Entertainment / Theatre

Our Day Out | Theatre review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Royal Court, LiverpoolThe success of Glee and High School Musical proves that groups of misfit teenagers singing and dancing their way to salvation are the stuff of global entertainment franchises. Except that Willy Russell had the same idea 30 years ago.Viewed alongside Russell's other creations, Our Day Out always seemed the runt of the litter. A tender-hearted but slightly awkward tale of a group of disadvantaged kids on a school outing, it became a youth-theatre fixture. Now it's back, in a completely revised version by Russell and director Bob Eaton. The result is a confident, through-composed musical with street-dancing, rapping, live penguins and a llama. It's a measure of the show's ambition that not only are the vast majority of the cast local under-16s, they even filch a hoard of real animals from the zoo.Best of all, this show has acquired its sleek new look without sacrificing any of its soul, although it may be susceptible to what could be called the Glee conundrum - whereby the supposedly ostracised kids turn out to be the most staggeringly talented. Yet Eaton's production feels well crafted without being manufactured; its success comes down to the energy of a young ensemble giving everything they've got.The adults have their work cut out to match them, but there's a beatific performance from Pauline Daniels as the teacher who recognises that a day out in Wales is a poor palliative for the broken homes many of her charges will return to. Rarely has a school bus trip been so transporting.Rating: 5/5Willy RussellTheatreAlfred Hicklingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Communicating Doors | Theatre review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Stephen Joseph, ScarboroughThree women have urgent business in a smart hotel suite. One of them has narrowly escaped being murdered, one is about to be murdered, and the other was murdered two decades before. Impossible? Not in this establishment, where, instead of connecting to an adjacent room, the door in the corner leads back to the same suite 20 years earlier.First presented in 1994, this time-warp thriller was one of the first plays in which Alan Ayckbourn allowed the inspiration behind his adult comedies and children's writing to fuse; it might be said to mark his adolescent phase, as it combines elements of the science-fiction he devoured beneath the bedcovers at boarding school with the film noir classics he loved in his youth.The scenario might even have had Hitchcock scratching his head: an elderly businessman with a bad conscience summons a prostitute to his hotel room to witness his confession, before a sinister henchman tries to silence her. She escapes through the time-space continuum and comes face to face with a previous victim of the person she is fleeing. Together, they devise a plot to travel further back in time to warn a third woman whose life is in danger, before it is too late - or possibly before it is too soon. It can be difficult keeping track.The conceit holds together because it adheres to the rigorous internal logic Ayckbourn applies to his finest children's fantasies, in which time travel is relatively commonplace. But the format also provides the basis for a deeply perceptive exploration of three women whose radically different lives suddenly become dependent on each other.Laura Doddington is touching as the world's most easily intimidated dominatrix, Poopay ("It's French for a doll," she declares). Laura Howard looks suitably perturbed as a young bride interrupted on her wedding night by someone from the future announcing that her husband is a murderer. And Liza Goddard's fiftysomething Ruella takes a delightfully pragmatic view of the romantic possibilities of winding back the clock. "Don't be ridiculous," she says. "No woman in their right mind would want to revisit her honeymoon."Ayckbourn's production sometimes stretches credulity: it is hard to imagine a five-star hotel that does not refurbish its rooms once in 40 years; but it whets the appetite for a piece in which the characters in an Ayckbourn revival stumble across a group of actors playing the same roles in the original production. Now there would be a conundrum.Rating: 4/5Alan AyckbournTheatreAlfred Hicklingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Why can't playwrights feel free to be political?

arts.guardian.co.uk - Athol Fugard is right: too many playwrights are under pressure to give the audience a good night outIn Monday's Guardian, political playwright Athol Fugard voiced a concern that dramatists are "failing to confront issues of injustice, writing instead for attention spans of 10 minutes between adverts". Monday was also the first day of rehearsal for my play Ugly, which deals frankly with the issue of climate change - it's set in a future where food and water are scarce - and is the most political work I've ever done. So part of me wants to disagree with Fugard. Only, in my heart, I think he's got a point.I don't think there is enough seriously engaged or oppositional theatre being made. But why does it feel so difficult to do political work when we're living through one of the most critical periods of human history? I suspect the answer may have something to do with a desire (of audiences and theatre-makers alike) to look for distraction rather than reflections of our frightening reality. And, I recognise an urge to self-censor, too. I found writing Ugly difficult because, while I've come to a point where I believe that the only way to confront climate change is to work for radical, systemic change, I'm fearful that by admitting this, I'll be closing my writing career down - that I'll be suspected of being too intense, and not a good laugh. I guess other writers may also sense the prevailing mood out there is: "Keep it light: if you must be informed, be ironic, and most importantly be non-committal about everything, other than the fact that paedophilia is evil." Writing Ugly became a battle against those self-censoring urges.How to talk about issues without preaching? No audience wants to be handed a manifesto when they come to the theatre. But if political theatre doesn't produce some kind of action, what's the point? I had to remind myself that I don't have to have the answers: writing a play is about creating a drama, which in its unfolding makes space for questions. The stage is one of the few places left where it is still possible to inspire challenging and exciting conversation. Writing this play became about attempting to chew on some big questions, while hoping that I wouldn't choke during the process.But isn't theatre about giving people a smashing night out? Shouldn't writers entertain? Is it possible to do that when you're writing a dark-as-night comedy about - among other things - a disgraced home economics teacher who survives by selling her body and her memories of the meals she once cooked, when food was not scarce? After a lot of soul-searching, I realised the answer is yes. The bar is not lower when we make political work, it is higher. Entertainment and engagement is my aim for Ugly. As for finding hope in all of this? I believe that lies with the audience. One of the things I love about working with Red Ladder theatre company is that their shows always have a forum for discussion after the performance. During these, I hope people will feel inspired to share their thoughts. I also hope that some will feel inspired enough to take those thoughts back into their lives and turn them into action. But, I have no interest in telling people what to do. For me, the show has done its job if it gets people thinking and discussing.I think Athol Fugard has a good point, for all that he overlooks plenty of examples of provocative and political work. For writers and theatre companies everywhere, perhaps his words are a wake-up call. Not only do we need to do this work, but maybe we need to get better at letting people know about it.Theatreguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Five stars in their eyes: can you trust unpaid theatre critics? | Bella Todd

arts.guardian.co.uk - Everyone's a critic these days - so how do you sort the wheat from the chaff? And who is reviewing the reviewers?A few years ago, at a weird corporate dinner, an actor from a satirical sketch show turned to me and said, "I've always wondered, what exactly are your credentials to review me?" I could have obligingly set out my career path. I could have argued that the qualities qualifying a reviewer to review are as ultimately unquantifiable as hers to sit on stage naked in a bathtub doing impressions of the Queen. I could have reassured her that I made a point of never reviewing people I'd sat with at weird corporate dinners. Instead, in the absence of a critic's exam certificate, I said: "Yes, I see what you mean." I remembered this while reading the Scotsman's recent article about an apparently suspect glut of four- and five-star reviews at this year's Edinburgh festival, which has led many to pose the question - who is reviewing the reviewers? A new body has now been set up to do just that. Festival Media Network, a trade organisation for independent media covering the Edinburgh festival, hopes among other aims to establish a code of best practice for reviewers, with numbered passes that can be used to verify the holder's membership.Declaring conflicts of interest, striving for objectivity, promising to post a review within a reasonable timeframe, agreeing on pain of death not to use the phrase "a good time was had by all" - these should be established standards for any reviewer. The only question for me is: why aren't we talking about rolling such a network out across the country?It used to be that the name of your publication stood your credentials to both artists and audiences. But theatre review websites have proliferated in the past few years, and with them the numbers of critics vying for readers' time and venues' tickets. Culture Wars and the Arts Desk are both staffed by professional critics, some of them ex- or current newspaper writers. Fringe Review, which reviews in London, Edinburgh, Brighton and internationally, uses a combination of theatre practitioners and journalists. Three Weeks, which has also sprouted roots far outside Edinburgh, is a training ground for mostly student writers. Since 2006, something called the Public Reviews has been taking this all to its logical conclusion, on an international scale, by vetting theatre reviews by members of the public.One member of staff at a small London pub theatre told me she'd had five reviewers call for tickets one week but recognised the name of only one publication. (One, she thought, had said they were from something called "Kangaroo Reviews", suggesting either an Australian zine with a particular interest in the work of Frank McGuinness, or that cash-strapped drama students are getting cockier). Even if a reviewer writes for a well-known publication, there's no quick way of guaranteeing they're an experienced professional rather than a volunteer enthusiast: financially squeezed regional newspapers in particular are supplementing their professional review teams with unpaid amateur critics.You may be able to tell within the first few lines of a review if the author is someone in whom you would place your trust (basically, don't fork out on a theatre ticket on the basis of one that starts "Walking into the foyer of the theatre, I …" or, possibly, "G'day, Mr McGuinness …"). But the majority of reviews aren't consumed in this way - they reach us stripped down to a line, or simply a star rating, on a piece of promo. How seriously should you take those five stars from the unknown website with no declared policy? Or the solitary star from the person who could, for all you know, be the director's arch-enemy?The truth is, most of these review organisations aren't out there to wangle free theatre tickets or turn their friends' flyers into minor constellations: they're there to do a useful job. In Brighton, sites such as Three Weeks and Fringe Review have been welcomed with open arms by a fringe that has been underserved by the mainstream press. And their reviews often bring good shows to the attention of high-profile critics. At the moment, it's too easy for more established organisations to turn their noses up and not acknowledge them. So maybe, if amateur reviewers were more organised - even with a formal code of practice - then they could be the ones who benefit most.TheatreEdinburgh festivalFringe theatreBella Toddguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Behind the curtain: backstage at the Edinburgh festival

arts.guardian.co.uk - Photographer Claudine Quinn was given exclusive access behind the scenes at this year's Edinburgh festival, and snapped everything from the cast of Montezuma playing golf in full costume to technicians setting up the Playhouse theatre for The Gospel at Colonus More... (Theatre)

Extra Almeida ticket offer

arts.guardian.co.uk - The Almeida in London's Islington is staging the world premiere adaptation of David Mamet's award-winning film, House of Games. Extra members can win two free tickets.Stepping in to help one of her patients settle his gambling debts, psychoanalyst Margaret Ford is drawn into the seedy underworld of the House of Games poker club. Seduced by charismatic hustler Mike and gripped by the thrill of the con, Margaret quickly becomes entangled in a fast-paced thriller.Richard Bean's adaptation of David Mamet's House of Games at the Almeida in Islington is directed by Lindsey Posner. The cast includes Nancy Carroll, Amanda Drew and Michael Landes.Extra members can win one of two pairs of tickets to attend a 7.30pm performance between 9 and 15 September, subject to availability. The prize includes one free programme and two free drinks (house wine, beer or soft drink).The closing date for entries is 7 SeptemberClick here to enter this competitionHELP WITH OFFERS, EVENTS AND COMPETITIONSYou need to be a member of Extra in order to enter a competition.You can sign up hereYou need to sign into guardian.co.uk at the top left of the screen to enter competitions.Almeida Theatreguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Carrington: what a carry-on | Reel history

arts.guardian.co.uk - There's an awful lot of clothes shed and souls bared in Christopher Hampton's biopic of the Bloomsbury artist, but precious little is actually revealedDirector: Christopher HamptonEntertainment grade: CHistory grade: A-Dora Carrington was an early 20th century artist. She was connected to the Bloomsbury Set through her relationship with the writer Lytton Strachey.RomanceLytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce) arrives at Charleston in Sussex for a house party. "Who on earth is that ravishing boy?" he murmurs, looking out of the window. It's not a boy at all, but Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson), wearing trousers and a Prince Valiant haircut. So begins the unlikely romance between one of the most openly gay men in Britain at the time, and a bisexual woman. Not that you'd know she was bisexual from this movie - Carrington's affairs with women have been left out. "I wish I'd been a boy," she sighs to Strachey. "You have such lovely ears," he says, and kisses her. She shoves him away, shouting: "Don't! Stop it! Would you mind not!" "Sorry," he mutters. Ah, posh British courtship. For some reason, she's all over him a few scenes later. Perhaps the line about her ears took a while to sink in.PeopleStanding as a large, angry obstacle to Carrington and Strachey's relationship is the artist Mark Gertler (Rufus Sewell), who appears to believe that it's his right to have sex with Carrington because he wants to. She prefers Strachey. "But he's just a disgusting pervert!" protests Gertler. "You always have to put up with something," she says. Meanwhile, Strachey attempts to get out of serving in World War I by becoming a conscientious objector. "Would you care to tell us what you would do if you saw a German soldier raping your sister?" asks the military representative on the tribunal. "I believe I should attempt to come between them," replies Strachey, archly. Which is less funny than the real line he came out with, as his biographer has it: "I should try and interpose my own body." Still, the sentiment is accurate. Strachey was eventually disqualified from service on medical grounds.SexStrachey and Carrington move to the country together. They both take a lover, Ralph Partridge, and Carrington eventually marries him. Then she moves on to her husband's best friend. All of this is more or less as it happened, but soon there is so much tortured bed-hopping and half-stifled jealousy in the film that there's almost nothing else. Much though the Bloomsbury Set and its affiliates are famed for putting it about, they did occasionally do other stuff, such as writing books or painting pictures. Once or twice, Strachey refers offhandedly to his most famous work, Eminent Victorians. Carrington fiddles around with canvases and brushes. Despite powerful performances by Pryce and Thompson, though, the film's blinkered obsession with the sexual neuroses of Strachey and Carrington soon becomes tiresome. DeathFinally, Strachey, Carrington and their menagerie of lovers move into Ham Spray House in Wiltshire, surely the house with the yuckiest name in England. Maybe Dunroamin was already taken. Amid the opulence, yet more sexual neuroses ensue. By this point, even the most bohemian viewer is probably seeing the virtue of having a nice, sensible, conventional relationship with just one other person. Strachey is soon bedridden with undiagnosed stomach cancer. "If this is dying, I don't think much of it," he snaps, and expires. An accurate quote from the man himself, and some of the best last words in history. Carrington is unable to live without him. She attempts suicide by shooting herself in the heart with a shotgun. The film implies that it worked, rolling credits straight after the gunshot. It didn't. She missed her heart, sustained a horrible wound to her side, and was found by the gardener. Carrington lived for half a day in what must have been awful pain, apologising to her aghast friends through a haze of morphia. So don't try this at home. Really, don't.VerdictDrawing extensively on its subjects' diaries and letters, Carrington is certainly an accurate historical movie - but not a particularly revealing one.Emma ThompsonChristopher HamptonAlex von Tunzelmannguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Young at art: what the arts cuts mean for young people | Trisha Andres

arts.guardian.co.uk - A defence of arts funding should be accompanied by careful thought about the smartest ways to engage the young in cultureThe comprehensive spending review may not take place till October, but already a number of schemes and programmes designed to engage children and young people in the arts have been scrapped or curtailed, sent to the back of the priority list.A Night Less Ordinary, Find Your Talent and the future jobs fund have all taken a hit - with no certain future funding or suitable replacements. Even smaller-scale projects such as the Royal Shakespeare Company's arts journalist bursary scheme, which aims to provide professional development for young journalists who can help the RSC reach young audiences, have been axed. This year may be the programme's last, unless the RSC manages to find a private donor.For all their flaws and imperfections such schemes are not only well-intentioned, they also offer real opportunity and access. So what does their demise mean for young people?The swingeing cuts to come at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport are considerable - up to 40% - and could leave education and outreach programmes for young people severely neglected. Lobbying against such a threat is imperative, but I'd argue that the cuts may also provide an opportunity to examine existing projects and devise imaginative funding models to ensure that programmes aren't only adequately provisioned, but thoughtfully considered. The A Night Less Ordinary scheme, Arts Council England's (ACE) free theatre ticket scheme for under-26-year-olds, may have a few detractors (Margaret Hodge admitted that its rollout was "rushed") but it has nonetheless provided young people with access to art. It could have eventually been altered or improved after an assessment period.Rajiv Nathwani, a 22-year-old founding member of Theatre Ninjas - a website and iPhone app that allows theatres to offer last-minute free tickets for their shows at the Edinburgh Fringe festival - argues that the ACE scheme could have been better targeted and publicised:"The implementation seems to have been rushed and therefore its impact has failed to be meaningful. Instead of theatres linking up with, say, volunteer organisations, schools, colleges and pupil referral units to try and bring in new audiences, they have instead rewarded regular playgoers like myself with many free tickets." Still, Nathwani maintains the scheme was beneficial, albeit in need of major tweaking.Meanwhile, Find Your Talent, the government's pilot cultural offering for children and young people run by Creativity, Culture and Education (CCE), helped young people gain practical work-experience in the creative industries and develop artistic skills (such as playing a musical instrument or performing on stage). Paul Collard, chief executive of CCE, says "the real implications of the discontinuation of schemes like Find Your Talent will not become clear until the comprehensive spending review in autumn. The government may decide to substitute these programmes with their own initiatives, or it may end up being a whole failed retrenchment that the government has engaged in."With the future jobs fund slashed, it isn't just cultural education that is suffering; the hopes of many young people wishing to enter the creative industries have also been dashed. The abolition of the fund, which provided paid work experience for young people who were struggling to find employment, means that youngsters keen on getting into the creative industries but devoid of connections or funds to work for free will now find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to get their foot in the door - unless the government finds a suitable replacement to the scheme.But Ryan Murray, a 22-year-old member of Tate Britain's youth forum believes that "the cuts will force us to be creative. It will be a matter of where and how arts organisations will find the money. However and wherever the funding comes from, as long as we ensure there is funding to achieve the main objective of inspiring young people and engaging them in arts and culture, then we've done our job."Now is the time to develop not just an offensive (anti-cuts) strategy, but also a defensive one. What are the lessons learned from the previous schemes? How can we better target the right audience? In this age of austerity, creativity and imagination are also key: are there new and better models of funding programmes for the young?Arts fundingArts policyYoung peopleTheatreTrisha Andresguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

The new Stratford theatre: a jam factory full of treasures

arts.guardian.co.uk - The old, three-tiered auditorium reflected the class structures of its age; the new one will, one trusts, be a more democratic spaceThe old order changeth, and rightly so. The new theatre promises a radical revamp of Elisabeth Scott's 1932 original: a vilified, endlessly adapted building which, even when it opened, was described as a jam factory and a tomb. Early on, when it had an orchestra pit, an old actor famously said that playing on the Memorial Theatre stage was "like addressing Boulogne from Folkestone, though on a fine June night you could distinctly see the front stalls in the distance".Yet you can't divorce a theatre from its memories; and, whatever its handicaps, the theatre housed great work. I was first taken there, as an eight-year-old in 1948, to see, of all things, Troilus and Cressida with Paul Scofield: good seats, wonderful experience.Later, having endured the ghastly back-row balcony on school trips, I realised that for a half-a-crown (this was the mid 1950s) you could stand at the back of the stalls. From that perch I was lucky enough to see Olivier's Macbeth and Titus Andronicus, Redgrave's Hamlet and Mark Antony, Ashcroft's Cleopatra and Imogen: life-changing experiences that, I suspect, instilled the urge to write about theatre.So I have mixed feelings about the old theatre: it may have been a red-brick fortress but it was filled with treasures. Over the years, it's had countless changes at the hands of successive RSC directors, with the stage reaching out ever further into the auditorium. But the action always had to be visible to the upper balcony. Now, thanks to the new architects, all that has gone. Scott's three-tiered auditorium reflected the class structures of an age where the least well-off got the worst deal: the new Stratford will, one trusts, be a more democratic, open space. All we need are the great productions and performances to challenge the ghosts of the past.TheatreWilliam ShakespeareMichael Billingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Royal Shakespeare Company prepares to open theatre after £112.8m revamp

