| Craftless Tedium from the Last Company of Wales to Perform |
At National Theatre Wales |
| National Theatre Wales- Possible , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , November 25, 2021 |
A flock of Welsh actors performed in “Under Milk Wood” in May. It was an unexpected choice by Rufus Norris for theatre's re-wakening but in retrospect an astute one. With a re-framing to suit the times Dylan Thomas' kaleidoscope of a community at work and play was a critical and popular success. Restrictions eased later in Scotland than in England or Wales and the National Theatre of Scotland returned in August. Its re-opening was sold out. “Lament for Sheku Bayoh” was performed by a company of all non-white actors. Its story was taken from life, the death of a young man while in police custody. It was a hammer-blow of a production, critically lauded. For the autumn the company toured from Greenock to Inverness with an adaptation by Kieran Hurley, a star playwright of Scotland, of Ibsen's “An Enemy of the People.” In Wales fifteen companies performed over the months of June to October. After five months the National Theatre of Wales came to perform. By that time Theatr Genedlaethol had done two tours. In all those years, before the great closure, the company performed in the open air when there was no need. In the summer of 2021 when the yearning was there it stayed at home. There is no tradition in performance in merging the roles of actor, director and writer. Two maybe, but not all three. The tradition is a good one, the art-form being one of collaboration; that distance brings objectivity and creative tension to the making. It is an error on the part of the producers to have merged all three for its first production. It is also a jejeune error, with an outcome that is inevitable. There are six skills necessary to write for performance. In “Possible” all six are absent. In their place are tonal flatness, formal structurelessness, inchoate metaphors, repetitiveness, thematic elusiveness. The rhythmless lines run repeatedly “I shave. I go to my desk. I say to Stephie.” The language is stripped of description, evocation, characterisation. The concept is flawed. Solipsistic confession is no substitute for the hard discipline of aesthetic pattern-making. In a theatrical first the author-player names and praises Lorne Campbell, who then becomes an occasional character. The narrative plods and sags without cadence, ebb and flow, cohesion or thematic impetus. The odd statements on human psychology are false. The impoverishment in authorship leads to the same in the acting. Words are uttered but there is no embodiment; the body as a compelling physical presence is not required and thus barely used. The direction too dispenses with the concept of actor in physical communication with audience. A screen displays a stream of words and images. They add flab not precision. There is no attempt to command the space of the Aberystwyth stage, no props. At times the player sits to watch images of himself on a screen. A director of experience, Mike Alfreds, got it right: “The purest space from which to tell a story is an empty one...any technology or design that is decided upon should only occur after rigorous questioning proves its necessity.” Occasionally the flab is padded out with music and song. The lyrics are repetitive and witless. The setting is the time of Covid-19. It was a time of collective privation. “Possible” is not the first theatre to be set in 2020. “Beat the Devil”, from Annapurna Theatre, London Theatre Company and Sabel Productions, was written by David Hare for a solo actor. Hare writes from the inside. An unusual symptom occurs. Tap water takes on the taste of sewage. Good writing is detail. It is bean sprout stew that fells him to the floor in deep pain. Ventilators, the dramatist reports, are failing to prevent blood-saturated oxygen entering the body. He cites a professor of thrombosis from King's College on the hazard of sticky blood. “Beat the Devil” makes the leap to the Prime Minister and the key weeks up to 23rd March 2020. The symptoms of the disease proceed horribly and in tandem. A diary entry reads solely “total despair.” His weight drops by six kilograms in ten days. Hare less successfully recounts the public policy of the first weeks, the reaction in Washington DC, the quality of the Cabinet. Unlike Jack Thorne in the television drama “Help” Hare's writing does not enter the care homes. There, without medical treatment, it took four to five days to die of gradual suffocation. With recovery he is flooded with joy but he ends “I don't have survivor's guilt. I have survivor's rage.” “Beat the Devil” is a good clear title. The title “Possible” is unclear. In “Possible” society outside the narrator hardly features. He himself sleeps well. Eighty percent of us by contrast suffered disturbed sleep patterns. He meditates, his loved ones are at hand. They move house. There is a relative in old age and illness but he is in another country. The writer is not there so there is no description. Late on the narrator interleaves a hideous episode from early teenagehood. But it is presented in a disjointed manner, the weak direction diluting its emotional force. This is the debut of a new chapter of this company. Maybe audiences at the other venues- Merthyr, Pontio- have been rapturous. In Aberystwyth the audience size is modest. It cannot be blamed on the pandemic. Two nights later Theatr y Werin is sold out. Two weeks before, at “Il Tabarro”, the audience rose to its feet. The audience for “Possible” has neither laughed nor cried so behaves as it does. It is polite. The company now takes a break. There are no performances for an undeclared number of months. Thirteen years of age, and all those millions down, this is a company that should be at full force and vigour, a centre-point in the national cultural life. It is not. It is a lost child. The future is predictable. |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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