Wastwater

[English version here]


Debussy hat einmal gesagt "Musik ist der Raum zwischen den Noten".

Ähnlich funktioniert Simon Stephens Stück Wastwater. Durch Ungesagtes, durch Auslassungen in und zwischen drei nur teilweise miteinander verbundenen Dialogen zeichnet es ein detailiertes Bild von der Welt. Simon Stephens benutzt in Wastwater Zweideutigkeiten als wären sie ein Teil der Besetzung.

Das Stück besteht aus drei Dialogen an drei voneinander unabhängigen Orten. In allen drei Fällen handelt es sich um Dialoge zwischen einem Mann und einer Frau. In allen drei Fällen geht es für den Zuschauer darum, herauszufinden, wer die Figuren sind: zunächst im Kontext der Situation - wie sie zueinander stehen - später dann im Kontext zu den anderen Figuren des Texts.

Im ersten Teil des Stücks spielen Linda Basset und Tom Sturridge Frieda und Harry: eine liebende, ängstliche ältere Frau und einen nervösen, zerfahrenen jungen Mann. Es könnte sich um eine Lehrerin und einen Schüler handeln, eine Mutter mit ihrem Sohn, um ein Liebespaar. Diese Unsicherheit führt beim Zuschauen zu einem starken Fokus auf Details. Nachdem Harry über ihre lange gemeinsame Vorgeschichte berichtet, sagt er zu Frieda: "Du hast wahrscheinlich schon davon gehört, oder? Es ist bestimmt in meiner Akte." Und wieder ist man verunsichert - ist sie eine besonders chaotische Bewährungshelferin? Nach und nach wird klar, dass es sich bei Frieda um Harrys Pflegemutter handelt; dabei spielen alle anderen möglichen Verhältnisse, die man als Zuschauer im Kopf durchgespielt hat, auch eine Rolle.

Diese Art von Unklarheit ist zentral für das Stück und für die Inszenierung . Selbst die Verortung ist unsicher: Lizzie Clachlans erster von drei großartigen Bühnenräumen sieht aus wie eine alte Sternwarte aus Holz und Glas oder wie der Wintergarten eines großen Familienhauses; sie ist zugewachsen und Frieda sagt, dass sie über einen Zaun klettern musste "um hier rein zu kommen". Wir erfahren, dass das Haus in der dem Dorf liegt, das zerstört worden wäre, wenn man Heathrows dritte Landebahn gebaut hätte. Von Zeit zu Zeit wird der Dialog von vorbeifliegenden Flugzeugen unterbrochen.

Die zweite Szene erforscht eine andere Art von Spannung und Unsicherheit. Mark und Lisa (Paul Ready und Jo McInnes) treffen sich in einem Hotel bei Heathrow und es ist dem Zuschauer sofort klar, warum. Die einzige Frage bleibt, ob die beiden es schaffen, das miteinander zu tun, wozu sie sich getroffen haben. Man erfährt nicht, wie die beiden sich kennengelernt haben und wie ihr Weg in das Hotelzimmer verlief, der Fokus der Szene liegt auf etwas anderem. Man folgt einem Duell zwischen Marks Nerven (teilweise leicht überspielt von Paul Ready) und Lisas Drang nach ständiger Selbstentblössung, immer gefolgt von Angeboten an Mark, wieder zu gehen: "Falls du jetzt gehen möchtest, macht es mir nichts aus.", "Bist du angeekelt? Möchtest du nach Hause gehen?", "Habe ich dich erschreckt?". Wieder wird die Handlung von vorbeifliegenden Flugzeugen unterbrochen.

Die dritte Szene ist die beunruhigenste. Sie spielt in einem Lagerhaus, wieder in der Nähe des Heathrower Flughafens, wo Jonathan (Angus Wright) mit Siân (Amanda Hale) verabredet ist. Die Beziehung zwischen den beiden ist die unklarste von allen. Siâns koketter erster Satz "Gefällt Dir mein Kleid?" ist missverständlich: vielleicht ist er ein Mitvierziger, der sich mit einer Prostituierten trifft. Die darauffolgende Veränderung ihres Benehmens - sie wird einschüchternd, nachbohrend - scheint zu einer leicht psychotischen Geheimdienstbeamtin zu passen oder zur einer Frau, die Selbstjustiz übt. Es wird klar, dass Jonathan etwas Schlimmes getan haben muss. Etwas sehr Schlimmes. Etwas, das mit Kindern und dem Internet zu tun hat. Er hat Angst vor ihr und sie genießt es, ihn mit ihrer Macht und seiner Angst einzuschüchtern. Lange scheint es wahrscheinlich, dass er mit einer Art Pädophilie-Ring zu tun hat. Alles an seinem Benehmen und ihren Reaktionen auf ihn deuten darauf hin. Am Ende stellt sich heraus, dass Jonathan eine große Summe Geld gezahlt hat, um illegal ein Kind aus Fernost zu adoptieren. Die Umstände werden nicht weiter erklärt.

Da wir soviel Zeit damit verbringen, zu denken, dass es in der Szene um Kindesmissbrauch geht, um Kindesentführung und das Internet, geht es in der Szene auch genau darum. Die Tatsache, dass die Szene am Ende von einer Adoption erzählt, löscht nicht das aus, was am Anfang ihr Kern zu sein schien. Das Spiel des Texts mit unseren Synapsen ist in vollem Gang. Details kehren wieder, Motive tauchen wiederholt auf, subtil verändert oder gespiegelt. Harrys Hose, die "ein wenig nach Pisse riecht" wird zu Jonathan, der sich "in die Hose macht". Friedas unschuldige Drohung "das Internet zu befragen" und "durch deine Nachrichten zu gehen" wird zu Siâns erschreckend genauer Beschreibung von Jonathans Handlungen, bei der sie jede einzelne Kreditkartentransaktion, jede Benutzung seiner Ubahnkarte, jeden Click im Internet aufzählt. Sogar Lisas Beschreibung von Wastwater: "Der tiefste See hier. Er ist schrecklich ruhig. Mein Vater hat mir gesagt, seine Ruhe sei eine Lüge. 'Er sieht ruhig aus, Lisa, aber du solltest sehen, wie viele Leichen auf seinem Grund liegen'." wird gespiegelt in Siâns späterer Erzählung über das Ertränken eines Hundes eines Pflegeonkels in einem Brunnen.

Diese Resonanzen erinnern uns ständig an die vorherigen Szenen und geben dem Text als Ganzes sein wahres Gewicht. Durch sie und durch die Verbindungen der Figuren untereinander beschwört das Stück die Riesigkeit der restlichen Welt: Siân ist ein weiteres von Friedas Pflegekindern, Jonathan ist der Lehrer, der einmal Mark geschlagen hat, Harry war in einem Auto mit dem berühmten Gavin Berkshire, einem von Marks Schülern, als dieser starb. Dadurch, dass diese Zusammentreffen so kurz und elliptisch sind, dadurch, dass die Verbindungen zwischen den Figuren so wahllos und zufällig scheinen, vermittelt das Stück einen Eindruck von der Masse an Menschen auf diesem Planeten.

