The Corn is Green

by Emlyn Williams

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 23 April 2022

Dominic Cooke directs this revival of Emlyn Williams's semi-autobiographical play The Corn is Green, first staged in the West End in 1938. Nicola Walker plays Miss Moffat, the inspirational schoolteacher who blasts her way like a whirlwind into the stratified society of a Welsh mining village and sees enormous promise in Morgan Evans, one of the miner's sons, played by Iwan Davies.

In a startling move Cooke and his designer ULTZ have imagined the play being created on a bare stage in front of our eyes, as if in the mind of Williams himself (Gareth David-Lloyd) who recites the detailed description of the set so typical of the play texts of the time, and then narrates the entrances and exits, the taking of cups of tea and setting out of lesson books, and so forth, with accompanying sound effects. At first this seems distracting and over-clever, but gradually the idea comes to be a brilliant way of showing the recollection and re-shaping of precious memories in action. It is therefore even more startling to find, after the interval, that the room so painstakingly described in words at the beginning has been given a physical manifestation on stage, in keeping with all those 'drawing room comedies' of its time.

Nicola Walker is excellent as Miss Moffat, inhabiting a character who brings all the force of her personality and convictions to bear on a society that expects women of her class to do nothing if they do not marry and produce children. Even on a cavernous stage with bare concrete walls she dominates and controls, blithely unaware of the way she rides roughshod over the personal cost to her star pupil, or the feelings of other lesser beings. Inevitably Morgan rebels, and the social pressures of the time are set to trap him: the energy of the play and of this production almost distract us from the somewhat distasteful moral dilemma posed and the extremely arbitrary solution adopted to 'save' him.

The play remains a powerful expression of gratitude to a life-changing event in a young boy's life, and the intense conviction that a sharp mind will flourish with education shines through the circumstances that tie the story to a particular time and place. The whole thing was a joy to watch.

Henry V

by William Shakespeare

screening of a live performance from the Donmar Warehouse seen on 21 April 2022

Although I had seen this production in the theatre itself (see my review of 10 March 2022 for a discussion of its deatails) I decided to attend the cinema transmission. It was not a live broadcast, but a live performance had been filmed during the production's run last month.

I wanted to see it again because my seat in the theatre had not been ideal. Of course the drawback with a filmed presentation is that the editor and camera personnel decide what is seen, and from what angle, but in the main this gave me a better opportunity to appreciate the forward-facing aspects of the staging. Though the visceral immediacy of the production was inevitably somewhat muted in the cinema, it remained a powerful interpretation of the play.

With many close-up shots of the characters it was possible to appreciate fine nuances of expression in Kit Harington's excellent portrayal of the King; perhaps he was in part reacting to the presence of cameras since the modulations of his half-smiles might have been harder to appreciate even in the intimate space of the Donmar. Far more potent and disturbing also was the mixture of resignation and disdain on Princess Katherine's face as she acquiesced in what was evidently an unwelcome marriage at the behest of her father and King Henry's insistence. Anoushka Lucas as the princess was no simpering lady: she learnt English while boxing with her maidservant, and gave a very cool welcome speech in the peace coference which concludes the play.

The produciton was well worth a second viewing.

The Human Voice

by Jean Cocteau

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 6 April 2022

Ivo van Hove directs Ruth Wilson in this adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1930 play La Voix Humaine; Wilson is encased in a featureless glass box (designed by van Hove's usual collaborator Jan Versweyweld) symbolising the crushing emptiness of her life as she talks for one last time on the telephone with a lover who has abandoned her.

The conversation begins with the frustrations of crossed lines. Though we hear only the woman's side of the exchange it is clear enough when she is dealing with a stranger who is inadvertently interrupting this painful call, and when she is addressing the now absconding partner. For much of the time she is putting up a brave front, being 'understanding' and 'forgiving' and refusing to blame anyone but herself, but beneath this surface brightness is a deep despair and an awful agony. Occasionally her anger and pain break through, but for most of the time we witness the brittle attempt to master a catastrophic emotional upheaval. Ruth Wilson, a fine actress who has worked with van Hove before (in a provocative Hedda Gabler - see my review of January 2017) pulls out all the stops here, though she is somewhat hampered by the distancing effect of the staging.

