The West End Spectator/Upstaging Broadway
Marin, Rick
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...Take Ayckbourn's latest black com- edy, Henceforward...
...Ayckbourn's razor cuts an exacting swath...
...Five Tempests in a single year...
...Then (for money) Don Ameche...
...QQQQ~QQ~Q~QOOOOSt Q~IQIQOQggO~OQQ~OQOOIOODOOQIOQgOO&OmIQ • I I BOOOOOQQQIOOOt QQQOQQ~gQgO I 0 I Q I • t D Q 0 Q Q ~ 0 J THE WEST END SPECTATOR I,, o o,, o. o, o o, oo J g oo coo a * o ! I i ! I lio* el e* • • • a J • ~ , • o ~o o a g w i I * I a • I I * I . I w * e o * o * I oo * o lla • I I • * g* e*o•l .A "x UPSTAGING BROADWAY D o readers of the New York Times wonder what exactly Frank Rich is talking about when he says that there were "five not altogether distinguished productions" of Shakespeare's The Tempest last year in London...
...I don't want to see plays about rape, sodomy and drug addiction...
...Peter Cook once ghosted a car-toon caption for the Observer that said, "You know, I go to the theater to be entertained...
...In a year-end roundup, one British newspaper critic expressed thanks that the theater was "in there fighting, and has no longer ceded to television the job of social and political analysis...
...For those willing to queue, half- price tickets are available the day of performance for all but a few block- buster hits, and about 40 percent of ticket purchases in London are made the day of...
...That kind of money will buy seats to almost any- thing...
...At least in the preten- tious, hair-shirt sense of the word...
...and the National Theater...
...Mamet's Speed-the-Plow is a poi-son valentine to West Coast shysters and hustlers, but a valentine nonethe- less...
...Martin Sheen's rock 'n' roll Hamlet...
...The man who put Madonna in Speed-the-Plow this season undertook rehabilitation of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, cast first (for art) with Downtown monologuist Spalding Gray as the Stage Manager...
...It's a casual, natural activi- ty...
...set in an apoca- lyptic quarter of the near future somewhere between A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner...
...In New York, Neff Simon does...
...Divorced, he's desperate to get partial custody of his estranged daughter but must first persuade a social worker that he's a fit, stable father figure...
...Like anywhere, London sees its share of junk...
...The "message" doesn't have to be spooned up with cod-liver oil...
...It's impossible to imagine Broadway simultaneously supporting works by an equivalent crowd--say, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Lanford Wilson, and half a dozen others-- not to mention such a profusion of classics...
...Over there it's actually being per-formed--a veritable Norton Anthology of English theater alive and well in the West End...
...A dyspep- tic composer lives hermetically iso- lated in a London ruled by roving gangs...
...But ac- cepting conventional wisdom's ranking of Williams, after Eugene O'Neill, as the great American playwright, why does it take a foreigner to restore Williams's magnum opus to the stage...
...The No Sex Please, We're British school of slapstick T&A is still in full jiggle...
...Over here, only Gregory Mosher, the impresario of Lincoln Center, seems to have as shrewd an eye for quality and the box office...
...There are economic rea- sons for this disparity...
...D espite endless whining from the "arts community" about the ravages of Thatcherism, theater in Brit- ain remains a cozily subsidized indus- try, notably at the Royal Shakespeare Co...
...AI Pacino as Julius Caesar...
...His hip, futur-istic dystopia bristles with imagina- tion, yet the wit doesn't upstage its emotional impact...
...Another country in- deed...
...There are other economic pressures squeezing Broadway: unions, real es- tate, unions...
...I can get all that at home...
...I t seems the British take not only their own drama more seriously, but ours too...
...Quite...
...Dead playwrights sell out...
...As America's most powerful theater critic, his is the heavy voice of authority--he oughtta know...
...If capi- talist Broadway reflects market value, London ticket prices are kept well below it...