arts.guardian.co.uk - Royal Shakespeare Theatre will open after three and a half years with major facelift, better seating and more ladies' loosThe Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, whose doors have been closed for three and a half years for a £112.8m refurbishment, will reopen this November. When it does, according to the Royal Shakespeare Company's artistic director, Michael Boyd, the revamped theatre will provide "the best auditorium for performing Shakespeare anywhere".For Shakespeare fans, the facelift is long overdue. The old theatre was locally nicknamed "the jam factory" for its industrial appearance, while an unsightly car park ruined its handsome 1930s frontage by architect Elisabeth Scott. "It was," said Rab Bennetts of Bennetts Associates, the architectural practice that has overseen the redevelopment, "a hostile building that turned its back on the town".And that was before you got inside: some seats were as far as 37 metres away from the stage - a distance that has now halved. The "furthest seat" will remain in situ, in a spot now part of the restaurant, as a reminder of the bad old days.Female members of the audience, in particular, will have cause to rejoice come November: the number of ladies' lavatories has increased from 19 to 47.Best of all, the redevelopment will come in on time and on budget, according to Boyd. There is £5m yet to raise, but Vikki Heywood, the RSC's executive director, said she was confident it would come in the next five months from "individuals and charitable trusts to whom we have been talking for a while".The new theatre, with its high running costs, will open at a time of cuts to public funding of the arts which could be as deep as 25%. Though it is recruiting for jobs with the new theatre, the RSC has frozen pay for existing staff. Boyd said he was hoping the new shop, restaurant, cafe and bar would all provide revenue.The main theatre and the smaller stage, the Swan, will open to the public from 24 November for visits and one-off events including a version of Shakespeare's sonnets by the director Peter Brook, who created some of his most celebrated productions for the RSC between 1950 and 1970.In February, full-scale performances will start, with revivals of Rupert Goold's production of Romeo and Juliet, and David Farr's King Lear, with Greg Hicks in the title role. At the Swan, the Irish cabaret singer Camille O'Sullivan will perform a new version of Shakespeare's poem, The Rape of Lucrece. Meanwhile, the temporary auditorium, the Courtyard Theatre, will still be up and running. Opening there in November will be a new musical, Matilda, an adaptation of the Roald Dahl story. Its book is by playwright Dennis Kelly, with lyrics and music by the comic and musician Tim Minchin.The first large-scale new work to appear on the 1,000-seat main stage from the spring will be announced in November, when the company finalises plans for its 50th anniversary from April 2011 onwards. Aside from (of course) Shakespeare, Boyd said the company would restage some of the plays the company has commissioned over its half-century, mentioning in particular founding director Peter Hall's affinity with the late Harold Pinter.Boyd said he thought Matilda, A Musical "might have legs, and we hope it will". A show in the West End and even on Broadway would significantly help the RSC through a period of austerity.In addition, said Boyd, the theatre would "celebrate things that screen art cannot: the desire to witness and share a gathering of a community in real space and real time. And it achieves three dimensions in a way that Hollywood is desperately trying to achieve. We have 3D in our bones."Royal Shakespeare CompanyTheatreArchitectureArts fundingCharlotte Higginsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Shining City | Theatre review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Theatre-by-the-Lake, KeswickA plainly dressed man in a poky attic flat is expecting a visitor. The bell rings, so he buzzes the caller in. Then he tries again. Then he trudges down four flights of stairs to open the door himself.Like the building's temperamental entry phone, Conor McPherson's play is a little difficult to get into at first. Its five scenes appear only randomly connected, while the narrative mostly tumbles out in the form of a jittery, perspiring monologue by a middle-aged salesman who has come to the depressing Dublin flat for counselling. He recently lost his wife in traumatic circumstances and now thinks he sees her shadow around the house. Our job, it seems, is to share the therapist's incredulity. By the end, you're not so sure.McPherson's 2004 drama is the best kind of ghost story: the sort in which there are apparently no ghosts - at least, none that it would be fair to reveal without spoiling a denouement that doesn't chill the blood so much as stick it in a deep freeze. But it's not really a play about spooks so much as a compassionate study of how fallible, guilt-ridden people manage to haunt themselves.McPherson is one of the few writers who can make inarticulacy sound poetic - Robert Calvert's troubled patient prefers the rising cadence "you know?" in place of full stops. But Zoe Waterman's meticulously observed production captures the deep revelation and curious banality of the therapy scenario: the artfully placed tissues, the cautiously leading questions. Though the spectre in the room may or may not be imaginary, the effect is truly haunting.In rep until 5 November. Box office: 017687 74411. Rating: 4/5Conor McPhersonTheatreAlfred Hicklingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Doug Stanhope | Comedy review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Leicester Square Theatre, LondonThe last time US comic Doug Stanhope performed in London, he phoned his sick mum from the stage to check if she was dead yet. This time he tells us, with jokes, how he recently assisted her suicide. Stanhope blasts a hole through to the existential void. If he's no longer the bruised, idealistic firebrand of five years ago, he still dredges electrifying comedy from the badlands of unsentimental despair.Tonight's best routine, as tragic as it is hilarious, is about Stanhope's impotence as a comedian. He no longer has "social relevance", he tells us, because he spent years trying to right the world's wrongs, and nothing changed. Cue a jeering roleplay in which Stanhope plays his fans endorsing his opinions, then cravenly excusing themselves for not putting them in to practice. Stanhope hates their pusillanimity, and hates himself for wishing to change things. In this feedback loop of pointless loathing, a dark laughter thrives.It's because he's lost hope, says Stanhope, that his standup is getting worse. I wish I could persuade him otherwise. After all, he clearly still cares. In his comments, say, about comedian Mitch Hedberg's death from heroin ("It killed him, but it didn't destroy his life"), his passion is manifest. But so is his cynicism - most depressingly, in an old routine about manipulative women and their violent men. One breathtaking rant, in which Stanhope vents his everyday frustrations with the use of castor oil, a rat cage and a spinning dildo, reminds us of the freewheeling articulacy of which this still-thrilling comic is capable.Until 11 September. Box office: 0844 847 2475. Rating: 4/5ComedyBrian Loganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

