in theater. Continuing his six-decade relationship with Best Plays is the brilliant artist, Al Hirschfeld. The Best Plays of 2000-2001 were chosen from Broadway, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway productions of new plays that opened between June 1, 2000 and May 31, 2001. The choices were made by the editor after consultation with the Best Plays editorial board, which includes Robert Brustein, Tish Dace, Christine Dolen, Mel Gussow, Robert Hurwitt, John Istel, Chris Jones, Julius Novick, Michael Phillips, Christopher Rawson, Alisa Solomon, Jeffrey Sweet, Linda Winer and Charles Wright. Each of the Best Plays of 2000-2001 will be celebrated in an essay to be published in the 2000-2001 edition of the book. The playwrights will also be honored in a planned ceremony this fall. The Best Plays of 2000-2001 (in alphabetical order): Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman (Chris Jones, essayist) King Hedley II by August Wilson (Christopher Rawson, essayist) The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard (Charles Wright, essayist) Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan (Tish Dace, essayist) Mnemonic by Simon McBurney (John Istel, essayist) Nocturne by Adam Rapp (Robert Brustein, essayist) The Play About the Baby by Edward Albee (Christine Dolen, essayist) The Producers by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan (Julius Novick, essayist) Proof by David Auburn (Bruce Weber, essayist) Urinetown: The Musical by Greg Kotis and Mark Hollman (Jeffrey Sweet, essayist) Best Plays uses the Web address of www.BestPlaysOnline.com and was featured in last month's CyberTheatre Monthly . In the fall of 2001, Best Plays citations will be posted on the Web site along with excerpts of commentary. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM LONDON Noises Off - a Shakespeare-Free Letter from London You all know I love bigman Bill Shakespeare, but you also know I've been chafing at the way the RSC has been dominating the letter column lately. So I'm just doing backflips at this chance to send clippings of my favorite farce in which nary a line of pentameter is spake Theatre Backstage to front BY BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE Noises Off is still a farce to be reckoned with Is Michael Frayn's Noises Off the best British farce ever? Maybe that's a meaningless claim: different eras laugh at different things, good plays soar or crash depending on the ability of particular casts and the responsiveness of particular audiences, and many other variables enter the equation. Roll into a theatre fuelled by bonhomie and booze, and the silliest stuff can have you rolling in that theatre's aisles. Still, I can't name another piece which so splendidly passes my key tests: Noises Off does not insult the mind; it is not gratuitously crass or vulgar; and it is very, very funny. Also, nothing has been lost with the piece's belated transfer from the National to the Piccadilly. One or two fine, game actors have left but they've been replaced with equally fine, game ones. Out goes Patricia Hodge, and in comes Lynn Redgrave, accoutred with girlish curls, and still droller as Dotty Otley, who plays the char in Frayn's farce-within-a-farce: a touring ribtickler called Nothing On. The situation seems as inspired in 2001 as it did at Noises Off's premiere in 1982. In our permissive era you can't easily raise laughter by cramming half- clad mistresses under beds or in wardrobes. Farce thrives on desperation, and that sort of desperation has gone out of infidelity. But when a theatrical production goes even slightly wrong, you can see and smell the sweat on the cast's faces. The terrified actor is, if you like, today's farcical counterpart of yesterday's frightened husband: he must sustain a performance when a gaping abyss is a step or a line away. Moreover, Frayn has his reflective side, and from Alphabetical Order in 1975 to Copenhagen in 1998 he has suggested that the world subverts our attempts to make sense of it. Disorder is the natural human condition. Here, too, Noises Off scores strongly. Misplace a cue, a box, or even a plate of smelly fish, and the unruly spirals into the chaotic. "Getting on, getting off," wails Peter Egan's Lloyd Dallas, the exhausted director of Nothing On. "Doors and sardines. That's farce, that's the theatre, that's life." But there's nothing dryly philosophic about the confusions of Noises Off. Act One, a midnight rehearsal of Nothing On, shows how dependent that piece is on timing, but also introduces us to the imperfect beings who must perfect it. And since Lloyd is a lascivious cad, Christopher