Theatre
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PREVIEW CLASSIC THE CARETAKER Citizens’ Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 22 Oct—Sat 15 Nov
Directing a classic Harold Pinter play is, says Philip Breen, like staging an opera, so exactly is it written. ‘Every pause is written for a reason and he’s always right,’ says the director, returning to the Citz after his successes with those other 20th century classics Arturo Ui and Shadow of a Gunman.
But just because they are written with the precision of a playwright who spent his formative years as an actor in weekly rep and knew exactly how his work should sound, isn’t to say The Caretaker should be hard work for audiences. Breen points out that Pinter’s influences were not only absurdist playwrights such as Beckett and lonesco, but also comedy figures such as Peter Cook. ‘It’s a very funny play,’ says the director, still basking in the Fringe First-winning acclaim for Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved. ‘I don’t want people coming along with the expectation that they’re coming to see “art”. It isn’t difficult and we won’t be doing it in a difficult way.’
First performed in 1960, The Caretaker focuses on three oddball characters - a tramp, a former psychiatric patient and a low-rent landlord - and their attempts to mean something in a fast-moving world. Here Tam Dean Burn plays the down-and-out Davies, a role first taken on by Donald Pleasance in the London production that secured Pinter’s place on the map. ‘He just writes unique theatrical atmosphere,’ says Breen who has previously directed The Birthday Party.
His job as a director, he believes, is to ‘stay out of the way and not fuck it up’, not least because The Caretaker is a classic precisely because it takes on the mood of the times so well. ‘There’s a reason Pinter and this play are coming into orbit at the moment,’ he says. ‘Today The Caretaker’s idea of space and territory is very interesting on a geopolitical level, as is the idea of people living much closer to chaos and poverty than we imagine. Doing The Caretaker on the back of the recent turbulence in the credit market is fascinating. You realise the insecurity of it.’ (Mark Fisher)
86 THE LIST 16—30 Oct 2008
PREVIEW NEW WORK A SLOW DISSOLVE Arches, Glasgow, Tue 21 -Thu 23 Oct
Last year, Barry Henderson’s first play, the Edward Hopper-inspired A Pleasant Kind of Loneliness, impressed critics when it premiered at the Arches. A Slow Dissolve, his new commission from Glasgay!. could well be the sleeper star of Europe's biggest gay-themed festival.
The solo work takes as its subject US playwright Tennessee Williams, whose powerful works. such as A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and internal wrangles over his sexuality and depression are the main focus for this year's Glasgay! In exploring Williams’ recurring themes of madness. sexuality and gender, in an effort to provide a new perspective on his troubled life, Henderson is clearly fascinated by the enigmatic playwright: ‘Regardless of your sexuality, Tennessee Williams is fascinating. His characters are so well constructed and extremely difficult to get a hold of. They've got so many layers to them that you can spend hours trying to get into their minds.’
Yet, anyone seeking direct answers on Williams' turbulent life from A Slow Dissolve could be disappointed, as Henderson makes no pledge to do so. Instead. he hopes audience and author will come to their conclusions together: ‘l'm hoping that what people will experience is an understanding of someone who is attempting to understand something about his relationship with madness. with homosexuality or just modern living. I don't know if this show will answer any of those questions for people — I think I‘m still attempting to find those answers myself.’ (Yasmin Sulaiman)
PREVIEW NEW WORK COCKROACH Traverse, Edinburgh, Tue 28 Oct—Sat 1 Nov. Previews Fri 24 Oct & Sat 25 Oct
With Darwin‘s bicentenary coming up in 2009. one can't help but suspect that an awful lot of TV documentaries with hidden ideological aims have just been put on hold. A great torrent of material about how capitalism most closely mimicked Darwin’s defined model for the health and perpetuation of our species. and a lot of twitter about such scientifically discredited books as The Selfish Gene have been forestalled — so be grateful for this aspect of the economic catastrophe.
In the Current situation it seems perfect timing to uncover a new writer with a degree in Biological Sciences to give us the real story.
In Cockroach, a new play by Developmental Biology graduate Sam Holcroft. we meet a teacher preparing biology lessons for her students as a huge global war. which has already claimed many victims, looms over their future. The play examines gender politics in a way that we haven‘t seen for a while in British theatre, exploring male aggression and female tendencies to nurture. and drawing political, yet scientific conclusions. ‘Opening the national newspapers every day and seeing that another six stropping lads have been blown to pieces is a waste,’ Holcroft observes, her next sentence alerting us to her biology boffin credentials. ‘Seeing all these men disappear has huge implications for young women, who are losing these potential partners as these fit and healthy men are shot to pieces. So the genes of those physically unable to light are the ones that will repopulate the next generation. That has implications for the next generation in terms of what genes are left in the pool.‘ (Steve Cramer)