Theatre Review: Guantanamo (2004)

Theatre Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Guantanamo (New Ambassadors Theatre, London)

 

Political Theatre has the ability to transform crises into drama with impressive speed. Already the so-called War on Terror has become a hot topic in the chilly West End theatres of London. This year has seen at least four productions concerning aspects of the post 9/11 conflicts: David Hare’s Stuff Happens, Alastair Beaton’s Follow My Leader, and Embedded by Tim Robbins. One of the latest is Guantanamo – Honour Bound to Defend Freedom, which explores the detention of over 650 internees at the Cuban base by the US. Picked up in the preliminary stages of the conflict, the internees are unprotected by the Geneva Convention or US justice and are seen as neither criminal suspects nor prisoners of war – simply ‘detainees’.

   

Described as a “shocking and often deeply moving production” by the Daily Telegraph, Guantanamo is written by Gillian Slovo – daughter of Joe – and Victoria Brittain, ex-Associate Foreign Editor of the Guardian. Written is perhaps the wrong word, for the story, such as it is, is a compilation of extracts from statements and interviews with the Camps Delta and X Ray detainees, their families, and friends of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. We also have relevant politicians from the ‘alliance’ putting their oars in, generally to the delight of the audience.

   

Interestingly, the play has no clearly defined beginning or end. As the audience enters the theatre the actors playing the detainees are already on stage, pacing the boards as if wishing the audience to hurry up and sit down so they can get on with it, and remain on stage when the play has apparently ended, presumably to draw attention to the audience’s freedom and the detainees’ lack of it.

   

Lack is something we are confronted with throughout the play, particularly of dramatic intensity. This is highlighted when the orange boiler suits part for the entrances of Jack Straw and Donald Rumsfeld. Passably impersonated, it is as if Rory Bremner has put in a guest appearance to brighten a worthy but rather sunless production. The cast do well with their material but seem constrained by the form of the play. Sitting, lying, standing but rarely moving, their general immobility seems emblematic of the static nature of the play, and the effervescence of dialogue is flattened by the need for single long speeches.

   

In the end there were no performances as such to enjoy, only the words of the inmates. Though their stories may have been moving, they alone were not enough to transpose this hot topic into even lukewarm theatre.

NW

Theatre Review: Nye (2024)

Theatre Review from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nye  by Tim Price (Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff)

The celebrated Welsh actor, Michael Sheen, takes the lead role in a new play about the celebrated Welsh politician, Aneurin (‘Nye’) Bevan. With a script by Tim Price and under the direction of the National Theatre’s artistic lead Rufus Norris, the scenario has Sheen, dressed in pyjamas and close to death in a hospital bed, going back in memory through the key moments of his life. A series of scenes, sometimes surreal in their framing, show him progress from stammering schoolboy to coal miner, from trade union activist to rebel Labour MP, and finally from the back benches of parliament to government minister overseeing the establishment of the NHS.

The play has already had what can be called ‘rave reviews’. The Times declared that ‘Sheen burns with genuine passion’, the i paper called it ‘a taut and fluid triumph’, and other words used to describe it have been ‘spectacular’ ‘mesmerising’ and ‘unrepeatable’. The full house of around 2,000 at the performance I attended were indeed mesmerised, as was I, by Sheen’s performance and indeed by the performance of the whole cast of actors around him, taking parts such as Bevan’s wife, Jennie Lee, his best and most longstanding friend, Archie Lush, and his bitter political adversary, Winston Churchill. One could not but be powerfully drawn into Bevan’s journey, both mental and political, and in particular into the leading role he played in setting up the ‘welfare state’ immediately following the Second World War as Labour government Minister for Health and Housing. His role in this, and particularly in the NHS, is the play’s main raison d’être, so that even the staunchly conservative Telegraph had only words of praise for Sheen’s performance and went so far as to refer to the production as ‘a valiant and valuable affirmation of the NHS’.

The question of course that a reviewer in the Socialist Standard must ask, even while sharing the widely positive view of the production itself, is to what extent its unmitigated praise of Bevan and his politics is justified. Prior to the formation of the NHS in 1948, workers who could afford it generally contributed to various small insurance policies to provide a form of insurance for medical treatment. But many did not. And this was cumbersome and inefficient, and above all a hindrance to workers’ productivity. It was decided by the wartime coalition government, therefore, in line with the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge Report, to reorganise the health system under central control. Both main parties, Labour and Tory, committed to such a reform in their 1945 election manifestos, and so when Labour won an overwhelming victory in that election, it fell to that party to put it into operation.

The justification for this and other welfare reforms was summed up in the Beveridge Report:

‘Social insurance and the allied services, as they exist today, are conducted by a complex of disconnected administrative organs, proceeding on different principles, doing invaluable service but at a cost in money and trouble and anomalous treatment of identical problems for which there is no justification.’

In other words, it was going to be more efficient and more cost effective for the services in question to be streamlined and brought directly under state control. So while no one would deny the famous adage of Bevan’s, repeated in the play, that ‘no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means’, it has to be borne in mind that the main rationale of this reform was to make the system of workers selling their energies to an employer for a wage or salary more efficient and not first and foremost to benefit those workers.

The Socialist Party’s frequent characterisation of the NHS as ‘a cheap back-to-work service’ or a ‘way of patching up workers’ may seem a little over-cynical, especially as the nation-wide hospital and free medical advice and treatment system that was set up under the supervision of Bevan as Labour health minister in 1948 was clearly of benefit to workers who no longer had to find the money to pay for medical treatment. But, that said, there can be no doubt that it was not introduced with benevolence in mind. Indeed, such an arrangement was soon mirrored in various other countries whatever the professed ideology of the governments in office there. The fact is that ‘welfare’ reforms were necessary to guard against social breakdown, a situation potentially detrimental to capitalism and its profit-making imperative.

Yet of course, as many reforms, the NHS never worked quite as intended. The ‘free’ health service soon became unpredictably ‘expensive’ and certain charges (eg, for prescriptions) were introduced, and it has rarely not been in a state of crisis. Today’s increasing waiting lists, difficulties in securing GP appointments and overwhelmed emergency units show how the economic forces of capitalism constantly beguile the intentions of well-meaning reformers such as Bevan.

There can be little doubt about Bevan’s sincerity, at least in the early and middle part of his life and career, as focused on in this production. He was a spellbinding orator not afraid to be seen as a rebel and to use the strongest terms possible to state his credo (once famously referring to the Tories as ‘lower than vermin’). But, in the end, his was the idealism of someone who threw his energy into political life under the impression that capitalism could be adjusted to work in the interests of the working class. And what, as a celebration of the man, this play fails to convey is that this impression was a mistaken one and indeed that Bevan himself, in later years, moved from expressions of triumphant idealism towards pragmatic acceptance of capitalist politics and its limitations. It was in a private pay-bed in an NHS hospital in fact that he ended his days, the bed from which we are taken in this play through the key moments of his life. But thoroughly recommended as a spectacle.

Howard Moss

Next month's Theatre Review (1996)

Notice from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

In next month’s Socialist Standard Michael Gill will review the play Wallpaper which will be running from the 8th October to the 2nd November (except Mondays) at the Bridewell Theatre., Bride Lane, London EC4 (0171 936 3456). The play is described as ‘A Shavian melodrama portraying the adventures of Mr William Morris, Miss Eleanor Marx and Miss Eliza Doolittle’ and an intriguing cast has Freddie Demuth (Karl Marx’s son by Helene Demuth) down as an "East End Tough’.

We are giving notice of the coming review of this play as we have been notified by the Theatre that those bringing along a copy of this issue of the Socialist Standard will gain a concession on the admission price.

Blogger's Note:

Wallpaper by Sophia Kingshill was reviewed in the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Theatre Review: Coriolanus at the Globe (2006)

Theatre Review from the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

This play features the citizens of Rome, as was customary for Shakespeare, as a fickle and foolish lot, shifting wind under the power of the words of their rulers and betters. The performance of it at the Globe leads to the intriguing twist of bringing the action into the audience (most of whom stand as a crowd before the stage for three hours of more).

We were thus cast as part of the mob, the mob despised by the title character – Gaius Marcius (given, during the play, the name Coriolanus for his part in the capture of the city of Corioli). As Coriolanus ranted how he hated the mob, he moved within the audience, speaking to placed actors in period costumes. The sentiments towards the mob must have jarred with the generally democratic instincts of the modern population.

The play centres on his being appointed Consul (leader) of Rome, and being compelled by the plebeians to gain their votes – for which he must plead and show his war wounds. He believes that consulship is his by right, and resents asking the scum for their voices.

The action then focuses on what is essentially a revolution. The play began with the people in revolt for more bread – which won them tribunes – a representation in government. The tribunes then organise to bring down Coriolanus – as a fierce opponent of democracy.

This leads to him being banished – only to return at the head of a rival powers’ army – much to the consternation of the revolutionary tribunes. Eventually, he is persuaded by the entreaties of his wife and mother not to wage war on Rome, and he returns with his army to be murdered as a traitor to the rival power.

Coriolanus himself is presented as a utopian idealist. He fights for glory, revelling in war. He actively refuses a share of the spoils, claiming only glory motivates him. At war with the world, he wants to be ‘the author of himself’, without any bonds trying him, living only for his glorious legend.His defeat is organised by more worldly Machiavellian politicians.

This raging anti-democrat still manages to hold our sympathies because of his idealism and his proven abilities. He stands as the ultimate individualist – who scowls like a schoolboy when chided to behave by his mother.

The play is littered with corporeal imagery – the state is a body with hands, feet and head. The common people are reduced to mere voices, as airy as Coriolanus’ own glory. It is this sense of powerlessness and insubstantiability that being in the crowd conveys. Audience members could easily recognise the regret of the crowd in making Coriolanus’ the consul for much the same way that most modern politicians – like Tony Blair – are appointed to disappoint by our simple voices.

Pik Smeet

Obituary: Michael Gill (2001)

Obituary from the August 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with much regret that we record the death from cancer in June, at the age of 70, of Michael Gill who will be familiar to readers as our theatre critic. Michael originated from Manchester but moved to London as a young boy. He joined Edgware branch in 1950. Later his jobs took him to different parts of the country and then back to the South East, to Braintree. He was a founder member and secretary of the Colchester Branch and one of the driving forces behind the East Anglian group.

Michael was trained as an industrial chemist and worked in the chemical industry before leaving to teach in further education. For a while he was an inspector in this field from which he eventually resigned in protest. Retirement allowed him more time to devote to socialist activity and since the early 1990s he was one of the Party's most devoted and active members. He was several times an Executive Committee member, and was always willing to lend his educational expertise and diplomatic skills to various committee tasks. Among other pieces, he wrote regular theatre reviews for the Socialist Standard, the last one appearing as recently as January. A good play from a socialist point of view would earn his lyrical praise — a bad one his measured wrath.

Kind, considerate and helpful, Michael was a keen advocate, and personal exemplar, of the ways in which socialists should treat each other. As he put it in a message dictated shortly before his died and read at his non-religious cremation:

"My life has been concerned with staff development, education, socialism and change for the better in human lives. Increasingly there seems to me to be a unity between fraternity, equality, and the full flowering of human potential. And in respect of my professional concerns and political convictions, I aspire to a transformation of society to allow for the growth of fulfilled and rounded people, able to be creative, fraternal and empathetic in meeting one another's needs. I hope there is a visible coincidence between my personal, professional life and the nature of socialism. I want people who have known me in different capacities to understand the connections between my aspirations and behaviors and ways of knowing — a gestalt view across all these perspectives . . . go well."

We offer our condolences to his wife, Jan, and children.

Blogger's Note:

A further obituary for Michael appeared in the Guardian. According to the Guardian website, it was published on the 10th July, 2001.

Theatre Review: Sand and Glass by Derek Martin (2002)

Theatre Review from the August 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sand and Glass by Derek Martin (Yale College, Wrexham)

There can’t be too many occasions these days when socialist ideas are brought to an unsuspecting public by performance arts students in a College of Further Education. In fact there are not too many occasions when socialist ideas are directly introduced to theatre audiences anywhere, by anybody at present. So for this reason alone, Sand and Glass – a new play by Derek Martin – stood out like a beacon.

As the programme notes make clear, the inspiration for this play was the attempt to establish a moneyless, co-operative community by the Diggers in 17th century England. The plot revolves around an attempt by a contemporary media company (fast disappearing up its own backside in the hunt for something original amongst the postmodernist slurry) to film a Digger-like community living on a desert island. To complicate matters this community (known as ‘The Commune’) is being invaded by imperialistic Taliban-like forces (the “Taheri”) intent on appropriating the land and turning Commune members into something akin to feudal serfs.

The Commune members speak a version of English shorn of its possessive and individualistic language, not even having a word for “I”. Their names reflect their roles in the Commune – Mend is the doctor, Relay the journalist, Digger a land worker, Stanza a poet. With the men imprisoned by the Taheri all the Commune members on show are women.

One of the most fascinating scenes is when Tell (naturally enough, the teacher) initiates a discussion amongst Commune members to explore why the sneering members of the media company filming them have no conception of a how co-operative society could work without private property and exchange. When this leads to an explanation of how people in ‘Western Globeland’ are only allowed access to something provided they have something else to give in exchange for it – and of how they are hunted by “detectors” and kept in small rooms on their own should they transgress this rule—the other Commune members are incredulous. In the Commune, barter, money and crime are alien concepts. Work is undertaken when necessary and goods and services are freely accessed whenever needed.

As the play develops, matters take a vicious turn. Assaulted by the Taheri and manipulated by the visiting journalists, the Commune are eventually forced into a defence of their entire social organisation, both intellectually and physically, leading to a moving series of scenes as the play reaches its climax.