Der Text benennt, davon abgesehen, eine große Menge an Orten außerhalb von Heathrow*.
Trotz der minutiös genauen Bühnenräume lässt die Menge an Informationen und Beschreibungen Wastwater streckenweise wie ein Hörspiel wirken - die Aufmerksamkeit des Zuschauers wird fortwährend auf andere Orte gelenkt als den Ort, den man anschaut; man ist angehalten, sich vorzustellen, was die Figuren beschreiben. Kombiniert mit der Unsicherheit darüber, wer genau sich in den Räumen des Stücks befindet, trägt diese Tatsache dazu bei, dass die Welt außerhalb der Räume des Stücks riesig wirkt.

Das, was im Stück benannt wird, folgt einem präzisen Muster. Wastwater ist ein sehr genau konstruierter Text. Die Szenen bauen auf einander auf, wie Echos. Jede Szene beschreibt einen Mann, der sich einer Frau entzieht. Nach und nach werden die Männer älter, die Frauen jünger. Mit jeder Szene entfernen wir uns weiter von der Natur und natürlichem Licht. In jeder Szene geht es ums Abschiednehmen: von Frieda, die nicht will, dass Harry wegzieht, zu Lisa, die Mark vorschlägt, wieder zu gehen zu Siân, die Jonathan verbietet, den Raum zu verlassen. Es gibt sogar eine sehr kurze vierte Szene, zwischen Jonathan und seiner frisch importierten Tochter Dalisay (sie, die jüngste der weiblichen Figuren, er, sogar noch gealtert durch die vorherige Begegnung), in der keiner aufstehen und gehen, geschweige denn sich bewegen kann.

In jeder Szene werden Entscheidungen und Konsequenten diskutiert, vielleicht liegt hier das Hauptinteresse des Stücks: die Frage danach, wie die Entscheidungen, die wir treffen, die Welt formen und zerstören. Harry beschäftigt die Aufgabe der Jagd zugunsten der Landwirtschaft: "Keine der großen Katastrophen der Menschheitsgeschichte wäre passiert, wenn wir uns nicht für die Landwirtschaft entschieden hätten", Lisa wiederum sagt: "Du triffst eine Entscheidung. Sie bleibt bei dir. Ein bisschen so, als ob ihre Konsequenzen sich in deine Knochen einschreiben."

Selbst die Benennungen von Orten und Dingen summieren sich. Hier geht es nicht um wahllose Beschreibungen von Details. Ohne je einen einzigen Wissenschaftler oder Eisbären auftreten zu lassen, hat Simon Stephens mit Wastwater das bis dato beste Stück über Klimawandel geschrieben; ein Stück über Globalisierung, über die Welt, in der wir unsere Kinder aufwachsen lassen, über unsere persönlichen und politischen Lebensumstände. All das mit beneidenswert leichter Hand. Am Ende ist man beinahe erschöpft davon, was man sich alles vorstellen musste und gleichzeitig aufgekratzt von der Anstrengung. Was nicht sagen soll, dass es sich um ein fröhliches Stück handelt. Die letzte Szene funktioniert wie eine Art Adrenalinkick, allerdings ist sie keineswegs beschwingt. Sie beschreibt eine Welt von verlassenen Kindern, Pflegefamilien, Sozialarbeitern, Heroinsucht und Internetpornographie, addiert ein ganzes Spektrum von Pädophilie und Kindeshandel: man schaut zu und wartet die ganze Zeit über darauf, dass etwas unglaublich Gewalttätiges geschieht.

Katie Mitchells Inszenierung ist ihre geradlinigste seit den Trojanerinnen. Alles ist naturalistisch gespielt und inszeniert, ohne Videokameras und Szenenwechsel, die scheinbar von Forensikern durchgeführt werden; die Handlung spielt in Räumen, die genauso aussehen, wie die Räume, die in den Regieanweisungen beschrieben werden.

Im Kontext dieses Naturalismus sind gerade Mitchells gelegentliche Abweichungen von ihm am Interessantesten. Immer wenn Flugzeuge auftauchen, hören die Figuren auf, zu sprechen und die gesamte Beleuchtung ändert sich: das Bühnenlicht wird gedämpft und ändert seine Farbe. Es gibt außerdem zwei fast tanztheaterhafte Augenblicke. In beiden Fällen geht es um allein gelassene Männer: Mark, der in Zeitlupe auf ein Bett fällt und Jonathan, der sehr langsam seine Hand ausstreckt. All diese Momente geben der Inszenierung eine Ebene von Fremdartigkeit, als ginge es, neben den einfachen Ängsten Sterblicher davor, dass wir unsere Luft mit Abgasen verpesten und dass Fremde unsere Kinder missbrauchen, noch um etwas anderes. Beziehungsweise werden diese Ängste in kurzen Momenten ganz klar greifbar.

Die Schauspielarbeit bewegt sich zwischen Stilisierung und Naturalismus, in einer Art kondensiertem Naturalismus, Hypernaturalismus vielleicht, so dass die Handlung immer etwas zu scharf, das Benehmen der Figuren immer etwas zu klar wirkt; an manchen Stellen maniriert. Die erste Szene, in der Bassett und Sturridge sich unterhalten, wird durch ein ständiges gegenseitiges Sich-in-den-Arm-Nehmen unterbrochen, durch ständiges Sich-Anfassen, Sich-Spiegeln in den Bewegungen des Anderen. Die zweite Szene wiederum zeigt Ready bei einer Variation dieses Motivs: er kratzt sich ohne Unterlass - ein Ekzem, wie seine Figur erklärt - am Hinterkopf, während McInnes körperlich ruhig ist. Im dritten Teil ist Angus Wrights Figur so zappelig, dass es zu einem Konversationsthema wird, während Amanda Hales Siân vergleichsweise gelassen bleibt.

Die szenische Handlung passt bemerkenswert gut zum Text. Man nimmt sie kaum bewusst war, dennoch erdet sie die Struktur des Stücks. In den ersten zwei Teilen von Wastwater singen Figuren den Anfang von La Habanera aus Bizets Carmen, im dritten Teil wiederum wird Messiaens "Musik für das Ende der Zeit" [sic] falsch zitiert (tatsächlich heißt das Stück Quartett für das Ende der Zeit). In Simon Stephens Stücken ist die Musik immer ein Hinweis auf die allgemeine Grundlaune. Während die Habanera spielerisch die Liebe als Vogel beschreibt, der Menschen das Herz stiehlt, ist der Grundton von Messiaens modernistischer Musik, die während der Haftzeit des Komponisten in Polen während des zweiten Weltkriegs entstand, ein gebrochener, erschöpfter. Eine weitere wichtige Referenz in Wastwater ist ein Zitat aus Dickens Großen Erwartungen, durch Lisa, kurz vor Ende der Hotelszene: “Der Himmel weiß, dass wir uns nie unserer Tränen schämen müssen. Sie sind der Regen, der auf den blind machenden Staub der Erde fällt, der unsere harten Herzen bedeckt."

