Theatre
Review
scoi ilST-l PR! Mli Rt BROKEN GLASS
Theatre Royal, Dumfries, Wed 30 May, then touring .0.
Whenever someone expresses a view that dissents from the mainstream it makes others feel uncomfortable, and they may feel the need to find a label for them. In his own time, Arthur Miller endured a good deal of abuse from various sources for his views, from persecution in the McCarthyite witch hunts, to the sniping and dismissals he received from the right wing press for his work in such organisations as Amnesty International in his latter years. So it’s no surprise that in this 1994 piece he examines the ease with which a woman, who has become obsessed with radio reports of the holocaust, can be dismissed as a neurotic.
But it’s more complex than this, since she is clearly suffering from a nervous disorder. It’s New York in 1938, and as her fellow Americans, including Jewish ones, dismiss the Nazi persecutions as a little local difficulty in a country far away, Sylvia (Fletcher Mathers), a middle aged, middle class Jewish housewife finds that
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she’s lost the use of her legs. Her cold and humourless husband (Stewart Porter) seeks the help of the affable family doctor (Lewis Howden) who applies psychoanalysis to the problem. But as is so often the case, hysterical repressions are easily applied to those of radical views, while their accusers often prove more troubled than the supposed sufferer.
Michael Emans’ production for Rapture locates Miller’s powerful central metaphor about domestic impotence and wilful ignorance of ideological threats with real vigour, but has to work to overcome the occasional bout of speechiness in the dialogue. Certainly the message - that our impulse in comfortable bourgeois circumstances to find petty distractions from our responsibilities to fellow humans, wherever they are, might lead to destructive psychological consequences - is well conveyed. If the action feels a little trapped within Lyn McAndrew’s rust coloured bedroom set, there are some powerful performances to offset the physical limitations, particularly from Porter’s self-hating Jewish husband and Howden’s egregiously self assured doctor.
Ultimately, this is a timely piece, whose central historical metaphor might speak volumes about world events we choose to ignore today. (Steve Cramer)
MUSICAL 'l'lIEATRE TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 5-Sat 9 Jun
POLITICAL THRILLER
CYPRUS
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Wed 30 May-Sat 2 Jun, then touring.
When Cyprus. writer Peter Arnott's taut. politically charged three-hander debuted at Mull Theatre in 2005. it was set on the day of the London bombings. ‘At the time. the bombings were the newest instalment of this continuing. sad. saga. ‘ says Arnott. ‘It actually occurred while we were rehearsing. and I very callously phoned the sound designer and told him to record Radio 4. We closed the show with a news repon from that day.’ However, given the opportunity to tow the production again. he took the chance to make significant revisions to the script. Rather than leaving the play in aspic as a historical piece. Arnott‘s various versions of the script, in which a retired MI 6 agent. his daughter and his former protege clash over intelligence documents. now constitute a son of rolling documentation of the war on terror. ‘It's not tied to any single event any more. People's perspectives have changed. and I've tried to give my Characters two years more experience on the situation. Remember, they‘re people who see nothing wrong with war as such. they just don't like it when you cock it up — and the extent of the cock up has become impossible to ignore. In 2005. that the war was a fiasco wasn't necessarily the majority Opinion. but there‘s no denying it now! So I had to approach it from a different point of view. Nothing's certain. now. The question we‘re asking isn‘t ‘how did we get into this mess'” it's “is there any way out of it?‘ And at the moment. the answer appears to be 'no.‘ (Kirstin Innes)
'When I was very young. Just a nipper. after my first album. I was living with a pal. Steve Morris. who lived in some style in Beverley Hills and l was invited to go to St Louis and write a musical with some real theatre peOpIe.' recalls legendary Scottish rocker BA Robertson. ‘I told them to piss off. What did I want to go there for in the winter. when I was having teQuila sunrises for breakfast every morning. I
sometimes think that wasn't my best career move . . . '
So it is that Robertson explains how his connection with the theatre could have started three decades back. There have been opportunities since. including an unreleased score written with Burt Bacharach,
but Robertson has. as ever. done things his own way.
The path he's taken has led him to the theatre in any case. with this intimate narrative cabaret. telling the story of John F Kennedy from the point of view of one of his early lovers. Inga Arvad. a jOurnaIist and former Danish beauty queen with a story of her own that seems to take in all the grandeur of Kennedy's. It's an intimate affair. here rewritten and expanded from the version presented at the Fringe last year. but still with only two figures on stage. Robertson and the actress playing Arvad, Katrine
Lunde.
Robertson is clearly brighter than the average rocker, and our conversation reveals a good deal of thought and research on his subject. But the heart of his story. told with many a song. is still the feeling of lost idealism that surrounds the fallen president. ‘How many shit moves would JFK have made when he was older? He was in that situation where he'll remain forever young, and that‘s very prized in Our culture. I mean. it James Dean had gotten old. lost his looks, and made a lot of shit movies. would he have become like Brando in later life? There's a similar idea with Kennedy.‘ (Steve Cramer)