The performance is a powerful one throughout and the play ends with a memorable call to the audience by the female Commune members to rise up against private property and its dehumanising forces as “cynicism is a sin . . . and we have a world to win!”.

It is apparently hoped by the playwright that other theatre groups and venues will be interested in performing or hosting the play in coming months. Though there is always the usual caveat to be mentioned with depictions of somewhat primitive, pre-capitalist societies such as this (with inevitable, unfavourable comparisons of at least some of their features with the modern industrial age) this is most certainly a play that deserves a wider audience. Indeed, for its depiction of the corrosive elements of contemporary capitalism and its call to a better, co-operative future we can only say the wider the audience, the better.

Dave Perrin

George Orwell's 1984 (2003)

Theatre Review from the April 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The performance of George Orwell’s 1984 by the Northern Stage Ensemble, at The Lowry in Salford, was dark, stark and brutal.

Directed by Alan Lyddiard and Mark Murphy, using large-scale visual footage filmed on location in Moscow and Newcastle, the adaptation attempted to recreate Orwell’s cold, oppressive, inhuman world. The staging was original, but from the first scenes of torture, beatings and blood-curdling screams, the noise level increased. Subtle, this play is not. It is violence, layered upon violence, which fails to convey the true terror of living in Big Brother’s totalitarian regime.

Craig Conway, as Winston Smith, is believable, putting in an excellent performance, but Samantha Cooper’s Julia (Winston’s lover) was much too lightweight, lacking any sense of passion. Mark Calvert as O’Brien, Winston’s confidant, friend and, ultimately, his torturer, also failed to convey menace, being rather wooden at times.

This version is concentrated mainly on the latter half of the book, skimming swiftly over Winston and Julia’s doomed relationship, turning it almost into a one-night stand. And owing to the loud video background, Winston’s final betrayal of Julia is lost; I had to strain to hear him over the noise say `Do it to Julia!’ – at least, I think that’s what he said.

The play lasts for one and a half hours, and overall is very well done and worth seeing. After two curtain calls, the audience exited to the Salford night in a state of shock. A brave performance all round.

Joan Morris

Phoney folk in Loamshire (2001)

Theatre Review from the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

House and Garden. The National Theatre

Alan Ayckbourn’s separate but linked plays, performed by the same group of actors on two of the National’s stages at the same time, were the hottest tickets in town during the late summer. Ayckbourn was fêted, called variously a wizard and a magician, and praised for “his astonishing ingenuity”.

No doubt some of this was justified. To write interlocking plays which can be performed at the same time on two stages, by the same group of actors playing the same characters, clearly requires no little skill. And certainly there was an edge for the audiences, watching in the Lyttelton and Olivier theatres, as they imagined the actors scuttling backstage between the two theatres, leaving one stage only to reappear on the other with seconds to spare. But to my eyes the experience was all about style rather than substance; a triumph of the pseudo.

In the early 1950s, in the days when theatrical productions were still the subject of censorship by the Lord Chamberlain—when for most people contemporary plays were as remote from everyday life as money for the starving poor—Kenneth Tynan had a fine time lampooning the theatrical establishment. He complained that most new plays seemed to be set in some fictitious county which he called Loamshire. He noted that they involved such worthies as the Rt. Hon Angela This and Lord Archibald That. He observed that they all took place in country houses with large lounges or drawing rooms complete with (seemingly compulsory) French windows. And that all the houses were staffed by country bumpkins, or cockney housekeepers and supercilious butlers. It was drama courtesy of Mills & Boon, and it was a sham.

I was reminded of Loamshire as I sat, ever more uncomfortable by the minute, watching first House, and then Garden. I recognised none of the people on stage. I wouldn’t have known them in the 1950s but now, fifty years later, they were even more crass and unlikely. Shallow fictions in a make-believe world. But wouldn’t you just guess? The critics loved the plays, and most of the supposedly sophisticated audiences seemed to share their feelings.

For my part I’m not really interested in the fate of some supposedly successful businessman, boozy and promiscuous by turns, whose behaviour on stage confirms that he wouldn’t last a day in the real world of 21st-century capitalism. I find it impossible to laugh when someone goes out of their mind because they have been ditched by their lover, and I find it hard to sit next to people who think such things are funny. And as for the well-heeled young man, a sixth-form student at some prestigious school and supposedly the ace reporter on the local rag, whose naivety and lack of nous would embarrass an eleven-year-old—he was straight out of the world of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster.

It says much for the dumbing-down of critical taste, to say nothing of the prejudices of the broadsheet press, that such vacuous nonsense should be received with such acclaim. These are plays which are hurtful. Glib and invalid, masquerading as significant social commentaries. My judgment: patronising pap about phoney folk.

Michael Gill

You can't believe that! (1995)

Theatre Review from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Broken Heart (RSC Barbican)

The idea of class art is well established. One has only to visit a public art gallery to recognise that throughout history painters have been employed to produce art that is valued by those who can afford it: that is, typically, by members of the landed aristocracy and their acolytes, merchants. capitalist entrepreneurs and so on. Even the value system by which paintings are valued has traditionally discriminated in favour of religious paintings and portraits of the great and the good, whilst genre paintings and scenes from peasant and working class life have been seen as relatively valueless.

But class art is also apparent in the theatre, and a good example is John Ford’s play The Broken Heart which is at present in repertoire at the Barbican (Pit Theatre).

Ford was born at the end of the sixteenth century, the son of a wealthy landowner. He trained for the law but soon began a literary career as a poet and playwright. He is believed to have written seven plays of which the most well known are probably Love’s Sacrifice and ‘Tis a Pity she's a Whore. Productions of The Broken Heart have been comparatively rare. The play seems to have been performed only once in the sixteenth century, and there are no records of revivals until 1898, 1904 and 1962. This year, however. there have already been four productions, including the one on view at the Barbican.

It is difficult to understand current interest in the play. The Broken Heart is about enforced marriages, and the use of marriage as a way of furthering the interests of families. social groups and even whole nations. Set in Sparta its characters are easily recognised as surrogates for the Earl of Essex and his sister, and Queen Elizabeth, and the events depicted chime with the recent histories of England. Ireland and Scotland. As the programme note says "The Broken Heart presents a kind of mythologised history of England's recent past and celebrates in the Spartan ideal a set of public virtues at once ancient and modern”.

But if Ford was intent on celebrating these virtues (sic), most of the audience could only have marvelled at the absurdity of the beliefs to which the characters were attached and. by extension, the aristocratic and emergent bourgeoise sixteenth century audience to whom the play was addressed. One can admire the way in which Ford has plotted his story — with its many twists and turns — and the wonderful skill of the actors and production team in bringing the play to life. But what a play! What amazing, bizarre and foolish sentiments are expressed: what extraordinary. craven and mean-spirited beliefs are paraded for our inspection. There were moments when I found it hard not to challenge the inanities being voiced on stage. "You can’t believe that!", I wanted to shout. "No one could possibly believe that.”