White | Edinburgh Theatre review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Traverse @ Scottish Book TrustThere is something a little odd about seeing a show intended for two to four-year-olds and finding that the audience is comprised almost entirely of adults, but this delightful show from Catherine Wheels is a really grown-up piece of theatre with strong absurdist overtones. There is more than a touch of Godot's tramps in Cotton and Wrinkle, custodians of a dazzling white world where every day they polish the little white houses on stilts, and each other, while waiting for an egg to drop."Now?" asks Cotton. "Not now. Soon," replies Wrinkle. But change is in the air, and when Cotton catches a red egg, Wrinkle insists that it's thrown in the bin. At night, Cotton retrieves the rogue and soon hints of colour are invading the white landscape. A tap, which moos like a cow, delivers blue milk; Wrinkle's hat bobble turns pink, and Cotton's white comb is yellow.If this is some kind of creeping infection, it is a benign and often giggly joyous one that eventually floods the stage with pulsating colour and showers the audience with brightly coloured confetti. Just as oranges are not the only fruit, white is not the only hue in this playful show that not only introduces the concept of colour, but also that of change and transformation.Cotton and Wrinkle are discombobulated by the arrival of glowing pinks and oranges, but soon embrace the pleasure of variety. This is a beautifully acted and neatly thought-out show, as cleverly executed as a conjuring trick - and a reminder why this Scottish company is an innovator in children's theatre.At Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford (01865 305305), 25 September. Then touring.Rating: 4/5TheatreLyn Gardnerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Billy Liar - still in town

arts.guardian.co.uk - Billy Liar, a story of smalltown frustration, captivated a generation, pre-empted the 60s - and even inspired Oasis. As the stage play returns, Laura Barton asks Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie why it endures'I don't think about Billy Liar very often." Tom Courtenay's voice hovers on the line. We have been discussing his upcoming holiday to the north-east coast, splashing about in the warm shallows of the present-day; at this detour into the past, he pauses, and retreats a little. "If I read it now, it would make me laugh," he concludes lightly, distantly. "But I honestly don't know why it's lasted. Who can say why some things are successful?"It is now 50 years since Keith Waterhouse's novel transferred to the stage, casting in its title role first Albert Finney and later, Courtenay. Published in 1959, Billy Liar has, over those five decades, enjoyed a rich and varied existence, remembered not only as a novel and a play, but also as a film (again starring Courtenay), a musical and a TV series. This Saturday will see it revived once more, in a lavish stage adaptation at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.Crucially, Billy Liar's longevity is not an example of a tale that is told and told again with a dulling faithfulness; rather, the long life of Billy Liar is a story of reincarnation, of each new generation seizing upon the tale afresh and making the story its own. Its influence may be felt in half a century of creative endeavour, in drama and literature and film, and, perhaps most keenly, in popular music: referenced, for instance, in the video for the Oasis single The Importance of Being Idle, and in a song by the Decemberists, and popping up, too, in many of Morrissey's lyrics, including the Smiths' 1984 hit William, It Was Really Nothing.Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton, Billy Liar tells of a young undertaker's clerk named William "Billy" Fisher. Billy, still living at home with his parents, is bored of his small-town existence, and in an effort to bring a little colour to his life tells lies - from the trifling and relatively inconsequential (the goings-on in the mythical world of Ambrosia, for instance), to the overblown, compulsive whoppers (this rather loose grasp of the truth leads him to be simultaneously engaged to two women).Meanwhile, Billy dreams of moving away to the city and becoming a successful comedy writer - though he has yet to summon the courage to actually do anything about it. "Today's a day of big decisions," he announces at one point. "Going to start writing me novel - 2,000 words every day. Going to start getting up in the morning." And then he looks at his overgrown thumbnail. "I'll cut that for a start," he decides. "Yes . . . today's a day of big decisions." It is a story that is funny, and familiar, but also tremendously sad, and not without sweetness."It's terribly exciting, in lots of ways, to unearth this beautiful play, to unearth beautifulness every day in rehearsal," says Nick Bagnall, director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse production of Billy Liar. It is, he points out, now a year since the death of Waterhouse, and so a revival of the play (co-written by Willis Hall, who died in 2005) seems a fine tribute. And that it has enjoyed such longevity and so much reinterpretation should not come as a surprise, Bagnall believes. "The language is warm and muscular, it's tender, and honest. And the character of Billy Liar is one that we all have inside us."For all Courtenay's reticence, his passion for the character of Billy is still tangible. He took on the role at the age of 23, a young actor who had himself left Yorkshire to pursue his own dreams. "I'd seen Billy Liar more than once," he says. "I loved it. It was something I knew about. It was a graphic illustration of how we lived. Billy Liar was in every molecule of my body."Courtenay's own upbringing, as a working-class boy from Hull, was not wildly different to that of Billy. "It was such fun to talk in a language I could understand," he says of the broad, everyday talk found in Waterhouse and Hall's script. "The most graphic speech is the speech about being grateful," he remembers. "I couldn't get it out when I did it on stage . . ." Courtenay falls quiet for a moment. "Because I was always told about being grateful, too. I'm sure I'm the only boy from my primary school to have gone to university. I know I was the only boy on my street. But my parents wanted me to be educated. They didn't want me to work on the docks; people who worked on the docks would say, 'If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my son!' But my father, he didn't want it to be good enough for me."To return Billy Liar to Yorkshire is a feat that has brought Bagnall much delight. "This area owns this play," he says firmly. Bagnall left Yorkshire when he was 16, hoping to pursue his own creative ambitions. "I think if I'd seen this play, then I'd have left the next day," he says. He recalls a scene from the play in which Liz, the most bohemian of Billy's girlfriends, tells him to leave town and follow his dreams. "She says to him, 'All you need to do is go to the train station and go.' And he says, 'Is it that simple?'" Bagnall sounds flummoxed. "I still feel it shocking that he doesn't go."In the 1963 film adaptation, directed by John Schlesinger, the role of Liz was played by Julie Christie. It was only Christie's third acting job; she filled the shoes of Topsy James, who was forced to leave filming when she became ill. "It was my lucky break," Christie recalls. "Without it, who knows what I would have been doing?" She remembers the film fondly, and also with a certain respect. "As a film, I think it was historically and socially very perceptive," she says. "It captured that strange period between the end of postwar austerity and the start of what became known as the 60s, with all the hedonism that involved and which my character represented. It was a grasping of freedom, a rejection of convention that she stood for and which people were all having to grapple with at the time. Billy - in the book and the film - couldn't quite make the break. What John did was capture that moment perfectly."It is that rejection of convention that perhaps lies at the heart of Billy Liar's enduring success. It was, of course, part of a wider movement, Billy sitting alongside the working-class heroes found in the Angry Young Men plays, novels and later, films, such as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey and Alan Sillitoe's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; works that challenged what Bagnall terms "the pretty, establishment plays, the plays that refused to acknowledge that we'd even been in a war". He compares Billy Liar to the famous shot from Kes, the adaptation of Barry Hines's Kestrel for a Knave: "Where he's trying to stick two fingers up at the establishment. It's kind of punk."Colin Meloy, lead singer and songwriter of the Decemberists, is in agreement. "Billy Liar totally embodies the rock spirit," he insists. "But it's also blessed with none of the earnestness of the 60s counter-cultural movement - let's tear it all down, with our tongues in our cheeks."Bombast and bravadoIn 2004 Meloy wrote a song he named Billy Liar that appeared on the Oregon band's first album. "At that time in my life I was just eating up all the Angry Young Men movies — it was really the peak of my anglophilia, and it's such a funny movie, and it's kind of revolutionary." The story of Billy struck a particular chord with Meloy. "I was in my mid-20s and like the Tom Courtenay character, working a dumb job - not as a clerk but in a pizza parlour. And, like him, I was chafing against authority, and burdened by an overactive imagination. The song I wrote is more about the spirit of the movie; it's about being a waylaid youth with too much time on our hands and not enough power. It's a paean to laziness."Oftentimes, the story of Billy Liar strikes me more like a song than anything else. Like so many rock'n'roll tracks, it is essentially a story about escape; about love and dreams, and the search for them both, and with them, too, the search for oneself. It is about telling stories with bombast and bravado and the half-belief that if you say it, it will become true. More, it is a story of youth, and of a generation coming to believe that it is different from the last. And perhaps this is why it is a story that has survived so well these past 50 years - arriving alongside a youth movement that recognised in Waterhouse's story something of its own spirit.Waterhouse wrote a sequel, but I ask Meloy what he thinks would have happened to the Billy in the play, a young man full of fire and vigour and ambition, yet too scared to get on a train. "How would Billy Liar have turned out?" Meloy laughs and thinks a while. "Well," he say, "I guess he would have turned out like the punk movement . . . you know, it kind of fizzled out." Billy Liar is at the West Yorkshire Playhouse from Saturday to 2 October. Tom Courtenay is in conversation with Laura Barton there on 10 September. Box office: 0113-213 7700.TheatreDramaLaura Bartonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Oikos | Theatre review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Jellyfish, LondonImagine Noah's ark sitting in a school playground in London and you get some idea of what Britain's first recycled theatre looks like. One end resembles a ship's stern, the other a prow made of discarded doors and chairs. I can't improve on what the Guardian's Jonathan Glancey called the Jellyfish theatre: junkitecture. And I can only echo his praise for the capacity of the Berlin architects, Kobberling and Kaltwasser, to make imaginative use of everyday materials, including timber pallets. The building, which will be dismantled in early October, is a disposable triumph.But, however much one admires the project and the 96 volunteers who created the 120-seat theatre in 11 weeks, its opening play is a more mixed affair. Simon Wu's Oikos (pronounced ee-kos) certainly lives up to the building's ark-like contours. The story concerns a high-flying, Indian-born financier, Salil, who returns late one night to his riverside home in London to find his life in chaos. His wife, Assana, accuses him of having an affair with his secretary. Their daughter, Lily, is apparently missing. Worst of all, a storm turns into a deluge and, as the Thames rises, their precious home is flooded.Obviously, the play gains horrendous topicality from the crisis in Pakistan; and Wu is shrewd enough to suggest that Salil, whose Indian family was devastated when the Ganges overflowed, learns that ecological disasters are the result of human actions rather than divine intervention. But, while it is always good for environmental issues to be dealt with through individuals, Wu's play strains belief. I can't help feeling that, with the waters rising, there wouldn't be much time for marital disputes about Salil's infidelity or his wife's failure to entertain his bosses. Too much of the dialogue, such as Assana's claim, "It's a trophy home with a wife in it", has a soapy feel. When the Thames does ultimately break its barriers, I don't imagine people will sit around reviewing their domestic failures.Topher Campbell's production, staged by the Red Room in association with The Junction, does successfully incorporate live action and film, to convey a sense of watery engulfment. Neil d'Souza as the saturated Salil, Dido Miles as his wife, and Amy Dawson as their returning daughter give it their all. But it's not so much the play, to be followed shortly by Kay Adshead's Protozoa, as the whole project that is moving. Something remarkable has been built, with loving ingenuity, out of reclaimed materials: it's an object lesson both for theatre and society.Until 18 September. Box office: 08444 77 1000.Rating: 3/5TheatreMichael Billingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Talk politics, lose a crowd | Brian Logan

