Europe

by David Greig

seen at the Donmar warehouse on 4 July 2019

Michael Longhurst, taking over as Artistic Director of the Donmar, has chosen to revive David Greig's 1994 play set in an abandoned railway station in an unspecified (but probably Eastern) European country near 'the border'. Ron Cook plays Fret, the station master, with Faye Marsay as Adele, his assistant, Billy Howle as Adele's husband Berlin, Theo Barklem-Biggs as Horse and Stephen Wight as Billy, Berlin's friends, Shane Zaza as Morocco, a local boy made good, Kevork Malikyan as Sava, a refugee, and Natalia Tena as his daughter Katya.

Written during the period in which the former Yugoslavia was being torn apart by war and 'ethnic cleansing', Europe nonetheless still packs a powerful punch. The small town is dying now that its importance as a border crossing has vanished, and automation is making its industrial workforce redundant - Berlin, Horse and Billy are now at a loose end. Stationmaster Fret appears at first to be an old-fashioned martinet swamped by the illogicality of train timetables which no longer include stops at his station, and he has no sympathy for a man and woman he finds waiting on the station, apparently impervious to his announcements that there will be no trains. Adele, stifled in her marriage to the unimaginative and truculent Berlin, dreams of glamorous foreign capitals.

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Donmar King's Cross Theatre on 15 December 2016

Harriet Walter plays Prospero in this production directed by Phyllida Lloyd and designed by Chloe Lamford. It forms the third of a trilogy (the first two being Julius Caesar and Henry IV, a conflation of Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays) with all-female casts, purported to be performed by the inmates of a women's prison. The first two plays were performed in the Donmar Warehouse in 2014 and 2015, and have been revived at the temporary King's Cross site in conjunction with The Tempest. I have not revisited the two earlier productions, although it would have been instructive to see them all as there are intriguing correspondences between the Shakespearean parts played and the characters of the prisoners that the actors have developed in consultation with the Prison Partnership Project.

1984

adapted from George Orwell's novel by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan

seen at the Playhouse Theatre on 1 July 2015

This production, originally at the Almeida Theatre, is directed by Robert Icke and designed by Chloe Lamford, and it features Matthew Spencer as Winston Smith, Janine Harouni as Julia and Tim Dutton as O'Brien.

The setting is a large wood-panelled room which can serve as office, canteen, shop, or Winston's flat - but our expectations are put into doubt during the opening scene in which Winston begins his forbidden diary, because there seems to be some sort of seminar (whether literary, sociological or historical is unclear) taking place to discuss the provenance of the diary. Some scenes are played out more than once, and Winston is constantly (and plausibly) being asked where he thinks he is. All of this cleverly de-stabilises our sense of the narrative drive, in just the way that Winston's own rewritings and adjustments of historical records (as part of his job) play havoc with the collective memory of what has happened.

The flat in which Julia and Winston try to live without the endemic surveillance of the Party is viewed by us only on film projected above the wood panelling - a subtle clue that surveillance has not been avoided after all.

At various points, blinding white light flashes to disrupt a scene.

Much of this can be played as comedy of course, with the fatuous Parsons extolling his daughter's precocity in scene after scene - until at the final repetition, one of the listeners has completely disappeared and can no longer contribute to the expected conversation. At this stage (at the latest) the audience's laughter can no longer be comfortable.

Any lingering hopes that this is an enjoyable parable are stripped away by the final scenes in which Winston is 'made perfect' by means of agonising tortures. The blackouts and blinding flashes of light are only just able to cover for the horror of O'Brien's relentless breaking of Winston's spirit in a room without darkness - a white space with a white plastic floor onto which the hapless prisoner bleeds and vomits.

This is an extraordinary visualisation of Orwell's novel. Perhaps the only thing missing is Orwell's relentless insistence on the sheer grubbiness of everything in Airstrip One, and the pervading smell of boiled cabbage (Orwell was obsessed with the smells of things as signifiers of mood and of prosperity or the lack of it). The cast are extremely good at conveying the stoical acceptance of oppression which defines their lives.

There is very little comfort. Even the idea that the Party ultimately failed, hinted at by the seminar discussions, is called into question by a final half-swallowed comment by one of the participants.