Age of Rage

after Euripides and Aeschylus

seen at the Barbican Theatre on 8 May2022

Gerard Koolschijn and Ivo van Hove have devised an epic retelling of the misfortunes of the House of Atreus and the depredations of the Trojan War based on several plays by Euripides and the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. Van Hove's usual collaborator Jan Versweyveld designed the production, a bare stage with scaffolding at either side for percussion instrumentalists, an area behind a huge mesh screen at the back, apparently the site of nefarious goings-on, and a gangway above allowing for various bodies to be winched out of sight.

It is not, of course, a happy story; indeed it descends into ever more revolting brutality.

As the audience filed in a complex family tree was being projected onto the mesh screen showing the relationships between the Greek characters, many of whom had Zeus as a forebear. The disasters befalling the house of Atreus span many generations, including two occasions when children were murdered and served in feasts to unsuspecting dinner guests. But this is all background: the particular 'age of rage' that we are to witness really begins with the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter Iphigeneia, required by the goddess Artemis before she will allow favourable winds so that the Greek fleet (the 'thousand ships') can sail to Troy. The first major action of the play is thus a recasting of Euripides's Iphigeneia in Aulis. 

We were spared a genealogy of the Trojans since they appear only as victims and potential slaves, mainly women apart from the already murdered Polydorus and the hapless boy Astyanax thrown from the walls to his death. These episodes are taken from Hecuba and The Women of Troy, two more plays by Euripides, though the tragic figure of Andromache, the widow of the Trojan prince Hector and mother of Astyanax, was not mentioned. The sacrifice of another girl, Hecuba's youngest daughter Polyxena, to placate the soul of Achilles was a chilling parallel to the initiating obscenity of Iphigeneia's death, underscored here by having both parts played by the same actress (she also represented the dead Trojan boys).

Aeschylus's Agamemnon provided the source for the next scenes in which the general and king is killed by his wife Clytemnestra on his return from Troy. He is accompanied by the hapless Cassandra who can foresee her fate but persuade no-one to believe her, while the queen is abetted by her husband's cousin Aegisthus, eager to pursue his own part in the family feud in order to regain power in Mycenae.

In the second half of the play we return to Euripides (his Orestes and Electra) as a source for the unedifying story of the children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra buckling under the strain of needing to avenge their father's death at the cost of killing their mother. The gruesome task achieved, Orestes and Electra become unhinged in guilt and embark on further atrocities until providentially stopped by the intervention of Apollo. The less sensational and more profound version of this part of the story devised by Aeschylus does not really suit the message of Age of Rage that violence leads to ever more violence, and that state-sanctioned violence in one generaton too easily permits personal savagery in the next to go unchecked.

There is a huge amount of sheer narrative to take on board here; I am familiar with the original plays and with other literature both classical and modern dealing with these stories, so I found it easy enough to keep track, but I wonder how easy it was for someone new to the tale. The production had enormous energy, with pulsating music and frenetic dancing at climactic points, and gentler percussive effects building tension during the lengthy expositions. Many of the male actors took several parts by necessity, but the powerful doublings were of Ilke Paddenbourg as the female victims noted above, and of Chris Nietvelt as Clytemnestra and Helen (who were sisters).

There is a formal difficulty in adapting Greek tragedy to the modern stage, which here was largely solved by stripping back the choric odes in order to concentrate on the narrative, while indicating the ritual aspects of performance by the use of music and dance, and by often having almost mute witnesses on stage who occasionally contributed to the dialogue. But there is a tonal difficulty as well in trying to yoke Aeschylus and Euripides together in a single production. These are two playwrights who used the familiar myths and legends to very different dramatic ends, and the peculiar power of the Agamemnon is diminished by its being too closely linked to the Iphigeneia story even though it is entirely plausible to do so in a panoramic telling of the family history. 

The two explicit interventions by deities were the least convincing episodes. In the first, Iphigeneia is said to be miraculously replaced by a hind at the last moment before her sacrifice. This allows for the later story in which she is a priestess in Taurus (on the Black Sea), but renders less effective her sacrifice as an explanation of Clytemnestra's hostility to Agamemnon: though we are told of this divine intervention no-one on stage can take any comfort from it or even have any knowledge of it.

At the end of the play Apollo appears in order to stop Orestes and Electra in their tracks, promising that Orestes will find judicial vindication and perhaps a measure of personal peace in Athens (he says nothing to comfort Electra). Here, Apollo was just another young man on the stage, and there was no attempt to invest his words with any divine authority. Consequently his appearance raised a few unfortunate giggles in the audience, and his intervention seemed merely perfunctory. (It is often proposed that Euripides used the deus ex machina convention ironically, but this was not the way to bring an Age of Rage to a convincing conclusion.)

