The Trojan Women, Gate Theatre

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

The king is dead, Troy is burning and the “crème de la femme” of the city are imprisoned in the maternity ward of the hospital, awaiting their fate amid teddy bears and pill bottles. The chorus screams while the gods cackle through mounted television monitors, peering down at the anguished humans with hand-rubbing glee. The Gate Theatre’s bold, visceral new realisation of the fall of Troy and the long tumble from grace to which its female inhabitants are subjected is certainly not a tragedy given to moderation.

Caroline Bird’s thrilling, muscular adaptation of Euripides is, as Poseidon sneers down from his distant Olympus, “an artistic impression” of Troy – a contemporary riff on tales indelibly impressed on the collective cultural memory. This allows for an implicit critique of the way such wars and massacres are historicised; an arch, glancing appraisal of the passing of stories from mouth to mouth. “Am I a poem?” asks Lucy Ellinson’s compelling one-woman chorus, begging the question of how individuals are memorialised, be it by Homer or Euripides or the modern media. It is a question that is as relevant to the depiction of perceived “victims” in present day conflicts as it is to the reading of ancient literature.

And Bird certainly isn’t shy about underlining Troy’s contemporary resonances, as she and director Christopher Haydon wrench Euripides’ characters out of the ancient world and into an unspecified modern realm. This Troy may still have gods in the form of Roger Lloyd Pack and Tamsin Greig’s pre-recorded deities, but it also has smartphones, machine guns and anti-monarchy blogs. This tension between ancient faith and modern secularism emerges repeatedly throughout the piece, with the fickle and malicious gods worshipped by the Greeks and Trojans becoming an apt reference point for the shifting, false idols of our age.

Just as the chorus, cannily pared down to Ellinson’s pregnant woman of the people, wonders whether she is merely “the idea of woman”, this interpretation also feels its way around what it means to be a woman caught in the conflict of motherlands. Louise Brealey’s dazzling, chameleonic portrayal of three of Troy’s pivotal female figures – Cassandra, Andromache and Helen – functions to illustrate three different facets of how women have been painted in the Troy legend: as hysterics, helpless victims and temptresses. The clinical surroundings of Jason Southgate’s striking design, meanwhile, define these women through the role of motherhood, mocking them with the hope of offspring that will be ripped from their breasts while childish paraphernalia laughs down from the walls.

But for all its brutally poetic language, searching interpretation and sheer winding power, there is something that grates a little within this reimagining. Rather than teasing out timeless threads from Euripides’ tragedy and applying these to our current predicament, Bird’s adaptation grasps and rips with both hands. As a result, the stubbornly imposed contemporary parallels, such as Talthybius’ use of Western democracy’s rhetoric to justify the Greek invasion of Troy, sit somewhat disjointedly with the Classical references preserved from Euripides. Meanwhile, the pointedly modern gadgets and glib, incongruous video sequences – as predictably enjoyable as Lloyd Pack and Greig’s performances are – have a touch of smugness that threatens to blunt the potency of the whole.

Heavy-handed as it may be, however, it’s hard not to be enthralled by the antiseptic horror and devastatingly intense performances. There is also something profoundly timely in Troy’s excess and destruction that speaks louder than all of the grinningly placed modern references. As the doomed spires of Ilium look more and more like the towering skyscrapers of late capitalism, perhaps this fresh, harrowing vision of Troy is a Cassandra for our times.

Ecologies and Economies

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

Money. It’s quietly accepted as something of a grubby word in the arts. Tangled up with funding decisions, disputes over pay and that even dirtier word “commercial”, many of us would prefer to ignore the part cash plays in our encounters with culture. It’s a financial relationship that much theatre itself actively seeks to elide, masking what is essentially an economic transaction with the romance and illusion of invented worlds; the relationship is elegantly shifted from service provider and consumer to the infinitely more palatable roles of artist and art lover.

But while attempts have been made within both performance and academia to interrogate, unveil and reverse this shift, little effort has been given to examining the role of the critic in this project of economic disguise. Asked for the purposes of a recent seminar to reflect on my own economic relationship with theatre, I realised for perhaps the first time just how complicated that relationship is. It’s a fraught and tumultuous affair, in which the boundaries are ever-shifting.

