#16. The Beaux' Stratagem

Susannah Fielding as Mrs Sullen
Photo by Manuel Harlan

The Beaux' Stratagem by George Farquhar
Premiere: Theatre Royal, Haymarket (now Her Majesty's - 8 March 1707)
Currently playing at the National Theatre.

George Farquhar's final play, written in the final days preceding his death, is a joyous romp by one of the great writers of the Restoration. It is currently playing at the Olivier in a strong revival directed by Simon Godwin, and led by Susannah Fielding and Samuel Barnett.

The Beaux', Mr Aimwell and Mr Archer, have lost their fortunes in the bristling city life of London, and hounded by their debts they have fled to Lichfield. Here they hatch their Stratagem; to pose as master and servant and find the richest lady possible in order to marry her for her money. Brilliantly, Aimwell and Archer meet their match in the women they set their sights on, Mrs Sullen and Dorinda. The Beaux' stratagem gets knocked off course when they end up truly in love with the women, one of whom is unhappily married to a drunk, and also manage to get mixed up with a crooked landlord and his highwayman pals, a stream of ambitious servants and a rather confused priest. Joyously, despite all of the chaos and confusion, love seems sure to win out in the end.

The difficulty in reviving this play is to rediscover the sense of shock that audiences of the time must have felt at the notion that a woman could have authority of her own.

It is a wordy, twisting plot that struggles to accelerate in the first act, but in the second act flies. Susannah Fielding as Mrs Sullen is reminiscent of Emmeline Pankhurst, although several hundred years her senior, in her rallying of the audience for support in her quest to have command of her own life. Fielding, quite rightly, has complete command of the audience, effortlessly whipping them up in her several soliloquies to the point where they cheer and applaud her sentiments. Samuel Barnett gives a fantastic performance as Aimwell, marrying faultless comedic timing with sincere hart and undying energy, paired with a light-footed Geoffrey Streatfield as Archer. Pearce Quigley's straight-faced performance is hilariously droll as the scene-stealing Scrub, the Sullen's overworked, under-appreciated servant, while Pippa Bennett-Warner holds her own as the charmingly youthful Dorinda.

Geoffrey Streatfield (Archer) & Samuel Barnett (Aimwell)
Photo by Manuel Harlan

Godwin makes impressive use of the playing space across Lizzie Clachan's three storey set, even if it is only using a fraction of the Olivier's huge stage. He finds the joy in the busy intimacy of the close downstage playing area, and relishes the opportunities to allow the cast to wink knowingly to the audience. Clachan's design is colourful and striking, and the transitions between scruffy inn and country manor as performed unaided by the cast are shrewd in their simplicity. The musical numbers, accompanied by conveniently conjured musicians, are a delight, and there is a fantastic song and dance number to round off a delightfully entertaining evening.

Farquhar's last play, when considered in context, is a testament to his fearless drive to innovate in his writing. In a radical shift to tradition, the conclusion is not with a double marriage, but with the celebration of a marriage and a divorce. After all, the notion of a woman divorcing, let alone the suggestion that she may remarry, was legally impossible at the time. The difficulty in reviving this play is to rediscover that sense of shock and surprise the audiences of the time must have felt at the notion that a woman could have authority of her own, and could leave the marriage of convenience to a powerful, wealthy man for real love. In absence of knowledge of this context as many of the audience will be (unless of course they read one of the wonderfully informative programmes the National are known for), the play loses some of its bite and gumption. Without this tension, the struggle of the women becomes quaint and nostalgic rather than admirable.

Certainly, Godwin's revival stands strongly as a witty comedy about the trials of love and respectability, and indeed is respectable for fairly presenting such a cross-section of society onstage. The energy and pace in the second act particularly whisks the audience up into the whirlwind of the strange manager of characters, and the pay off is worth the work. It is a shame, though, that the political and perhaps even revolutionary air of the play is lost in performance to an audience for whom divorce has become commonplace.

Pearce Quigley (Scrub) and Geoffrey Streatfield (Archer)
Photo by Manuel Harlan

Playing at the National Theatre until 20th September 2015. 
Tickets available here.