Benjamin's old-time thesp a deaf alcoholic, Natalie Walter a shortsighted bimbo, Jeff Rawles a sad cuckold, Stephen Mangan a juvenile lead who is ferociously jealous of anyone who gets anywhere near Redgrave's Dotty - well, trouble is all too likely to occur when performances of Nothing On are successively shown from backstage and the front. Think fire-axes. Think shoelaces tied together, a hopelessly tangled phone, slippery sardines and much, much else. It's hilarious, and it's hilarious for an incongruous reason: Jeremy Sams's cast is physically and verbally so adroit that it can play inept actors getting things as immaculately wrong as they're meant to get them immaculately right. Imagine nine people wobbling on cue, then falling a hundred feet head-first into buckets of water - and you've a feat that the most expert tightrope walker would envy. Trousers off Why are there so many plays about farces? Michael Billington investigates Michael Billington Guardian Wednesday May 16, 2001 What have Noel Coward and Michael Frayn got in common? Not a lot, except that both wrote plays, just opened within a stone's throw of Piccadilly Circus, in which backstage friction leads to onstage mayhem. In Coward's Red Peppers, at the Jermyn Street Theatre, a tatty song-and-dance act is scuppered by a vengeful musical director. And in Frayn's Noises Off, looking infinitely more at home in the Piccadilly Theatre than it did at the National, a prop-filled, sardine-dominated farce accelerates into unbelievable chaos. Playwrights, from Shakespeare to Pirandello, have been fascinated by the idea of theatre as metaphor. But Coward and Frayn's plays belong to a much more specific genre: disruptive comedies dealing with onstage disintegration. They are the tip of an iceberg that includes Sheridan's The Critic, Rattigan's Harlequinade, Henry Kendall's On Monday Next (an old rep favourite filmed as Curtain Up) and Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound. Why is it that theatre so enjoys mocking its own mechanics? I suspect the reasons are both philosophical and pragmatic. To apply the word "philosophical" to farce is to invite derision; one of the overlooked delights of Noises Off is a programme for the play-within-the-play containing a brilliant spoof essay, written by Frayn himself, on Studies in the Semantics of Bedroom Farce. The loss of trousers, it claims, is "an allusion to the fall of man and the loss of primal innocence". But, although Frayn hilariously punctures academic solemnity, it is still worth asking why the spectacle of a farce falling apart in Noises Off reduces audiences to helpless delirium. One answer is that all theatre attempts to impose a structure on the flux of reality. Farce is simply the most vivid example, in that a living nightmare is executed with maximum precision: the minutest miscalculation, however, throws the whole spectacle into disarray and exposes its absurdity. As in theatre, so in life: we all live with the fear that our supposedly ordered existence will descend into chaos. In life it can happen through a missed train or a malfunctioning computer. In farce it happens through a missed cue or a recalcitrant telephone; and what we laugh at in Noises Off is our recognition of the escalating panic that follows the breakdown of any ordered system. Far-fetched? Not if you listen to Frayn himself who, in his introduction to the Methuen edition of Noises Off, says that all his work is "about the way in which we impose our ideas upon the world around us", a theme that extends to his nuclear physics play, Copenhagen, and his art-history novel, Headlong. But all the best backstage farces are about the nature of perception. Sheridan's The Critic, one of the funniest plays ever written, shows the preposterous Mr Puff rehearsing his absurd patriotic melodrama about the Spanish Armada. But Sheridan constantly draws attention to cliched stage conventions, such as the overheard aside, to expose the falsity of theatrical reality. And, as Fintan O'Toole points out in his masterly Sheridan biography, the work is grounded in the scepticism of Locke and Berkeley and the belief that the material world is simply an idea in the mind of the beholder. Obviously you don't go to farce for an academic discourse; but intelligent writers like Sheridan, Frayn and Stoppard bring to the form their own philosophical preoccupations. The backstage farce is also a wonderfully pragmatic vehicle for what I'd call pre-emptive satire. Since the theatre has always been under attack from some quarter, dramatists get their strike in first by acknowledging its artifice and absurdity. Yet their exposure