As a critic, I’m in the fortunate position of rarely paying for tickets – or at least not paying with money. But if the transaction is not a financial one, just what is each party getting? Are the performers in front of me rendering me a service, or are we engaged in some vague form of in-kind exchange? And how does that exchange shift in its value depending on the nature of the words I proffer up by way of payment and on the inherently commodifying collection of stars I decide to award at the top of my review?

Such thoughts were also spurred on by a conversation I stumbled upon on Twitter – that evergreen source of column inspiration – in which Megan Vaughan stated her adamant belief that no critic should receive free press tickets. It’s a belief that is emphatically reinforced in her blog’s manifesto, in which she writes: “tickets given in exchange for words are not free and will not be accepted”. It’s a principle that, even as I read it again now, makes me squirm a little with the knowledge of how much I blithely accept for free and how that absorbs me within a larger economic system.

Of course, theatre criticism has its own set of economics. The much contested star rating acts in conjunction with the words below as a form of currency, with the stars often functioning as pounds to the prose’s pennies when we might hope for the reverse. Editors speak of being economical with language, of squeezing as much value as possible out of a necessarily limited word count. And that’s not even considering the money involved, when there is money involved, although the circular arguments about writers being paid or not being paid hardly need retracing.

What I’m more interested in probing is how the accepted structure of theatre reviewing, tweaked a little to accommodate digital media but essentially the same in its convention of giving press comps, reconfigures the relationship between spectator – now critic – and performance. If the audience member who is suddenly made aware of the performer’s labour experiences discomfort, where does that leave the critic? In that moment, can we identify with performers in the knowledge of both being workers in the same industry? Or are we irreconcilably divided by another kind of economic relationship, in which critics act as the bestowers of value?

Briefly playing devil’s advocate, I’m also tempted to question this value itself. Realistically, casting aside any hopeful delusions about the level of influence I wield, my cash is probably still worth more to theatres than my words, at least in purely economic terms. But in a non-monetary sense, I believe – as a critic surely has to – that the discourse around theatre has a value of its own. By seeing work, by engaging with it and its aesthetics and ideas, by drawing intelligent, astute links, and by assessing the overall shape of the landscape, a critic can, as Andrew Haydon has suggested, assume the role of “ecologist”. Without accepting free tickets, however, the vast majority of critics simply wouldn’t have the means to take on this role. Do we therefore buy a non-financial stake in the theatrical ecosystem through an implicitly financial agreement to be part of that same ecosystem’s economy?

I offer uncertainties rather than answers because I’d prefer to leave this column as an open question mark. I’m not even sure these are the most important questions to be asking right now, as many other unresolved debates cluster around the horizon of contemporary theatre criticism. But as we attempt to map new critical contours, perhaps we should be aware of the restrictions of the established cartography. If we accept that theatre, as much as it might attempt to hide it, exists within a web of financial exchanges, then we also need to accept our place within that same web.

I’ll end, appropriately, on one last question – one that I’m at a bit of a loss to answer. Given this acceptance, should we as critics be attempting to move beyond our current entanglement within a surreptitiously economic system? Or perhaps, instead of “should we”, the real question should be: until we find a model that eschews the concept of an exchange of anything other than ideas, can we?

Sealand, Arcola Tent

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

sealand

Originally written for Time Out.

It’s time for a new start, a radio announcement blares out: time to start again from scratch. Inspired by the real principality of Sealand, a miniature nation established on a former World War II fortress island off the coast of Suffolk, Luke Clarke’s intriguing new play imagines a utopia in the middle of the ocean, an escape from a Britain that is ‘on its last legs’.

Cast appropriately adrift from the city in the sealed-off space of the Arcola Tent, there’s something charmingly homemade about this spirited co-production from The Alchemist and Sell A Door Theatre Company. Upturned containers become chairs and hatches are operated by makeshift pulleys, reflecting the DIY nature of protagonist Ted’s project to build a new community away from the homeland that has let him down. It’s a scheme as idealistic as it is doomed.

While fascinating questions of escape, authority and nationhood quickly make themselves apparent through the narrative, these are just as rapidly submerged in the rising tides of domestic drama. As two troubled families struggle to co-exist in this pressurised tin can in the ocean, Clarke’s initially promising premise eventually dissolves into the same claustrophobic human relations that might be encountered on dry land in pub or sitting room.

By way of an abrupt and bloody concluding revelation, the fate of this fictional Sealand unsurprisingly implies that nations are always founded on violence and sacrifice. But as for why such utopian visions invariably collapse, we’re left all at sea.