#11. Closer

Liza Walker (Alice) and Clive Owen (Dan) in
the original production (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

Closer by Patrick Marber
Premiere: Cottesloe, National Theatre, London 
(22 May 1997)

Published by Methuen Drama Modern Classics

Patrick Marber's second play, Closer, was impressively successful following its original run at the Cottesloe (recently renamed the Dorfman). It transferred first to the Lyttleton, then the West End and finally on to Broadway. A film adaptation also penned by Marber and several revivals internationally have followed. It has become renowned and respected as a modern classic. 

Marber's writting does indeed bear the hallmarks of genius. In a tight, brisk play he manages to articulately discuss a wide-reaching debate on the politics of sex and love. It is unsentimental and uncompromising, and I would suggest unparalleled in its enduring poignancy, power and relevance. 

There are only four characters in Marber's slick play, who perform what he calls a 'sexual square dance' caught between desire and betrayal. It is reminiscent of Pinter's Betrayal in its economy and scope, though differs in the sense that Pinter explicitly tool betrayal as his topic, while Marber explores all the sides of the war of attrition that these characters present as relationships. 

"Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words." Alice

His characters are observers, personified in their professions - Dan a writer, Anna a photographer and Larry a doctor - but also inherent in their nature. That is true except for the exception to all rules, Alice, a young stripper. It is perhaps truer to say that she is observed; the subject of the writer's book, the photographer's art and the doctor's diagnosis. But that, as a description, seems inadequate, as it somehow downgrades her to a position of inert powerlessness, which certainly isn't accurate. Alice knows she is observed and takes hold of it as her own, and finds an ability to stare her observers right back, square in the face. Perhaps, then, she is the one with the true power. But does anyone really win in this bloodbath? Ultimately, probably not.

Sally Dexter as Anna and Ciaran Hinds as Larry
(Photo: Tristram Kenton)

The characters in the play, like the Newton's Cradles often mentioned, constantly collide and swap partners. Through this cross-matching of couples, we see an incredibly diverse difference in the politics of relationships between different people. In the case of Alice, for instance, sex has become a monetary transaction. She is young, and perhaps most desperately in love with the idea of love. Alice becomes the magnetic force that seems to pull all the characters together in one way or another. Some of her one-liners, as if regurgitating learnt soulless epithets, are like those of a further disenchanted, disenfranchised Marilyn Monroe; "Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off. But it's better if you do." A wry humour rings out in her buried desire to self-destruct, underscored by a deep longing, a resoundingly painful wisdom. 

Marber's play is stylish and slick in its minimalism, and eminently quotable in its wit, but this belies a deeply felt and shrewdly observed piece that does not shy away from the grit and dirt of intensely passionate relationships. His characters are beautifully rounded, with no one coming out unscathed. Rhythmically, the piece storms on like a galloping horse. It is consistent in its power and brutal in its deftness and economy. 

Through the character of Dan, a failed novelist resigned to the Siberia of writing, the obituaries department of a newspaper, Marver communicated a sense of doubt. There is repeated questioning throughout the play of the ethical validity of Dan 'stealing' Alice's life for the subject of his novel - mirrored in Anna's work as a photographer. There are also some witty remarks about a writer's need for praise, and whether the mark of a good writer is that he isn't phased by it. Alice's appraisal of Dan's book is that he used bits of her; the only thing he left out was the truth. He even questions the importance or words themself when Alice confronts Dan with finality: "Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words." Marber could be questioning his own work, using his own experiences as the basis for much of his writing (not, of course, that Marber is short on praise today). There is something fascinating in this self-deprecating, self-referencing irony; it seems to leave it to the audience to decide what to take from the truth Marber presents onstage. 

Closer, appropriately canonised today, is without a doubt one of the best plays on the politics of sex and relationships written in recent decades. It is interesting when compared to Caryl Churchill's rather different Cloud Nine (recently covered on the blog), also a powerful consideration of sexual politics. Churchill's approach is satirical and overtly political in terms of the more generalised struggles between the sexes. Marber's play is more concerned with the internal politics of relationships, which echo loudly out from the pages of his succinct play to encompass many personal struggles in the modern age. In some ways, Marber's play is more haunting than Churchill's powerfully political play from the previous decade. 

