Theatre
www.list.co.uk/theatre PREVIEW CLASSIC THE GLASS MENAGERIE Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 27 Apr–Sat 1 May
The Glass Menagerie opens with an address from Tennessee Williams, masquerading as the play’s central character, Tom Wingfield. ‘I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,’ he says, an idea that Shared Experience’s touring production has seized upon.
Director Polly Teale has amplified the illusory elements by using video projections of 1930s movies. However, when the inevitable pathos in the meeting between Wingfield’s shy sister Laura and a snappy gentleman caller plays out, the hurt of Williams’ ‘memory play’ is rendered with truthful coldness.
‘I think in the first half you have to gradually get used to the style which is quite
expressionistic,’ says Imogen Stubbs, who plays Tom and Laura’s mother, Amanda. ‘But the scene with the gentleman caller, that is a naturalistic scene in an expressionist play. And I think that makes it pretty heartbreaking.’ ‘It is something that fascinates me,’ says Stubbs, an RSC veteran, of her casting as the
overbearing and unbalanced mother, ‘that line between tragedy and comedy. And also the really good parts for women tend to have that kind of complexity.’
Her presence in the play is one of its biggest draws, but some audience members have actually missed her. ‘The last matinee that we did, two different people complained to the theatre manager that they’d come to see me in the show and that I wasn’t in it . . . they watched me for over an hour and didn’t recognise me.’ It can only be taken as a sign that she’s mastered those southern vowels. (Jonny Ensall)
Y A D T R E B O R
PREVIEW ADAPTATION THE MINISTRY OF FEAR Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 20–Sat 24 Apr
The British embrace the idea of the Blitz spirit with the familiarity of an old teddy bear. But was the London blitz all that it seems in national myth? One of the earliest writers to question this sacred cow was Graham Greene, through his Blitz-set love story, full of spies and shady characters, with a typically morally ambivalent protagonist.
Dan Jamieson’s touring adaptation of this neglected novel for Theatre Alibi attempts to bring both the atmospherics and dark humour of the piece to the stage. ‘We’ve had messages from people who were in the Blitz, and they were very complimentary about the way we captured it,’ says director Nikki Sved. ‘There’s that sense of chaos, but also of sharp emotion and poignancy about the period. In some ways there’s been a surfeit of information about the Blitz, and we want to get close to the truth.’
The ambience of the period is of critical importance, and Sved feels that the darkly humorous tone can in part be captured visually. ‘We draw on elements of film noir, with that use of colour and direction of light – it’s a fantastic effect. It’s all about capturing the spirit of the book. Greene called it an entertainment, and I can’t quite tell if that’s a misleading term or a useful one, but he certainly hoped that it would engage people more than on a surface level.’ (Steve Cramer)
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PREVIEW ADAPTATION THE CHERRY ORCHARD Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 16 Apr–Sat 8 May
It’s commonplace to see productions of Chekhov concentrate on the business of love and loss that so underpins his great dramas. Yet what is neglected, particularly in British productions, is the urgent sense of social change and economic disaster that feeds into these relationships. So often in this country the real drama of Chekhov is resolutely ignored by directors keen to emphasise a love story devoid of the political content that’s actually key to the emotions depicted. Not so John Byrne, adapting The Cherry Orchard for
the Lyceum. Byrne, along with director Tony Cownie, is keen to see some social truth restored to Chekhov’s lovelorn characters. By setting this new version in May 1979 (for those of you unfamiliar with the history of catastrophe, the time of Mrs Thatcher’s election victory) Byrne has made Chekhov’s social metaphor crystal clear. ‘It’s very germane to the whole thing,
setting it in 1979,’ Byrne says. ‘It points it to the deeper significance. It really was a sea change, parallel to that coming revolution Chekhov was talking about.’
The purchase of the titular farm, belonging to a
formerly well-off family, is given new relevance with Byrne’s relocation of the piece to rural Scotland. The zealous revolutionaries of this version, though, are of the right, not the left, and, as if to emphasise the fanaticism of these early Thatcherites, one is nicknamed ‘Trotsky’ by the locals. ‘McCracken [Trofimov in Chekhov’s version] is a
Thatcher man; he talks about free enterprise and how, if it wasn’t for him, people wouldn’t have jobs,’ says Byrne. ‘So 1979 was a real godsend, with that change in society about to happen. The Northeast of Scotland is a good place to set it, because it’s full of landed gentry and toffs, who were altered by that change too. We couldn’t have been luckier, with this show running through a general election.’ (Steve Cramer)
15–29 Apr 2010 THE LIST 85