Tag: Simon Kenny

Here In America by David Edgar, Orange Tree Theatre, 14 September 2024

Imagine politics in the USA embroiled in weird paranoia, obsessing about enemies within, making counterfactual accusations directed primarily towards people from migrant communities, with freedoms consequently being eroded by egotistical politicians.

But this isn’t a play about the Trumpian era; the play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s and the impact it had on the friendship between playwright Arthur Miller and director Elia Kazan.

I have been a fan of David Edgar’s plays since the mid 1980s, when I got busy reading every play I could get my hands on. In those days I was able to get my hands on a lot of David Edgar’s plays.

In the 80s and 90s I got to see several David Edgar plays performed, but he is not so prolific these days and not often revived in places that Janie and I tend to visit.

Still, like London buses, after a dearth of Edgars for several years, two new ones have come along at the same time: this one and The New Real, which we have booked to see in Stratford-Upon-Avon next month.

This one, Here In America, is just our sort of play – and this production at The Orange Tree is just our sort of production – we loved it.

I have long been fascinated by the phenomenon that became known as McCarthyism and in particular the impact it had on the performing arts. In 1952 Elia Kazan eventually agreed to name names rather than jeopardise his career, whereas Arthur Miller risked jail by refusing to name names when he was summoned to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954, around the time that Kazan was enhancing his career with films such as On The Waterfront:

In David Edgar’s hands, this story fizzes with political and interpersonal energy. The play is mostly dialogue between Kazan and Miller, with Kazan’s wife, Molly Day in a great many of the scenes. Several scenes also include Marilyn Monroe, who appears in Milleresque fashion, perhaps as flashbacks, perhaps as unreliable memories or perhaps as imaginings. Very reminiscent of such scenes in Miller plays, e.g. Death Of A Salesman. Very well done.

All the actors played their parts well: Michael Aloni (who struck us as very Arthur Miller-like), Jasmine Blackborow, Faye Castelow and Shaun Evans. Director James Dacre is also to be congratulated for making this multi-faceted play work extremely well within the limits of The Orange Tree’s small in-the-round space.

Janie and I left The Orange Tree with lots to discuss; many big-picture political matters, questions around loyalty to friends and also loyalty to loved ones. Both Kazan and Miller betrayed their wives with Marilyn Monroe and later, arguably, jointly betrayed Monroe’s memory through their work.

But before we left the auditorium, or rather as we were leaving, I was able to congratulate David Edgar in person. We were there on the first preview night for this show so it was hardly a surprise to spot him there. I asked him if Here In America and the forthcoming play The New Real are companion pieces.

Didn’t really think about it that way…but there are two lines that appear in both plays,

he said. I promised to form my own opinion on that question. I’m glad I had the opportunity to speak with David Edgar, albeit very briefly, having followed his work for so many decades.

The evening even generated a memory flash from 50 years ago, which I have written up in a separate Ogblog piece:

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I’ll Name Names, Tomorrow…Playing Call My Bluff In An English Class, Was It 1S Or 2AK? 1974 or 1975

It was a very memorable preview night in the theatre. I’ll add a review link once the play has been formally reviewed. It is running at The Orange Tree until 19 October. Highly recommended by both me and Janie.

Platinum by Hannah Patterson, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, 10 December 2016

Ged Ukulele Barefoot Ladd, not singing “This Land Is Your Land”

Hmm.

We very rarely see a dud downstairs at the Hampstead – Ed Hall’s project to put works on down there regularly has been a raging success as far as we are concerned.

But sadly, I feel obliged to report that this one, to us, was a dud.

The idea sounded great. An iconic 1970s protest songstress, now a recluse, with an estranged daughter and a fundamentally important secret about that iconic career.

Trouble is, that’s about it, plot-wise. The important secret has a rather “so what?”, tenuous feeling about it, while the motivation of the characters to behave as they do/had done in the past, if the secret was so important to them, was utterly dubious.

It was also difficult to care for even one of the three characters, each irritating in their own way: the iconic songstress, the estranged aspiring chanteuse daughter, and the Californian PhD student who has been studying the icon for six years only then to act as the catalyst for the wafer-thin plot to unfold.

Daisy nodded off about 20 minutes into the piece, once it became clear where it was (and wasn’t) going.

I persevered.

I wondered whether the PhD student’s explanation of protest song types, rhetorical and magnetic, was something the playwright had invented for him or whether it was an actual media studies/sociology course thing. Turns out it is the latter and that the explanation as expounded by the character can be found in the Wikipedia entry on protest songs under “types” and that this particular classification should be credited to the late R. Serge Denisoff, bless him.

The actors sang some protest songs along the way, closing with We Shall Overcome and at one point rendering This Land Is Your Land, quite well.

I rather like the latter song but Janie, tragically not steeped in media studies or the sociology of popular culture, perceives it as a nationalistic US song rather than Woody Guthrie’s intended protest song and has banned me from singing it on my ukulele in her presence. She should click the link I have added to the phrase This Land Is Your Land and look at some of the original lyrics. In particular, the verse that reads:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said ‘Private Property.’
But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.

…that verse might come back into fashion some time soon. But they didn’t sing that verse in this rather bland play. Pity.

A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee, Almeida Theatre, 7 May 2011

A stellar cast for this Edward Albee revival.

Here is a link to the Almeida resource for this production.

Of course it was wonderfully well acted and the production was excellent, but I recall not being too enamoured of the play. It was quite long and wordy. I think you are supposed to feel trapped by the play, much as the characters are trapped in their circumstances.

On the whole the critics loved it – here is a search term that finds reviews and stuff.

I have also found an interesting vid that shows how the Almeida team transformed the place from The Knot Of The Heart into A Delicate Balance: