Linen Hall Library

Belfast Drama: The Year until JuneAuthor(s): James SimmonsSource: The Linen Hall Review, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1988), pp. 14-15Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533999 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 05:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Linen Hall Library is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Linen HallReview.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.198 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:51:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Belfast drama

the year until june My survey of 1987*s autumn theatre closed on the unhappy prospect of Ro

manoff and Juliet at the Lyric for their Christmas show. In the event Tom Jordan's luck held. It is a dire play that should never have been resurrected, but the actors took it by the scruff of the neck and created a

curiously attractive evening of non

sense. How it creaked in the opening buffoonery! But Eoin O'CaUaghan and Donna Bainbridge were hand some and charming young lovers, a

deUght to watch. Trudy KeUy and Kevin Flood gave amazing weight to the Russian ambassadorial couple. Tom Jordan, standing in for the in jured Gerard McSorley was funny as the spy. He has great stage presence. John Hewitt gradually made quite a lot of the General and Joe McPart land was magnificently funny as The

Archbishop. It was a sort of semi sophisticated pantomime with noth- j ing much to say about the cold war, but the details were good fun and graduaUy the audience got involved this desperate enterprise.

The next production, Juno and the Paycock, produced an odd impres sion. Again there was a starry cast.

Eoin O'CaUaghan was one of the best Johnnys I have seen. He managed to convey the necessary sense of pain and panic that anchors the farce to a

speciaUy cruel time and place, the Civil War of 1922. SteUa McCusker was a fine Juno, restrained and exact in her interpretation of that difficult role. She knew her way through the

minefield, but you cannot act alone. Kevin Flood, as the Captain, didn't give her enough to react to, and he in his turn was upstaged by a self-indul gent Joe McPartland as Joxer, preoc cupied with funny walks rather than the pathetic, vicious character he should have portrayed. So it went. Tom Jordan, the director, certainly didn't make it work that night.

It was not a director's year and yet everything at the Lyric worked well on a superficial level. Tom Jordan has luck and energy and middle-of-the road tastes, a good front man. More

than that he pushed positive sensible

policies, gave plays longer runs (which rests the actors), used up and

coming actors consistently, used local

casts where possible, toured two

plays, had live music in the foyer, ran successful Sunday night entertain

ments and acted a host to 'Field Day*. This enabled the theatre to cope with two honourable failures, The Road to

Mecca and Orphans, and one really

stupid flop, An Giall. After a three week break in Amer

ica which caused me to miss the Ul ster actors in The Prime of Miss Jean

Brodie I came back to the last per formance of John Boyd's dramatisa

tion of Wuthering Heights. I had no

great hopes for this since passion isn't one of Boyd's notable qualities; but intelligence and humility are, and these were in evidence in the com

plexity and subtlety of this stage version. It was far more interesting than the famous film version. Hous ton Marshall, who serves the Lyric

well, had made an ingenious set that coped with indoor and outdoor scenes, and Roy Heayberd inspired a

largely English east to cope very well with an enormous challenge. It was my best night at the Lyric this sea

son.

The obligatory Yeats play this year was Purgatory, probably his best, a brief supernatural melodrama with a few very rich poetic descriptions. The two characters are an old murderer

and his son. The old man kills his son to give his mother's tormented spirit rest, without success. This was pretty well performed by Michael Liebmann and Kevin McHugh. The main show of the evening was An Giall (the origi nal Hostage) translated into English. Apart from John Hewitt's perform ance as the caretaker it was trivial, unfunny and especially distasteful because it coincided with the mob killing of the two soldiers in West Belfast. Not that the management could have foreseen the public events, but they should have been aware of the inadequacies of the script. Pre sumably they thought it was some

! sort of scoop and the name of Behan i would carry it. No, it needed Joan Lit

j tlewood to give life to this modest

I parable. Here, again, I was shaken to find educated people saying they en

! joyed the evening. Perhaps there is a

j hunger for something light-hearted about the troubles', perhaps it is part 1 of a current taste for wildness and

J energy on the stage, whatever the

quality of the script. This is fed by Tom Maclntyre's dubious experi

| ment and, in a more conservative way

| by Branagh's 'Renaissance Theatre'. A good mainstream realistic produc tion is reckoned boring by such the atre goers. They like the script to be a

