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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Hopeless propaganda

The Arsonists, Royal Court; The Giant, Hampstead; The Bicycle, MenKing’s Head

Strange happenings in theatreland. Three London playhouses have taken it into their heads to mount a sustained attack on the avant garde. Result â” carnage! Careers are in tatters. Reputations have been shredded. Some of these playwrights will never be seen again. In August the Donmar cruelly demonstrated that N.F. Simpson was unworthy of adult attention by staging two of his silliest playlets alongside a slice of tedious cleverness by Michael Frayn. Last month the Royal Court embarrassed Ionesco by putting on his dated sci-fi fantasy, Rhinoceros. Next the Almeida started knocking lumps out of Caryl Churchill with a resuscitation of her 1970s dodo, Cloud Nine. And the Royal Court has taken a second pop, at Max Frisch this time, by presenting his turgid class-war sermon The Arsonists. They’ve even hired Alistair Beaton to give the translation a sheen of professionalism. The play fails in both its central aims. As propaganda it’s hopeless. Rather than persuading us to adopt a prejudice (Frisch believes wealth is a crime), the play assumes that we already hold the prejudice and examines its possible consequences. That’s not argument but solipsism. As drama the show is equally inept. Two pyromaniacs break into a businessman’s house and fill his attic with drums of petrol. When the businessman discovers these arrangements, he tries to shoo the pyromaniacs off while engaging them in a debate about the ethical justifications of property. The script is so saturated with irony that its dramatic muscles have wasted away. So another experimental dramatist has been mugged and left for dead. Perhaps I’m missing something here but shouldn’t these hapless scribblers be left to fade away in peace?

At Hampstead Antony Sher’s new play examines the creation of Michelangelo’s ‘David’. I’m not a massive fan of Sher’s writing, and his privileged position makes me feel slightly uneasy. As a knighted celebrity whose boyfriend, Greg Doran, is a top RSC director, he’s one of the best-placed dramatists in the country. Anything he writes is virtually guaranteed a production. But far from enfeebling him, his good luck has helped him thrive, and this new work is vigorous, passionate and highly entertaining. Sher happily dismisses historical facts and embellishes whatever ideas catch his interest.

He sets the scene as follows. ‘The action takes place around a block of marble in Florence between 1501 and 1504.’ The block, nicknamed ‘il gigante’, has yet to be assigned to a sculptor, and the opening act dramatises a fictional contest between Michelangelo and Leonardo for the right to carve it. Sher’s Leonardo is a Shakespearean creation, a witty, disillusioned philosopher who spouts self-mocking epigrams and retains a fool who parodies and undermines him. Hamlet plus Lear, in other words. Michelangelo is less successful, an angry young loon caked in marble dust who rages around his studio like a boil ready to burst. There’s no delicacy or sensitivity about him. No poetry either. The play’s best innovation is Michelangelo’s choice of model. He selects one of the quarrymen who mined the block. Very neat: naturally, the young labourer has a well-honed physique, and because he works in the mountains he carries a sling to hunt birds and ward off wolves and bears. Michelangelo is clearly in love with the lad, and the second act traces his developing jealousy as Leonardo draws the young stud into his entourage of party-goers. But homosexual affairs (shunned by Michelangelo, covertly embraced by Leonardo) are only a minor theme here. Art is the chief preoccupation, and the play offers an absorbing glimpse of Florence during the High Renaissance. Greg Doran’s direction is dependably fluent, and for art historians this show is an absolute must. It won’t be easy to revive, by the way, since the prop list includes a life-size replica of ‘David’.Â

At the King’s Head there’s a weird new musical sketch show by an American foursome led by Dan Castellaneta. He’s the voice of Homer Simpson. The script is a comedy nightmare in which an American cyclist is kidnapped by mad locals while on holiday in France. The show has toured the States extensively and its strong franco-phobe theme made me feel oddly embarrassed. When Brits mock the French I laugh. When foreigners do it I somehow side with the French. After a wobbly start the show develops into a highly original and hilarious piece of comic cabaret. And Castellaneta is amazing. He’s one of the best-known actors in the world and I couldn’t pick him out from three yards away. The show is great, though. Profoundly silly, but great.

More articles from: Lloyd Evans | this section

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