But ‘yes’ the audience for which the play was written did believe these nonsenses. They believed them with tenacity and passion.and these ideas informed the substance of social behaviour throughout the sixteenth century. Socialists will find comfort in this discovery as they imagine a time when folk will look back on the commonplace beliefs of the late twentieth century and similarly wonder how it was possible for most people to believe that poverty, war. pollution and all the other self-inflicted wounds of a class-riven world were inevitable features of life.

Michael Gill

Time well spent (2000)

Theatre Review from the January 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Three Days of Rain. Donmar Warehouse, London.

What lessons can we draw from the past? At a time when some academics, shamefully unaware of their unwitting attachment to the ideological apparatus of capitalism, claim that history is dead, contemporary playwrights are much concerned with the conclusions we draw from events long ago. In the last year or so I have seen plays by Tom Stoppard (Arcadia), Michael Frayn (Copenhagen—see Socialist Standard, September 1998), Peter Barnes (Dreaming—Socialist Standard, August 1999) and Stephen Poliakoff (Remember This—Socialist Standard, December 1999), all of which conclude that the past very much determines what takes place in the present. And now Richard Greenberg, a young American whose work has not previously been seen in Britain, offers us a splendid new play in which the past is ever present.

Three Days of Rain involves only three actors. In the first act we meet brother and sister, Walker and Nan, together with Pip, the son of their father’s business partner in an architects’ consultancy. In the second act the same actors play Walker and Nan’s father and mother, and Theo, their father’s business partner. And as the second act unfolds it becomes apparent why Walker, Nan and Pip are as they are. Not, I hasten to add, in any crude deterministic fashion, Greenberg’s imagination is far too subtle for that. Rather we are aware of the impact that one generation makes on the next: of the way in which behaviour is affected by the complex chemistry of both nature and nurture. Act 1 offers us a view of the past in which Walker, Ned and Pip strive to understand the behaviours of their parents trying to make sense of diaries and remembered anecdotes. And Act 2 shows, us with both drama and poignancy, that if you don’t have enough evidence and you don’t understand the context, you will reach the wrong conclusions.

The play is a warm, intelligent one, by turns touching, sensitive and funny, which is marvellously played in the small, 250-seater, Donmar Warehouse Theatre in Covent Garden. It is a play which points to the dangers of judging a person’s contribution on the basis of their family life, their relations with their children, and so on. If we are to understand people’s lives we need to have access to all the relevant evidence. The personal behaviour of the architect fathers of Walker, Nan and Pip cannot be inferred from their buildings, even though the latter command universal praise. Francis Wheen’s recent biography of Karl Marx makes much the same point. Marx’s contribution to the history of western though cannot be judged by his rather fey attempts to live a bourgeois life in mid-Victorian London.

Postscript

The following three plays—all of which have been reviewed in this journal—are still playing in London. All can be seen for less than half the cost of a ticket to a Premier League football match. All have something to say to socialists. All are highly recommended at the turn of the century.

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (Duchess Theatre) “Michael Frayn has written one of the best plays about science and society that it has been my pleasure to see.”

Summerfolk by Maxim Gorki (National Theatre. Reviewed October 1999). “Summerfolk is as relevant today as it has ever been. I hope to find an early opportunity to see the play again and to marvel at the skill of the actors and the wonder of its staging.”

The Weir by Conor McPherson (Royal Court Theatre. Reviewed April 1998). “Valerie’s revelation serves both to underscore the emptiness at the heart of their lives and to offer an alternative which might be reached through honest, open discourse, about matters of real concern, managed in an empathetic manner . . . This is theatre at its most sublime.”

Michael Gill

Lost Musicals and “Get Lost” Musicals (1999)

Theatre Review from the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

110 In the Shade, Fortune Theatre, London

I have to admit that I like musicals, and especially old musicals of the kind that were common from the nineteen-twenties and thirties until the seventies. True many were arch, whilst others were coy and over-sentimental. But when they worked it was usually because they had wit and charm and, in the years following the end of the Second World War, because they were increasingly grounded in the lives of ordinary people. Their books were written by the likes of Guy Bolton, George Kaufman, Moss Hart and Wolf Mankowitz; with words and music from, for example, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Frank Loesser and Howard Goodall.

Today’s musicals, by comparison, affect to be populist operas. Words are at a premium, the intention being to write an “all-through” score, as in Les Miserables. Character and story lines frequently fall victim of the desire to produce knock-out “special effects”, like the arrival of the helicopter in Miss Saigon. Story lines are pretentious and amoral (Aspects of Love), extravagant and fanciful (Phantom of the Opera) and naïve and childlike (Beauty and the Beast). Audiences are stunned by sound and spectacle. Humanity and reality lose out to noise and stage technology.

The effect is frequently chilling. I recall seeing Les Miserables at the Barbican—astonishingly it was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. All around me people were clapping and cheering—some had even leapt onto their seats the better to give expression to their feelings. And for what? A great novel had been shredded before our eyes and repackaged as an indifferent quasi-opera. History had been re-written, and events in mid-nineteenth-century France turned into the kind of fiction that I remember as a child associating with the adventures of Flash Gordon at the local cinema on a Saturday morning. Yet people were cheering. How could this be? I felt a huge sense of isolation. It was as though I was a prisoner on another, alien planet.

Contemporary musicals form part of the ideological apparatus of capitalism. Their function is first and foremost to make money for their backers by projecting messages which are consistent with the status quo. To do this they employ lavish sets and imposing numbers of people and special effects in order to tell bizarre tales (Starlight Express) and other unlikely fictions, in a manner which, as one critic puts it, “stuns you into submission”. Their size makes them expensive, and in order to recoup their costs they have to continue to pull in the punters literally for years. This means that they have to be pre-packaged and sold. Like Star Wars Episode 1 which is reputed to have carried a pre-showing budget of several millions of pounds in the UK, any significant new musical is going to be hyped for weeks and months before it opens. This makes the critic’s job more difficult. An honest opinion is difficult if the pre-production gloss has led you to expect a masterpiece, and if the newspaper in which you write is owned by someone who has invested in the show. But once the public has been persuaded, often regardless of the merits or otherwise of the piece that the show is worth seeing, once a show has survived six months or so in the West End and the coach companies are arranging trips from the far-flung corners of the country, then producers can be pretty certain of getting their money back and more; much, much more.

How nice then to report that for those living near to London it is possible to see musicals predicated, in part, on a different basis. For a couple of years now my partner and I have been attending occasional performances of “The Lost Musicals” on Sunday afternoons in May, July and September. Organised by a charitable trust and managed by a man whose enthusiasm for musicals is as obvious as his indifference to the money-making, in nine years they have managed to offer 160 performances of over 40 different shows which haven’t been seen for 30-50 years or so, using 600 actors who have given their services free.