of its weakest points implies an awareness of its strengths. Thus Sheridan's The Critic lampoons the kind of jingoistic nonsense, such as Richard Cumberland's The Battle of Hastings, that his own father was putting on at Drury Lane. Coward's Red Peppers, written in 1936, when the cinema was a potent threat, mercilessly mocks tatty music-hall veterans who thought they had a god-given right to survival. And Rattigan's Harlequinade, written in 1947, uses a dress rehearsal of a subsidised Romeo and Juliet to satirise, unfairly but amusingly, the post-war theatre of social purpose. "As far as I can see," says a disgruntled stage manager, "it means playing Shakespeare to audiences who'd rather go to the films; while audiences who'd rather go to Shakespeare are driven to the films because they haven't got Shakespeare to go to." Art has always fed off itself. But the theatre has a long and enviable tradition not just of self-satire but of exploring its own nature. The paradox is that meta-theatre, at its very best, also has mass appeal. And Noises Off, in its buoyant transfer to the West End, explains why. It not only offers a nostalgic evocation of reppy, door-banging, detrousering farce. It also suggests that we are constantly poised between order and chaos and that our whole existence is much ado about nothing. In the words of the play-within-the- play's god-like director: "Getting the sardines on - getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's the theatre. That's life." A magical mirth machine Charles Spencer reviews Noises Off at the Piccadilly Theatre A FEARSOME former editor of this newspaper used to have a disconcerting habit of creeping up on me in the gents and barking, "Top three shows in London, Charlie?" in a tone of impatient interrogation. My mind always went a complete blank, and, on one occasion, after looking over my shoulder to stammer out a response, I discovered that I had peed all over my shoes. Asked the same question today, I would unhesitatingly include what is surely the funniest show in London - the National Theatre's revival of Michael Frayn's Noises Off (1982), which has now transferred to the Piccadilly. Frayn is an intellectual who is fascinated by chaos, a highbrow with a taste for lowbrow jokes, and a writer who has always been stronger on ideas than he is at characterisation. Here, all these qualities are harnessed to pursue one simple, single aim - to manufacture a dramatic machine for making you laugh. The result is almost frighteningly effective. You really do laugh so much it hurts. The printed text looks more like a complex technical manual than a play text. Every move is carefully plotted, every joke meticulously timed, every action cleverly motivated to create the farce to end all farces. Indeed, Noises Off does for farce what Anthony Shaffer did for the whodunit in Sleuth, simultaneously celebrating - and subverting - a dramatic genre so perfectly that more conventional attempts at the form seem superannuated. Frayn's brilliant idea was to write a farce about a farce. If you wanted to come over all pretentious you could describe it as a metafarce, though personally I'd much rather you didn't. The action begins at the Grand Theatre, Weston-super-Mare, where a battle-scarred company is enduring an all-night rehearsal before the opening of a dire bedroom farce called Nothing On. Frayn's view of luvvies in extremity combines beady-eyed malice with palpable affection, but it is in the second act that the play stops being merely wickedly entertaining and moves into the realm of brilliance. For, on this occasion, set a month later, we get a backstage view of the performance, a delirious sequence of mimed mayhem drilled with astonishing precision by director Jeremy Sams. The third and final act, in which we watch the last night of Nothing On from the front again, was always a problem in the past but is now almost as fine as the second. Everything that can go wrong does in a collective nervous breakdown that might have been written by Pirandello on laughing gas. Newcomer Lynn Redgrave can't quite eclipse memories of Patricia Hodge as Dotty Otley, who plays the sardine-addicted char lady, but Stephen Mangan offers an irresistible mix of blind fury and terminal dimness as the juvenile lead. Meanwhile, the survivors from the original production have turned comic craft into high art, with especially fine work from Peter Egan (offering a delicious caricature of Sir Peter Hall as the director), Natalie Walter (as a pneumatic bimbo), Christopher Benjamin (as the old soak) and Jeff Rawle (as an accident waiting to happen). Comic bliss. A gem of a farce