There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry.
There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry. The huntsman starts to believe that neglect proves excellence. Sturdy Beggars, an independent troupe who accept no public subsidy, are mounting a season of ‘forgotten gems’ from Eastern Europe.
The first stone they’ve uncovered is an anti-royal satire written in 1938 by Witold Gombrowicz, a Polish boulevardier who never quite made it out of the C-list of mittel-European wannabes. He gives his story the muscular and daring contours of a fairy tale. Philip, the handsome crown prince of Burgundia, selects the ugliest girl in the kingdom as his bride. The choice outrages his parents and throws the aristocratic lovelies at the palace into paroxysms of anger and jealousy. Having first feigned romantic interest, Philip finds himself genuinely smitten with his plug-ugly date, and their unlikely affair sets off a series of plots and intrigues as the incensed courtiers conspire to evict the amoebic interloper from the palace.
A summary of the play makes it sound rather more pithy and resonant than the full-length version. There’s plenty here to excite university theory-mongers but not nearly enough for the paying public. And it doesn’t help that Kos Mantzakos’s production is performed in white face by an all-male cast who play the female roles in screechy Little Britain ‘I’m-a-lady’ voices. To remove the feminine element from a play that turns entirely on erotic desire and sexual conquest seems a perverse decision.
But my guess is that Gombrowicz would have approved of this spiky and unforgiving production. What he wrote is a hate-play, a drama-bomb, a theatrical blitzkrieg whose purpose is to expose royal dynasties as corrupt, feeble, self-serving and regressive. In 1938, that must have sounded like last year’s news. But I’m glad to say that this dud hasn’t deterred the Sturdy Beggars. They plan further bounty-hunting expeditions through the archives of the Eastern bloc, beginning with the Hungarian master Ferenc Molnár and the unsung Bulgarian dramatist Stanislav Stratiev. I wish them luck, and if I can I’ll join them.
The Finborough Theatre calls its quest for buried riches ‘Rediscoveries’, a more equivocal label which makes no advance claims for the quality of the lode. The Potting Shed by Graham Greene, written in 1958, has descended tragically from riches to rags. The original West End production starred John Gielgud. A version mounted in 1971 starred Cliff Richard. Since then nothing. Complete radio silence until Svetlana Dimcovic’s absorbing new production, which stars Paul Cawley as James, a depressed newspaper hack.
Poor old James’s life was blighted by a mysterious episode in the garden shed when he was 14. Amnesia has erased the facts from his mind and his parents have covered up the incident for their own reasons. When we learn that a drunken priest was a key participant we jump instantly to the conclusion marked child abuse. But we’re wrong. This is Greeneland so the crisis is spiritual and involves the competing temptations of doubt and faith.
I have to admit I’ve never signed up for the Graham Greene fanzine, and his avowals of Catholicism always struck me as bizarre and transparent. Greene was a canny rationalist who borrowed Rome’s vestments in order to make himself look interestingly damaged. It was a marketing device and it worked a treat. His best novels were hailed as masterpieces. The same couldn’t be said of this play, which is noticeably short of structural sophistication. Three of the characters are superfluous; the plot’s mechanics are engineered by a clever little girl who keeps summoning family outcasts to reunions by telegram; and the minor characters get little chance to develop or flourish.
Martin Wimbush does a splendid job as the tortured priest, and Cate Debenham-Taylor is excellent as the jilted sex bomb Sara, although it’s hard to believe that this raunchy goddess still carries a torch for the miserable James. The show’s success — the matinée I attended was a sellout — suggests that the script may earn a permanent place in the repertoire.
Meanwhile, the search for neglected greatness continues, not least because it’s more than just the pursuit of artistic valuables. What the explorers seek is final proof that our forebears were philistines without an ounce of discrimination or sense. We see evidence for this seductive theory wherever we look: all that Marxism in the 1930s, all that sexism in the 1950s, all that wallpaper in the 1970s. It stands to reason that the twits responsible for those colossal blunders must have overlooked huge reserves of beauty and truth at the same time. Hence our non-stop rummaging in the vaults. We’re tidying up after our grandparents.
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