The performance was given in Dutch by members of the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, with English surtitles: only a minor inconvenience as far as understanding was concerned, but perhaps vocal nuance was inevitably a casualty in a production lasting nearly four hours.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

adapted by Joel Horwood from Neil Gaiman's novel

seen at the Duke of York's Theatre on 28 April 2022

Katy Hudd directs Tom Mackley as Boy (on the night I attended), Nia Towle as Lettie Hempstock, Nicholas Tennant as the boy's father, Grace Hogg-Robinson as his sister, Penny Layden as old Mrs Hempstock, Siubhan Harrison as Ginnie Hempstock (her daughter and Lettie's mother) and Laura Rogers as Ursula in this imaginative adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel concerning the fateful irruption of a malignant spirit into the lives of the boy and his family, and the efforts of the mysterious Hempstocks to control and banish it.

The play begins as a reminiscence, the boy returning to his childhood home as a grown man while attending his father's funeral, but very soon we are in the thick of the real story as the boy meets and befriends the young girl Lettie just after having seen the body of the family lodger who had committed suicide. Though Gaiman's novels are aimed at a fairly young readership he does not pull his punches with some dark subjects; the boy has a panicked response which his father tries to assuage, but with typical English reticence much of the father's strategy is a matter of deflection. The Hempstocks seem preternaturally aware of the boy's predicament, but in their own way they are also not forthcoming, leaving him both intrigued and confused.

Lettie views the local village duckpond as an ocean, and this capacity, both fey and childlike, to see strange possibilities in the ordinary world is crucial in developing the atmosphere of the play and convincing us of the strange emanations which she and her family feel bound to monitor and control. The boy's means of coming to terms with the strangeness are bound up with his immersion in the Narnia books of C.S.Lewis (as Gaiman himself was), while his sister is of a more practical disposition: the tension between the siblings is palpable and convincing. When the strange spirit accidentally unleased on the world takes human form as the intrusive Ursula, the 'wicked stepmother' aspect of so many fairy tales takes on an all-too-believable abusive form in the modern world.

With an atmospheric use of the simplest stage effects - lighting, noise, dark shapes and diaphonous swirling sheets of fabric, the work of Fly Davis (set) and Jamie Harrison ('magic and illusions') among others - the numinous world threatening the boy and his family is thrillingly evoked, and the story resolves itself with a muted sense of the need for willing sacrifice and the consequent loss to those left behind. After the somewhat hectoring tone of Marys Seacole seen in the afternoon of the same day, it was a pleasure to witness masterly storytelling on stage.

Marys Seacole

by Jackie Sibblies Drury

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 28 April 2022

Nadia Latif directs Déja J. Bowens, Llewella Gideon, Kayla Meikle, Esther Smith, Olivia Williams and Susan Wooldridge in Jackie Sibblies Drury's new play Marys Seacole which investigates not only the career of the original Mary Seacole, a Jamaican who travelled to the Crimea in the 1850s to provide nursing assistance during the war (where she was rebuffed by Florence Nightingale), but also the wider experience of coloured people as carers and medical staff in the modern world.

In a verstile set designed by Tom Scutt we are sometimes in an NHS ward, sometimes in an anonymous park, sometimes in Jamaica, sometimes in the Crimea, and sometimes apparently in the dark recesses of the mind of the generic 'Mary' (Kayla Meikle). The transitions are often abrupt, and the play suffers from becoming too like a series of vignettes none of which have sufficient time to develop into truly engrossing drama. Everything becomes subsumed in the overarching theme of twisted mother-daughter relationships and general racial prejudice, with the individual stories never adequately resolved.

The opening, which gives the impression of being a prologue to a play focussed on Mary Seacole, turns out to be a monologue in which episodes which could have formed the following scenes turn out to be only told to us. The scene in a modern hosptial or care home which follows sets up all sorts of tensions between three generations (a resident, daughter and gradndaughter), and adds the unpleasantness of barely concealed racism towards the staff, but fades from our attention as other matters are addressed. An almost phantasmagoric scene in which broken soldiers lie scattered across the floor while fragments of the dialogue in earlier scenes jostle with each other at shouting pitch gives an alarming impression of a mind in turmoil and stress, but at the cost of wearing down the audience with relentless noise.

All in all, I was not particularly satisfied with this production. After the glorious dramatic coherence of The Corn is Green seeen a few days earlier, on this occasion I felt I was too often present at a hectoring lecture rather than a truly developed play.

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.