{THEATRE} Reviews
S W E R D N A W E H T T A M
R E K L A W L L A N I
ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS I wanna tell you a story ●●●●●
There’s a tremendous life force pulsating through director Tim Supple’s reclamation of these ancient folk tales. It’s a life force that exists, most palpably, for Houda Echouafni’s Shahrazad, whose survival depends on her ability to spin a yarn and leave enough of a cliff-hanger to make her husband, Assaad Bouab’s Shahrayar, delay her execution for another night. And it’s a life force that exists on a deeper level in the stories themselves, spread across a six-hour performance that grows richer and more compelling as it goes on. Far from being the sweet bedtime stories we associate with
the Arabian Nights we grew up with, these tales have a life- and-death urgency about them. In part, they show us a society trying to find order and fairness for itself, highlighting the injustices of corruption, rashness and the breakdown of trust. More specifically, they show us the challenges facing men and women of living equitably with each other. The misogyny of part one contrasts to the feminist fight-
back of part two; and both are underscored with a lusty appetite for sex by male and female alike. Indeed, it’s one of the surprises of Hanan al-Shaykh’s adaptation that these stories from a part of the world we have come to see as repressed should be so raucously upfront about sex. The scene in which a servant has to guess the names three sisters give to their vaginas would have caused a stir if it was written by one of the ‘in yer face’ generation of playwrights.
This is bawdy fun, of course, but more than that, it is a reminder that sex, like stories themselves, raises the big ‘what happens next?’ question. In a production that feels like a rediscovery of a lost classic, the stories, and the stories within stories, build to a profoundly satisfying sense of resolution as the sexes find balance on their own terms. (Mark Fisher) ■ Royal Lyceum Theatre, 473 2000. Part 1: 25, 30 Aug, 7pm; Part 2: 24, 26 Aug, 1 Sep, 7pm; Parts 1 & 2: 27, 28, 31 Aug, 2 & 3 Sep, 2pm & 5pm, £10–£36.
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E V T A E R C S W O R R A F ©
MAY I HAVE THE PLEASURE . . . ? Champagne and loneliness ●●●●● I, MALVOLIO Theatre of cruelty ●●●●●
LLWYTH Overlong Generation X play ●●●●●
L A V I T S E F
Adrian Howells is a warm and empathetic character and a captivating speaker. This helps to explain why he’s been picked to be a best man six times. However, in this one-man show he’s facing up to some cold facts. Like how, at 50 years old, he’s still looking for that elusive long-term relationship. Or how his friends who got married have since grown distant. Was it that misjudged comment in his best man speech that drove them away?
This show is part video footage of those fateful
speeches, part seminar on the nature of weddings, and part confessional, all set within a very realistic reception room at the Point Hotel. The talking is broken up by one-on-one dances between Howells and audience members. These take place while the rest of the audience make innocuous chitchat. Also much like a real wedding, there’s the strong sense that the guests are mostly redundant. This is Howells’ special day, and our chance to share in his wedding catharsis. His revelations, though moving, are his and his alone, and his enthusiasm at taking to the floor at the show’s euphoric climax does not spread across the whole audience. (Jonny Ensall) ■ Traverse @ The Point Hotel, 228 1404, until 28 Aug (not 25 & 26), 7.45pm £17–£19 (£12–£13).
56 THE LIST 25 Aug–22 Sep 2011
Appearing in the latter half of a Festival that has made its theatre audience work harder than in previous years, Tim Crouch keeps us on our toes with a show that probes cultural tastes through the figure of Shakespeare’s tragicomic steward.
We discover Crouch’s Malvolio in the mad house, dressed in yellow stockings and clutching the letter he believed from his beloved Olivia, still protesting his sanity and clinging to the stuffed-shirt indignation that made him a target for Sir Toby Belch and his cohorts. At first he cuts a ridiculous figure, but when he enlists the help of audience members to hold his chair while he erects a noose, the mood darkens. ‘Is this the kind of thing you find funny?’ he accuses. Malvolio’s fate in Twelfth Night has long been the subject of debate, but by turning the tables so comprehensively and drawing our attention to the nastier aspects of that play, Crouch makes us consider our own tastes for cruel humour, whether in Shakespeare, reality TV or the internet. In the end, as Crouch leaves the stage, still in character, while we linger, not knowing whether to applaud, you feel that Malvolio has had the last laugh. (Allan Radcliffe) ■ Traverse Theatre, 228 1404, until 28 Aug, times vary, £15–£17 (£12–£13).
Dafydd James’s text deals with issues of home and relationships, of both blood and fraternity, as well as the responsibilities these bring. Thirty-something Welshman living in London returns home to Cardiff and hooks up with his old friends from the gay community. There follows a kind of Generation X jamboree of booze, drugs and sex, reminiscent of the early work of Mark Ravenhill. At the climax our protagonist seduces a boy, who it emerges is underage, by intoxicating him with booze, coke and poppers. The potential to give the play some edge and moral ambiguity, though, is lost when it emerges all he really wants from the lad is a cuddle.
The problem is that James’s overlong script belongs to an era when the practice of sexuality and out celebration was politically important to a gay community facing homophobia, and even one of his characters points out that this time is gone, rendering the play redundant on its own terms. Despite a couple of high-camp set pieces, and a couple of good performances, the lumpy poetry and sentimental moralising has very little to say to contemporary life, gay or straight. (Steve Cramer) ■ St George’s West, 225 7001, until 28 Aug, 11.45am, £10 (£8).