Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Private Lives

Photo by by Heidrun Lohr

BELVOIR presents PRIVATE LIVES by Noel Coward, in the Upstairs Theatre at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills.

What a surprise (pleasant for some, or, otherwise, for others) to find at the Belvoir St Theatre that PRIVATE LIVES by Noel Coward was scheduled into their programming. It speaks volumes as to the essential old fashioned values and conservatism of the Company of Artists that ordain an important part of the opportunities we have when we attend the performing arts culture in Sydney. I appreciate their tendency, if not always the product. More cannily, it might be a hint at their vision to broaden the spread of their demographics, audience. Indeed, many of my friends working in the many local Community Theatres, from Penrith to the Genesian Theatre, Hunter's Hill, Rockdale etc, were excited about measuring their productions of this very popular play against the standards of the Belvoir St.and were attending that theatre for the first time. Some were very happy with their own work.

I am not so sure how many Australian playwrights seeking opportunities for performance, especially at a prestigious house such as Belvoir, were pleased, or, were envious, indeed, of the reputation of Noel Coward, that one of his oft seen and produced plays had gained a position in the 2011 Sydney professional repertoire - especially, as the playwright was receiving no fiscal advantage of being presented - of course, it is absolutely clear and free profit for the house, unlike the DEATH OF A SALESMAN, it is out of copyright. [N.B. one of my correspondents: That Guy, informs me that PRIVATE LIVES is still in copyright. Maybe that "girl' in the Belvoir office who bungled up the Miller work, could clear it up, definitively, for us, unless she is still on holiday.] Canny Mr Myers (I wondered what Kit Brookman, an actor and promising playwright, the Assistant Director for this production, thought about this choice of play. I wondered if he felt it an odd choice considering his first hand knowledge, from family and friends, of the difficulties of getting original work onto the stages in Sydney).

Noel Coward is, of course, one of the legends of the English theatre - a legend, according to my reading, as much for his writing for the theatre, as to his glamorous celebrity status all the way through his life, from, it seems the age of 11 to his passing in 1973, at the age of 74. Classically, five of his plays are esteemed and staple regulars in the commercial and amateur theatre, locally and worldwide: HAYFEVER (1928); PRIVATE LIVES (1930); DESIGN FOR LIVING; (1935); PRESENT LAUGHTER (1939) and BLITHE SPIRIT (1941). PRIVATE LIVES has a special kind of status, because of the legendary fame of the original actors:  Noel Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and the beautiful Adrienne Allen, and the torturous and deliciously challenging linguistic game-play presented by the text. It is a fiendishly wonderful task of style in comic mode. Not easy.


Having Toby Schmitz available to give Noel Coward's Elyot Chase a chase, apparently, was an irresistible temptation, for Belvoir. I, and my friends, certainly thought it was a reason for anticipation of a good night out.  Mr Schmitz did not let us down. After his practice of vocal pyrotechnics in certain speeches he delivered in STRANGE INTERLUDE, we knew we were onto a fairly safe bet for exquisite fun. His ability to give verbal pitch whilst making content-sense over an extremely, extremely long breath-demand was and is Olympian.

Ralph Myers, has built with this production of PRIVATE LIVES on the impression that he made, in late 2008, with his production of FRANKENSTEIN at the STC, as to his skill as a director. Having Mr Schmitz as Elyot was a 'jewel' to possess, but it was necessary to find actors of equal skill and joie de vivre. Casting the right actors, the late great Richard Wherrett used to say, was the greater part of the success of any theatrical venture. This Mr Myers mostly has done. Zahra Newman (Amanda Prynne), last seen in Sydney in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, was intelligently witty and proficiently skilful, an alert foil to Mr Schmitz; ably supported by Toby Truslove (Victor Prynne), in a performance that builds on the intelligent and good work that he revealed in STRANGE INTERLUDE, earlier this season - a kind of self-deprecating goodness at base. All three of these actors have developed the technical proficiency to speak the lines briskly, each capping each other without a pause and using the language of the playwright with an attitude of it being part of the performer's instrument as a tool for charm, and used accurately to carry, as well as the comic wit, a kind of emotional weight.

