New writing

As one year ends and another begins, Pirate Dog curls up in his basket, and ignores my attempts to get him to help me to review the highs and lows of the past year. Although the Royal Court has had a good year, with Lucy Prebble’s Enron and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem heading most lists of best new plays, it might be worth distinguishing between these two pieces of writing. Basically, Butterworth is a distinctive and original voice but his brilliant play suffers from a certain insularity: who, part from the Brits, cares about Deep England? Prebble, on the other hand, has created a brilliant play that is international in its significance but lacks, in many places, the sense of a lively subjectivity. Still, both plays trump the National’s big hitters — David Hare’s The Power of Yes and Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art. On the other hand, if provocation is a positive value, then surely the best play of the year must be Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice, closely followed by Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children. The hysterical reactions provoked by these two plays, which both questioned segregated religious communities, suggest that they were at least thrillingly contemporary. As well as these plays, I also enjoyed Jez Butterworth’s Parlour Song (Almeida), Simon Stephens’s Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith) and all three plays in the Tricycle’s Not Black & White season. Low points were Simon Bent’s Prick Up Your Ears (Comedy Theatre) and Mark Ravenhill’s Over There (Royal Court). Mixed Up North (Out of Joint) was a verbatim piece sadly in search of a story. Work by thrilling newcomers and young(ish) Turks include Polly Stenham’s cracking Tusk Tusk (Royal Court), Alia Bano’s Shades (Royal Court), Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia (Bush), In-Sook Chappell’s This Isn’t Romance (Soho), Lucy Kirkwood’s It Felt Empty (Arcola), Nick Payne’s If There Is (Bush) and Mike Bartlett’s Cock (Royal Court). Oh, and Adam Brace’s Stovepipe (Bush). How many more have I forgotten?

The critics

As Pirate Dog well knows, this is a time of year when humans are so busy doing nothing that there is simply no time to write, or read, or do anything apart from make food, and consume it. So that’s my excuse for this very short post, which simply refers to a lovely cartoon about the spat between two critics, the Financial Times’s Ian Shuttleworth, and, yes well, Tim Walker. As it’s still the season of good will to all men, including those who — like Walker — manage to make a living by behaving like imbecils, I’ll refrain from saying any more.

Cultural philistinism

Yes, I know it’s Christmas, and the season of good cheer, but the Daily Mail somehow always manages to deplete my stock of generosity. Last week, Quentin Letts’s review of Martin Crimp’s The Misanthrope (you know, the show that stars Keira Knightley), was enough to get me going. Letts lambasts the play and sneers at the playwright. He writes: “Chum Crimp is one of the most laughably fashionable and, in my view, over-promoted playwrights of luvvie London. His work with trendy director Katie Mitchell is absurdly garlanded by some of the impressionable fools of our state-subsidised theatre.” Apart from the verbal charm of this easy prose, there’s something irredeemably vulgar about the attack. And it’s so easy to do, isn’t it? “Chum Crimp”: well, it could be “Hubbie Hare” or any other alliterative nonsense. Even “Luvvie Letts”. But wait a minute, what is the worth of his judgement about Crimp and Mitchell? For a start, Letts is not a professional theatre critic — he has no qualifications, apart from a big mouth. He’s a celebrity writer and his assessment is simply valueless. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a small boy taking a poo on his parents’ carpet and waiting for their approval. So who is the “fool” here? But it’s also a bit sinister. As the great British public prepare to vote in another Tory Administration, philistinism — in this case a contempt for anything that even faintly smells of theatrical modernism — looks set to make a return. Attacks on “our state-subsidised theatre” could easily be mistaken for a prelude to cuts in that subsidy. As the Imam of militant philistines nationwide, Letts is their herald. And he’s also pure poison: sadly, he may, and this might spoil anyone’s Christmas, be the face of things to come.

Darker Shores

Although the Hampstead Theatre has had a good year, and has celebrated its 50th anniversary with some sound shows and great revivals, it still seems to be a venue whose real achievements are strangely unacknowledged. At the moment, it is staging Michael Punter’s engaging slice of Victorian gothic, Darker Shores, an atmospheric ghost story beautifully directed by departing artistic director Anthony Clark. As well as attracting local schoolkids, whose ability to spontaneously whoop and gasp make them an ideal audience for such sensational fare, the theatre has also managed to get a much younger and more diverse audience than ever before. Last night, for example, you could see young women in headscarves discussing the religious ideas in Punter’s play. It’s good to know that some of the audience brought in by Atiha Sen Gupta’s What Fatima Did... has come back for more. Isn’t that worth celebrating?

The Priory

Now Pirate Dog always looks pretty attentive when I tell him a story about other animals, but I really can’t be sure that he understands a single word. So all I got was a puzzled look when I told him the story of a mouse being spotted on the set of Michael Wynne’s The Priory, currently on at the Royal Court. Of course, this is one of those fabled situations where fact is better than fiction: the play takes place in an isolated former priory now being rented out for seasonal parties. So it’s a suitable set for a mouse’s guest appearance — or did it choose the set because it looked familiar? Anyway, surely the Court has a resident cat? Apparently not, at least not since the demise of Osborne, its old growler. Time to get another: but what to call it?

Black power

When you have a dog, it is sometimes worth staying out late — the licks your pet gives you when you get back are so hot! Last night, I finally saw Kwame Kwei-Armah’s new play, Seize the Day, part of the Tricycle Theatre’s excellent Not Black and White season. When I got back, Pirate Dog gave me a lovely greeting. It was a good end to a good night. At the Tricycle, the audience responded warmly to the show and the applause during the curtain call was heartfelt, celebratory. With good reason: the play dares to imagine a black man running for Mayor of London. And even though the character, Jeremy, finally decides that he doesn’t want the job, the play ends on a joke about a man of colour becoming Prime Minister. You could call it the Obama effect. As the actors finally left the stage, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (who plays Jeremy) turned to the audience and gave a clenched-fist salute. Black power! Now Kwei-Armah likes to fill his plays with provocative ideas, and this one includes the statistic that 40 per cent of the London population now comes from an ethnic minority. So although it might seem sentimental to rejoice in a black power salute, who knows? One day this might be seen as a historic moment.