Meanwhile...

I'm hoping to have a proper post up later this afternoon covering the second set of Rough Cuts at the Royal Court which I saw a week ago - not least since I see from my obsessive checking of my new blog stat counter that the Google searches which are most frequently finding this blog are those for "Laura Wade". It is hard not to speculate about who is conducting these searches. Does she have so many ardent admirers, forever trawling the net in search of their heroine? Apparently so. So I'd better not disappoint them.

In the mean time, and at the risk of turning my blog into little more than an alerts service for - and running commentary on - the Guardian's Theatre Blog, I shall draw your attention to this story from Lyn Gardner yesterday...

Oh, and I saw the much-praised Elling last night. Expect a CultureWars review, and possible meta-commentary here if I can't reasonably fit the questions it raised for me as part of a continuum about depictions of the relationship between madness and artistic/divine inspiration (cf. ...Dissocia, Speed Death..., St Joan) into the review proper...

And then expect millions of further posts about why I feel the need to divide my reviews into "proper" and "other" as my contribution to the brewing debate on what makes for good theatre criticism/writing-on-theatre (to borrow and paraphrase a better man's distinction) some time in the future.

. . stop press . . . stop press . . . stop press . . . stop press . . .

Another Google search for Ms Wade has just tipped someone onto the site. I just had a look to see if Postcards had somehow got to the top of Google's Wade references. It has not. It is on page 11. Someone is looking very thoroughly through mentions of her. How very strange.

St Joan - National Theatre

George Bernard Shaw has somehow acquired a reputation for being fiercely boring. This could in part be down to Michael Billington’s almost ceaseless lionising of the man as one of Britain’s Greatest Ever Playwrights. After a while the record starts to sound a little broken, and the plays still aren’t getting any younger. They’re not getting any shorter, either. Even this new yoof-friendly, £10-ticket version at the National Theatre comes it at around three hours including interval. So, given the National’s apparent obligation to stage some Shaw, if only to stop Billington moaning, what to do? Hytner and Co.’s solution is probably about as neat a reply as you’re likely to get. They chosen one of Shaw’s history plays - useful as it is not so much mired in minute Edwardian detail and arguments about a century-old status quo - and given it to one of the most robust, inspired directors currently working in mainstream theatre. On top of that they’ve chucked in one of Britain’s favourite actresses - Anne Marie Duff (of Shameless fame) - in the lead role. If that doesn’t attract audiences and please the critics, then Shaw is beyond help.

In terms of style, this is very much in the school of the open-stage, minimal, suggestive design - in this case a charred wooden hydraulic rake set on the Olivier’s revolve, surrounded by blasted trees taken straight from photographs of the Somme. It is perfectly suited to the sort of ensemble playing that Marianne Elliott deploys. Indeed, the battle scenes in St Joan function almost as a standing rebuke to the stage version of Lord of the Rings across the river. Without a single slow-motion sword being crossed the ensemble suggest Joan’s whole campaign across English-held France in a single, continuous assault on the props; smashing chairs against the stage, drumming on metal at its flanks, as the burnt rake gradually rises to become battlefield and city wall. Credit here is also due to Jocelyn Pook’s score, which - far more than functioning as mere background music to scene changes - takes a commanding role in evoking both the battles, but also the heady religious atmosphere crucial to the play’s success. Without some reminder of what God had the potential to mean the play would utterly fail.

It is easy to see the play’s attractions as a candidate for revival in today’s Britain. Elliott does well not to play to the obvious - but ultimately spurious - potential readings of Joan as a religious fundamentalist seeking to liberate her country from an invading foreign power. We are spared the foolishness of seeing Jean d’Arc in Iraqi/Palestinian/Chechnyan fatigues. Annoyingly we are not quite spared all possible commentary since Duff speaks in a broad Irish accent throughout - it could well be her own accent, and, fine, it represents well enough Joan’s position as a peasant girl moving in noble France; it is also more than a little freighted in terms of England’s more recent military occupations.

However, Shaw’s concerns are more wide-reaching. It is salutary to remember that when the play was written, Shaw was almost as close in time to the Napoleonic Wars as we are now to World War One, which had concluded only five years earlier. And it is with this, through the prism of the Hundred Years War, that the play really deals, examining ideas of nationalism in an earlier Europe when France was several kingdoms, and England was ruled by the “French”. The play imagines the anticipation of Protestantism, looking at the need by religious leaders to suppress those whose religious fervour ultimately weaken their own power bases.

To this end, there is no small amount of debate. At its best, it resonates like several Sir Humphries set one against another - dry English understatements meeting with parries by drier, more understated understatements. (Interestingly, this vein of similarity with well-loved characters from British comedy does not stop at Yes, Minister, as the excellent Paul Ready’s Dauphin is, near-as-damnit, played as Frank Spencer). Occasionally the dialogue does lapse hard into portions of an essay divvied out between characters, and when sometimes actors deviate from wryness to passion, the corresponding loss of diction sometimes misplaces the odd minute of dialogue comprehension. But there are plenty more minutes of dialogue to make up for the few that go awol.

Ultimately this is a patchy play. Its curious structure runs something like: debate, debate, fight, debate, debate, moments of searing brutality, debate, surreal epilogue. Some of the debates are thought-provoking, others crucial to the plot. Were it not so well-turned a machine, though, it would be tempting to suggest it be cut by a further half-an-hour for the comfort of all concerned. That said, one’s personal tolerance for endless discourse and Fabian pamphleteering notwithstanding, the point at which it is decided that Joan is to be burnt at the stake is astonishingly powerful.

The short version of this is: I pretty much enjoyed it, but I'm not sure how many other people would.

Edit: Turns out I'm pretty much with the West End Whingers on this one - if noticeably preoccupied by the ideas of the play where they focus on the acting. Good place to go for an account of what Anne Marie Duff's like, though. Rather a weak point of my review.

Edit v2.0: OK, so the critics enjoyed it too. Charles Spencer, Michael Billington, Susannah Clapp.

Blog backlog (blogklog?)

Only days after starting this blog, I've already gotten behind in posting on it. Apologies. Over the next few days I should have written up The National's new production of St Joan, which I saw in preview (on an extraordinarily reasonable Facebook offer preview ticket costing just £5) and the second Royal Court - Rough Cuts evening, which featured work from Recorded Delivery and Laura Wade. I also hope to jot down some thoughts on the scratch performance I saw at the Camden People's Theatre last night.

However, none of this is likely to happen today since I've got a party to go to in about an hour and several emails to write before then. Instead, here's a quick selection of interesting bits from the weekend's press which may be of interest.

First up is a somewhat breathless whizz through some of the theatre on offer at this year's Latitude Festival from The Independent, although sadly not mentioning Postcards' friends Small Change or Pegabovine.

The second article is an account of one of the new Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport's first speeches after his appointment. There's already a fine commentary on this over at Dan Bye's blog, so I shan't waste my breath, other than to observe that I wholly heartedly approve of the minister's access policy when it comes to adding perfect strangers on Facebook. I should also use this space to observe that his claim to have seen "Kneehigh's Caucasian Chalk Circle at the National" is patent nonsense, or poor reporting, since no such show exists.

The last thing, which you've all undoubtedly read as well, is this very sweet article from Friday's Film & Music supplement in the Guardian about the odd mutual appreciation between playwright Alan Ayckborn and French auteur Alain Renais. As a devotee of Scarborough thanks to firstly grandparents and now also the National Student Drama Festival, it's nice to know that it exercises its strange charm beyond our narrow national boundaries.