Anya Reiss: Navigating Chekhov

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

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Originally written for Exeunt.

The moment from Benedict Andrews’ bracing new adaptation of Three Sisters on which many responses seem to have fixated is its glorious, vodka-drenched rendition of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – moody Russian existentialism blasted into contemporary, head-banging anarchy. But there is just as much contemporary resonance in Vershinin’s fading optimism for the future, an act of looking forward that feels tainted by the creeping threats of environmental crisis, or in Andrey’s disillusioned, shell suit-clad lethargy. The times are yet to outpace Chekhov.

As if to prove this continuing relevance, a sudden rash of new productions is rapidly spreading across London, including two contrasting Uncle Vanyas about to lock horns on the West End. If British theatre is currently intoxicated by Chekhov, however, his latest adaptor is remarkably immune. Speaking about the origins of the modernised version ofThe Seagull that opens at the Southwark Playhouse later this month, adding to this mounting wave of revivals, writer Anya Reiss bluntly confesses, “I’d never been particularly grabbed by Chekhov”. Approached by director Russell Bolam to update the classic play, her first reaction was to remember her lack of engagement when forced to study the text at school, and only when reading again with an eye to adapt could she begin to tease out some of the play’s enduring appeal.

“I understood what there was within that story and the characters and I saw that I’d been held back by its context,” Reiss says of her re-reading of the play. “We were always made to read things with a very reverential eye and it was quite hard, so reading it again and knowing I had permission to tear it up a little made me see what it was worth.”

Despite speaking of tearing up the text, Reiss is quick to correct herself when I press her on that phrase, clarifying that the approach she and Bolam have taken is one of respect mingled with reinterpretation. “We’ve deliberately not taken a sledgehammer to it,” she is keen to emphasise, characterising their production as one that treads the middle ground between faithful adaptation and radical revision. “I feel like I’ve tried to be true to the stories and the characters and the themes, and once you do that you’ve got more permission to play with the language.”

Reiss also feels that there is inherently more flexibility when working with plays in translation, as it’s impossible to be entirely faithful to the original. “Everything you read is always someone’s slant on it, so I felt freer to do my own thing – it’s what you have to do,” she says. “If I was trying to update Shakespeare by putting it in modern language I’d feel like a twat, but when it’s already not Chekhov’s phrases you’ve got more freedom with it.”

One of the integral elements of Chekhov’s play is its remote farmland setting, a space distinctly removed from Moscow and its seductive promises of fame and fortune. To replicate this “real sense of isolation”, Reiss and Bolam have relocated the scenes to modern day Isle of Man, a location at a definite remove from the lure of urban excitement. Reiss explains that she began by tackling these crucial points of contextual tension, working out their contemporary equivalents. “It was those questions and the new setting that did it all; they’re the key pinpoints, so once you change those everything else follows along with it.”

Although there are some elements of Chekhov’s nineteenth-century Russian setting that don’t have an obvious modern counterpart – “there was a lot of stuff about horses, that was the main problem,” Reiss laughs – on the whole she says that the play translated quite smoothly. “Compared to other Chekhovs I think it’s quite easy to update, because it’s all about fame and love and art, and those are kind of eternal things,” Reiss explains, contrasting this with the immobility of the Prozorov sisters, a predicament that is harder to explain in a world of international travel. “The crux problems they have are very personal,” she goes on, “they’re not time-specific.”

As timeless as the characters’ situation may be, I wonder how the playwright is handling the wider implications of playing with a classic text. Discussions about Reiss inevitably veer towards her precocity and the astonishment that attended her debut play Spur of the Moment, written when she was just 17. Our conversation actively eschews this typical focus on her youth – Reiss is still shy of her 21st birthday, with two Royal Court productions already under her belt – but my question about the level of pressure attached to this new production is implicitly coloured by the expectations that have settled on Reiss’ shoulders at such an early stage in her career. This is greeted, however, with a surprising lack of concern.

“It’s had the opposite effect,” says Reiss in response to my suggestion that taking on such a famous text might carry with it a certain level of trepidation. “It’s made me more relaxed because a lot of it isn’t really my problem. If you don’t like it then a lot of that’s Chekhov, it’s not really me.” With the same casual frankness that characterises the playwright’s tone throughout our conversation, Reiss goes on to admit that there was something lazily enjoyable about writing a play in which plot and characters were already taken care of, removing a layer of anxiety from the writing process.

