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This week in the theatre didn’t look promising. My reward (or penance) for two wonderful weeks in New York, followed by two wonderful weeks of Karen Oberlin and Dillie Keene at The Pheasantry, was an unknown Strindberg, a difficult Ibsen, and the uninviting prospect of a combination of Howard Brenton with Euripides and Thomas Hardy. All in one week. As it turned out, they were all worthwhile and often revelatory. Creditors – Jermyn Street Theatre Tiny Jermyn Street is presenting, back to back, Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Creditors. In a busy week, I decided to give Miss Julie a miss, firstly because it’s been done and done and done and I’ve seen it too often for surprises to emerge, secondly, because I’d never seen Creditors so a ‘new’ Strindberg would be a treat. And a treat it is. Structurally, it’s deceptively simple. A hotel room. Three people. An artist tells his new friend about the state of his teetering marriage. He exists in a constant panic that his beloved wife, who harks back constantly to her first marriage, might leave him to return to it. His new friend offers disastrous advice which brings him to the point of madness. Then, the wife, absent for the day, returns. The ubiquitous playwright Howard Brenton (more of him later) here indulges his obsession with Strindberg in a fascinating and satisfying evening of feints, fears, and forensic examination of character as we begin to understand who the ‘friend’ actually is and why the artist is so afraid of losing his wife. The shifting psychological stances of each of the three people involved in this frightening domestic triangle are absorbing and always surprising. The acting, from Dorothea Myer-Bennett, James Sheldon, and David Sturzaker, is excellent and Tom Littler’s direction – don’t know how he does it in that tiny space - rings unfailingly true. Worth the price of admission alone is a superb essay in the programme book/play text by Brenton which is the best thing I’ve ever read on Strindberg, his work, his life, and his demons. Rosmersholm – Duke of York’s Theatre Staying with the Scandinavians, Strindberg’s great rival, Ibsen’s Rosmersholm is both intimate and monumental. Like so much of Ibsen’s later work, this is a play about conscience, personal and public. No wonder he was the favourite playwright of my favourite playwright Arthur Miller. It is also about its our ability to encompass two conflicting ideas – the willingness to engage with activism and to become involved in the events of our time, and the opposite – the desire to retreat from conflict and live our lives in peace and harmony. In Rosmersholm, John Rosmer (Tom Burke) is a preacher who no longer preaches since his wife took her own life, a widower who has withdrawn from his prominent position in the town to live platonically with the feminist Rebecca West (Hayley Atwell). Into their calm life comes Andreas Kroll, played against type by Giles Terrera, a childhood friend but now an important man, who wants Rosmer’s support for his own project and, if he is refused, threatens to make public a mistake once made by Rosmer, the revelation of which will cause a scandal. Rosmer, while determined to follow his own conscience, is nonetheless drawn to the traditional values personified by Kroll and the possibility of returning to a more public life. Rebecca, for her own reasons, is not. Rosmer and Rebecca have to make a decision which, whatever they decide, will shatter their lives. It is a tribute to Ian Rickson, who directed Rosmersholm, and to his cast, that I believed every word of their dilemma, followed the Ibsen arguments breathlessly, and easily absorbed the other-worldly, watery (they live by a watermill), and magical elements of the play. Jude – Hampstead Theatre I can’t say I was quite as comfortable with Jude, Howard Brenton’s other contribution to my week. I think it’s about the unquantifiable nature of genius. That is, a person can have a small or large talent. It can be developed, it can be nurtured, it can be wasted. But genius just is. Brenton’s protagonist here is a 16-year old Syrian refugee with a genius for languages who is determined to go to Oxford. Totally self-taught, she somehow passes her A-levels with A-Stars, and convinces a Classics don to admit her to the University. Following only her own rules or orders, she manages to manoever herself into a full scholarship and the mentorship of several powerful dons. Then, politics intervenes. So much for plot, never Brenton’s strong point. The direction, by Ed Hall, and the performances, especially Isabella Nefar as Jude, are splendid. For inspiration Brenton has shades of Jude the Obscure, another mystical character with a genius far beyond his birth and class. Hardy's Jude doesn’t appear in this play except for a soggy reference to pigs’ blood and other inferences from the novel. Then there’s Euripides, another rebel, who does appear, complete with mask (a gorgeous construction with hair and beard), and even has conversations with Jude where he tells her, in effect, to follow her own way because the world will never understand her. And, of course, the world doesn’t. This is where Jude gets bogged down. Politics, academic and global, terrorism, feminism, jealousy, gay and straight sex, and all manner of other issues are brought into Jude’s story and take up stage time and, more importantly, the oxygen the play needs to resolve itself into a pattern which might allow us to contemplate its issues, such as, can our society cope with genius? By the time we get that far we’ve forgotten that this is the primary question the play raises. This is the final play directed by Ed Hall before he leaves Hampstead’s Artistic Directorship after 10 years in the job. He’s done a fabulous job, taking a local theatre that was on its uppers when he arrived and making it an international success. This critic, for one, will miss him dreadfully. What a tough act to follow. Where will we find such another? Good luck, Ed, to you and to us.
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AuthorRuth Leon is a writer and critic specialising in music and theatre. Archives
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