London is the hub of every major form of artistic expression: the performative, the visual, the wearable; some might even reassess earlier views and include the edible in this formative list. With such an enormously large array of arts, one never knows what to expect, as I quickly found out in my first week on the Danenburg Oberlin-in-London Program.
The Old Vic is a theater with a stately and venerable tradition. It was the original home of England's much-lauded Royal Shakespeare Company. Actors such as Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson held court seasonally at this theater. Nowadays, the Old Vic is home to the Royal Court Theater, a company whose mission it is to champion new work from living playwrights. The play that brought me to the Old Vic was Conor McPherson's Dublin Carol. McPherson has become quite successful both in London and in the United Staes for his play The Weir, a series of monologues that are ghost stories set in a pub in Ireland. Dublin Carol, McPherson's newest piece, also revolves around drink, and he again captures the alcohol-soaked, elegiac tone prevalent in so much Irish literature.
The play is small, with only a cast of three. Brian Cox, one of England's most reputable actors plays John, a pathetic loser who runs a funeral home in modern day Dublin. The play is set on Christmas Eve; it is raining outside.
Mark is John's apprentice, and Mary, the audience discovers in a rather awkwardly written scene, is John's daughter. Mark's future lies straight down the bleak path that John forged years ago. Mary is finally mustering the courage to confront John about his corroded life, yet she still clings to the spindles of support he shows for her. She cannot fully break the tie and deliver the verbal cold shower John needs to survive. All three of the characters in McPherson's drama are crippled by the same debilitating inactivity, an inactivity that bares more than a coincidental resemblance to the one written about by another Irish playwright - Samuel Beckett.
The secondary characters in Dublin Carol McPherson writes in a rather sketchy manner. The play is really a monologue for Cox. With the exceedingly lengthy monologues that McPherson gives John, Cox manages to turn spoken text into arias. They are arias of anger, hostility, warmth and depression. With his performance, Cox creates a character that does not so much move gingerly through a twelve-step program but crashes through a blistered fate. As John says to Mary: "I knew I'd let you and your mammy down. I knew deep down in me, that I'd run away and leave yous to it. You a little baby. And your mother like a little squirrel or something."
Towards the end, John sits in a chair, alone on stage, his two potential lifeboats having left him. Staring out at the audience only feet away, all the pain and betrayal are etched onto Cox's haggard face. It is a face that comes from years of acting and years of living. Cox relishes the moment as the lights fade; so do we.
Sadly, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer horror that was the play Black Earth, one of London's most unique theatrical endeavors.
"Oh hello," a man cheerfully announced to me. "You're here for Black Earth?"
"Yes," I began.
"I'm so glad. I'd like to explain a few things to you about the production."
"Who are you?" I quavered.
"I'm the producer."
Explain a few things? It seemed a little ridiculous to have the producer of the play explain the thing to me twenty-minutes before I was going to be viewing it. To my chagrin, no amount of explanation could have saved this poor producer's woefully lost cause. He must be an angel with deep pockets if he had the dedication to sink so much money into three-hours of touchy-feely psycho-babble encompassing technology, the Internet, an extinct Grecian dance form and women in gauze playing awakened spirits.
"You see," he explained in a rather earnest and heartfelt manner, "the company is made up of 20 actors from all over Europe. They all speak in their native language so that we may convey more of a sense of the collective power that theater offers. But I promise you that if you stay till the third hour, things begin to make sense!"
Black Earth seemed like it could have been wonderful. They spent a great deal of money on sets and costumes, having created an evocative set that resembled a lunar surface. Unfortunately, the acting that cluttered the stage marred the beauty of the set. A typical scenic breakdown in the program read something like this: "The characters sleep. Their souls move across the threshold into the spirit world. They meet in a circle of light and recognize each other in essence." Makes L. Ron Hubbard read like hard-boiled fiction. Martha Graham crossed with a sixth-rate Interdisciplinary Performance Project.
Leaving after two hours of Black Earth, I whispered to the usher if she had seen the show.
"I have, mate," she whispered back. "I think it's quite daft really. It's bollocks!"
If only she could have been on stage.
Copyright © 2000, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 128, Number 14, February 18, 2000
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