within a farce by MICHAEL COVENEY, Daily Mail Venue: Piccadilly Theatre When Michael Frayn's blissfully funny theatrical farce last opened in the West End, in 1982, it ran for five years. Like throat lozenges or laxatives, it should be permanently available on prescription, so the transfer of last October's National Theatre revival is a true act of public health service. Jeremy Sams's production has been carefully and brilliantly maintained, and the cast bolstered by two new arrivals. Lynn Redgrave now plays Dotty Ottley, the fading rep actress in a housecoat, bearing plates of sardines with a mind of their own. How wonderful to have this great comedienne back where she belongs. Miss Redgrave adds a new dimension of physical power and stricken pretensions, forming her face and her figure into hilarious postures as the full catastrophe pierces her vanity. She projects the star status of Gloria Swanson in Ashton-under-Lyne, refusing to speak in a neck brace and dark glasses. Until her cue comes. Stephen Mangan (Adrian Mole in The Cappucino Years) is equally excellent as the axe-wielding Gary Lejeune, overtaken with jealous fury and almost emasculated by a telephone cable that bisects the stage like a vicious washing line. This was always a play Frayn could never quite finish. The set-up of a chaotic rehearsal becomes a frantic, balletic mime of mayhem with the same text played upstage beyond the set to an unseen audience of mystified OAPs at the Wednesday matinee. But the much improved third act is now a surreal meshing of reality and fiction in a nightmare improvisation where nobody cares very much about even a trace of logical stage action any more. Susie Blake and Jeff Rawle reprise their knockout performances as the tour of Nothing On collapses amid swaying scenery, violence and flying sardines in war- torn Stockton-on-Tees. If you don't laugh out loud at least two dozen times, I think you should check to see if you're still breathing. Frayn's side-splitting farce about a farce comes home at last Noises Off, Picadilly Theatre, London By Paul Taylor As the sage said: every exit is an entrance somewhere else. Nowhere is this truer than in Michael Frayn's Noises Off. Very probably the most side-splitting play ever written, it's a farce about a farce, giving both a front-of-house and behind-the-scenes view of a ghastly touring production of a terrible sex romp,Nothing On. Jeremy Sams's life-threateningly funny revival opened last autumn at the National. There was only one mild drawback there:Noises Off needs to be seen in the kind of raffish, gilt-and-plush theatre where Nothing On would have been performed. The modern, antiseptic ambience of the Lyttelton had, for me, a slightly deadening effect but it all feels much more at home at the Piccadilly Theatre. Any doubts about the National's involvement in such a sure-fire commercial hit dissolve once again before the escalating comic ecstasy Sams' company generates. The genius lies in the devilishly clever way the deteriorating antics on stage interlock with the backstage farce of mounting jealousies and misunderstandings. The second act, where we view a disastrous matinee of Nothing On from the thesps' perspective, becomes a painfully hilarious, panic-stricken ballet, involving the whisky bottles that have to be kept hidden from the old soak senior actor; frantic first aid measures that invariably look like heavy sex to the jealous male lead; and the set-shattering consequences of a pair of shoelaces tied together in revenge. Frayn has traditionally had problems topping this middle scene, but with Sams' inventive tightening the laughter just gets more and more helpless in the last act which shows us the final performance in Stockton-on-Tees, with the cast now desperately ad-libbing as the play self-destructs around them. The company is first-rate. Amongst the newcomers to the show, Lynne Redgrave is undoubtedly skilled as Dotty Ottley, the rather grand soap star who plays the comic char, although Patricia Hodge played it with more mischievous incongruity. Stephen Mangan brings a terrific frenetic edge to Garry Lejeune, the leading man. With his goatee beard and dark clothing, Peter Egan's snooty director is libellously reminiscent of a former head of the National. It's invidious, though, to single people out. Every exit is an entrance. And one of the most pleasurable exits you can make at the moment is the one from Denman Street, W1, into the Piccadilly Theatre -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CYBERTHEATRE MONTHLY Tick Tick Boom http://ticktickboom.net/ TICK, TICK, BOOM was a one-man musical autobiography written by