Lungs

by Duncan Macmillan

seen by live streaming from the Old Vic on 3 July 2020

(apologies for not posting this sooner)

This two-handed play starring Matt Smith and Claire Foy was performed at the Old Vic last year. In the current lockdown the two actors, directed by Matthew Warchus, agreed to give six new performances in a revised format to be made available by subscription - that is, by buying a 'ticket' to gain access to the live transmission of a selected performance.

In line with government requirements in response to the coronavirus most theatres in London are still closed. The Old Vic has devised a means of bringing performances to a wider public by choosing short plays with minimal casts and selling 'tickets' for the right to watch a performance at home. The performance is filmed on the Old Vic's stage, with no audience in the auditorium and a skeleton film crew which maintains social distancing.

The stage was virtually bare, with just two small platforms, one for each actor to sit or lie on at certain points; they scrupulously kept their distance from one another, but for much of the time there was a separate camera trained on each of them, mostly in close-up and so resembling a Zoom video. It was very clever technically speaking.  

As for the play itself, it is an intense look at a young couple, well-meaning, aware of the greater problems in the world (climate change and economic damage), wondering if they should have a child together. The prospect brings up all sorts of doubts and tensions, and things go horribly awry, though there is a strong hint that they have an abiding future together. The performances revealed the style of both actors, I think, Foy seeming quite self-possessed but banking down great gusts of emotion, Smith good at a certain type of masculine awkwardness and insecurity. I found parts of it far too wordy, especially when the woman was establishing her eco credentials, and I am quite relieved that I did not pay for an expensive ticket to see it last year, while at the same time being glad to see it here at home.

Rosmersholm

by Henrik Ibsen

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 29 May 2019

Ian Rickson directs Hayley Atwell as Rebecca West and Tom Burke as John Rosmer in Duncan Macmillan's new adaptation of Ibsen's play, with Lucy Briers as Mrs Helseth (the housekeeper), Giles Terera as Andreas Kroll (Rosmer's brother-in-law), Peter Wight as Ulrik Brendel (Rosmer's former tutor) and Jake Fairbrother as Peter Mortensgaard (a newspaper editor).

In classic Ibsen style the oppressive traditions of a family dynasty, the Rosmers of Rosmersholm, weigh heavily on Pastor John Rosmer, now living in the vast family mansion in mourning for his sick wife who leapt into the nearby millrace in despair (apparently) at not being able to bear children to carry on the family name. Rebecca West, sent by Kroll to be a companion to his sister in her illness, is still living in Rosmersholm, a soulmate and intellectual sparring partner of John Rosmer, a woman with an uncertain past who threatens Kroll's comfortable sense of masculine superiority. 

But there is more than simmering family dynamics here - there is a political situation as well. Kroll has not visited the house since his sister's death, but now he needs Rosmer's endorsement in the imminent elections for the governorship, in order to counter the scurrilous populists encouraged by Mortensgaard's gutterpress Lighthouse newspaper. Kroll proposes that Rosmer should become the nominal editor of the Tribune which he and his supporters have just purchased. He is astounded to discover that Rosmer wishes to remain neutral, and appalled even more when the Pastor confesses that he has lost his faith. Naturally he concludes that this is Rebecca's fault.

The free-spirited Rebecca, passionate about her right to think for herself and to control her destiny, is an obvious foil to Kroll, a man so convinced of the rightness of his views that he discounts the fact that his wife and children profoundly disagree with him. But as usual, Ibsen shows the damage idealism can cause as well as its allure - Brendel, an old tutor who doubtless first sowed the seeds of intellectual enquiry in the young Rosmer, is now a disreputable sponger, while Rebecca herself has to face unsuspected facts about her past which are truly awful: her intellectual mentor was more than he had seemed.

Rosmer, encouraged at first to break free from the legacy of his family, finds little solace in adventurous idealism as he loses Kroll's esteem and finds even Mortensgaard precipitately keen to drop him when he realises that an apostate pastor is of no use to his cause. And of course, to add to the ironies, it was Rosmer in his earlier days who had ruined Mortensgaard's life by publicly denouncing his adultery. He also finds Rebecca an enigma to the last, and the conventional solution of marrying her is not one that she can countenance.

All this and more is superbly supported in Rae Smith's design for this production. The horror of the house is emphasised by its grey walls studded with family portraits (at first gloomily covered by grey cloths). The light pouring in from the windows reveals a chilly atmosphere. Rosmer's abandoned faith is cleverly signified when his study is revealed: the wallpaper (silvery grey of course) is faded except for where a cross must once have stood against it: now just the outline remains, and above it another painting (of his wife? of a religious subject?) has also been removed, leaving a darker patch.

Hayley Atwell imbues Rebecca with fierce passion and a self-confidence which scandalises the more conventional Kroll - and perhaps the loyal housekeeper Mrs Helseth too - but the character's nervous tension is finely drawn, making her sudden collapse at Kroll's revelations all the more convincing. Tom Burke's Rosmer is also excellently done, a man of ideals finally trapped by the vast gulf between idealism and the day-to-day grind of life. These two carry the passionate weight of the play with complete ease.

Cogent political points are easy to score in today's climate where questions of personal responsibility for political views are all too relevant: the jibes at the ignorance of the voting population and the manipulations of a cynical press were all too resonant. But at the same time the dangers of self-indulgence on the part of the idealistic John Rosmer and Rebecca West were wonderfully intimated by the constant presence of silent servants performing their duties - moving furniture, bringing in flowers or candles, providing Rosmer with his house clothes or his outdoor gear - but also listening stupefied or nervously intrigued as their 'betters' sound off about personal freedom and economic improvement.

The power of Ibsen' vision, unflinchingly revealing that nothing can be just black or just white in this complex world of women and men, was fully evident in this fine production.

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.