Scouts in Bondage, The King's Head, 23/12/2009
This is a lightweight lark which seeks to lampoon Scouting and the Empire through filth and innuendo. The results are mixed.
Four scouts - one camp, one posh, one keen and one German - are flying to a jamboree in India. When their plane crashes in Afghanistan, they get into scrapes, and must outwit dastardly Afghans, dastardly Russians and dastardly Brits. Along the way, they learn about the true meaning of Scouting, and accidentally bend over in front of one another, in very tight shorts.
A miniscule audience - the same size as the cast - immediately puts the players at a disadvantage. From then on, they battle manfully along, little helped by an average script, without ever commanding outright hilarity. There is enthusiasm and energy from all the cast, but only Mark Farrelly, who is the most experienced of the actors, has genuine poise and comic timing. His soliloquies as the editor of Scouting Magazine are by far the most sophisticated and funny moments.
On a bustling Saturday night, with a tipsy crowd, this piece would be warmly received. As it was, it could never rise beyond the diverting, and never elicit more than a titter.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Hottest Show in Town
The Habit of Art, The National, 21/12/2009
Alan Bennett is probably the most respected of modern British playwrights. After the magnificent, gripping History Boys, expectations were perhaps unfairly high. Nonetheless, this play is an astonishing and clumsy misstep.
There is little plot to tell. A group of actors are rehearsing a fictionalized encounter between Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden. In this play, very little occurs. Auden sits in his study, and receives visitors: his cleaners, a rent boy, and Britten. Britten and Auden reminisce, without shedding much light on the subjects they discuss. This lack of meat means the play rests entirely on the charm of it's characters - which is largely lacking.
Bennett explains that he used the 'play within a play' device in order to allow exposition. What he gains in doing so is vastly outweighed by its distancing effect; it is very difficult to care about characters when the actors are constantly shedding them. Moreover, as the play hovers indecisively, it does not give enough time to the characters outside of their play; the actors are never more than sketched out. Instead, they receive a list of stereotypical traits. There is a gay, luvvie one. There is a difficult, egotistical one. There is a fresh-out-of-drama school one. There is a pretentious writer, a shy actor obsessed with the vital importance of his minor part, and an efficient, sarcastic assistant director.
Without plot or proper characterization, the play might yet have been saved by Bennett's undoubted wit. Sadly, this too was not much in evidence. There are moments - the rent boy is amusingly blunt, and Frances de la Tour provides some of the most biting wit (as well as some poignant observations) as the assistant director trying to hold together her collection of egos. Auden and Britten, though, are essentially rather dull, whilst the actors are used only for a succession of cheap jokes about the theatre. Such lines would quite happily have sustained a 20 minute entry to the school House Drama competition, but they do not have the sophistication or zing that one feels entitled to expect.
One of the most remarkable moments comes shortly after the interval, when Adrian Scarborough - playing a nervous, try-hard actor who is playing Humphrey Carpenter - insists on trying to flesh out his character by performing some of Carpenter's music. Carpenter is a relatively well-known figure, and many of the audience will know that he was a jazz musician - not, as the play unaccountably suggests, a drag artist! This, one must presume, is Nicholas Hytner's idea. He would have done well to consign it to an Acorn Antiques revival.
Every ticket for the entire run has sold out. One hopes that the many who will see it will find more in it to enjoy than I did.
Alan Bennett is probably the most respected of modern British playwrights. After the magnificent, gripping History Boys, expectations were perhaps unfairly high. Nonetheless, this play is an astonishing and clumsy misstep.
There is little plot to tell. A group of actors are rehearsing a fictionalized encounter between Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden. In this play, very little occurs. Auden sits in his study, and receives visitors: his cleaners, a rent boy, and Britten. Britten and Auden reminisce, without shedding much light on the subjects they discuss. This lack of meat means the play rests entirely on the charm of it's characters - which is largely lacking.
Bennett explains that he used the 'play within a play' device in order to allow exposition. What he gains in doing so is vastly outweighed by its distancing effect; it is very difficult to care about characters when the actors are constantly shedding them. Moreover, as the play hovers indecisively, it does not give enough time to the characters outside of their play; the actors are never more than sketched out. Instead, they receive a list of stereotypical traits. There is a gay, luvvie one. There is a difficult, egotistical one. There is a fresh-out-of-drama school one. There is a pretentious writer, a shy actor obsessed with the vital importance of his minor part, and an efficient, sarcastic assistant director.
Without plot or proper characterization, the play might yet have been saved by Bennett's undoubted wit. Sadly, this too was not much in evidence. There are moments - the rent boy is amusingly blunt, and Frances de la Tour provides some of the most biting wit (as well as some poignant observations) as the assistant director trying to hold together her collection of egos. Auden and Britten, though, are essentially rather dull, whilst the actors are used only for a succession of cheap jokes about the theatre. Such lines would quite happily have sustained a 20 minute entry to the school House Drama competition, but they do not have the sophistication or zing that one feels entitled to expect.
One of the most remarkable moments comes shortly after the interval, when Adrian Scarborough - playing a nervous, try-hard actor who is playing Humphrey Carpenter - insists on trying to flesh out his character by performing some of Carpenter's music. Carpenter is a relatively well-known figure, and many of the audience will know that he was a jazz musician - not, as the play unaccountably suggests, a drag artist! This, one must presume, is Nicholas Hytner's idea. He would have done well to consign it to an Acorn Antiques revival.
Every ticket for the entire run has sold out. One hopes that the many who will see it will find more in it to enjoy than I did.
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