Liza Walker (Alice) and Neil Pearson (Larry) in the 1998 West End transfer
(Photo: Tristram Kenton) 

Buy on Amazon here.

Double-Bill part two: #7. hang

hang by debbie tucker green

Premiere: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs (11 June 2015)

Published by NHB Modern Plays

Part two in the Royal Court double-bill is debbie tucker green's latest, hang. dtg has explored the victim-aggressor dynamic before, but here flips it on its head with the victim put in the position of power.

The play exists in an imagined near future under a system where victims get a say in the corporal punishment of the perpetrators of crime. dtg's characteristically succinct, taut play focussed on the meeting where Three, the unnamed victim of an unspoken crime, has come to formalise her decision determining how the convict will be executed. The script revels in the 'newspeak', hollow, jargon-laden conversations of inadequate pencil-pushing bureaucrats - who clumisily admit to indulging in roleplay to prepare themselves for these meetings. This meeting with the combative, impassioned Three, however, is nothing they were prepared for. 

From the very beginning of the piece, Three claims to have her mind made up, but it takes until the very end of the piece for her to finally follow through. Only after she has forced one of the two officials to go through the very fine points of each form of execution will she at last give up her choice. As such, it seems as though in fact she hasn't made her decision, but is too headstrong - accurately observed as an effect of the trauma inflicted on herself and her family - to allow herself to be influenced. The two officials simply want an answer and an easy life, while for Three it is a much bigger issue at hand and I would say there is a great deal of doubt surrounding her choice. This disconnect is wonderfully communicated, and keeping so much unknown does effectively create a certain tension.

debbie tucker green's play is precisely and meticulously structured, confidently articulating the complicated and emotional argument around corporal punishment and revenge.

The dialogue in dtg's script is incredibly rhythmic, almost like the rhythms of rap or sustained spoken word poetry. This is particularly evident in Three's longer, passionate speeches, which are remarkably moving. There is an impressive clarity in this play which holds its cards very close to its chest, only gradually revealing the whys and wherefores of the situation. 

Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Three) with Claire
Rushbrook (One) and Shane Zaza (Two)

There are some interesting differences between the published script and the performed production, most notably the very end of the play. Throughout, reference is made to the 'Chekhov's gun' style letter that has been written by Three's persecutor. Three won't read it until she's signed away her decision. In the script, she opens it in front of the two officials and tells us: "He's...sorry." Whereas in performance, she was left alone to read the letter and we never find out what is in it, simply seeing her hands shake and her eyes widen as she takes in what he has to say. The choice made for the performance seems more in line with dtg's stylistic decision to remain oblique, heightening the ambiguity about what exactly he's done to inspire such strong feelings from Three. The script, though, does give more of a sense of Three's own doubt and conscience - she will have to live with the decision she has just made about his death for the rest of her life. Both choices are effective, though the production perhaps more subtly so, in questioning the validity of notions of revenge in corporal punishment. It offers an exciting choice to directors in future productions, too!

debbie tucker green's play is precisely and meticulously structured, confidently articulating a very complicated and emotional argument about crime and corporal punishment. She has also written a tremendous female heroine, which there is a great dearth of in contemporary theatre - expertly performed by Marianne Jean-Baptiste in a tour de force turn at the Royal Court earlier this year directed by dtg herself. I really enjoy the sense of ambiguity in the piece, though it may suffer in political volume as its lack of cultural grounding doesn't directly place it within or in connection to any system we currently have. As a play about revenge, though, which has a much wider resonance, it is haunting.

Buy on Amazon here.

This double-bill of Royal Court plays was not a deliberate choice, but you will notice that many of the plays I will cover have premiered at the Royal Court at some time over the past few years. Both hang and Constellations are tremendous plays, offering fresh perspectives and new voices, and are testimony to the incredible work of the Court. Constellations has had a healthy commercial life in large-capacity houses across the globe since its premiere in the tiny Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. It is thanks to the Royal Court's ability to take risks, enabled by the subsidy they receive (comparatively small next to the behemoths of the National or the RSC), that our theatre culture remains so vibrant and that new playwrights have a platform to develop and stage their work. If ever there was a reason to fight the case of arts subsidy, the Royal Court is it. 

Visit the Royal Court website to find out more.