ARTS MARK LAWSON ONCE MORE,


WITH FEELING Our theatre critic reflects on a year in which classics and revivals eclipsed new writing in London’s West End


T


he consensus in the theatre busi- ness is that 2011 will begin to show the effects of the recession on the subsidised theatres – facing cuts


of at least 15 per cent in their Arts Council grants – and the commercial venues: fewer tourists and a hike in VAT. If so, then 2010 has proved appropriately


memorable, especially in the category of act- ing. Two Shakespearean roles that have recently become so familiar in the theatre repertoire that many critics trudged slightly reluctantly to yet another – Hamlet and King Lear – encouraged nearly definitive perform- ances that were filled with fresh vocal and physical insights. Rory Kinnear’s Prince of Denmark in Nicholas Hytner’s production was very much a student, lolling sulkily with his books in a clothes-scattered attic, but brought unusual depths to both Hamlet’s bereavement – never before have I believed that the character gen- uinely fears that, if he turns round, his father’s ghost might be there – and his grief-induced depression: Kinnear fascinatingly suggests that the prince may put it around that he will pretend to be mad as a cover for symptoms he can already detect. The Shakespearean character who definitely does fear that he is losing his mind was played, in Michael Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse revival, with remarkable control of both lan- guage and body language by Sir Derek Jacobi. Lear’s rages in the first part of the play are properly terrifying, which only makes even more affecting the wrecked repentant gentleness of the final scenes. With these two productions, Hytner (a modern-dress Elsinore with eavesdropping secret agents in every corridor) and Grandage (a bare box made of white-splattered planks) also offered a model for modern performance of Shakespeare. Whereas the older generation of directors – Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn – favour full texts, spoken with slow and careful poetic deliberation, the younger men trim peripheral characters and urge their players to a cracking pace that takes advantage of the quicker ear the audience has developed


28 | THE TABLET | 1 January 2011


through watching fast-talking American movies and TV shows. Hytner was my director of the year, also


drawing a great comic performance from Simon Russell Beale in the National’s revival of Boucicault’s 1841 comedy London Assurance. SRB’s turn as the deluded baronet Sir Harcourt Courtly contained many pieces of comic business that should be used as a teaching aid at acting school: such as the moment when, dropping to one knee in order to pledge his troth to a woman he falsely believes to be keen on him, he realises with horror that his pained arthritic process down will be trumped only by the horrifying prospect of trying to rise again. Beale demonstrated his versatility later in the year in Matthew Warchus’ improbably enjoyable West End restaging of Ira Levin’s 1978 thriller Deathtrap. As a blocked play- wright who sees possibilities when he meets a young aspiring dramatist with a brilliant idea for a plot, he brought a classical precision and detail to a script which some critics, eager for his Lear, regarded as unworthy of his talents but which was shown in this produc- tion to be a drama of exceptional wit and cleverness, in which, without making a fuss about postmodernism or meta-text, the play we are watching is, at various points, being written by the characters in the play. Another remarkable piece of acting came


from Jonathan Pryce, who found new readings and meanings in a much-played role: Davies in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker at London’s Trafalgar Studios. Accentuating the native Welsh in his voice, a decision that proved entirely to suit the rhythms of the role, Pryce invented a remarkable collection of vocal and bodily mannerisms, emphasising the qualities of vulnerability and cunning that are central to the tramp’s make-up. The finest performance by an actress came at the very end of the year: Tracie Bennett, in the Judy Garland bio-drama End of the Rainbow at the Trafalgar Studios, uncannily resembled the tragic chanteuse in both appearance and song and somehow man- aged, even though the play asked her to depict


Fresh vocal and physical insights: Nicholas Hytner’s production of Hamlet


Garland at her slurred and broken worst, the greatness that still occasionally flared up. Unfortunately, the script, by Peter Quilter, was a pretty standard piece of celebrity faction, a lack which was symbolic of a year in which theatres seemed to have a new play problem. Most of the best plays by living writers were revivals from the 1980s: Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing and John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation (both Old Vic) and Alan Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce (Duke of York’s Theatre) and Season’s Greetings (National Theatre) all came up sharp and funny, although all confirmed the greater emotional and social depth that directors and actors now tend to find in comedies. Yet these rela - tively recent texts all had to be staged as period pieces: a reminder that mobile phones and the internet have made it almost impossible to update contemporary plays. Even the best new drama came from a vet-


eran of 1970s theatre: Howard Brenton’s funny, fascinating Anne Boleyn (Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre) combined theological and historical speculation with theatrical in-jokes in a play vindicating Globe artistic director Nicholas Dromgoole’s policy of commission- ing new pieces to run alongside Shakespeare. It will deservedly return next year. Worryingly, though, the National had a string of new plays that didn’t quite work: Drew Pautz’s Love the Sinner, Mike Bartlett’s Earthquakes in London and Blood and Gifts by J.T. Rogers. All dealing with important themes – gay Christians, global warming and Western involvement in Afghanistan – they felt as if characterisation and dialogue would benefit from a further draft. A year, then, in which classics and revivals


generally outshone new work. And, alarm- ingly, a recession, which will really begin to affect repertoire in the next 12 months, traditionally encourages old shows rather than new ones.


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