I have strong memories of this one. Just one word in my log:
Superb.
It was a convoluted process getting to see it, as I was really suffering with my back knack when this production opened in London (October 1990; it had spent the spring and summer at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin).
Anyway, Bobbie and I sorted out some good tickets for just before Christmas and my goodness this one was worth seeing.
Excellent cast, including Brid Brennan, Stephen Dillane and Alec McCowen. In truth I don’t know Director Patrick Mason for anything else but he can come visit again.
I remember early the next year recommending it to a Dutch software developer, Gerard Mey, who was working on a project with me in London and asked me to recommend a show. I wondered if it was too challenging for someone who does not boast English as a first language. Gerard told me how much he enjoyed it, while admitting that he found some of the language difficult, but said that his head had been full of so many interesting thoughts and ideas since seeing it. That’s a recommendation in my book!
I’ll leave it to the experts to explain in their words just how good this show was.
Michael Billington spoke very highly of it in The Guardian
I’m very partial to Athol Fugard’s work, but thirty years on, I remember very little about this one. Even the log, which was only a few years after the event, says:
Little recollection, strangely.
I saw this with Bobbie Scully, who seemed keen to see Fugard with me back then. Janie also has a taste for his work.
I think the problem for me/us was that it was a story that pre-dated Nelson Mandela’s release but we were seeing it very soon after that momentous event. In that sense it felt a bit like old news, although of course the injustices and arguments depicted were still (are still) relevant.
…but for sure I got back to London in time to see this preview at the Cottesloe.
Bobbie might say, “more’s the pity”, as my log notes that Bobbie absolutely hated it. I merely found it long and hard to follow. That’s how I remember it and that is exactly what I wrote in my log.
Super cast – Tilda Swinton is always very watchable but does often do weird stuff. Also Aidan Gillen, latterly very well known indeed. David Bamber was in it too – thirty years on I tend to watch his son, Ethan, bowling for Middlesex instead.
The play is described as a dramatic poem in the English language text and/but it was basically a family drama.
I wrote the above piece on 14 February 2019, basically because it had been on my mind after writing up Music At Oxford a few days earlier. By strange coincidence, Bobbie Scully turned up at the Gresham Society Dinner that evening, as Iain Sutherland’s guest.
I mentioned the coincidence. Bobbie started to quiver with indignation:
I’d forgotten the name of that darned thing, but it was surely the very worst thing I have ever seen at the theatre…I think we walked out at half time…
…she said. Actually I don’t think we did walk out at half time. I’m sure I would have recorded that fact in my log whereas instead I recorded that the play was long and impenetrable.
I think we stuck it out tho the bitter end…
…I said. I also volunteered to dig deeper into the programme to see if there were in fact two halves.
Yes, there were two halves and they added up to a whopping three hours of hurt for Bobbie.
I’m not sure why we did stick it out. Perhaps I was still wet enough behind the ears to imagine t hat such a piece might yield in the second half all the answers it withheld in the first. I know not to do that now. Perhaps I was so tired and hungover from the joys of Oxford the night before I was reluctant to move on yet.
More likely, we had booked a late night eatery and jointly thought we might as well see the thing through rather than kick our heels somewhere.
Anyway, the whole experience clearly had a profound effect on Bobbie who was shaking with the trauma of recalling that evening and remembered it so well she even said…
…I seem to recall it was only on for a short run…
…which indeed it was.
Nearly 30 years on, Bobbie might wish to read the short essay from the programme too. The least I can do, upload the material, after all I put poor Bobbie through with regard to this play/production.
Postscript Two: Bobbie Chimes In With A Recovered Memory
An e-mail from Bobbie 24 hours after our encounter at the Gresham Society:
I was casting my mind back to that dreadful so-called play (it wasn’t, it was a string of tedious monologues) and had a recollection of being there after the interval in a (suddenly) half empty theatre. So I reckon that, although we did not leave at half time, about half the audience did.
And, indeed, I think that is why we stayed. We came out at the interval, intending to leave, but had pre-booked interval drinks to consume. As we did so, we watched more than half the audience exit the building. I think we went back out of sympathy/solidarity/courtesy towards the cast.
Does this ring any bells with you? Did we really watch the second half because we felt sorry for the actors? Personally, I can think of no other reason …
My response to Bobbie’s considered recollection was as follows:
Yes, we were young and foolish back then. We might well have stayed on for compassionate reasons. There’d be no such snowflake nonsense from this quarter these days. I do recall the second half seeming to drag to an even greater extent than the first half. I also remember an incredible sense of relief when the ordeal ended.
Postscript Three: Here’s a professional view…I don’t think Nicholas de Jongh in the Guardian exactly liked it either:
At the time of writing, strangely, I have recently seen Alun Armstrong again, I think for the first time in those 30 years, in The Cane at the Royal Court:
Billington on Lughnasa Wed, Oct 17, 1990 – 38 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
Coveney on Lughnasa Sun, May 6, 1990 – 57 · The Observer (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com