Jonathan Larson. The last reading of this show prior to the about-to-open production was in 1993 before Jonathan turned all of his attention towards RENT (which, the savvy reader will deduce, means there is no mention of it in the show, which is sure to confuse and disappoint 90% of it's audience). When re-arranging this from solo show created by Larson to be performed by Larson, to become a three actor posthumous tribute, musical director Stephen Oremus did inject some RENT "flavor" into several of the numbers so that Larson fans could identify with it. How well he succeeded is anybody's guess, but those who saw the preview report great vocal performances by RAUL ESPARZA as Jonathan Larson, AMY SPANGER as Jonathan's girlfriend, Susan, and JERRY DIXON as Jonathan's roommate, Michael. What's new on the Rialto http://www.talkinbroadway.com/rialto/ Although not a uniform fan of everything at Talkinbroadway.com, VJ's "What's New on the Rialto" column seldom disappoints. It has the refreshing sense of being written by - a real person, that has fond memories of some shows and performers, limited knowledge of others, a reasonable collection of tastes and biases - and is not, like so many chatty theatre columns, compiled from assorted press releases. Casper the Musical http://www.caspermusical.com/ Don't blame me, I just report 'em. High School Tech Productions Just a note that Scott Parker's High School Tech Productions site featured last month has a new URL at http://www.hstech.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RUBIN'S CORNER The Woman in Black "The Woman in Black" begins with an agitated man in a rain-spattered overcoat entering an unlighted building. The play is a shamelessly hokey Victorian ghost story and come complete with misty marshes an isolated village whose citizens bear a secret, a solitary mansion, a graveyard, spectral sightings, and a lingering curse. The play is performed by two speaking actors whose talky re-enactment of events is a forthrightly about the conventions of theatrical storytelling as it is about spooks and nightmares. Stephen Mallatratt adapted the play from a 1983 novel by Susan Hill. This is the same play that has been running in London for 12 years. It opened on Monday, June 2nd at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village as a Off-Broadway production. The narrative concerns a young lawyer who is sent from London to Crythin Giford in the marshlands of England. The house that he is visiting is haunted. Suffice it to say that the lighting and sound effects, which include one very loud thunderclap and an amplified scream, hit you entertainment pleasure center. What makes this a strong play is the narrative frame for this tale as it is performanced by Keith Baxter, in the title role of Kips. Jared Reed plays a dozen other characters in this play within a play. The setup allows an actor's coup. Watching the two men perform their identity switching onstage, aided by some basic costume changes, is one of the play's chief pleasures In the end one might wish a number of things for the show. You wish the final solution were not so obvious so early in the second act. Although the "Women in Black will not make you believe in ghosts it will make you believe in theater. The production plays Monday to Friday at 8:00 PM and at 7:00 PM and 10:00 PM on Saturday. The production does Wednesday and Saturday afternoon performance at 2 PM. Patrick Garland directed the production and the sets are by James None. The lighting is by Ken Billington. --- A special not I have just learned that Matthew Broderick will leave "The Producers" for six weeks this summer to do a movie. Martin Short will take on his role. Mel Brooks will redirect Short. Broderick will complete his one year contact and then Short will replace him in the role. GLIMMER, GLIMMER AND SHINE Playwright WARREN LEIGHT and FOLLIES Stars BROOKE SUNNY MORIBER and JOAN ROBERTS on Friday's THEATER TALK Friday, June 15 at midnight on Thirteen/WNET, THEATER TALK's guest is playwright WARREN LEIGHT. Leight, whose 1999 play SIDEMAN won a Tony Award for Best Play, talks about his new work GLIMMER, GLIMMER AND SHINE, now playing at The Manhattan Theatre Club. Later, THEATER TALK also welcomes BROOKE SUNNY MORIBER and JOAN ROBERTS of the musical FOLLIES, now being revived by The Roundabout Theatre Company at The Belasco Theatre. The two actresses discuss the legendary Stephen Sondheim show, as well as playing the same character at two different stages of life -- operetta star Heidi Schiller -- in the production. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2001, Mersinger Theatrical Services