This is a richly satisfying trip. I only wish I had more energy. In spite of a flu bug I have managed to stay upright to attend the events laid on for us but I don’t have strength to spare for any additions.

Winter Solstice by Roland Schimmelpfennig, a play and playwright both unknown to me, were introduced to us at the Orange Tree Theatre, a small house in Richmond., by a cast of five who joined our group for a discussion after the performance. The production is bizarre: the “stage” (it’s sort of theatre in the square) seems set up for a read-through, the beginning of rehearsal, with rough trestle tables set around by good wheelie chairs and laid with water and paper cups, manuscript pages, odds and sods of stuff that will come to hand arbitrarily as whatever convenient prop needs to be handled. This becomes a challenge when, twice, they have to build a Christmas tree with found objects. Each actor has an assigned role but whoever is handy, it seems, reads the stage directions and the voice of a little girl, daughter of a couple in the play. The company told us they had a little trouble with this; they didn’t settle on who should read what until about four days before the opening when it seemed to sort itself out.

I’ve seen this casual approach to production before; it doesn’t seem to me to add profundity to what the actors are saying. Rather, it relieves the writer of the responsibility for a certain carelessness of expression. I’m old-fashioned; I still believe in the power of the spoken (written) word. Playwrights who upheave the order of events, as David Hare did this years ago now in Plenty, (1978) and others have copied, or who focus more on the set, as Robert Lepage did in Needles and Opium, (2013) or Nick Payne who let balloons and a revolving stage sub for involvement by an uninspired repetitive pair of actors in Constellations, (2012) have not done their homework. I know the plays I mention have won awards and prizes but what choices are there?

Winter Solstice, however, aside from giving the crew a break, is an interesting play with levels of interpretation that surfaced in the lively discussion with the cast. It’s not the first or last play with hidden political meaning. I still remember Friedrich Durrenmatt’s The Visit (1956) and actually saw it twice, once in Manitoba directed by John Hirsch, who was always political in his choices, and once at Stratford, directed, I think, by Jean Gascon. Actually, political sub-text began with the Greeks. I mean, look at Antigone.

So the week is flying by and I’ll still be dealing with this tour after I get home. I might have more time by then, certainly more energy.

blog for January 25, 2017

I saw Hedda Gabler this week, at the National Theatre, in London, and it is the major reason I came on this theatre tour arranged by the Stratford Festival.

I must say the arrangements are wonderful. Yesterday we were taken (by bus) for lunch at a country estate, about 3000 acres of land, accommodating horse breeding and tenant farming, this one in the same family (allowing for some morganatic descent) since the Domesday Book (16th century) and a neighbour of HighClere (aka Downton Abbey). This was a private negotiation through a family friend; the owners do not cater to tourists as a source of income. Lovely to visit and lunch was delicious but I wouldn’t want to live that life. How blessed we are!

I had seen Ibsen’s play twice before, set in a stuffed 19th century atmosphere, stifling enough to justify Hedda’s malaise. I had read of the Dutch director, Ivo van Tove, and his stunning , innovative directing style (Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, in New York last year, and then available on National Theatre cinema this past season), and I wanted to see what he did/does with Hedda. It’s not only the directing, of course it’s the set and design and script. Written in 1890, the play was a powerful piece of 19th century realism and Hedda became the female Hamlet role..

It is said that every age must translate for itself, and we tend to tinker with old scripts in English, too (except, of course, Shakespeare!), but respect often leaves a script smelling kind of musty or stale. Not this version of Hedda Gabler (2016) by Patrick Marber (English, 1964). I bought a copy but haven’t had a chance to read it yet, so I will probably have to report again when I have done so. What I saw was very much driven by van Tove but I think he and Merber developed their view of the play along the same wave length. VanTove had directed HeddaGabler twice before in New York and Amsterdam and he wanted his previous productions to accord with Marber’s script.. Marber says van Tove sketched the set deign and asked the playwright to write a script that would work for a modern-dress production in an almost empty space but that “could, in theory, be performed in period costume on a realistic set.” No updating, no slang, some editing (cutting?), some re-ordering of dialogue but “no further liberties.”

As I said, I haven’t read the script yet, but the production I saw was tight, gripping, harrowing, moving and modern. (So was Ibsen!) All theatre, as you know, is collaborative, so I must acknowledge the fine acting by the cast. We were privileged to listen to the actor Ruth Wilson, who played Hedda, in a pre-performance interview (ticketed) , talk about her work and preparation. Asked what was her chief direction given her by van Tove, she said that he told her to do what I always thought Brian Bedford used to do to perfection: to act – no, behave – as if every move and thought or speech had just occurred to her/him. I think that’s what made her so scary. You never knew what she was going to do next.

I’m leaving now for another play. Anon, anon.