In Competition No. 2487 you were invited to submit a theatrical critic’s response to a production of a modern play in ancient costume. There were easy laughs to be had at the expense of ropy chitons and inadequate loincloths and in general you took a harsh line. Most of you set your jaundiced sights on productions of works by just a few (Pinter, Osborne and Coward loomed large). None, though, scaled the scornful heights of Kenneth Tynan’s much-quoted take on Gielgud in modern dress, whom he described as having ‘the general aspect of a tight, smart, walking umbrella’.
A more or less lone chorus of approval came from W.J. Webster, who nets the bonus fiver. The other prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each. I am still unwell and so, for the time being, as of next week, the competitions will be set and judged by a colleague.
When the curtain went up to reveal the mouths of two adjoining caves, there was a rustling of programmes as the audience checked that they hadn’t mistakenly booked for Beckett instead of Coward. They hadn’t. This is the notable first production of Private Lives in a prehistoric setting. And by and large, surprisingly, it works. Can one be debonair in a pelt? Tim Trimm is there to show one indubitably can. And brittle in woad? Arabella Mellor is effortlessly so. These are bright young Neolithic things. The 20th-century façade has been stripped away from the aeons-old comedy of human coupling and uncoupling. Even the anachronisms produce a telling resonance. ‘Very flat, Norfolk’ now conjures a picture of a vast, plashy fen. And something plangent is added to the potency of cheap music when it is played on a three-hole pipe. We are ourselves in an exhilaratingly different time and place.
W.J. Webster
Pinter’s enigmatic exploration of vicious grudges and frustrations in family life is given a strangely distorted perspective in Perverse Theatre’s decision to set and dress The Homecoming in ancient Greece.
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