I vehicle for flashy acting, as it was in

Orphans. The final production at the Lyric

! (apart from the re-run of Da) was Brian Friel's The Loves of Cass

McGuire. This seemed to be another attempt to find a popular success, but it is surely one of Friel's weakest plays. Again, some intelligent friends enjoyed it. How is that possible? 'Good acting,' they said; but what is there to act? The play tackles two subjects together and explores nei ther in any depth. At first it is about a returned Yank whose rough habits, acquired in a miserable life-time in a

scruffy New York bar, gradually es trange the family that wanted to

welcome her. This never gets beyond stereotypes and cuches, and in the second half Cass has been moved into an old people's home where she at

first resists and finally succumbs to the habit of self delusion that keeps the inmates happy. The characters here have, if anything, less depth. An afternoon in any real old people's home would be more dramatic, liiere is a sort of crude comedy as Cass's

rough vocabulary and habits shock her refined family, but she is incredi bly dull, apart from one very funny joke abut a mean immigrant who doesn't send any money, but keeps the people at home informed about his promotions, each of which is 'a feather in my cap'. When he gets fired and asks for money to come home he is advised to 'stick the feathers up your ass and fly home'. If this is a Friel original he is to be congratu lated, but it isn't enough to keep a

play going. Given the duU script, the actors

came off with honour. Trudy KeUy has a massive presence and made us

feel the pain of being a drunk, lonely, stupid woman. Catherine Gibson was

marveUous as the geriatric mother.

Joe McPartland had plenty of fun as the old country man who actually escapes from the home, although he

might have strayed in from a kitchen comedy. Blanaid Irvine played Tr?be Costello with great panache, the humble born woman inventing an aristocratic life, but the part, as writ ten, was pure cuch?.

I can't make up my mind if Friel leans on quotations from Uterary texts creatively or desperately. His best play, Translations, seems to use

the Aeneid effectively. Some of the characters are Latin scholars, and

the passage potently suggests that Ireland has a blighted destiny: like

Troy, a powerful neighbour will push it into the sidings of history. In Cass

McGuire the long quoted passages from Tristan and Isolde fail misera

bly to add resonance.

The Lyric Theatre dominates drama in Belfast and in Ulster. As Charles Fitzgerald says, "it is our National Theatre." In that context it is less than distinguished, but at least it is back in business after the crises of last year. We should be thankful to Tom Jordan for doing a professional job, but that odd collection of Trus tees and Honorary Directors listed on

every programme seems chronically

page 14 UNEN HALL REVIEW 53

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.198 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:51:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

geared to not doing the one necessary deed, of employing a really talented Artistic Director and giving him/her a freehand.

I attended a press show which an nounced a great future for The Ulster

Actors, another curious committee,

supported by the Arts Council, that hopes to keep an alternative theatre alive in the Arts Theatre and the

Riverside, Coleraine. I think the province would be better served by an open policy of coordinating the three or four serious dramatic venues in the province. At the moment John Hewitt and other actors keep inventing new

companies, Actors Wilde etc., to put on ill-chosen, under rehearsed plays. The actors involved all appear at the Lyric regularly, except, oddly enough, B.J. Hogg. Looking over the cast lists there might well be enough local actors to keep two companies

going, one in Belfast, one in Coleraine or Derry, that would tour the prov ince and theatres in the South of Ire land. Such companies would have to include 'Charabanc' and Tield Day*.

How can a student company like 'Druid' become an international

force? Because it has a talented direc tor. Why is Charabanc an interna

tional excitement? Because of tal ented members and a distinctive pol icy. Both companies exist on shoe

string finance which gives a bad liv ing to the actors, but both have the qualities that The Lyric and other companies lack... they have talented

leadership and they mean business.

I haven't been to many Opera House productions; but I get the feel ing that the management are making a fair hand at coping with a difficult situation. They run successful musi

cals and whatever opera and ballet

come to hand. In between they host amateur finals, and distinguished touring companies, English and for

eign. One notable success has been

The Renaissance Theatre Company founded by Kenneth Branagh in

which actors direct each other and

Branagh, something like the old ac

tor-manager, is the star of each play, even if he isn't playing the biggest role. The company has come into ex

istence without government money.

They like to think of this being 'in defiance of Mrs Thatcher' but in fact it exemplifies the sort of enterprise that she seeks to encourage. This new

actor-manager is a very boyish figure that we have been used to seeing in realistic T.V. roles (the Billy plays,

Fortunes of War). It is a surprise to find that he has a big voice and ath letic movements on the live stage. I

remember being similarly surprised by Albert Finney. He was so good at

playing working class heroes that you thought that was the way he spoke and carried himself. What a surprise to find him commanding the stage of the National Theatre with a boom

ing home-counties voice. So it is with

Branagh. The Opera House was packed on

a Monday night for Branagh as Ham let. The set was simple, but effective.