Wastwater entwirft ein komplexes, menschliches, besorgtes Bild der Welt. Es beschreibt Politisches durch menschliche Beziehungen auf die beste mögliche Weise. Es zeigt uns nicht nur den Zustand der Nation, sondern auch den Zustand des Planeten. Wastwater tut all das durch Bilder, die mitreißend und aufregend sind und die, zusammen genommen, viel mehr bieten als eine einfache Summe der Einzelteile. Das Stück zeigt eine eng gewobene Decke von Referenzpunkten, die weiter nachhallen. Es zeigt uns ein moralisches Universum, in dem individuelle Entscheidungen Konsequenzen haben, ein Universum, in dem Entscheidung in unseren Knochen weiterleben. Wastwater beschreibt die undarstellbare Riesigkeit der Welt und gleichzeitig die vergleichsweise winzigen Leben in ihr; das Stück zeigt, wie kleine, fragmentarische Momente unvorhergesehene, unvorstellbare, unbekannte Nachwirkungen haben können, die sich von ihren Ursachen entfernen wie ein Netz von Rissen auf einer zerbrochenen Glasscheibe.

Es ist schwer zu sagen, was man mehr wollen könnte von einem Kunstwerk.

________

*Sipson, Middlessex; Surrey, Kanada; Neuseeland; Asien; Südamerika; Minneapolis, Amerika; Stansted Flughafen, Essex; Epping Forest; Lancaster; Wastwater, der Lake District; das Holiday Inn in Derby; Swansea; der Charles de Gaulle Flughafen; Cebu auf den Philippinen; die Islington Filiale der Co-Operative Bank an der Ecke von Upper Street und Pentonville Road; Halfords auf der Liverpool Road; Oddbins auf dem Weg zur Holborn Ubahnstation; die Archway Ubahnstation; Seattle; Inverness; München; Salzburg, Warrington, Manchester; Teile der Elfenbeinküste; die Itury Region in der Demokratischen Republik Kongo; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Kirgistan und die Seitenstraßen der Hauptstädte Lateinamerikas.

Coronation of Poppea - The King's Head

[1st and only preview – see disclaimer*]


It can only be a matter of time before some wag notices the confluence of Opera-Up-Close and Mark Ravenhill and coins the albatross term In-Yer-Face-Opera. It's hard to imagine something less fitting. Off the back of the massive sell-out and now Olivier Award-winning success of La Bohème, entrepreneurial wunderkind Adam Spreadbury-Maher, who was also, until recently, running Kilburn's Cock Tavern where La B. originated, has somehow managed to get hold of Islington's King's Head and rebrand it as London's Little Opera House. It's an ambitious project, and one for which Mark Ravenhill's new translation and staging of Claudio Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea now makes an excellent case.

Monteverdi's opera, apparently first staged in the year of his death, 1643, at the Venice Carnival had survived in two apparently differing versions (source). Ravenhill also notes that this represented Monteverdi taking his opera outside its customary in-court setting to “the people”, which chimes nicely with the staging of this version in the back room of the closest thing Islington has to a spit 'n' sawdust pub.

As narratives go, the Coronation of Poppea is distinguished largely by its playful cruelty. It starts out with the titular Poppea sulking at the Roman Emperor Nero for not yet having divorced his wife, Ottavia (the opera is historically interesting for dealing primarily with real figures and not mythical characters and Gods – and here, what Gods there were in the original have been cut). We then learn that Poppea hasn't even left her husband Ortho, who in turn is paying visits to one Drusilla, who is in turn in love with him. Thrown into this heady mix is the complicating factor that Nero is a psychopath with the power of life or death over everyone in Rome.

Morally, this is an antiquity. The philosopher Seneca, who also features, is at his most noble when putting his stoic philosophy into practice when commanded to take his own life. Similarly, if narrative serves as vindication – or as Wilde has it: “the good end happily, the bad unhappily” – then the conclusion as to what constitutes *good* here is amoral to say the least.

What is surprising, then, is how much tenderness and humanity Ravenhill's newly translated libretto and staging manage to wring from it. This is perhaps the best libretto for an opera I've ever heard. And that includes a fair few originally written in English; it knocks spots off Richard Thomas's words for Anna Nicole at the Royal Opera House, for example. There isn't a clunky phrase or rhyme that I noticed. Instead you get a real sense of the revolutionary (for its time) dramatic story-telling of the original, rendered in unobtrusive but elegant, witty contemporary language. There's even a bunch of playfully self-referential “fuck”s thrown into the first three minutes. But even these are still in keeping with the context.

But it's the tender stuff that really hits home. Granted I don't know the original backwards, but assuming the words stick roughly to what was originally being said (you know, like a translation), then the felicity with which syllables fall into place, while still conveying an entirely credible and genuine and moving sense of what they mean, is pretty awesome.

The closing duet, Pur ti miro, pur ti godo is simply rendered as “When I see you, when I touch you”, for example. It sounds too simple to be even worth noting, but it's this very simplicity and acuity of feeling that makes it work.

Aside from Ravenhill's contribution as librettist and director (of which, more later), the other real star here is Alex Silverman's re-imagined score. As has been noted elsewhere, there isn't really a definitive score for L'Incoronazione... and so chopping and changing at will isn't even controversial. In terms of the music, though, it is not so much the cuts and dramaturgy that stand out as the impressive re-working of the instrumentation. Monteverdi's music has been scored for a jazz trio of piano, double bass and saxophone(s) (I think various different sizes of sax are deployed – insert own headline along “Silverman discovers Monteverdi's sax appeal” lines).

Given the twiddly, treble-heavy nature of baroque music – those almost too-sharp harpsichord trills and high-pitched violins – you might think the transition to the mellower tones of the piano and double bass would take the edge off the music. It doesn't. You can still hear the ornate curlicues of the baroque original, but splendour/grandeur are traded in for sheer energy. After all, the real difference here isn't the change of instrumentation so much as the fact that three people are filling in the notes originally provided by an orchestra. It's well worth trying to get yourself a seat from which you can also watch Silverman at the piano, which is a whole brilliant performance all of its own.

As well as cutting away a lot of polytheistic dramatic dead wood, this version also inserts a new aria written by Michael Nyman. I am a big fan of what Silverman had done to Monteverdi's score, but, if anything, I'm an even bigger fan of Nyman's new “intervention”. Probably only lasting three-to-five minutes, this is the most blistering part of the evening. It might benefit slightly from having entirely modern sensibilities from the off, rather than skillfully adapted antique ones, or it might just be that I prefer Nyman to Monteverdi – but after a lot of plangent trills, the new aria comes on almost like a cleansing dose of punk rock. It's the same insistent, hammering rhythm familiar from his Purcell pastiches for The Draughtsman's Contract soundtrack, backing a satisfyingly vindictive, vengeful prophecy of misery and death for Nero and Poppea sung by Ottavia as she covers herself in handfuls of stage-gore like a kind of jazz-baroque Siouxsie Sioux.


I should probably couch some of my quibbles here in the fact that I only saw the first preview*, although my basic problem is far more silly and fundamental: I'm starting to realise that I'm not a massive fan of small rooms. Which, when an entire enterprise is predicated on the smallness of the premises, seems much more like an irreconcilable difference of opinion. I just like being a bit further away from the action than one can actually get in the King's Head. I sat at the back – a perfectly excellent view of the new side-on Thrust stage configuration, and it still all seemed a bit close. I do wonder, though, if part of the issue here is to do with a) the production still needing a bit of time to bed in at that stage, b) the fact that opera singers presumably have much less training for the volume at which to pitch a performance in a small room with a low ceiling, and, c) an interesting disjuncture between the ethos of the music (jazz) and the singing style (still operatic).

That is: I wonder how much the style in which opera is sung has to do with the size of the venues in which it has traditionally played – that full-throttle mass of human voice making the most sound it's humanly possible to make tunefully. In a small room there's a question of whether that sound needs some adjustment or whether it is an unalterable part of the genre.

Relatedly, while with jazz the point is to look and sound as relaxed as possible, opera is perhaps the most effortful way of singing ever devised, to the extent that it sometimes looks physically uncomfortable. As such, it sometimes feels like the score here perhaps even accentuates this effort unhelpfully. I don't know if any of this is relevant, helpful or even accurate, though – perhaps it's much more a matter of conventions which I need to get more used to.

The clarity of the staging and the acting within it are admirable. Previous Ravenhill collaborator (on Intolerance) Rebecca Caine as Nero's spurned wife, Ottavia, stands out both vocally and dramatically. Although there is strong support from Martin Nelson's Seneca and counter-tenor David Sheppard as the cross-dressed, would-be assassin Ottone. Elsewhere, Adam Kowalczyk's Arnalta and Jessica Walker's Nero add to the cross-dressing fun, cross-cast to good effect (in the original, Nero is thought to have likely been sung by a castrato; in our more entlightened times, a soprano seems like a fair compromise). It's not exactly gender-blind casting, hoever. One gets the impression Ravenhill quite relishes the draggy aspect – introducing the premiere with quotes not only from Seneca, but also RuPaul.

The setting feels mildly more indicative than fully realised, but adds to the likeable sense of a DIY ethic running through the whole. And, in fairness, was infinitely more ambitious even in its lo-fi state than many far more expensive, grandiose sets in “proper” opera houses. For patently very little money, designer Katie Bellman has pulled together an look that recalls the grungy, trash-aesthetic of Frank Castorf's Volksbühne.

So: yes. The Coronation of Poppea is an excellent place for Opera-Up-Close to be right now, although I can't help hoping that a bunch of money gets flung at it so that it can transfer to a slightly bigger space – it doesn't have to be enormous, the Almeida round the corner would be excellent – and has the budget to more properly realise the set and costumes. I realise these are terrible things I'm saying and I should be embracing the tiny-room-ness of it all more wholly. I'm not sure what one does about one's desire for a bit more remoteness from one's opera, though. It plainly has nothing to do with this excellent production. I think it's just a matter of taste, and/or training. That said, if Opera-Up-Close continues to work this well, I might yet be persuaded that I want my Opera in my face after all.


[*Disclaimer: I saw the only “preview” performance. This preview was the first time this staging had been performed and, as director Mark Ravenhill explained before the show started, was still missing a couple of scenes. As well as being the only preview, it was also still a week before Press/Opening night [now almost a fortnight ago], so there was still a week of rehearsal to go. The only reason I went to this preview, was that it was the only night it was on when I was in London. That said, I emailed Mark and asked if I could have a press ticket and he said yes, thus, I think, obliging me to write. Not sure where that puts me in the critics/bloggers // to-preview/not-to-preview debate. Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, Mark's a friend; although that wouldn't stop me writing an unfavourable review of his work if I thought it was bad, as I think he knows

Happily, most of the “proper” reviews I've read since seem equally thrilled with the thing. Among the best are:

Kieron Quirke in the London Evening Standard

and the blog Intermezzo


The FT – which doesn't go for the Nyman intervention at all (more fool them) – does make an interesting point about its dramatic effect]

The Knot of the Heart - Almeida

An interesting phenomenon, when it comes to reviewing New Writing, is the rush and the urge to identify “themes”. In Rewriting the Nation terms:

“If the nineties were all about druggie council estates, David Eldridge's Knot of the Heart, like Nick Grosso's Ingredient X before it, proves that drug use and addiction were also very much middle class problems. The play shows Lucy, who has just started a career presenting children's television, gradually succumbing to heroin addiction; but, with an alcoholic mother and a self-harming sister, Lucy's not the only addict in the family...”

Which would be a pretty reductive way of viewing the play. Certainly addiction is something in the play, but it isn't a play “about” addiction. Indeed, if anything, it's actually all about class. Or families. Or death/grief/bereavement/guilt/love/being-a-mother/being-a-daughter. Or blame.

The point is that it's a story. It's a play about *some people*. Yes, as a study of addiction it is without recent peers – it makes That Face look like a vindictive, petulant tantrum by comparison. Early on it has more in common with those dramas of familial claustrophobia – from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf to Bedbound – but even this seems too schematic a placing. Neither location nor kinship are ultimately the trap. There's also more than a little of the Ibsen about it. At its core – certainly “core” in the way it is placed by the narrative – is a Dark Family Secret, the uncovering of which...

And here we run into another problem of trying to write seriously about the play. This is a strange thing about plays which tell a story, but also include what could be described as “discussion of a theme” – let's say here it is addiction for the sake of argument. The story, the way the events unfold, the simple one-thing-after-another-ness of it all, always appears to be a part of the thesis. But you're not meant to talk about “what happens” in a write-up. It's a bit like trying to explain what Christ meant with the Parable of the Prodigal Son without giving away the ending.

Eldridge has clearly done thorough research into his subjects – let's say those are heroin addiction, alcoholism, self-harm, the middle class and the language of addiction-therapy (“clearly” not least because he's said as much). Each of the three principle characters (Lucy, her mother, and her sister) could be seen to be an embodiment of one of these problems. Of course, they're not. They're characters who are meant to be quite like “real people”. As such, their relation to even this particular facet of their character is governed, at least in the dramatist's mind, by his impression of how that character would deal with a certain situation. Which of course makes them flawed ciphers for their addictions. But Eldridge is more than canny enough a dramatist to know this. So this is not a play which purports to give a definitive study of “addiction”, but rather a humane, concerned, compassionate-but-unflinching portrait of a particular woman/family through a difficult three years at the end of a difficult thirty years.

In terms of the writing, well, it fluctuates a bit. Some of the early scenes – one between the mother and the sister in particular – feel like either the actors haven't quite hit the “right” rhythm (I say this knowing full well that it's all a matter of taste), or else the language is deliberately condensed into a sort of realist cordial without the water added – all the right favours are there, but they haven't been a diluted so they don't taste like “real” real life should.

This gets ironed out by the last scene before the interval (running time: 1hr20(?), 20 min interval, 1hr6). Suddenly, all the stuff that might have been being manoeuvred into place a tiny bit obviously is in the right position and the thing takes off. The play is flat-out engrossing, without little tics distracting you.

But more than the fact that Knot... could be described as an “about” play which easily transcends its “about”ness, what's really interesting is the way it's structured. Along with “Where are all the right-wing plays?” and “Why can't young writers write 'Big Plays'?” one of the most persistent grumbles about “New Writing” is that it seldom produces “Big Parts”.

Knot of the Heart has created precisely that. It's already a matter of record at the central figure of Lucy was created by David Eldridge for actress Lisa Dillon. And it's a thumping big part: on stage most of the time; in most of the scenes; utterly central and given a hell of a lot of decisions and transformations, moods and attitudes to portray, this is indeed a Big Part.

