THEATRE ROYAL, GLASGOW
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER KING'S THEATRE, EDINBURGH
RESURRECTION ORAN MOR, GLASGOW
PETER Shaffer's Equus – due in Edinburgh next week, after a short run in Glasgow – is one of thos
e plays that seems to tremble on the verge of greatness, without ever quite making the final leap. It is, firstly and fascinatingly, one of the essential British plays of its time – of that moment, in the mid-1970s, when our bright faith in the onward-and-upward progress of reason and modernism began to crumble, to be replaced with a desperate yearning back towards concepts of mystery, worship and raw nature that had perhaps been discarded too hastily. It's also, though, a play that fully embraces modernism in its theatrical style. It abandons without apology the traditional naturalistic clutter of middle-class mainstream theatre, playing on big stages, but allowing its team of a dozen actors – five of them only playing horses – to tell the story without distraction, on a few box-like structures arranged around a dark space. Its story – about a teenage boy, who, through a strange combination of upbringing and character, acquires a powerful erotic obsession with horses, as his object of worship and desire – is a bold one, still almost embarrassingly explicit about the arbitrary, private and powerful processes of adolescent excitement and arousal. And it turns the questions it raises about the bloodless, over-rationalised quality of modern urban life straight back on to the narrator at the centre of the drama, the middle-aged, middle-class child psychiatrist Martin Dysart, who is asked to treat Alan after he mysteriously blinds six horses in the stable where he works.
If the play has a weakness, it lies in this relentless foregrounding of Dysart, his voice, his midlife crisis, his self-analysis; and if only the most subtle and searching of performances can make this aspect of the play work well, then that's hardly what it gets from Simon Callow, with his unfailingly fruity vocal style, and mockingly likeable demeanour. What Callow has in abundance, though, is stage presence, confidence and intelligence in delivering Shaffer's wordy but powerful text; and in Thea Sharrock's beautiful production, he is now well matched by Alfie Allen in the role of the boy, and by every detail of John Napier's austere design, breathtakingly lit by David Hersey.
And there are moments, too, when this complex, intrusive play sometimes seems almost too prescient for comfort; not only in its rebellion against a sexless, control-freak society that makes no space for wildness or wonder, but also in its fatal attraction towards those aspects of faith and worship that can drive young men to ecstasy, and also to madness and violence.
Like most 18th-century comedy, Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer – first seen in London in 1773 – is by contrast a fine, genial expression of the spirit of enlightenment, all sunny reason and deft mockery of foolish pretensions. Playing in Edinburgh this week before travelling on to Aberdeen and Glasgow, this touring production by Jonathan Munby, for Birmingham Rep Theatre, is a fairly routine English period romp, enlivened by a jolly trompe l'oeil set by Mike Britton, live on-stage music played by a rustic country band, the robust Birmingham accents deployed by the cast, and a nice, sharp-edged adaptation of the old theatre tradition of Prologues and Epilogues, featuring a faltering 21st-century romance between two theatre ushers.
And of course, insofar as it deals in matters erotic and romantic, Goldsmith's grand old comedy – like Dickens's Great Expectations, also currently on tour – offers some powerful insights into the great British tension between class and sex, and the strange tendency of men, in particular, to find sex sexier when it crosses class and cultural lines. Charles Marlow, our hero, is a man who can only find his range – in terms of confidence, power, sexual energy – when dealing with members of the lower orders; now let someone update this play to the age of Asian internet brides and gorgeous Ukrainian waitresses, and we might begin to see what Goldsmith was on about in his satire on sex and status, and what a bold old bird he was.
In an unusual twist of programming, Oran Mor's Play, Pie and Pint show this week also features a piece of period costume drama, and a love-affair that breaches the boundaries of class. Written and directed by leading playwright Nicola McCartney, the play takes Tolstoy's 1899 story Resurrection – about a prince who decides, ten years on, to try to make amends to a beautiful servant-girl whom he has seduced and betrayed in his youth – and sets it in the context of an irritable debate between the chronically unfaithful Tolstoy and his long-suffering wife Sonya, whom he asks to help him sort out the story.
At either end of a long dining-table, Tolstoy and Sonya debate sourly about whether the Prince's redemptive impulse is remotely credible, or just a typical male attempt to offload his sense of guilt at the expense of someone else's peace of mind; meanwhile, the Prince and his Katusha move around them, arguing their way through Tolstoy's story. The play has its turgid moments, and is so awkwardly staged that Katusha spends long periods hidden from view to at least a third of the audience. But there are two strikingly fine performances from Paul Cunningham and Louise Ludgate as the Tolstoys; and in the end, the play makes its rich feminist case about the price of passion, and who usually pays it, with a clarity and vividness that lifts the heart.
&149 Equus at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, until tomorrow; at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, 18-23 February; and at His Majesty's Aberdeen, 31 March until 5 April. She Stoops To Conquer at the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, until tomorrow; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 19-23 February; and His Majesty's Aberdeen, 26 February until 1 March. Resurrection at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until tomorrow.
The full article contains 1000 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