There were three big red curtains that could hide or expose a sort of

metal balcony, and, downstage, a

number of black boxes. With this they could suggest battlements, bed rooms, graveyards without any delay for scene changing. The costumes

were turn of the century, so that Horatio wore a tweed coat and stu

dent scarf, Polonais a morning suit.

This also was admirable: you could see at once the latter was a diplomat and the former a student whereas we cannot interpret Elizabethan dress. It leaves some awkwardness where

the text refers to doublet and hose, but Shakespeare never worried about anachronisms. The whole production

was characterised by speed, clarity and intelligence.

There have been a lot of interest ing Hamlets in the last Twenty years.

My favourite has been Nicol William son, in the film, but these intelligent

friends that keep breaking my nerve don't know or don't remember, they want to go overboard about this new success. I hate them because they confuse any notion of standards.

They hate me because I don't go over board in the face of obvious success.

Branagh has lots of talent, but cheeky was the word that kept coming to my mind as I enjoyed this production. I could not but see him as taking on

j Olivier. He wasn't taking on the part. ! He had no deep emotional line

through the play. He and the director Derek Jacobi, being actors, may be

unused to seeing a play whole. Ol

ivier, who was a great actor, had

enough weight in his soul to impose some sort of interpretation on his famous films. His Hamlet is very Ughtweight, but it is coherent and

memorable.

Branagh's (Jacobi's) Hamlet is an entertainment of very high quality. Take the confrontation with the

ghost. Whatever they thought they were doing, the ghost is a comic voice, and Hamlet lying over on of the boxes,

miming the poison being poured into j his father's ear is laughable. It is

cheeky. In the final scene where Hamlet fences with Laertes I could j have sworn that Branagh was laugh- | ing as he laboured about the stage, j conversing with one, dispatching ? another. It is an almost impossible j scene to play.

| When I said it was an actor's de

light, I mean it was full of really funny and intelligent interpretations of

? individual moments. Some of them had real power. The following should influence all future productions of |

j Hamlet. They finish the first half with Ophelia's speech after Hamlet has roughed her up and sent her to a

nunnery because she has engaged him in conversation for the benefit of Claudius and Polonius. When Ham

let exits Ophelia utters a fairly con ventional lament over his decline but in this production she speaks the

lines with such passionate horror that it goes a long way to explaining her madness in later scenes: "O, what a noble mind is here o'er thrown_*

It was always a beautiful speech, but in this interpretation it carries a new weight. She really cares. She isn't saying that his behaviour is

unacceptable, she is going mad be cause the man she loves has been forced into madness

Branagh looks like Rupert Bear and has some of his adventurous qualities, but perhaps lacks his pas sion and integrity. He will do any thing that works. In the final scene

they have Fortinbras come on and usher all the remaining principles off stage to be executed, thus justifying the final line, "Go bid the soldiers shoot". This is plausible and more

interesting than most other endings I have seen. It is at once one of the most

memorable plays in the world, and the most impossible to cope with. You have to face up to that. There cannot be a definitive interpretation of Ham let. It is a flawed play. This should teach him to be kinder to flawed plays

written by contemporaries, but let them be ambitious and well written.

I missed Much Ado but I found Branagh a very amusing Touchstone

in As You Like It. Playing the part as a music hail comedian in a loud checked suit. This is very funny, so

much so that it unbalances the play, illustrated nicely by Touchstone sing ing (and sending up) the beautiful song meant for the two pages: "It was

a lover and his lass ..." On the same

principle Tarn Hoskyns as Rosalind is far too busy and hysterical for that subtle and beautifully written part

it would be curmudgeonly to only talk of the weaknesses of this produc tion. In many ways it was a joy. Most

of the actors do very well and the play runs forward as merry as a marriage bell.

As with Hamlet, and, by all re

ports, Much Ado, we are time and

time again amused or startled by

really good solutions to dramatic problems. Positive fruit perhaps of direction by really good actors with out previous experience of directing

? Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench and G?r

aldine McEwan, but for all that these

great players become weightless and

uncoordinated.

Branagh was quoted in the Sun

day Tribune as wanting the theatre to be 'a great night out'. His company have achieved that, but the attractive

energy and clarity are bought at a

price. It is Branagh's night out rather

than Shakespeare's but nonetheless

the challenge to other companies has

been made successfully.

james simmons

LINEN HALL REVIEW 53 page 15

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.198 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 05:51:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions