The Assault/The Last Days of Gilda
Old Red Lion
Eye/Balls
Soho
London in August. It’s the capital’s sabbatical. Theatre is all Edinburgh right now and the London-bound play-goer feels dislocated, irrelevant almost, alienated by accidents of chance and inclination, like a Hebrew at Christmas, a teetotaller on St Patrick’s day, an honest man in the Labour party. There’s still theatre to be had, though. The hunger remains, the unappeasable ache. A Brazilian double bill catches my eye. When it comes to Brazilian theatre — and I come to Brazilian theatre often — I’m more than an enthusiast, I’m a proto-fanatic. My expectations are vast. My sense of anticipation is beyond measure. The words ‘theatre’ and ‘Brazil’ produce seismic eruptions. I’ve never visited South America but I’ve seen it on TV, and with every beat of its voluptuous and exuberant heart, Brazil is pure theatre. Sheer theatre. The beaches are Lupercalia, the women are gypsy goddesses, the bikinis are acid-trips, the cocktails are grand operas, the fireworks are moon shots, the parties are riots followed by orgies followed by siestas followed by grilled lobster on the shore-line at sunset, where incense mingles with pheromones and cigar fumes. Or so I imagine. And Brazilian theatre markets itself very skilfully over here. A Brazilian play arriving in England will invariably claim the label ‘masterpiece’, ‘classic’, ‘runaway success’, ‘multi-award-winning sell-out hit’. And invariably it will be garbage. But still those simple words ‘Brazilian theatre’ work their magic and I’m lured in a heady mist of sensuous expectation towards the Old Red Lion in Islington.
The experience justifies the hype. I get a full Brazilian. The wrong sort, alas, and I emerge plucked, shorn and bleeding. Maybe I exaggerate but my hopes for the prize-encrusted play The Assault weren’t disappointed so much as kidnapped and buried alive. This is the sort of undemanding apprentice piece that English theatres stage all the time. The themes are money and sex. A gay banker detains his handsome, grumpy cleaner and solicits him with bribes of stolen cash. The set-up is banal, the plot isn’t great and the meatiest debating point — wealth’s inclination to exploit want — is hardly front-page news unless you read Marxism Today.
Characterisation is the problem. The characters aren’t nice. That shouldn’t matter but it does. Iago isn’t nice but his flaws have a grandeur that engages and fascinates. These characters’ flaws lack magnificence, they inspire no respect, fear or troubled envy. They aren’t flaws so much as slightly crap qualities. And as slightly crap qualities go they are themselves slightly crap. The banker is lonely, manipulative, nerdy, wheedling and a bit superior. The cleaner is dim, surly, egotistical, unimaginative and a bit superior, too.
When their tribulations are resolved — with the help of some convenient gunfire — a new play pops up. A monologue, performed with dogged panache by Gaël Le Cornec. The programme notes characterise her as ‘a Brazilian–French actress, director, poet, producer and former biologist’, whose interests in ‘human behaviour and anthropology made her plunge into theatre’. Her performance exudes winsome charm and pleading humour but I hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. Representing a ghetto earth mother called Gilda, she pranced around rolling dishcloths into loaves of bread and cajoling kisses from handsome boys in the audience. She was good. Her speeches were meaningless and though she successfully lodged herself in my memory vaults, I wouldn’t care if I was robbed.
The NYT season at Soho features a hectic double bill entitled Eye and Balls. Some helpful hints. A high headcount doesn’t guarantee dramatic richness and new writer Sarah Solemani crams her quarters like a slum landlord. Too much is left unexplained. A girl with a newborn baby goes to Dublin to study art history. Why? Motive is the silken thread connecting the audience with the players. Make the characters’ spurs for action many-layered, plural, human. Tease and cajole, invite us in. Don’t mess us about. Asked about the father, the mother says, ‘There’s no father.’ No punchline either. A Christian activist spends the entire play hunting for someone or other. Mystifying. Make sure critics have to work for their facile jibes.
Calling a play ‘Balls’ saves us too much trouble. Actually Balls is better than its predecessor. We’re in Dublin again (is there a sponsorship deal?), where a mistrustful fiancée has arrived in order to stalk her beloved’s stag party and make sure he doesn’t get into trouble. He gets into trouble. Stag party and anxious bride converge at a strip club with rather heavy-handed consequences. Solemani captures the spirit of booze-soaked laddishness very well and at times with exquisite precision. Then it all descends into mawkish sentiment. Would I see Solemani’s next play? Yes. Just.
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