THEATRE Naming names
The Children’s Hour COMEDY THEATRE, LONDON
London’s West End have escalated following the seepage from Broadway to London of “premium seats”, with the most sought-after performances (weekend evenings, half-term matinees) becoming subject to greedy sur- charge. For this current production, you can stump up as much as £95 and the secondary sell-on market – agencies, auction sites – has seen at least one punter parting with a reported 10 times that. Depressingly, as usual, the really hot seats in theatre have little to do with theatre at all. These ludicrous profit margins are possible because Keira Knightley, celebrated for movies from The Pirates of the Caribbean to the cur- rent Never Let Me Go , has decided to have a second stab at stage acting after her indifferent debut in a modern version of The Misanthrope two years ago. Her chosen role this time is Karen in a
H
revival of Lillian Hellman’s 1934 melodrama The Children’s Hour, with Elisabeth Moss, who plays the sassy but tragic Peggy in Mad Men, appearing on the London stage for the first time. Moss plays Martha, a teacher in a New England boarding school, a colleague of Karen’s. They are accused of having a lesbian affair, social and professional death at that time, by Mary Tilford, a troubled pupil whom they have disciplined. The Children’s Hour is one of three high-
profile dramas from the middle third of the twentieth century that deal with the poison of false accusation: the others are Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy(1946) and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953). Indeed, The Children’s Hour owes some of its theatrical longevity to having been revived alongside the Miller, which it seems to have influenced, during the McCarthyite witch-hunts. The problem is that, in this trio of pieces about deceit, which would make an intriguing season for a theatre somewhere, Hellman’s drama is by far the weakest. A first play written at the age of 28, it is clumsily constructed – changing locations unnecessarily and largely preferring to deal with only two characters at a time – and fatally, unlike Miller and Rattigan, Hellman fudges the validity of the accusation to suit her dramatic purpose at different times. Nobody could have served the text better
than Ian Rickson, a highly skilled director, and he has brought Knightley on a long way from her rather stiff and limited playing in The Misanthrope. Because movie actors con- struct their performances in isolated moments over several months, the doubt about their stage acting is whether they can show an emo- tional arc over one evening in full sight. But Knightley does, rising to the necessary shat-
26 | THE TABLET | 19 February 2011
ow much would you pay to see a play? Complaints over rising ticket prices in
The title deliberately alludes
to nineteenth-century novels and plays named after their heroine, although the named character is most specifically a modern version of a protago- nist whose story isn’t named after her: Becky Sharp in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. Gionfriddo’s Ms Shaw (Daisy
Elisabeth Moss as Martha Dobie and Keira Knightley as Karen Wright in The Children’s Hour
tered anger when she realises what she has lost to gossip. The feeling remains, though, that everyone would have been served better by a different text and that this play is revived so often because there are so very few dramas in which all the major roles are for actresses. Yet, even in this, Knightley and the powerful but some- what single-note Moss are hobbled by the fact that the best role goes to the accuser: as Mary, Bryony Hannah portrays both terrifying spitefulness but also a suggestion of the vul- nerabilities that trigger it. A contemporary play by a young female American dramatist will never achieve the box office takings of The Children’s Hour but Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo (Almeida Theatre, London) is a far superior piece of writing. Rarely after leaving a theatre have I flicked so eagerly through the play script to appreciate the one-liners again.
RADIO Cult classic
Britain in a Box BBC RADIO 4
P
aul Jackson’s brief, in this endeavour now into its fourth series (Saturdays, 10.30
a.m.), is to examine “TV classics that helped to define their time”. The Old Grey Whistle Test, which ran on BBC2 from 1971 until the late 1980s, and whose legacy can now be admired in three substantial DVDs, certainly fell into this exalted category. It was a programme whose creation, out of
the fragments of the 1960s arts show, Late Night Line-Up, marked a decisive break with the old light-entertainment-style approach to popular music. Previously, televised pop had been bright, cheerful, disposable and awash with dancing girls. Now, four years after Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it was intense, beetle-browed (no pun intended), low-budget and implacably serious.
Haggard), her entrance teas- ingly delayed until late in the first half, is a gauche, gaudy thirtysomething single woman who is introduced on a blind date to Max (David Wilson Barnes), a financial consultant known for speaking with sar- castic candour. For example, criticised for declining to sleep over after a one-night stand, he
snaps: “If you’re asking me will I jeopardise people’s life savings because women like to cuddle, the answer’s no.” Yet, though Becky is apparently the weakest and poorest character, she progressively dam- ages the lives of Max, his childhood friend and surrogate sister Suzanna (Anna Madeley), Suzanna’s young husband Andrew (Vincent Montuel) and her mother Susan (Haydn Gwynne). As well as a high gift for comic invective, Gionfriddo explores fascinating ideas, ques- tioning the simple definitions of “good” and “bad” behaviour and examining the possibility, against the modern trend for full emotional disclosure, that lying may have beneficial effects. The latter theme makes this an inter- esting companion piece to The Children’s Hour; though much cheaper and easier to get in, this is by far the more satisfying evening. Mark Lawson
It was also, at any rate on the cult scale, hugely popular. As a late 1970s teenager, I can testify to the gravity with which OGWT performances were discussed next morning in the school playground. Essentially, this three-quarters of an hour or so before the late-night close-down appealed to a highbrow, studenty, LP- as opposed to single-purchasing, audience interested in American imports and the kind of native music filed under the head- ing of “progressive rock”. The quasi-orchestral stylings of such ensem- bles as Genesis, Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were much featured, and record com- panies rapidly woke up to the marketing opportunities on offer. When the hitherto unheard-of Dutch band, Focus, played a cou- ple of numbers on it late in 1972, the pressing plants were kept busy for the next four days. There were other attractions. As several of
its staffers were anxious to testify, the show’s self-proclaimed seriousness was subtly enhanced by the austerity of its backdrops. Top of the Pops was a kind of caravanserai of hot pants, BacoFoil and dry ice. The OGWT, filmed in a legendarily tiny studio, with no earpieces available to the presenters (Bob
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