...Even the tough guys go down sooner or later...
...Shepard, the thinking woman's Marlboro Man, seems to spend more time acting than writing...
...A tradition, almost a responsibility, seems to have evolved in modern British theater to entertain as well as edify the paying public...
...The week I spent in London I took in seven shows in five days...
...Coming Next Month: Whittaker Chambers, Journalist THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1989...
...25 for the most sought-after plays...
...Absurd Person Singular), smart can equally be fun...
...is Ayckbourn's thirty-second play, an amazing statis- tic even by the Brits' prolific stand- ards...
...But significant numbers also turn up at theaters with nary a T or an A on the marquee...
...In Manhattan, it's Joseph Papp's hooked- on-classics hype that lures the masses to Shakespeare...
...Broadway is lucky to see one in five years...
...For example, Lettuce and Lovage, by Peter Shaffer, the author of Equus and Amadeus, ostensibly concems an odd relationship between two odd older women...
...In America this stuff barely makes it into text- books (even the "Eurocentric" ones...
...In vivid contrast to the vast concrete barns and cramped black-on-black dungeons that house most American drama, the better West End theaters-- the Duke of York's, the Theatre Royal Haymarket, the Phoenix--are monu- ments to bygone elegance, lush palaces of red velvet and gold leaf...
...Shaftesbury Avenue [the West End thoroughfare] continues to sink into the same tourists' common denomina- tor as Broadway," sniffs Frank Rich in the Times...
...Mostly new plays, except Richard II, and all but one (a musical vulgarity called Budgie) what the discriminating dramaphile would call "serious...
...These people actually want to see Derek Jacobi do Richard H and 111...
...Maybe somebody will feel it over here...
...The word that should jump out of that quotation isn't the un-"distinguished," it's the "five...
...It's a marathon dirge almost never performed here--arguably (if you don't like the play), with good reason...
...That Harold Pinter, David , Hare, Stoppard, Ayckbourn, Peter Shaffer, and Frayn should all have pro- ductions in direct competition with- in a few blocks of each other is remarkable...
...The world awaits Judd Nel- son's Macbeth, Demi Moore's Desde- mona, and--this is Papp's new brain- storm--Chefs Cleopatra...
...By all means, kick hard...
...Peter Hall's first solo ven- ture after fifteen years as director of the National Theater was to raise from the dead Tennessee Williams's Orpheus De- scending, with Vanessa Redgrave play- ing to sell-out crowds in the starring role...
...But his peers, too, do churn it out...
...Depending on the dollar, under $40 for the top musicals...
...Like going to a movie...
...A far cry from a sticky evening at the local multiplex...
...But it's as much about the demise of architecby Rick Marin ture and language--taking emphatical- ly conservative stands on both...
...Above and beyond the healthy staple of contemporary plays--and cash-cow musicals like Cats that thrive on both sides of the Atlantic--Lon- don theater listings typically include a handful of Restoration comedies, the obscurest Shakespeare (Cymbel-line, The Winter's Tale, maybe a Timon of Athens), and at least one Eliza-bethan revenge tragedy...
...Henceforward...
...New York playwrights have always been easy marks for the temptations of Holly- wood...
...But hold on...
...The Washington Post quotes a British actor complaining that the West End needs "a good kick in the bum...
...Television no less...
...This means rewiring his factory-reject android, NAN300F, to mimic a human significant other that will pass muster with his ex-wife and the bureaucrat...
...The money, for anything but bankable dead-certain hits, isn't...
...Yet most weren't serious at all...
...People line up for tickets...
...In the world of Tom Stoppard (Jumpers), Michael Frayn (Noises Of J), and Alan Ayckbourn Rick Marin is television critic for the Washington Times...
...The material is there...
...Tom Stoppard's Hapgood delves into the vicissitudes of quantum physics...
...It's apparently fashionable in elite circles to snipe at the London stage...
Vol. 22 • May 1989 • No. 5