Recently we saw 110 In The Shade, a warm folksy tale based on Richard Nash’s play The Rainmaker. Never mind that the actors were reading their parts against a black back-cloth, and singing with the support of only a single pianist, this was a wonderful experience. There was more honesty, warmth, wit and wisdom in this unpretentious show than in all of the lavish musicals on offer in the West End. The best musicals manage to conjure from story, character, music and dance, something close to occasional moments of ecstasy. Perhaps understandably then there was something of the ecstatic in the audience’s response.

Michael Gill

Foolish Totem of a Hapless World (1999)

Theatre Review from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. National Theatre.

The National continues to boast proudly in its programmes that “The National Theatre is for Everyone”, whilst its newish director, Trevor Nunn, seems increasingly to pander to safe bourgeois tastes.

Last month Noel Coward’s Private Lives joined the repertoire, and audiences were invited to identify with two spoilt members of the “upper set” whose egotism and selfishness leads to the break-up of not only their own marriage but also threatens the well-being of their subsequent partners. The critics in the broadsheets had a field day affecting to see “significance” in the puerile machinations of the two combatants, whereas arguably the real significance lies in the fact that by producing such witless tosh in favour of other fare, the theatre offers an experience of stunningly irrelevance to the lives of most of their audience: Mills and Boon for the chattering classes. And this month Money by Bulwer-Lytton, Victorian son of a rich aristocratic mother, one-time Liberal Member of Parliament, novelist and playwright, Conservative MP for Hertfordshire and briefly Colonial Secretary, and latterly Baron Lytton of Knebworth.

If Bulwer-Lytton’s biography is hardly encouraging, neither is his play Money. In what seems a long evening Bulwer-Lytton is at pains to make what he sees as a crucial point: that money conjugates with success; poverty with failure. When Evelyn, the play’s central character, is in the funds he has friends by the score; once seemingly bankrupt his friends desert him like rats from a sinking ship. Bulwer-Lytton takes nearly three hours to ram his message home. Three hours in which to expose hypocrisy, but not a minute to question the economic and social structure which lies at its base. Cosy sentimentality in lieu of analysis. A triumph of escapism.

The talented cast do wonders with a turgid script. Bulwer-Lytton may well have been a successful novelist but on the evidence of this play he is an indifferent dramatist. His characters don’t so much speak as give voice to lines of prose. Close your eyes and you might be listening to someone reading a book rather than speaking.

Writing in the programme Peter Ackroyd paints a warts-and-all picture of Victorian London, and I wondered what the audience made of this. In easy, uncomplicated language Ackroyd describes everyday life in mid-century London “in terms which Lytton’s contemporaries would have preferred not to recognise”. Here is a real picture of Victorian London—”the streets filled with teeming and struggling life; the city as a prison, with walls and buildings towering above the people”—not the fay, prissy fantasies of Bulwer-Lytton.

Michael Gill

Broadcasting: A Counterfeit Reality (1999)

Theatre Review from the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Talk of the City by Stephen Poliakoff. Royal Shakespeare Company at the Young Vic.

I find myself writing this review of Stephen Poliakoff’s rich and revealing play about censorship in the BBC in the years before World War II, the day after the NATO announcement that it viewed the content of Serbian television as so much propaganda. It is also only two days since a correspondent to the Guardian noted that whilst letters to the paper have been full of various opinions about the bombing of Serbia, no such differences of opinion have been evident in radio and television broadcasts. And, coincidentally, it’s a couple of months since an invitation to appear on the Kilroy programme was withdrawn because I wouldn’t express opinions in line with the wishes of the production team. All of which remind me of a couple of quotations which I noted when I was reading the Open University unit, “Science, Technology and Everyday Life, 1870-1950”, a couple of years ago:

“The so-called ‘mass media’ serve to generate consent in their audiences by representing the real world in ways which confer legitimacy on the social order in which they subsist.” “Communication is not only about who is talking to whom, and how; it is also about who is not talking to whom and why.”

Talk of the City is a zippy, immediately accessible show which is played with great exuberance and panache by a talented cast. It offers us review host, Robbie, inclined like most comedians to embroider his material in the light of his feelings and creative impulses at the time of delivery, and who is forever in trouble with those who produce his show and would have him never depart from the script; ideas man, Clive, anxious to offer listeners an account of what is happening to the Jews in Germany in 1938, contrary to the covertly anti-semitic line of many BBC managers; and a retinue of BBC officials sensitive to government policy, anxious to tow the party line, who insist on approving every last word before it is voiced over the airways.

The programme contains the complete text of the play and foreword, “Some Background Material—BBC in the Thirties”, which offers about a dozen quotations from internal memos, the BBC house magazine, ex-employees, etc. a real snip at £2.50. Two quotations give the flavour of the culture of the Corporation in the mid- to late-1930s:

“I really believe that they (BBC managers) really thought that everybody who was doing a productive job was necessarily childish and irresponsible and needed controlling” (Maurice Chapman). “I received a letter from the Northern Regional Studio, asking me if I would talk on Repertory Theatre while I was up North. I said I would. I was then informed that a copy of my talk must be in the hands of the BBC at least a fortnight before the date of broadcasting, and that I must go to the studio to rehearse. ‘Otherwise,’ I was told, ‘the project must be abandoned.’ ‘The Project,’ I replied at once, ‘is abandoned'” (JB Priestley).

Nowadays, however, censorship is managed more subtly. Recording programmes in advance and enquiring of those who plan to take part what they might wish to say, can be used to avoid “unsuitable material” being transmitted over the airways. [My own recent personal experience is instructive, and is reported elsewhere in this issue.]

Talk of the City is a splendidly lucid piece of adult theatre, but it is also arguably historically and culturally adrift. By failing to connect with today’s media and avoiding a more substantial critique of broadcasting, Poliakoff seems to be inviting audiences to see the events of the late 1930s as an unique series of events. Socialists, however, would see them as representative of the continuing control of the cultural and political agenda by agents of the capitalist class who wish, as the Open University quotation has it, “to confer legitimacy on the social order in which they exist”.

Michael Gill

Trouble at the mill (1999)

Theatre Review from the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hindle Wakes by Stanley Houghton. Royal Exchange, Manchester

When first produced in 1912 Hindle Wakes soon found itself the centre of controversy. Watch Committees up and down the country censoriously voiced their disapproval; the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University tried to have the play banned from Oxford theatres, and failing this he succeeded in placing theatres “out of bounds” to the university population. As against this the Suffragette Movement took the play to their hearts and famously interrupted a production attended by Lloyd George.

It is easy to understand why the play should produce such reactions. Given the intense feelings of the time for and against women’s suffrage, any play which affirmed women’s right to choose was likely to be contentious. And this one, which used commonly spoken Lancashire speech rather than standard English, and which suggested that women as well as men might occasionally fancy a sexy weekend, was always likely to produce an exceptional furore. Still it was good for business. The programme reveals that in its first year it received over 2,000 separate productions in Britain and America alone. By this standard Lloyd Webber’s mind-numbing musicals will have to play for decades to reach the same number of people.

