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Kamarck, Edward (ed.) / Arts in society: the arts of activism
(1969)
Rosenberg, James
Notes and discussion: looking for the third world: theatre report from England, pp. [437]-444
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Page 441
intellectual conceits which often does not survive translation into the flesh and blood of the theatre, and what it emerged as here was merely an illustration of the banality of the banal. If DR. FAUSTUS was ultimately a bore, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA could scarcely be called dull - although it has been called just about everything else - and those who saw it are not apt to quickly forget it. I count myself among its minority of admirers, only because it seems to me that the director - John Barton, in this case - fully accepted the implications of monstrousness, ugliness, and incompatibility in the text, whereas most directors, in dealing with this most intractable of plays, strive either to avoid or to reconcile them. I don't think I have ever seen such a successful manifestation of what I take to be Shakespeare's central thesis, that man's sexual and warlke natures are inextricably intertwined, both of them representing savage distortions of whatever is good in the human condition, and both of them ultimately lying beyond the reach of rational analysis. The result was scarcely a pleasant or comforting evening in the theatre, but it was in many ways an indelible one, and I am not put off by the fact that a large part of the box office support for this (in every sense of the word) queer production came from that segment of the population which has flocked to plays like ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE and THE STAIRCASE and THE BOYS IN THE BAND. It is well perhaps to be reminded that Shakespeare is not always square, dull, and a Classic, and that modern writers are breaking no new ground in portraying some of the great heroes of history as raging homosexuals and perverts in their private life. Here we have a sort of God's plenty of the world of the Marquis de Sade and Sacher-Masoch: a screaming faggot of an Achilles, in blonde wig and "drag" (and yet, curiously, in Alan Howard's portrayal, not altogether the grotesque caricature such a description might suggest); male warriors, both Greek and Trojan, parading about stripped down to G-strings; a Cressida who flits from romantic naivete to flaunting sluttishness, with no attempt to explain or to mediate between the disparities; a Thersites (by Norman Rodway, the Edmund of LEAR and the Don Pedro of MUCH ADO) whose emphasis is on ugliness rather than comedy; and a brilliantly-realized Pandarus 441 (by David Waller, a stolid Kent in LEAR and a disappointingly unfunny Dogberry in MUCH ADO, but here so marvelously "right" as to silence all criticism). Finally, though, the triumph of the Stratford season was, for me, their MUCH ADO, never one of my favorite plays, but here - in a gorgeously articulated and almost seamless production - adding up to that rarest of commodities on the current market: joy. I had never realized, until seeing this production, that the transition of Beatrice and Benedick from the adolescent world of kidding and badinage to the adult acceptance of the deathly seriousness of the Claudio-Hero plot could be, not just credible, but somehow moving, nor am I put off by those veteran Stratfordites who lament that Janet Suzman and Alan Howard fall pitiably short of the great days of Sir John Gielgud and Dame Peggy Ashcroft. I have a hunch that these same people will, in ten or twenty years, be complaining that MUCH ADO has lost much of the sparkle it had back in '68, in the great days of Dame Janet and Sir Alan! The ultimate triumph of this production, however, is that it in no way depends on individual performers or performances but is, in every sense of the word, a total vindication of that much- misused term, "ensemble acting," and in a way which is not true of any of the other RSC productions, so that what is often in danger of seeming like a rather silly and ill-constructed plot suddenly comes together to make perfect sense and to offer us a coherent, complete, and somehow tender view of the human condition. And what more, after all, can one ask? It may not be the greatest art, but it is so perfect of its kind as to make criticism sound like super-sophisticated carping. As for the National, the most interesting of their productions which I saw was their EDWARD 11 (Brecht, not the Marlowe), although their most prestigious success has undoubtedly been ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN. While this is clearly the most internationally successful British play since THE HOMECOMING - and each re-viewing of it increases my respect for it, and my feeling that there is something
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