At Volcano Theatre |
| Volcano Theatre- Private Lives , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , April 1, 2001 |
| Theatre Clwyd did a production of Private Lives in their last season. While it would have been theatrical treachery to have supported a company which refuses to admit to the existence of most serious Welsh playwrights it wouldn't have occurred to me, anyway, to go and see a Noel Coward play. Which is, perhaps a little unfair as I don't know that much about Coward - mostly what he represents: an unashamedly, bourgeois theatre culture which has dominated and still dominates the Welsh. Which brings me back to Theatre Clwyd and, as it happens this reviewing on the web business. I am about to give an unequivocally positive review for Volcano Theatre Company's production. It will be positive because I only want to review plays I like. I don't see any reason to review something I didn't like. Now if, by accident I had found myself in the audience for Theatr Clwyd's production, I wouldn't have reviewed it. I wouldn't have reviewed it, not because I might have been afraid of being seen scabbing but because I don't like what the play in their production would have represented. Simple as that. It's interesting that in all the talk about culture in the New Wales, that place which ought to be the central arena of cultural expression - the theatre - is so dominated by the non-Welsh, I mean, specifically, the values of the English middle-classes. If you want to colonise a nation bloodlessly, get into their theatres. Better still, if they have a language which is historically an expression of their culture, learn that language and use it to sneak your own values in. Wales is becoming a nation of English middle-class values introduced through the medium of Welsh. Volcano Theatre is a Welsh company with an international reputation. This production is a Welsh version of an English play. It's great. In the volcanic energy which displaces the decorum of the original, you have layers of meaning revealed where meaning was hard to find at all. The lava flow is orgasmic but unashamed and passionate unlike those hidden by Coward's text where you can imagine his characters wanking, off. It is a play which belongs mostly to the time of its origins but it still gets done as he intended (Theatr Clwyd) and big middle-class audiences identify with the evasiveness and dissimulation. Of course there's irony and there's anger lurking behind the lines, it's just that when the anger is manifested - as you see in the Volcano production - you see how absurd and petty the whole thing is. The journey from King Oedipus to Private Lives is not one of soaring, transcendental aestheticism. Basically it's meaningless and what this production does is focus on that meaninglessness and make the comedy out of that. And so they've made Ben Jonson out of the play of some obscure, Elizabethan poetaster. The serious side of the production is in its discussion of language and in the argument presented to the audience between what's said and what you see: an argument which is essential for the debate that makes audiences moral (which you don't get in Theatr Clwyd's amoral theatre). Often speeches are delivered at such a pace that they're deprived of any meaning. Words themselves no matter how beautifully or wittily strung out are no guarantee of meaning or truth. Coward was a master, say, of structure. But Coward wasn't Wilde whose inversion and ironies and paradoxes are made devastating by being so affectionate. In fact, Coward is like his heir Mike Leigh who, with limited talent, ends up offering his characters as just plain stupid to those not predisposed to sympathise with the problems of their class. Because of that, as with Leigh, there is a kind of exploitation of the human and, as with the culte de la blague,, in which humour is used for fascism there is very much the odour of the vicious about them. Paradoxically, perhaps, Volcano's production is almost affectionate to the characters. The cast - Eric Maclennan, Paul Davies, Fern Smith and Laura Rees is brilliant: athletic, multi-talented (Laura Rees does a great tap-dance in the ruins), and with superb timing. There are moments which reminded me of that great Theatre de la Mezzanine show I saw in the Restless Gravity season where there are no words. Ultimately, Volcano succeed in making a meaningless language wordless and performance eloquent. |
Reviewed by: Dic Edwards |
This review has been read 4338 times There are 31 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