The idea of a telephone system in which complete strangers can accidentally find themselves talking with one another must seem almost fantastical to a modern audience. The characterisation of the woman, and in particular the portrayal of her as self-blaming and always ready to exonerate the partner who has abandoned her, has struck reviewers as dated and unsatisfactory. Even with the modern emphasis on personal freedom and self-valorisation, however, the experience of an unwanted breakup can wreak havoc and bring to the fore all manner of unwanted and supposedly outdated emotions, so perhaps these criticisms are rather beside the point.

Nonetheless there is something about this production which mutes the impact of all this distress. The fact that there is a large glass panel separating the audience from the actor inevitably creates a distance, and the actor's voice is clearly augmented electronically in the auditorium. Given that the piece is effectively a monologue, and that Ruth Wilson takes advantage of the arrangement to veer from bright hysterics to an almost voiceless whisper, this technical decision is not as awkward as it can be, but it still removes one of the basic parts of a theatrical experience, and makes what we see more of a spectacle than a direct encounter with human experience. It is very skilled but not entirely involving.

On the other hand, the style does provide for some intriguing ambiguities. For a good part of the time it is not entirely clear whether the woman is actually speaking to anyone at all, as the telephone handset lies forgotten at her feet while she continues to talk. Perhaps we are just privy to her innermost thoughts. Also the breaking up and reconnection of the calls raise the possibility that the partner is already with someone else; at one point in her frantic desire to keep the conversation going she makes a phone call herself (presumbly to a familiar number) only to be told that the ex-partner is not there, and yet almost immediately afterwards she has an incoming call and resumes talking. This small episode is another aspect of the betrayal that she can hardly bring herself to acknowledge, and after only a momnt's hesitation she of course does not offer any recrimination or demand an explanation. These subtleties are what makes Ruth Wilson's performance so effective even if the character's behaviour fails to live up to modern standards of how an independent woman should behave. After all, the play is almost a century old and pain is still pain.

Tom Fool

by Franz Xaver Kroetz

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 31 March 2022

Diyan Zora directs Michael Shaeffer as Otto, Anna Francolini as his wife Martha and Jonah Rzeskiewicz as their son Ludwig in Estella Schmid and Anthony Vivis's translation of Kroetz's play entitled Mensch Meier in German, here rendered as Tom Fool to catch the undertone that Otto Meier is both hapless and pitiable, but also something of an everyman.

In a domestic setting of cheap furniture and minimal comfort (excellent design by Zoe Hurwitz), Ludwig is sleeping on the living room sofa, trapped by his parents' aspirations for him: they castigate him for not earning his keep, but disapprove of his plan to take up a bricklaying apprenticeship because he could do better. Otto works in a car assembly plant, dependant on job security and only half aware that he is sapped by the relentless tedium of the work. He agonises over the awkwardness of having lent his boss an expensive pen which has not been returned - his lengthy analysis of the situation, and the difficulty of raising the matter days after the event, shows in microcosm the stifling social forces engulfing him, forcing him to brood on petty slights until they become an obsession. A later intense discussion about a restaurant bill shows us a mind restless to analyse but constantly presented only with mundane objects of attention (though of course money is tight, so it is vital not to be cheated).

Martha is patient and supportive with a sort of weary tolerance, while Ludwig is disaffected but powerless; his act of rebellion coinciding with the shock of mass redundancies at the assembly plant tip Otto into an unexpected and spectacular bout of rage. It is rare to see so much destruction wreaked on furniture in such a confined acting space, but a stroke of dramatic brilliance to have it followed not by an interval so that the stage crew can clear up the mess, but rather by a protracted scene in which Otto and Martha wordlessly mend furniture and sweep away the broken shards of their domestic life.

In ways such as these the playwright has pinpointed the suffocating pressure of 'ordinary' life, the man of the house bound on a treadmill but with the uneasy thought that he could be let go of at any time, the housewife eking out a domestic haven until it becomes unbearable, the next generation paralysed by uncertainty and resentment. Only a tentative recognition that each of them must learn to look after themselves before taking on responsibility for each other provides a modicum of hope that the bleak cycle of uncomprehended frustration may one day be broken.

This all sounds unbearably depressing, but it was electrifying to watch, with excellent performances from all three actors and a steady direction allowing the all important silences to signify as much as, if not more than, the awkward attempts of the characters to communicae their feelings and frustrations to one another, and hence to us.