It's also a difficult part. Lucy is by no means a sympathetic character, nor does Dillon try to make her one. She is messy, self-absorbed, selfish and deluded. What's most interesting about Dillon's performance are the switches in register. She coquettes about, making herself small, curling up, whimpering and so on, but at other points, suddenly seems to discover a deep, almost Thatcher-like stridency and power.

Margot Leicester as her mother, Barbara, is also gifted a whacking great part, which she inhabits thoroughly, if perhaps over-playing the jolly, ho-ho-ho Middle-class-mum act. Although, it's hard to tell whether it is the actress or the character who is doing the over-playing. Much more probably the latter. Abigail Cruttenden makes heavier weather of sister Angela, although again this could be a deliberate choice rather than a failure of capturing the character.

It is briefly pleasing to note that the programme contains the credit “Kieran Bew - All the Men” - although perhaps the most interesting element of this is that this might mean Knot of the Heart contains the only – unannounced, unsignalled – performance by a white actor of a black or Asian character.

The strength of Knot of the Heart is in it's clear-eyed telling of a true-sounding story. There's a feeling of well-realised authenticity and accuracy about it. Without giving away the ending, it's harder to say any more about it than that.

Wastwater - Royal Court

Debussy once said “music is the space between the notes”.

This is how Wastwater works. Through the vast spaces between and within three tangentially connected dialogues, it paints a picture of the world on an enormous scale.

DISCLAIMER: as a result of the above, it is impossible to discuss Wastwater in any meaningful detail without starting to eat away at some of the things that make watching it great. As such, this review is primarily intended for those who have already seen Wastwater and those who are not going to see it. Or who don't care about that sort of thing (hello, Germans).

If you like your reviews to function as a kind of consumer guide: Go see Wastwater. It is funny, clever and terrifying. The best play yet written about climate change and globalisation. Probably the best play of 2011. Five Stars. Andrew Haydon. (& if you want a reductive critical shorthand for what it's like, try: Under the Blue Sky to the tune of The City)

Now don't read any more until you've seen it or you're sure you're not going to. Or are German.


The reason it's impossible to discuss Wastwater without giving things away is that Simon Stephens uses ambiguity here like it was a set of additional characters.

The play is made up of three dialogues in three separate locations. Each between a male and a female. In each dialogue it feels like the first game we're being asked to play is “working out who the characters are”: first in the context of the scene – who they are to each other – and then, later, who they are in relation to the other characters we've seen.

In the first scene Linda Bassett and Tom Sturridge play Frieda and Harry, a loving, anxious older woman and a nervy, distracted young man. They could be teacher and pupil, parent and child, or lovers. Not knowing makes us watch the details harder. After establishing what sounds like a long shared history, Harry says, “You probably heard about it, didn't you? They must have put it in my file.” And we're unsure again – is she a particularly unkempt probation officer? It gradually emerges that Frieda has been Harry's foster-mother, but by that point the other relationships we might have imagined for them also matter.

There's an out-of-joint-ness that is crucial. Even where the scene is set seems disputed: it looks (here, in the first of Lizzie Clachan's excellent sets) like the back of an old wood and glass conservatory or greenhouse to a large family home, but it's massively overgrown, and Frieda refers to “climbing over the fence to get in here”. We learn that the house is in the village that would have been destroyed had Heathrow's third runway been constructed. From time to time the dialogue is interrupted by planes flying overhead.

The second scene exploits a different sort of tension and uncertainty. Set in a hotel room outside Heathrow, it is almost immediately obvious what Mark and Lisa (Paul Ready and Jo McInnes) are doing there. If there's a question, it's whether they'll actually manage to do what they've set out to do. There is the unanswered ancillary question of how they met and how they got to this point, but their scene isn't interested in that. Instead it's a play-off between Mark's nerves (perhaps slightly over-played by Paul Ready) and Lisa's urge toward relentless, steely-eyed self-revelation always followed with the opportunity for Mark to leave: “If you want to leave now I wouldn't mind.” “Do you feel disgusted? Do you want to go home?” “Have I scared you a bit?” Again the action is interrupted by planes.

The third and final scene is the most unsettling. It is set in a warehouse, also near to Heathrow airport, where Jonathan (Angus Wright) has agreed to meet Siân (Amanda Hale). This is the most unclear relationship yet. Siân's flirty first line “Do you like my dress?” wrong-foots us: perhaps he's a middle-aged man meeting a prostitute. The subsequent switch in her manner – hectoring, interrogatory – suggests a slightly psychotic MI5 Officer or vigilante. It's clear that Jonathan has done something wrong. Something very wrong. Something to do with children and the internet. He's frightened of her and she enjoys teasing him with her power and his fear. For a long time, it seems likely that he's involved in some kind of paedophile ring. Certainly his behaviour and her treatment of him and the hints to what's going on point toward this. Eventually, it turns out that Jonathan has paid a large amount of money to illegally adopt a child from the far east. The circumstances aren't made much clearer than that.

Because we spend so much time in the scene thinking that it is about paedophiles, child abduction and the internet, the scene/this part of the play is about that too. The fact that it turns out to be about something different doesn't erase what the scene seemed to have been about. Again, the game that the text is playing with our synapses is in full-flight. Details recur, little moments or motifs crop up again, subtly transformed or shifted. Harry's trousers that “smell of wee a bit” here turn into Jonathan “pissing himself”. Frieda's light-hearted threat to “investigate the internet” and “go through your sent messages” becomes Siân's terrifyingly full account of all Jonathan's movements that day – she reels off all his credit card, Oyster Card uses and internet transactions. Perhaps even Lisa's description of Wastwater itself – “The deepest lake in the country [England, not Britain]. It's terribly still. My dad told me the stillness was a bit of a lie. 'It looks still, Lisa, but you should see how many bodies are hidden under there'.” finds a twin in Siân's later description of drowning a foster-uncle's dog in a pond.

These little chimes and resonances constantly reminding us of the scenes which have gone before give the momentum of the whole real weight. It is through these, and the almost glancing connections between the dramatis personae – Siân is another of Frieda's foster-children, Jonathan is the teacher who once hit Mark, Harry was in the car with Mark's star pupil, Gavin Berkshire, when he died – that the play conjures the hugeness of the rest of the world. By making these encounters so brief and elliptical, by the characters and the connections between them being so apparently random and incidental, it achieves a sense of the sheer mass of people on the planet.

The text also names an awful lot of places from Heathrow outwards*. Indeed, in spite of the minutely detailed naturalistic sets, the rush of information and descriptions sometimes make the piece feel more like a radio play - one's mind is continually being put out of the room you're looking at and being asked to imagine something that one of the characters is describing. This, especially when coupled with the slight sense of not-knowing who is in the room, again adds to the sense of the overwhelming hugeness of the world outside these rooms.

There's a precision to what gets mentioned, though. This is an incredibly tightly constructed play. The scenes echo and build on one another in ways that go far beyond happy coincidence. Each depicts a man cowering slightly more away from a woman. Scene-by-scene, the men get older and the women get younger. It has been noted elsewhere that each setting gets further from nature and natural light. Each scene is about leaving, from Frieda not really wanting Harry to go, to Lisa suggesting to Mark he might want to go, to Siân absolutely not allowing Jonathan to exit. There's even the briefest of fourth scenes – that between Jonathan and his newly imported daughter Dalisay (she youngest still, he aged even by the encounter) – where neither can leave, or even move.