arts.guardian.co.uk - Standup is too cosy. What happened to the kind of comedy that wants to change the world?During my month at the Edinburgh fringe I saw more than 80 standup comedy shows, and I heard David Cameron mentioned just once. I saw shows about sex, shows about owls, and plenty of shows that revelled in being about nothing at all. But of global financial meltdown, endless war in Afghanistan, and Britain's new government of millionaires bent on selling off the state to private bidders, I heard scarcely a mention.Fair enough, you might say. After all, Michael Gove, Helmand and the RBS aren't the stuff of clutch-my-aching-sides. And thank goodness there's comedy out there to offer relief from harsh reality. But that shouldn't be the only kind. Whither the rich tradition of political comedy, in which many of the art form's greatest practitioners have worked? This year is the 50th anniversary of the Edinburgh debut of Beyond the Fringe, which triggered the 60s satire boom. The generation that followed - so-called alternative comedians like Alexei Sayle, Ben Elton and Jo Brand - were explicitly insurrectionist. Elton is as welcome in comedy circles nowadays as Nick Griffin at a royal tea party, but his "Thatch"-bashing on Saturday Live (a show on which Denis Healey did guest slots) inspired a generation.So why is 2010 comedy so politics-averse? It's practically a truism now that to talk politics is to lose a crowd. "I'll tell you what'll kill the gig," said this year's Best Newcomer prizewinner, Roisin Conaty, midway through her show: "Let's talk about the election." Even at late-night cabaret Political Animal, established by Radio 4 regular Andy Zaltzman to foster political comedy, several acts had nothing political to say.Zaltzman himself was an exception; he's an expert proponent of that Now Show brand of mild political comedy, an equal opportunities wit that skewers politicians and doesn't commit itself to anything. What we most keenly lack is political comedy of the firebrand variety: comedy that wants to change the world, that uses humour to avenge wrongdoing, comedy to wrench laughter from despair, to help us see through the PR and lies. The best political comedy isn't "satirical" in the narrow, Mock the Week sense. But - think Bill Hicks, think Brass Eye - it's outraged, hilarious, and believes in a better world.It can't be argued that its absence is a sign of the times. We're no longer in what New Labour propagandists told us was a "post-ideological" era. It may be a coalition, but this government is surely the most polarising for a generation. The economic collapse is an era-defining event. There is ample material for opinionated, passionate comics to grapple with.That they're doing so in such small numbers is down to changes in their industry. As Mary Fitzgerald discusses in this month's Prospect, standup has been professionalised. It's now a career offering lucrative opportunities across the media, and today's comics are understandably loth to jeopardise all that. Why express a strong political opinion and risk alienating half your audience? The comedians who get primetime slots bring audiences together: they don't divide them, exhort them, or make them think.Jokers lose credibility when they get cosy with the powers that be: comedy needs outriders who believe something, and say it without fear of consequences. I'd like to see a new generation of political comedy, unrecognisable from the urbane irreverence of David Frost's era or the hectoring hilarity of Sayle and Elton. Perhaps its seeds were planted at this year's fringe when Josie Long, a standup better known for whimsy than militancy, dedicated the end of her act to a call to arms against the Con-Dem vandalism of the state. But for now, political comedy is sorely missed.ComedyEdinburghLabourConservativesLiberal-Conservative coalitionBrian Loganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Black Swan makes a splash at Venice film festival

