| A Study in Deception |
| This review first appeared in Planet Magazine , no. 176, April/May 2006 |
Theatr y Byd |
| Theatr y Byd- Butterfly , Chapter Arts Centre Cardiff , March 25, 2006 |
“Those who can’t, criticise.”So says the art critic in Ian Rowlands’ new play, Butterfly. The balance of power between those who do, and those who review, is a perilous one; the one has the talent, the other the means to make or break with a few words in the right ear. Neither comes off particularly well in the end. Rowlands’ play claims to “deal with art, life and the appropriation of both by the unscrupulous.” The trouble is, everybody on stage seems unscrupulous at some point, so it’s hard to know where to place your sympathies. None of the characters are trustworthy: the verbose art critic whose whole persona is falsely based on an Oxford education (the poly, it turns out, not the uni) and whose reviews aim to damage for the wrong reasons; the Boy who picks him up at a gallery (gay or not?); Butterfly — the ghost of an artist who might be real, might be imagined. The critic (Ian Saynor) is a man ruined by his love for Butterfly, an artist whose youth and beauty captured him as much as her talent. She takes up with him, enjoys his patronage — loves him, even — but eventually leaves for younger and prettier shores. He sets about destroying her career with vicious words and as a result she commits suicide, leaving him bereft of feeling — he literally cannot experience beauty, no matter how much he can appreciate it. The Boy appears at first to be an empty “beauty” without many words... but he is actually Butterfly’s husband, set on revenge. It turns out he has plenty of words and a murderous intent to boot. Butterfly herself is either a figment of a grieving mind or the real embodiment of beauty. She’s also a betrayer, a user, and not even necessarily that good an artist — it’s left deliberately opaque. I might have had more sympathy for the character of Butterfly (in fact, I was probably supposed to, though I’m still not sure) if it hadn’t been for Ian Saynor’s turn as the critic. Saynor simply soaked up all the attention. He delivered Rowlands’ words with an evenness of humour, pity and spite that left no room for the other characters. He was the very meaning of experience versus the gaucheness of Butterfly and Boy. It’s no surprise that the younger actors struggled against Saynor’s deft performance. The Boy, (Sam Miller), is supposed to be an “incubus”, but the word incubus suggests something mercurial, lithe — he simply wasn’t. While Saynor was fleet of foot across the stage, Miller seemed rooted to the spot. He had very little to say in the first half, which meant his barked responses gave him nowhere to go, no way to impress. Towards the second half, Miller had more to work with and did better and, improbably, seemed more the incubus in his underpants (no, really). Alison John as Butterfly suffered from the same rigidity; for a character who is the essence of airy beauty, she hardly fluttered. Neither of them had the voice modulation that makes it comfortable to listen to, and since the play is all words and no action (and barely anything else, either) the sound of the lines is extremely important. I bought a copy of the play beforehand, and the lines played better in my head. In fact, it’s an enjoyable read with truly funny moments and some nice criticisms of modern art that will find an echo with many people. As the critic says in a tired voice: “As if we haven’t seen two women sew their nipples together before; and with perter breasts! Eh?” or a personal favourite “...the shit artists write to justify themselves. It’s an insult to literacy. Artists should be banned from writing anything.” Of course, you’re not necessarily supposed to agree with the critic, because he’s a nasty piece of work who uses beauty and never creates it; who collects it like butterflies pinned to a canvas, little scraps of artistic soul caught in his possession; but the fact is, you can’t help it. He’s open in his nastiness, humble and humorous about his aging charms, whereas Butterfly and Boy are closed-off, full of secrets. Self-obsessed. Another thing that I missed from the performance and gained from the script was the real sense of ambiguity about Butterfly. She’s physically present (a little too much so on stage), but there are reasons to suppose the Boy is subconsciously making her up and it’s as much the critic’s own, desperate desire to regain a sense of beauty that leads him to believe in her. In the first half, the critic says things which the Boy uses in the second to prove Butterfly’s existence, and drops hints — “ No lizards in my wine” — which could point the Boy in the direction of the critic’s favourite painter, Caravaggio. But everything is untrustworthy, unreliable. Butterfly does not stand up as a play about beauty, but rather as a study in deception. The deception of the word, whether it be from the critic or the artist. All three characters have deceived in some way, but it’s the critic who, in the end, has the truest word. He realises that his one chance of creating beauty lay in the baby that Butterfly had aborted, and his feelings are real and painful. He may be described as “a vampire” in the play’s blurb, but the critic is the one character with the most to give. He is an utterly real, believable creation. But don’t believe me — because I’m one of those who can’t do, who just criticises. Theatr y Byd’s production of Butterfly by Ian Rowlands, artistic director, Chris Morgan, was at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, from 21-25 March. |
Reviewed by: Alex Carolan |
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