In each scene there's an additional discussion of choices and consequences – perhaps the overriding concern of the play – that question of how the choices we make are shaping, and destroying the world – from Harry's concern with humanity's abandonment of hunter-gathering in favour of farming: “None of the catastrophes of human history would have happened if we'd not decided to farm.” to Lisa's: “You make one decision. It stays with you. It's a bit like the consequences of it get into your bones”.

Even the references to places and things add up. This isn't just a scattergun miscellany of detail. Without putting a single scientist, politician or even polar bear in the rooms, this is the best play yet written about climate change, globalisation, about the sort of world into which we are bringing children and how we live, both on a personal and political level. It is also about information, commerce and what the world does with children. All this is achieved with an enviable lightness of touch. By the end, you feel almost wrung-out by how much you've had to imagine as well as exhilarated by the effort. Which isn't to say this is a cheering play. The last scene might function like an adrenalin shot – you spend the whole time just waiting for something horrifically violent to happen – but it's hardly an “upper” - to a world of abandoned children, foster-families, Child Protection Officers, heroin addiction and internet pornography, it adds the spectre of paedophilia and the actuality of children being sold or abducted for adoption.


Katie Mitchell's production is her “straightest” since Women of Troy. That is to say, this is played almost entirely naturalistically – i.e. without video cameras or CSI scene-change operatives, in replicas of rooms that look exactly like the rooms in which the scenes are set, played by a cast who mostly “look like the characters”. Actually, this last point isn't always strictly observed. In the printed script, Siân describes Frieda as “absolutely beautiful. She looks about my age...”, which, with the best will in the world, isn't strictly true of Linda Bassett and those lines have been removed. Of course, it is equally possible that Siân could believe it or, indeed, be lying to Jonathan when she says it, but, as far as I remember, the lines have simply been cut. Similarly, as with many productions of Blasted, the hotel room doesn't look anywhere near as pricey as it's described as being.

Within the context of this naturalism, it is Mitchell's occasional departures from it that are most interesting. In each scene, when the planes fly over, as well as causing the characters to stop speaking, the entire lighting state also changes – dims slightly, perhaps changes colour a bit. There are also at least two moments of almost dance-theatre-style non-naturalism. Both when men are left alone – in one, Mark falls backward in slow motion onto the bed, and in the other Jonathan slowly flexes a single hand. All these moments, set within the context of the naturalism, suggest an additional layer of strangeness. As if, beyond the simple, mortal fears of burning naphtha-kerosene destroying the air we breathe and strangers torturing our children, there is also a briefly glimpsed extra dimension. Or those fears momentarily take on a tangible form.

The acting itself is an interesting mix of the stylised and the totally straight. It feels like a form of condensed naturalism – hyper-naturalism, perhaps – so that all the action is slightly too sharp, the colours of the behaviour a little over-bright. It's very tic-cy in places. The first scene, in which Bassett and Sturridge chat, is marked by the way that both are constantly hugging themselves, hands picking endlessly at arms, movements mirroring one anothers'. The second scene, by contrast, sees Ready carrying on this motif of self-scratching – he almost compulsively itches the back of his head (eczema, his character explains) – where McInnes is more physically still. The third scene has Angus Wright in the most heightened state of fidgeting yet, almost unable to keep still to the point where it becomes a subject of discussion, while Amanda Hale's Siân is comparatively sanguine.

This action is fitted to the text remarkably well. It is almost unnoticeable at a conscious level, yet all the while adding grounding to the structure of the text. Re: this structure - the first two scenes both have characters hum/sing the start of Habanera from Bizet's Carmen, while the last (mis)name-checks Messiaen's “Music for the End of Time” [sic]. In common with other of Simon Stephens's plays, the music mentioned can be read as a partial hint to the mood or tone of the piece. While the opening notes of Habanera hop darkly but playfully downward like the bird that's going to steal one's heart (cf. its lyrics), the Messiaen is an altogether more fractured, shattered, modernist piece, written during the composer's imprisonment in Poland during WWII, inspired by the book of Revelation. The other crucial structural or thematic note is the quote from Dicken's Great Expectations delivered by Lisa just before the close of the hotel scene: “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.”

What Wastwater does is create a complex, humane, concerned picture of the world. It illuminates the political through the personal in the best possible way. It shows us not only the state of the nation, but of the planet. It creates this picture through scenes that are individually intriguing, exciting and which, when taken together, add up to far more than the sum of their parts. It offers a rich, densely allusive tapestry of references which resonate far beyond the walls within which they are uttered. It suggests a moral universe where individual decisions have consequences and where decisions live on in our bones. It manages to stage both the unstageable enormity of the extent of the world, and the comparatively tiny lives within it – suggestively showing how tiny, fragmentary moments can have unforeseen, unimagined, unknown impacts, which thread away from them like the network of cracks on a sheet of shattered glass.

It is hard to know what more one could want from a work of art.

____________

*Sipson, Middlesex; Surrey, Canada; New Zealand; Asia; South America; Minneapolis, America; Stansted Airport, Essex; Epping Forest; Lancaster; Wastwater, the Lake Distract; Holiday Inn, Derby; Swansea; Charles de Gaulle Airport; Cebu, Philippines; the Islington Branch of the Co-Operative Bank on the corner of Upper Street and Pentonville Road; Halfords on Liverpool Road; the Oddbins on the way to Holborn Tube; Archway Tube; Seattle; Inverness; Munich, Germany; Salzburg, Austria; Warrington, Manchester; parts of the Ivory Coast; the Itury region in the Democratic Republic of Congo; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Kyrgyzstan and the back streets of the major cities of Latin America.

Funding cuts coverage

So, “Arts Council England funding cuts”, eh?

Having spent much of the day itself and latter half of the week reading about them, it seems the only thing still lacking is coverage of the coverage.

The first thing that needs pointing out is that, contra the above-quoted locution, the cuts aren't really “Arts Council cuts”. Or at least, rather than simply being cuts made by the Arts Council England, they might more properly be thought of as that organisation's administration and allocation of the reduced budget allotted to them by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. It's a good rule of thumb that if an article doesn't make this distinction within the first two paragraphs, it's probably not worth reading.

While, yes, it is ultimately Arts Council England deciding where the money goes, there is less money for them to allocate than there was in the last spending round in 2008 and it is primarily this which has necessitated their making any cuts at all. At the same time, it should be noted that the Arts Council has also dug into its Lottery reserve to the tune of £82 million, in order that it might cushion the blow.

That said, ACE's response has been, rather than simply shaving an equal percentage off each organisation they had hitherto been funding – a practice charmingly euphemised as “salami slicing”, as if salamis were traditionally served by chopping fifteen per cent off one end – to conduct a thoroughgoing reappraisal of both their entire portfolio of funded organisations and indeed the entire structure of their funding model (changing RFOs into NPOs and so on).


The differences between this funding round and their last, announced in December '07, are incredible. Indeed, it's hard to believe they were carried out by the same organisation. Which, in one sense, they weren't – depending on one's view of the philosopher's axe.

Whereas in January '08 the Arts Council was issued with a vote of no confidence as a result of their proposed cuts, this time around, it has gathered almost nothing but praise. There is near-universal recognition that it has come up with a portfolio of artists, and settlements upon them, which has been rigorously thought about, re-thought about and agonised over; and in a far more difficult set of circumstances than last time.