While apparently unflustered by the possible pressures of tackling Chekhov, however, Reiss is at pains to deflect any suspicions that her version will be pointedly wedded to the present. “You do a modern adaptation, but you don’t want it to be too smug and wink-wink, with lots of references to Twitter and X Factor,” she says, deliberately naming modern touchstones that might easily be applied to the desire for fame that is explored in the play. “The reason you’re updating it is to demonstrate that what it’s about is eternal, so to then make it very much about issues we have now doesn’t serve the play in the same way.”

In the midst of these negotiations of adaptation, I mention Lyn Gardner’s recent piece about the timidity that often goes hand in hand with the approach taken to classic plays by British directors – a fitting reference point, given that Gardner’s comparison is Australian director Andrews’ version of Three Sisters. The same criticism might arguably be levelled at writers working with these classic texts in translation, all earnestly trying to stay true to the author’s intention, that enshrined tenet of British theatre. Do we need to be more open to interpretation?

“That idea that it has to be either one or the other can be quite alienating,” Reiss suggests, recoiling slightly from both the reverential and the radical. It need not necessarily be a basic choice between Nirvana and museum piece, as much as the commentary surrounding these plays might have us believe. The tactic chosen by Reiss and Bolam is to navigate a path somewhere between the two extremes. “You feel like you either have to love it in this very faithful way or you have to take a hammer to it, and I think there’s a middle ground that isn’t explored as much as it could be. That’s what we’re trying to explore.”

The Kingdom, Soho Theatre

Posted on by Catherine Love-Smith

Originally written for Exeunt.

Just as a man’s home is his castle, of his life he is king. Or so goes the notion subscribed to by the ambitious young Irishman at the heart of the lyrical stories told by Colin Teevan’s three toiling labourers, chipping away at secrets and received certainties with the same sweaty vigour with which they hack at the rocks littered at their feet. With unobtrusive poetry that lilts to the swing of the spade, three men weave myth, dream, tragedy and defeat, drawing a direct line from the doomed heroes of Ancient Greece to the thwarted dreams of the tortured Irishman, the chancer who seemingly grasps at fate only to find himself clenched in destiny’s stony grip.

The ironic kingdom of Teevan’s play is the abandoned Irish homeland, a country shrouded in both romance and fear. In a tale told through three generations, the other promised kingdom – that of heaven – is discarded in favour of a more earthly and all too ephemeral set of riches. But in place of the usual tale of the plucky young Irish lad seeking his fortune in England, Teevan presents us with narrative suffused with myth. The familiar echoes of Greek tragedy begin to overlay what opens as three stories but gradually emerges as just one, the trio of tales meeting with a creeping inevitability, like the crossroads at which the story’s crucial narrative hinge is located.

As hinted at by the mound of rocks reaching to the ceiling of the Soho Theatre’s small upstairs space, there is much about the building of status, of a better life, of a future just out of reach. Anthony Delaney’s grinning young man greets opportunities with wide eyes, all youthful excitement with just a glimmer of greed, while his older counterpart Owen O’Neill holds on to what he has constructed with tight fists. These grasping figures are counterpointed by the next generation above, embodied in Gary Lilburn’s bowed, broken, but grimly wise old man. As all three men shapeshift, taking on different roles and picking up dropped narrative threads, distinct moments in time collide and merge. Past and future are always present.

Often moving as heavily as the exhausted workers, Lucy Pitman-Wallace’s understated production can feel like a toil, particularly in the opening minutes. Between the labour there is a suffocating stillness, a stillness that respects the haunting movement of the narrative’s slow revelation and that evokes the thick black air of its gloomy tunnel setting, but that also threatens to let the piece turn stale. It’s a delicate line between contemplation and boredom. This stasis, broken only by the distracting movement of digging, lays all the burden on Teevan’s symbolism drenched script, a burden it fails to fully support.

In contrast with the evidence of the earth that spreads around the three performers, the lyricism of the text embraces the suffering but not the grit. Failing to acknowledge the tension between the tragic fall from grace and the grinding of the working man back into the mud from which he dragged himself, the play’s bleakness is of the same romanticised kind that is frequently attached to “the kingdom” itself. We learn much of myths, but little of men.

Photo: Robert Day