arts.guardian.co.uk - Drugs, murder and lesbian sex feature in Darren Aronofsky's unconventional take on world of classical balletClassical ballet has rarely been portrayed like this, featuring murder, ruthless ambition, drug taking, self-harming, unhealthy narcissism and lesbian sex. "I'm terrified of a ballet backlash," movie director Darren Aronofsky joked at the opening of the Venice film festival today after the first showing of his new film, Black Swan. "Those dancers are real dangerous."The film stars Natalie Portman as a ballerina who sacrifices more than her feet to get the leading role in Swan Lake. It's a tense psycho-thriller which also stars Barbara Hershey as her mother, Winona Ryder as a has-been ballerina, Vincent Cassel as the driven company boss and Mila Kunis (also known as the voice of Meg in Family Guy) as the rival swan.One of the most talked about scenes from the film will doubtless be the lesbian sex scene with Portman and Kunis; Portman said she first talked about the film with Aronofsky, who directed The Wrestler, in 2002. "He described it as 'you're going to have a sex scene with yourself' and I thought that was really interesting because this movie is in so many ways an exploration of ego and that narcissistic attraction to yourself."I found the psychological impact of that scene to be really challenging and interesting."Aronofsky said his recollection was different. Portman, he said, had in fact said 'why?' To which the director admitted he had not quite figured it out.Aronofsky is something of a Venice favourite, winning the Golden Lion for The Wrestler, which starred Mickey Rourke, in 2008. Today the director said he saw the films almost as companion pieces. "The more I looked into the world of ballet, the more I started seeing similarities with wrestling. They both have these performers who use their bodies in extremely intense physical ways, the entire performance is based on their physicality." Not that he had been entirely welcomed. Aronofsky said he and screenwriter Mark Heyman "spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get into the ballet world, which was incredibly difficult. It's a very insular world and they really have absolutely no interest in anything [other than ballet]. Most of the time when you show up and say, 'Hey, I'm going to make a movie about you' all the doors open up but with ballet they all shrugged and didn't return calls."Slowly, they managed to get a "stamp of approval", persuading people that they were trying to do something cool. "We tried to capture as much of the reality in a real documentary sense. I was trying to fuse something highly stylistic with something I was doing in The Wrestler, which was more documentary."They were helped by the involvement of Benjamin Millepied, a dancer at the New York City Ballet and Portman's real-life boyfriend, who plays the prince.Aronofsky said it was a "huge honour" to open the festival and they had been working round the clock so it was ready in time. "I slept more on the plane coming over than I have in months."Black Swan was the first of three opening films and is competing with 22 others for this year's Golden Lion.Venice film festivalThrillerDramaDarren AronofskyFestivalsItalyBalletDanceMark Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Clip Joint: ventriloquists

arts.guardian.co.uk - Stitch the lip and swap one glove for a puppet as Alexandra Coghlan mumbles through the best ventriloquists on filmThere's something reliably disturbing about a ventriloquist act. Third only to taxidermists and gynaecologists among people you'd rather not find sitting next to you at a dinner party, ventriloquists reverse the natural order of things - giving grinning life to what should be inanimate, dead, silent.Together with taxidermists (and gynaecologists, for that matter) these preternatural puppeteers have spawned a cinematic sub-genre all their own, feeding off our deepest psychoses of identity, or perhaps just exploiting an appealingly perverse avenue for horror.Uncanny in the truly Freudian sense - at once familiar and deeply alien - a ventriloquist's dummy is the dysfunctional cousin of Chucky and Frankenstein who has yet to cut the paternal apron strings. These ties work both ways; as much as the ventriloquist gives life to his dummy so his dummy takes it from him. The puppet is a parasite in a bow tie, leeching personality and, if the films are to be believed, sanity from its master.Far from the nattily-suited men of vaudeville gagging over a "gottle o' geer", ventriloquists' dummies on celluloid are an altogether more menacing breed. So whether it's a murderous psychopath (or two), a comedy partner, or even a "black devil doll from hell" you're after, there's an alter ego here for everyone. If you ask nicely it'll even sit on your lap.1) Ealing Studios' 1945 horror hit Dead of Night gave birth to a new wave of British horror along with one of its most deviant dummies - Hugo. The ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) may get his revenge here, but it's Max who gets the last laugh.2) With all the subtlety and restraint you'd expect from the makers of Saw, Dead Silence extracts every last twitch of life from the dummy-horror genre. Just remember not to scream…3) 'It walks; it talks; it sees; it kills!' Paying homage to cinematic forebears with another dummy named Hugo, 1964's Devil Doll bills itself as a 'most unusual suspense thriller'. Blending voodoo and ventriloquy, forget 'unusual', Devil Doll is mercifully unique.4) In a rare twist The Great Gabbo's dummy Otto is a benign creature, which is more than can be said for The Great Gabbo himself. Watch the pair indulge in a little light-entertainment before the madness sets in.5) A young, fisherman-jumpered Anthony Hopkins makes a foray into ventriloquism-horror in 1978's Magic. Hopkins may be the ventriloquist, but the puppets are the ones pulling the strings here.Last week on Clip joint, Josh Du Sautoy filled us in on the best tatts on screen. Here are his picks from your suggestions. 1) Reiko Ike shows her tattoos and takes revenge in Sex & Fury. Thanks to AJBee.2) nilpferd's clip has Harpo Marx showing off something by an old master, as well as her telephone number in Duck Soup.3) Nothing says dedication to the Dark Side like an all-face tattoo, say Monkeybug and indiefreak.4) So many comments for this one that it couldn't be left out, thanks to ExFi, alipan and Goalthreat among others.5) And, finally, have you ever regretted a tattoo as much as Edward Norton in American History X? Nodule reckons not. Fancy writing Clip joint? Email Catherine Shoard for more details.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

The shock of the new: why novelty is not the star of the show

arts.guardian.co.uk - Critics can go too far in their celebration of originality and unconventional forms of theatre - we end up unfairly focusing on the concept rather than the contextI've been accused in the past of fetishising originality and overusing the word "new" to the point where it loses all meaning. These accusations are probably correct. I love discovering something radically different to anything I've experienced before. An immersive audio encounter with a blind man in a solo submarine in the deepest part of the ocean. A one-on-one encounter on the roof of the tallest building in the world conducted entirely by tracing lines on each other's hands. What's never been done before? What can we do after that?I refuse to apologise for that, as I believe passionately in the value of constantly reimagining the relationship between audience and performer and the world. I also believe the politics and meaning embedded in the form an experience takes can speak as loudly and as articulately as the content of that work. As such, it is important to explore the forms that live performances can take as well as finding new and interesting things to say. Doing something is, in the end, maybe our most articulate and resonant way of communicating.But I'm noticing increasingly that the way in which I and others have celebrated this originality can be unhelpful. I worry that emphasising how original something is above all else, though it's an easy way of championing unconventional work, ends up in the end devaluing it. Largely this is because in highlighting its novelty, you often suffocate its context. The work becomes unfairly reframed by what it is rather than what it does. The newness is what is all important, rather than what purpose the artist wants it to serve. Whether it's live-streaming sound into headphones from an adjacent building, reimagining an opera inside an abandoned factory, or climbing up and down a ladder until you reach space - the innovation becomes objectified. It is the show. When in actual fact the show is about the specific relationship between audience, place and artist - structured and facilitated by whatever new thing they are doing.Commentators latch on to technological or structural similarities between pieces in an implicitly negative way, without taking enough account of why or how that technology is being repurposed or re-articulated. Some artists even get protective of what they see as their creative property; more than once I've heard of artists annoyed because someone else has created a show that uses their innovation or their technology. But the show is not the technology - it is the use to which that technology is put. The artist didn't invent that technology any more than David Hare invented the typewriter. In their defence, however, that reaction is understandable when trying to exist in an environment in which your work is so often reduced to its novel logistics.Perhaps people, such as myself, who write and think and talk about this kind of work, have a responsibility to articulate what artists are doing more sympathetically - not to reduce projects down to their constituent parts, however easy and enticing that may be. To enjoy the flourishing of new forms and new mediums as much as their first iteration. To understand what something does, as well as what something is. Context as well as concept.TheatreAndy Fieldguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

South African dramatist Athol Fugard says today's playwrights are shirking the big issues. Do you agree?

arts.guardian.co.uk - The South African dramatist said that the current generation of playwrights aren't doing enough to engage with the world's problems. Is he right? More... (Theatre)

Lost in translation: why have we declared war on foreign dramatists?

arts.guardian.co.uk - Classic plays in foreign languages are being rewritten for modern audiences who have no idea that what they're seeing is quite different from, and vastly inferior to, the originalsWhatever will these silly foreigners get up to next? Did you hear about the Chinese version of Hamlet that gave the play a happy ending? Surely we all know you can't rewrite the classics, and my Chinese example is imaginary. But British theatre commits artistic assault and battery of this kind on an increasingly regular basis. The victims, sprawled in the wings with their scripts torn to shreds are invariably playwrights who had the misfortune not to write in English.The latest example is Heinrich von Kleist, who has been dead for nearly 200 years, but that's no excuse for the version of his Prince of Homburg at London's Donmar Warehouse. At the end, the audience sees the prince dying in a hail of bullets as the Elector of Brandenburg, a prototype fascist dictator clad in black, supervises his execution by firing squad. Unfortunately, this is the exact opposite of what happens in Kleist's original, in which the final scene is a mock execution. The Donmar's rewrite man, Dennis Kelly, has turned the play on its head, substituting a scene of superficial drama for the original's dream-like ambiguity. For me it spoiled the evening. As Michael Billington exclaimed at the end of his review, "Oh Kleist!".This kind of sexed-up version isn't a one-off. According to playwright Howard Brenton, audiences can't be expected to sit through classic plays in foreign languages the way they did 30 years ago. He thinks they are right to reject what he dismisses as "library theatre". When Brenton reread his 1982 version of Büchner's Danton's Death, he couldn't make head nor tail of it. "I couldn't believe the audience had sat through it." So his new version at the National Theatre, for the short-attention-span generation, runs for just 105 minutes without an interval. What remains is faithful to Büchner's text, however, so let's be thankful for small mercies; if Dennis Kelly had been in charge, Danton might have escaped the guillotine and lived happily ever after.Germans aren't the only casualties in this war on foreign dramatists; eminent Russians have also been run over by the National Theatre juggernaut. Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Bulgakov have both suffered at the hands of director Howard Davies and his Australian rewrite man Andrew Upton, whose approach goes far beyond just seeking a modern English idiom that makes theatrical sense. Upton's version of Gorky's Philistines, seen at the National in 2007, changed the story, inserted entirely new speeches and - in my view - destroyed the coherence of the play. "We sharpened up the plot," he told an interviewer. The same ruthless rewriting process was employed in Upton's version of The White Guard earlier this year. Poor old Bulgakov; in his lifetime his masterpiece about the Russian civil war was banned by Stalin - now it's just torn up to suit the tastes of modern London audiences who have no idea that what they're seeing is quite different from, and vastly inferior to, the original.One can argue that in the theatre anything goes, particularly when the author is safely dead and long out of copyright. But one of the principles that marks off theatre from film is respect for the artistic integrity of the author's text, even when he or she is no longer around to complain. That's why we squirm to think of Nahum Tate reworking King Lear in the 1680s to give Shakespeare's tragedy a happy ending.Treating foreign works in this cavalier fashion sends the same message as the decline of language teaching in schools; we are increasingly a monoglot culture, treating classic plays in other languages as mere raw material for our own theatre.If writers feel the urge to improve or reinvent the classics, they can choose to present the work under their own names and with a new title. That's the route chosen by Patrick Marber with Don Juan in Soho and After Miss Julie, and by Moira Buffini when she changed Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide into Dying for It. These adaptations are fine by me; so are Michael Frayn's excellent translations of Chekhov, which don't try to improve on the original. But let's have a moratorium on versions that occupy the theatrical no man's land in between.TheatreMichael FraynPatrick MarberMoira BuffiniHoward BrentonJohn M Morrisonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)