Of course, there are individual decisions which different people would have made differently. I, for example, think it's terrible that Third Angel have had their funding cut by 100%, but would have happily cut the Tricycle by a good deal more than 11% if left to my own cack-handed devices.

Which at once touches at one corner of what makes writing about these cuts difficult: personal preference and a lack of first hand knowledge. Both these issues also go a long way toward demonstrating why we have an Arts Council in the first place.

This is best evidenced by Messers Spencer, Cavendish and Callow.

Of the three, Spencer perhaps comes out best, offering only seven short paragraphs in which he rehearses a few of his already well-known prejudices. His 2009 review starting: “Reviewers should be honest about their prejudices and one of mine is a great dislike for the Arcola Theatre in darkest [!] Dalston. It’s a nightmare to get to [from Surrey], and when you finally arrive in the neighbourhood you find yourself on a menacing main street, often patrolled by terrifying hooded youths [!]...”

Here becomes: “the Arcola in... Dalston gets an increase of 82 per cent. This seems to be an example of the Arts Council favouring a venue in a run-down location rather than one that attracts the Islington fashionistas. The posh Almeida audience may now be required to dig deeper into their pockets. ”

Never mind that Islington ceased to be fashionable in about '95. In the world of Telegraph-shorthand for “blacks” and “queers”, this imaginary play-off between “terrifying hooded youths” and “fashionistas” should keep them gurgling happily for days.

It's worth noting in passing that while those figures – some of the most quoted across reports, not least because they're rare examples of numbers different to 11 or 15 – sound extreme, the actuality is that the Almeida losing 39.0% means it's going from £1,052,543 down to £704,917, while the Arcola's 82.1% gain raises £157,418 to £314,879 – still less than half the public money the Almeida gets (also worth noting that the venues' public subsidy isn't the whole of their income. The Almeida is sponsored by the private bank for millionaires, Coutts, and the Arcola is sponsored by the American financial firm Bloomberg)

Spencer rounds his piece off with a joke about not liking the London International Mime Festival, which is, of course, totally unforgivable.

Crucially, though, at no stage does he once question the actual practice of funding the arts. It's just one guy's “Well, I wouldn't necessarily do it like that” thoughts.

Putting its finger on the problem of this subjectivity much more firmly is Dominic Cavendish's oddly chippy piece. It is worth quoting him at some length:

“I have to declare that, having looked over the Arts Council’s existing list of regularly funded clients, which will be supplanted from April 2012 with the new National portfolio, I was astonished by how many theatre companies have barely registered as significant players, let alone produced works of memorable excellence, in the 10 years I’ve been reviewing, and covering the regions.

To name half a dozen: Mimbre theatre, Spare Tyre theatre company, Dodgy Clutch Theatre, Lawnmowers Theatre, M6 theatre company and Monster Productions. Two of these companies (Dodgy Clutch, who specialise in outdoor experiences, and Monster, who have produced musical theatre for children) are now funding-less, but the others are doing OK - some are doing better than OK; Lawnmowers Theatre, which works with learning disabled, gets a 21 per cent increase.
To single these companies out is not to denigrate the work they’ve done - they’ve been so off the radar, there’s no knowing - or to imply that they won’t achieve excellent in the future; but if there’s a glaring deficit in the arts at the moment, it remains that the incredible talk about what the arts achieve and what they do for the public, taxpaying or otherwise, isn’t always matched by audiences' understanding or appreciation of what is out there.”

Which is one way of putting it. Another might be to suggest there's a “glaring deficit” in the Telegraph's regional reviewing. Except it's not even that. After all, does a theatre company which works with the learning disabled even want a review from the Daily Telegraph? Much though theatre critics might like to believe that they're the eyes and ears of the public, the fact is, if you're the second string theatre critic of Britain's most right-wing broadsheet, owned by two reclusive tax-exiles, it might have just not occurred to a company working with learning disabled children in Gateshead that Telegraph readers are interested in their work.

Cavendish's suggestion that the “incredible talk about what the arts achieve and what they do for the public... isn’t always matched by audiences' understanding or appreciation of what is out there” seems hard to verify. Or rather, he gives absolutely no evidence for his claim – although “isn't always” is such a moveable feast as to be almost impossible to disprove. It is equally likely that people might be made aware of what's going on near them by their own local information networks, advertising and media, rather than them requiring notification or critical approbation from the national press.

Granted, when Toby Frow raised the issue of regional coverage in a Guardian blog last year, the fierce resentment of even the Guardian's critics' perceived London-centric agenda reverberated through the comments section. On the other hand, isn't at least some of what the Arts Council funds not specifically aimed at the widest possible audience?

My friend Jo Wright works at South Hill Park, an arts centre which has just been cut by 100%. It's a “mixed arts” venue which serves as a local venue for touring theatre productions – they've got Noughts & Crosses and the excellent Poland 3 – Iran 2 coming in soon. They also serve as a home for dance, have a gallery and run all sorts of classes and youth groups. Etc. Jo appeared on Anne Diamond's Radio Berkshire programme (No. I didn't know that existed, but I don't live in Berkshire) to talk about what they did (link is iPlayer, so might disappear).

This is her talking about someone who'd benefited from what they did there:
"...Honey, who's 8 years old, is another one with massive autism. She let me brush her hair for the first time ever because she was in role. As a rabbit."

This doesn't need a star-rated review to prove it's valuable, does it?

But least Cavendish flags up his own subjectivity. He is surprised that he's not heard of some regional touring companies, but doesn't presume to judge them. Demonstrating again why we have an Arts Council and not just a few pundits based mostly in London.

Which brings us to Simon Callow, who, I note with great displeasure, is going to be on Question Time next week opposite Jeremy Hunt. His little contribution to the Guardian's round-up of the Arts great'n'good's take on the cuts, is flabby, self-interested, petulant, myopic and ignorant:

“I'm utterly bewildered by the way the cuts have been applied.” He begins, unpromisingly. “And I can't begin to understand... I can't imagine what... I don't know what...” he continues, before asking “[I]s the Walk the Plank theatre company really the most important thing to invest in at a time like this?” Clearly he's not the man to ask.

He then goes on to deliver a perplexing and contradictory assessment of how Tom Morris's move from artistic directorship of the BAC to directing War Horse at the NT apparently demonstrates that it is the Arts Council and not Simon Callow who don't understand Britain's theatre ecology.

The Culture Secretary must be quaking in his boots.


There is no point in reading Quentin Lett's pre-annoucement piece for the Mail, and I'm not linking to it either. Letts in the Mail is no more than a preacher to his choir of paranoid left-conspiracy theorists and online he just reads like a troll who's got above the line. As such, the online coverage fight was between the Grauniad and the Torygraph since the Indie opted for a bit of wire-copy to cover the entire thing and the Times remained behind a paywall which no one ever pays.

Having dispatched the Telegraph's contributions, it should also be stated that Charlotte Higgins's piece for the Guardian is a masterclass in hyperbole, illogical argument, imprecision and cliché.

“It is a black day for the arts in England and, for all the government's comforting rhetoric, it will have to take responsibility for a crude, unthinking vandalism to the English cultural landscape.”