The story is simply told. Fanny who like her father works at the local cotton mill, spends a wakes week (holiday) weekend in Llandudno with the owner’s already engaged son, Alan. Their tryst is discovered, and the boy’s father insists that his son does the “right” thing and marry Fanny; a sentiment which is echoed by his disappointed fiancée who even concedes that Fanny now has more “right” to be his wife than she does. All seems settled when, out of the blue, we are presented with one of those wonderful dramatic moments when against expectations the plot line is turned on its head. Instead of talking about Fanny’s interests someone is bold enough to ask her what she thinks. Consternation and surprise: Fanny has no intention of marrying her errant swain. She likes him fine, but only as he liked her: as a casual lover.

It is always fascinating to monitor the reaction of audiences to “slice-of-life” plays like this. Things which might have offended or unnerved grandparents and great grandparents are seen as comic and absurd. Most people watch plays about the past conscious only of their own beliefs and opinions, little understanding that—given the spirit of the times—their own long-dead relatives were in fact behaving much as they themselves would behave today. Many in the audience laughed comfortably. How odd these people from another age seemed—what extraordinary attitudes. Yet although things have changed, much is still the same. Certainly women have the vote, but by almost any measure they still suffer institutional discrimination. And men continue to be demeaned. They are still seen as largely out of control of their sexual emotions; powerless in the face of their untrammelled sexual desires, victims of women of easy virtue.

The play has some powerful things to say about life in Britain at the turn of the century, and it says them engagingly and amusingly. Both its use of vernacular language and its examination of the cant and hypocrisy of contemporary sexual mores make for an entertaining and stimulating couple of hours. And in the light and airy Exchange Theatre, now delightfully restored following the IRA bombing of Manchester, the cast achieve a honesty of characterisation that adds conviction and credibility to the action.

But at the end, with Fanny triumphant, I imagined another play dedicated not so much to the independence of women as to the emancipation of the whole human race. I saw some latter-day Fanny, and her comrade Freddy, telling those who wished to continue to exploit and diminish them, that they had no intention of remaining the willing victims of their continuing imprisonment: that instead of deferring to their economic lords and masters they were intent on taking their own decisions, in their own interests, and in the interests of the generations still to come.

Now there’s a play that needs to be written. A play for today and tomorrow, showing evidence of a clear understanding of the past and the present.

Michael Gill

Inadequate scientific perspectives (1998)

Theatre Review from the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Experiment with an Air Pump by Shelagh Stephenson. Hampstead Theatre.

Three plays about science in as many months. Is there something in the wind or is this mere serendipity? All three plays have a historical focus: Copenhagen (Socialist Standard, September) is about the making of the first atom bomb; After Darwin (October) looks at the immediate and later consequences of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution; and now in An Experiment with an Air Pump, Shelagh Stephenson offers two stories, inviting us to compare the motivations of scientists at the end of the eighteenth century with those of other scientists 200 years later.

Like Tom Stoppard in Arcadia, Stephenson keeps both her stories in play throughout the evening. She is good in persuading us that even as late as the end of the 18th century science was still largely a gentleman’s activity, that the primary motives of those involved were still concerned with discovery for its own sake, and that the enterprise was managed in a neutral manner. But she also chillingly points to the dangers of scientific experiments which, whilst neutral in their apparent search for truth, were morally indifferent to the rights of those who became the subjects of experiment. The same attitudes which allowed scientists in Nazi Germany to experiment with victims imprisoned in concentration camps, were clearly evident in Great Britain two hundred years ago.

Unfortunately, however, whilst the 18th century tale is persuasive and revealing—and managed with a sure dramatic touch—its 20th century counterpart is a slight little thing which avoid any substantial discussion of contemporary science. The story, such as it is, concerns the fate of a research scientist. Should she continue to work as a university don or accept funding from a private company? Whilst the earlier tale offers some interesting insights into the relationships between science and society, the later story seems intent on avoiding such issues in favour of what might be called “human interest”. The choice facing the scientist is thus a particular choice. It is not referenced to similar choices which other scientists might face, nor yet is it placed in any meaningful context. Indeed, the very particularity of the scientist’s dilemma means that it cannot stand as a token for wider concerns.

Why, I found myself wondering at the end of the performance, had Shelagh Stephenson offered us such a sad little tale? Why, having established such a broad set of critical perspectives for her first tale, should she choose such an inadequate contemporary counterpoise? And then it occurred to me that it is possible to get some purchase on events in the 18th century, without necessarily having access to those further additional insights which would allow similar, present-day events to be scrutinised. Thus she is sufficiently far from the end of the 18th century to be able to see what was afoot with some clarity. But she is also too close to the present, and seemingly without all the analytical tools necessary to understand what is going on.

I recall being critical of Timberlake Wertenbaker’s After Darwin for much the same reason: a failure to comprehend what is at stake in modern science. As a one-time graduate in chemistry I can confirm that the education (sic) of scientists usually conspicuously avoids any reference to the nature of scientific activity, its history and philosophy. Such knowledge as I have about science and technology (rather than the restricted field of vision that is chemistry), has been gained from the study of sociology, philosophy and history, rather than as part of undergraduate studies in science. Just about the last thing that contemporary society wants is that scientists are able to reflect on the nature and consequences of their activity. If they were able to do this they might become concerned about the consequences of their day-to-day behaviour. But commerce and industry want compliant workers and now knowing, reflective practitioners. And dramatists—certainly dramatists who might want to write about contemporary science—tend to have an arts rather than a science background, and as such are unlikely to be familiar with both science and its sociology.

So we will probably have to wait a very long time before some writer is able to incorporate a critique of contemporary science in a drama about the practice of science. It’s not only audiences who are the victims of over-specialisation and dumbing down. Writers, directors and performers also suffer in the cause of capitalism.

Michael Gill

After Darwin (1998)

Theatre Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

After Darwin by Timberlake Wertenbaker. Hampstead Theatre.

Timberlake Wertenbaker, perhaps best known for her inspirational play about the transportation of prisoners to Australia, Our Country’s Good, now offers After Darwin, another drama set mainly in the 19th century. I say “mainly” because Wertenbaker both follows Darwin’s famous voyage on the Beagle—noting the cataclysmic effects of his discoveries on the ship’s captain, FitzRoy, a man of absolute religious conviction—and she also offers these insights as scenes from a play which we see in rehearsal in contemporary Britain.

The play abounds in irony and paradox. FitzRoy is scrupulous in his precise, scientific observations, but cannot accept the validity of Darwin’s observations and inferences, because they undermine the basis of his belief in God. Later, however, he was to become one of the founding fathers of the modern science of meteorology. And he it was who named those familiar weather zones around Britain: Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, etc. By comparison Darwin’s own observations are often short on facts and full of value judgments. Moreover, when faced with evidence pointing to the evolution of species he is careful not to place himself in an exposed, heretical position. Rather he uses the discoveries of other scientists as props and supports. FitzRoy, who is clear that the nature of human kind has been fixed immutably by God, nevertheless believes that the “poor wretches” he finds in distant parts of South America, are capable of infinite adaptability. The Beagle carries sets of exotic cutlery, embroidered antimacassars, copies of novels of Jane Austen, etc, which will be used in an attempt to resocialise the natives. Darwin is hot on the fight against slavery, but indifferent to the native people he confronts seeing them as “abject, filthy and ugly”. When reminded by FitzRoy that they are human beings, Darwin retorts, “I feel closer to these beetles.”