I defy a right-wing satirist to come up with a better parody. The piece concludes:

“Whether the government's behaviour is blunderingly careless rather than deliberately destructive to the arts is a moot point. There is no official policy that cries "cast down the arts!". Some good intentions are signalled by the support in the budget for cultural philanthropy. But the whole picture is one of a vicious assault, on every front. ”

“Blundering carelessness” is odd, because it was “unthinking vandalism” at the beginning. Similarly, how – if it's a “moot point” whether the “government's behaviour” is “blunderingly careless” (good adverb!) or not – can “the whole picture”be “one of a vicious assault”? Carelessness, blundering or otherwise, is not assault.

And the accusation is not strictly true, since what the the Government actually did was reduce the amount of money that the Arts Council had to distribute – in line with its general policy of reducing spending across the board. It left the thinking to the Arts Council. As a result, the “vandalism” was executed with incredible thoughtfulness, and not by the government. Similarly, since Arts Council England has partially plugged the gap left by the government's re-allocation of money, “the whole picture” looks a lot less bad than it might have done.

None of this is to condone either the arts cuts or the government's wider policy of cutting public spending. But it is important to get the language right. Sadly, Higgins's stab at rhetorical flourish has already done its damage; already flashed up on The Review Show after Quentin Lett's piece as if to prove his powers of clairvoyance, and it has doubtless being logged in the memories of many others wishing for a good go-to example of “keening and caterwauling on an epic scale”.


On the day itself, far better pieces emerged from Meghan Vaughan and Dan Bye. Similarly, the first most readily accessible overview was also provided by a blogger: Fin Kennedy's no-nonsense practical guide to what had happened. (with a follow-up piece here)


Playwright and academic Dan Rebellato's piece offered an excellent overview of the cuts:

“The Arts Council has done a near-miraculous job, a much better job than the Coalition deserves. They could have enacted a programme of swingeing vandalism - axe the Royal Opera House’s annual £28.3m for example - and let the Coalition take the hurt. They’ve been, in fact, forward-looking and creative.”

The main meat of his piece, however, is an attack on the attitude of triumphal philistinism taken by those offering their pearls of artistic/economic non-wisdom in the nation's online comment boxes.

Also brilliant is NT Artisitic Director Nicholas Hytner's piece in the London Evening Standard. Hytner is perhaps the gutsiest commentator yet. He admits that he doesn't “think that we have any superior claim on the public purse at a time when, in the cause of a beautifully balanced budget, more or less everything that makes a vibrant economy worthwhile is being undermined” and even that “there is something I recognise in the adrenaline-fuelled conviction of our political masters. They govern in a spirit of swaggering certainty that I value in my creative colleagues.” He admits that the government's plans might even pan out, at least in economic terms. At the same time, his acid diplomacy lands far more punches than Higgins's bluster.

The final piece I'd draw your attention to comes, surprisingly, from the Spectator; the right-wing politics and arts magazine which also boasts Charles Moore's hunting column and the Wehrmacht-wannabe society scribbler, Taki.

It does some much-needed high-Tory legwork:

“There is a corroborative quotation circulating the internet which tells that during the Second World War, Winston Churchill’s finance minister said Britain should cut arts funding to support the war effort. Churchill reportedly retorted: “Then what are we fighting for?”

“This is fantastic, true-blue Tory red-meat support for maintaining the level of arts funding in the face of national crisis: if we can sustain the subsidy through war, what’s a little national debt and an inconvenient cash-flow problem? But I checked the veracity of this attribution with the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University, and it transpires that the great man never said any such thing.”

But also, with a fair-minded, intelligent grasp of history, it reminds the “arts used to survive without public subsidy” hawks, that:

“To those who say the market should decide, I ask you where Mozart would have been without Emperor Joseph II, or Beethoven without Archduke Rudolph? And let’s not forget that this was the era when emperors and dukes were the state: it was the taxpayers of Austria who subsidised *The Marriage of Figaro* and sponsored the Missa Solemnis. Before these it was the Church which commissioned the great works of art, and that was when the Church was the state ...”

It's the sort of eloquent rebuttal you can't help wishing someone at the Guardian had come up with.

Yes, there's also the obligatory harumphing about “bland, monochrome or monotonous, almost Stalinist uniformity in the national artistic expression” and the old canard “where are the ‘right-wing’ plays, playwrights, poets or theatre directors?”, but on the whole, it's good to read something from the intelligent right which isn't just extolling the virtues of letting the market provide the art.

That said, it's worth noting in passing that his argument, “not all art brings home the bacon, especially if it’s a Damian Hirst dissected pig suspended in formaldehyde with quotations from the Quran tattooed into its ham. And for the state to subsidise, someone somewhere must assess the merit or virtue of Tracey Emin’s enseamed bed, and they won’t all be as discerning as Aristotle or Charles Moore.”

Is based on an entirely false premise. Both Hirst and Emin were sustained not by public money but by the private wealth of Tory advertising executive Charles Saatchi: the man who created Thatcher's Labour isn't Working election campaign in 1979.

____


If we were to draw a single lesson from the coverage of the arts cuts, it would be that no election has ever been won or lost on arts funding in the UK. Also, that these funds, when considered as a totality of the UK government's spend, are pitifully small. We also see that a vocal minority would like to give the impression that the wider public don't feel that they benefit from the 17p-a-week of their taxes which are spent on the arts.

While some have argued that the government's cuts demonstrate “Tory Philistinism”, I would suggest that given some of that party's fondness for even more libertarian principles, the 30 per cent cut to ACE is more simply an expression of far wider economic aims, combined with a need to be seen to be “doing something”. I would bet that there are plenty of right-wing idiots who would argue for a total cut to the arts budget without even thinking about what that meant. This being the case, we should perhaps count ourselves lucky there's still an arts budget at all.

Beyond this, though, the Philistinism here isn't primarily Conservative but English.

Because while we're counting ourselves lucky that we've still got an arts budget at all, what's crucial to remember is that Britain's arts budget is, and was, ridiculously small.

We should also remember, that subsidising the arts isn't inimical to right-wing government. I live in a country which has a right-wing coalition that spends €1.15bn a year, 3-4% of their national budget, on the arts. The combined arts budgets of Berlin, Munich and Hamburg would more than cover ACE's entire national budget.


The root problem behind the Tories' budgeting isn't philistinism but philosophy. Current Conservative thinking has it that the arts would be best provided by extremely wealthy individuals sponsoring the arts out of the goodness of their hearts, having had their wealth subsidised by the taxpayer. Like in the middle ages.

Given that the Telegraph, the Times, the Independent, the Evening Standard, the Mail, the Express the Sun and the Star are owned by precisely such wealthy individuals, it is little surprise that the coverage of the cuts in the mainstream media has been so one-sided. Or that there is encouragement of the perception that the English don't like the arts, and resent subsidising them.


Disproving these arguments is the first step toward better arts funding for the future.

And, while the ideological argument can't be disproved, it can be exposed as the least preferable of many alternatives, to the majority of people.

Being angry, name-calling, accusations of philistinism and “crisis thinking” can be rejected in favour of hard facts and cool logic.

This isn't a fight, it's just a sensible discussion, and one where all the evidence suggests that arts funding is an excellent idea. That point just needs to be made a bit more clearly now.