The actor we see playing Darwin turns out to be a disingenuous, feckless rogue, whose behaviour nicely demonstrates the absurdity, not to mention the dangers, of social behaviour which is underpinned by the idea of “the survival of the fittest”. He wishes to abandon the play in favour of appearing in a film of stupendous crassness. He claims he is thus “adapting to his environment” the better to survive. On the other hand the actor playing FitzRoy chooses to be principled, loyal and dependable.

Does Timberlake wish us to take any lessons from this? It is difficult to know. But whatever her intentions by setting the drama as a contemporary play in rehearsal, she leaves the audience wondering about the consequences of applying ideas which seem to have considerable power when explaining the origin of species, as providing a relevant model for social behaviour.

I enjoyed the evening. It is rarely that a play entertains and informs, stimulates and amuses, and leaves its audience with so much to think and talk about later. But I have a cavil, and it is a substantial one.

I can see the attraction of Wertenbaker’s format, especially to a dramatist. Using a rehearsal room performance to inspect both the subject of a drama and the actors’ reaction to it, is an imaginative idea. But if the intention is to look seriously at the world “after Darwin”, perhaps more time needs to be spent looking at the impact of the theory of evolution. What about social engineering, eugenics, the tendency to see human society as a biological system, and to use imperatives derived from the natural sciences to explain social behaviour? Habermas and Marcuse have been keen to point out the dangers of using “scientism” to bolster the ideological basis of capitalism; to reduce matters which properly lie in the province of values, to the merely technical. I would argue that such things are much more central to the world “after Darwin” that those which Wertenbaker seeks to discuss. Wertenbaker’s analysis, enjoyable though it is, is sadly both insufficient and incomplete.

Michael Gill

Ruff And Ready (2021)

Theatre Review from the December 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, October 2021)

The squatting movement has a long history of searching for creative, practical ways to get around capitalism’s failure to satisfy needs as basic as housing. One story among many has been turned into an entertaining musical by Cardboard Citizens (a theatre group composed of people who have been homeless), playwright Sarah Woods and Boff Whalley, Chumbawamba’s guitarist. The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency is set in 1977, when there were an estimated 30,000 people living in squats among 100,000 empty houses in London alone. By this time, the eponymous estate agency had been running for three years, one of several services set up by and for squatters in the city, and the only one which ran as an estate agency, matching vacant buildings to people who needed housing. In an average day, it would be approached by 15 to 20 people made homeless through eviction, poverty or escaping violence who couldn’t or wouldn’t be supported by mainstream organisations. The police and social services even sent people there occasionally.

The play presents the agency as welcoming and open, and the enthusiasm of its members is warmly realised by an energetic cast. The properties they found or heard about were advertised in their bulletin with descriptions like ‘36 St Luke’s Road. Empty two years. Entry through rear. No roof. Suit astronomer’. The agency’s workers would break into the buildings, meaning that those who subsequently moved in weren’t committing an offence. The legislation in England and Wales has since changed, though, and squatting in a residential building was made illegal in 2012 (having been against the law in Scotland since 1865). This doesn’t mean that squatters in 1970s London were left alone by the authorities, though. The musical features undercover police monitoring the estate agency and officious landlords and council staff, all ridiculed by being played as deliberate caricatures.

The production could have lasted for longer, to go into more detail over what happened on Freston Road, then in Hammersmith. Supported by the estate agency, a community of 120 squatters were living there, and faced eviction when the Greater London Council planned to redevelop the area. The squatters responded by all adopting the surname of Bramley to support their application to be rehomed together as a family. Then they announced that Freston Road was now independent of the UK, and had become the ‘Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia’. The new self-declared country issued its own newspaper and stamps (accepted by the Post Office), ran its own art gallery and theatre and aimed to join both the UN and EEC. During the ’80s, Frestonia dropped its aspirations and morphed into an officially-recognised housing co-operative which still runs today.

As the musical depicts it, The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency lost momentum when its members had to focus on their own lives rather than their work. Trying to put free access into practice in capitalism would always be an uphill struggle, as it goes against how the economy and property laws operate. Although finding imaginative ways around the system isn’t the same as working to replace it, the determination of the agency’s staff meant that many people were helped into better situations, at least temporarily. The musical is an enjoyable celebration of them, as well as being an introduction to a lively aspect of working class history.

Clive Hendry

Injustice and “the law” (1998)

Theatre Review from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nabokov’s Gloves (Hampstead Theatre.)

Employment is a central feature of most people’s lives, and its impact on behaviour has been widely documented by modern playwrights. In the last five years or so it is easy to remember Alan Ayckbourne's aspiring entrepreneur finding himself literally involved in murder in A Small Family Business; two young city types playing the money markets and thereby occasioning the collapse of the family firm in which their parents work in Serious Money; and Wesker's cook driven to uncontrollable violence as he succumbs to the pressures of life in The Kitchen. And now in Nabokov’s Gloves at the Hampstead Theatre, Peter Moffat shows how the lives of a handful of young barristers are affected by the practice of law.

Nick is a smooth-talking, conceited barrister whose great passions in life are football and pop songs. Both matter far more than his partner, his other relations and his work as a lawyer. But when he becomes fixated with a client his cosy, privileged life quickly collapses. Critics in the posh papers noted Nick’s constipated emotional life and other inadequacies supposedly characteristic of English males. I wouldn’t gainsay Nick’s retarded emotional development, but I would charge the practice of law as having much to do with many of his obvious deficiencies.

In Britain the legal process is like some elaborate game. It is a game which is concerned with winning rather than with justice; with the manipulation of juries and evidence rather than truth-telling: a game in which barristers who represent the interests of clients behave with what is seen as a praiseworthy inscrutability and detachment, even when they know that their clients are guilty as charged. Indeed far from “the law” being a virtuous activity, its practice and also the wellbeing of its practitioners must necessarily become compromised when winning is the order of the day. Justice, like truth and honesty, need and compassion, are inevitable victims of a system which puts winning first and everything else second.

All this is very clear in Peter Moffat’s revealing and engrossing play. If some of the critics choose to ignore the obvious, and to take refuge in clichés about “the weaknesses of the middle class English male” (whatever they are), that is their privilege. Moffat has fashioned an acerbic piece of drama which is played with great conviction by a talented cast, and which grips the audience from first to last. A play which shows the practice of law as a hollow sham, the basis of a privileged lifestyle for its practitioners; the whole sustained by double-dealing clerks intent on more business and thus more money for themselves and their professional (sic) colleagues. Far from the practice of law being a principled activity Moffat suggest that its amoral pragmatism damages both the emotional and moral wellbeing of all those caught up in its clutches. The tainted values which are required in order to succeed, serve only to undermine and tarnish the rest of lawyers’ lives.

But then we shouldn’t be surprised that in an unjust society those who serve the cause of supposed justice are also its inevitable victims. The nature of law in a class-divided society is essentially to serve the interests of the dominant, minority class. And there sure ain’t no justice in that.

Michael Gill

Bulgakov's 'Flight' (1998)

Theatre Review from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Flight, National Theatre, Olivier.

Flight, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a knockout. For sheer exuberant theatricality, high octane ensemble playing, and dramatic frisson, I have seen nothing like it for years. And the text is so dense and rewarding that a second visit revealed much that in the excitement of the first occasion we had missed. Rarely does a play provide such a whirligig of different emotions which sit so comfortably together. Through the evening the audience is presented with moments of terror, hope, apprehension, side-splitting humour, poignancy and despair, through all of which shines an indomitable will to survive.

The play, which is set in Russia, Turkey and France in the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, is a biting commentary on the tragedy and absurdity of civil war. It follows the chaotic journey of two refugees caught in the war between the White Russian Army of the Ukraine and the advancing Red Army, whose fates become enmeshed with the Ukrainians. Called a play in dreams the first act dramatises the bitterness of losing; the second act describes what Lesley Milne calls, “the wish-fulfilment dream of winning”. The style is reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht. Just when you think you have grasped the narrative—the essentials of the plot—Bulgakov throws sand in your eyes. Given the world in which we live, he seems to be saying life is unpredictable.

And Bulgakov, who was born in Kiev in 1891, seems to have enjoyed (or, perhaps more properly, endured) the kind of chaotic existence so typical of many of the characters in Flight. In 1919 he qualified as a doctor and was forcibly recruited into the Ukrainian Republican Arms. He escaped, returned to Kiev and was immediately mobilised by the White Army and sent to the Caucasus. Discharged the next year he began a career in literature, writing a string of novels and plays, many of which were banned or censored.

Small wonder then that Flight, written between 1926 and 1928, was not performed in his lifetime. It is a damning critique of Soviet revolutionary politics; a heart-rending account of the way in which most of the Russian population were little more than pawns in a cruel struggle for power between the emerging Soviet state and the residual White Russian Army. And to think that as recently as the last decade there were so-called communists living in Britain who thought that what happened in Russia in 1917 and the following 70-odd years, had something to do with the triumph of socialism.

As a socialist I loved the final moments. In the last dream one of the White Russians, having won a fortune in a French gambling salon, invests it all on a horse. Standing centre-stage, arms outstretched, Charnota's words end the play. "Put everything on Shooting Star to win!" Occasionally, like Charnota, we need to dream if we are to fight the good fight.

Michael Gill

Analysing the subtext (2000)

Theatre Review from the August 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Country by Martin Crimp, Royal Court Theatre,

Fires Were Started directed by Humphrey Jennings and

Peter Grimes by Benjamin Britten. The Aldeburgh Festival.

Peter Hall argues in Exposed By The Mask that “without Beckett, the way would not have been clear for Pinter . . .” And it seemed to me whilst watching Martin Crimp’s The Country at the Royal Court, that without Harold Pinter there would have been no Martin Crimp.

We are in familiar country. It is a land rich in desire and despair. “Who is the comatosed woman Richard has found on the roadside? Why has he brought her into his house? Exactly who is telling the truth?” the dialogue is clipped and staccato, and filled with menacing silences. Clearly all is not as it seems, and we are challenged to see through and beneath the words. What is really going on? As with Pinter we are confronted by the neurotic and the psychotic. Alienation and malevolence abound. The one character who seems honest and straightforward is deceived, abused and finally disempowered. Welcome to the 21st century.

No doubt those who find such theatre valid and significant would argue that the drama of Crimp, like that of Pinter and Beckett, challenges “naturalism”, and in doing so “gives the stage back to our imagination”. But there is a difficulty. Pinter and Crimp whilst challenging “naturalism” nevertheless seem to suggest that their work is rooted, albeit metaphorically, in reality. And no doubt it is. the difficulty is that the reality of the world of Pinter and Crimp is robustly selective. It is populated by people who are consistently malevolent: where to show even a mite of concern for someone is to be seen as being weak, and to invite abuse. It is a world which is so unambiguously nasty, as to have little contact with everyday experience other than in some fevered nightmare.

The Country paints a picture of people and their behaviour which is light yeas away from the of Fires Were Started, the wonderful dramatised documentary made by Humphrey Jennings in 1941/42. The film records a day in the life of a National Fire Service unit involved in fighting the London Blitz. In it Jennings shows us a group of unique individuals—ordinary men and women—working together in a team “dedicated to public service, bravery and sacrifice”. It too is selective—necessarily so given that it was produced by the Crown Film Unit in the middle of the Second World War. It was made to boost morale, to offer role models, to aid the successful prosecution of the war. As such it makes no mention of desertion, the “black market”, the continuing disparities between the rich and the poor, etc. It’s selectivity makes it, knowingly and unashamedly, propaganda. But I wonder? Could we also see The Country in this way? Arguably it, too, could be seen as an exercise in persuasion, in deliberate distortion. And which class might benefit from the selectivities that are evident in the subtext? Isn’t a fraternal, co-operative, democratic and just society less likely if people can be persuaded that malevolence is the norm?

And selective responses abound in critical commentaries of Benjamin Britten’s great opera Peter Grimes. At Aldeburgh I noted the way in which Philip Reed’s introduction in the festival booklet and the commentary in the programme both maintain that Britten had a natural empathy with Peter Grimes, because like Grimes he was an outsider. And why was Britten an outsider? Because he was a homosexual. Oh, yes, he was also a pacifist, but the latter is added as a kind of afterthought. It is Britten’s homosexuality which is identified as the major determinant of his empathy with Grimes.

I’m not surprised that commentators want to see Britten in this light. It’s all very convenient. It allows people to see Peter Grimes and to tut tut about the way in which foolish people in the 1940s—when the opera was written—almost drove Britten to write about an outsider, because he was a homosexual. Now, of course we see homophobia as unacceptable. Now we are enlightened and imaginative, and we shake our heads both at the behaviour of the people who drove Grimes to commit suicide, and society’s attitude to Benjamin Britten. And we deceive ourselves.

Certainly people disapproved of Britten’s homosexuality, but they disapproved even more of his pacifism. This is what drove Britten to travel to the USA at the end of 1939, not his homosexuality. Britten was fleeing from the war and all that went with it. To pretend otherwise may be convenient, but it is also wrong. And most people probably still object to his pacifism. So we have commentators writing contemporary history so that it chimes with contemporary prejudices. As ever the subtext is fascinating.

Michael Gill