This is what Eloise Mignon (Sybil Chase) did not appear to understand. She was not, by comparison, comfortable in these dualisms of  Coward's language-world, and her physical characterisation was fairly unsophisticated and flatly broad - no real bounce or cultural insight to the original world to build from (my companions thought that Caroline Craig was being channeled, here!). Fortunately, in the Australian sounds, "in our own voice(s)" that Mr Myers broaches as his preferred house style sound, at Belvoir (including Ms Newman's Jamaican/American sound), this Sybil still worked in a kind of shocking 'bogan' way - SYLVANIA WATERS/THE SHIRE qualities, lots of money it seems, for with this Sybil there was no other reason apparent to justify the marriage choice of Elyot - was it her youth, perhaps?. This Elyot had clearly 'gone a mucker all right" in marrying this Sybil. For Elyot Chase, even in this Australiana, a daring choice of bride. Mish Grigor as the French maid, Louise, plays for physical jokes in what is essentially a verbal joke - in French, with an Aussie accent, of course.

From Frances Gray on Noel Coward and PRIVATE LIVES:
Two people are close; they try to pass the time, get bored, quarrel, crack jokes; they encounter two other people and don't make much of them; nothing really happens; at the end of the play they are in the same state as they were at the beginning. If this sounds like WAITING FOR GODOT this is not wholly coincidental. For all his dislike of the style and form employed by the Theatre of the Absurd, Coward dramatised in the story of Elyot and Amanda the sense of inhabiting a universe without meaning or controlling force; in the twenties, anticipating Beckett, he earned a label for himself in Robert Grave's summary of that decade : 'Coward was the dramatist of disillusion, as (T.S.) Eliot was its tragic poet, Aldous Huxley its novelist, and James Joyce its epic-prose writer.'

The difference between Coward and this exalted company is not so much one of attitude as one of resonance. Beckett, or the Eliot of THE WASTE LAND, or Joyce, convey with irresistible force the sense of possibilities exhausted, of convictions tested on the intellect and the nerves and found wanting; the bare conditions of the GODOT tramps reflect their existential stripping, the one slim conviction on which they ground themselves. Coward's characters, stripped of beliefs, have egos to keep them going; they forget the outside world to live luxuriously like exotic waterflies on a surface tension composed of personal charm and the admiration it attracts. If they have a conviction amid their foggy awareness of 'cosmic thingummies', it's a belief in love: not love as a redeeming factor in existence, a goal to strive for, but as a mischievous presence that will creep up on you somehow and strip you of charm and dignity; despite all the evidence to the contrary, they cannot help thinking that, this time, things might be different, that they will manage not to kill the golden goose even though they have no intention of changing themselves. [1]
Is this play then a 'serious comedy'? Not ''just the 'lightest of light comedies', but as a John Lahr describes it - "a situation comedy where the situation - two people in love and unable to live together - is tragic" [2]

Ralph Myers on Coward:
We think of Coward and we see grand pianos and brandy and gramophone records and we think that is what the plays are about. But in fact they're not; like all great plays they're about something profound. They're about love, and about being alive, and about trying to be happy and how hard that is. Coward's genius is to wrap that up in a confection that makes you think that you're watching a stage full of beautiful people in evening dress saying not very much in a frightfully clever way, rather quickly..." 
Love and being alive and trying to be happy - profound, indeed. Now, I believe, in some degree with Mr Myers, about a serious undertow present in Mr Coward's work, and always felt that the way to succeed with Coward was treat it in earnest, play it, perhaps, like Edward Albee, (and, incidentally, play Albee, as if it were Coward), so the love motif observed by Mr Myers, is, I agree, somewhat true, but, what Mr Coward said of his own work was, that it was an exhibition of his "talent to amuse". Essentially, PRIVATE LIVES, for all the pleasing academia I have earlier quoted, is about that : a talent to amuse as biographer Philip Hoare describes:
This play, mused in Mr Coward's head for some time, and then with the Muse of Gertrude Lawrence clearly inspiring him, he, while recovering from 'flu in Shanghai, wrote it down in four days : 'I thought it was a shrewd and witty comedy, well constructed on the whole, but psychologically unstable; however its entertainment value seemed obvious enough, and its acting opportunities for Gertie and me admirable...' " Always the showman, Coward's instinct was for impact, not art. ... PRIVATE LIVES allowed the Coward-Lawrence team to exhibit their showy intimacy." [3]
Laughter before societal critique, perhaps? The second act of this play, an extended duologue for the two principal actors, famously, was a nightly duel between these two competitive, but mutually admiring performers. What with their renowned vocal dexterity, wit, piano-playing and dancing skills, the time length of that central act was entirely dependent on the willingness for the two of them to engage in spontaneous improvisations of one-up-manship - perfect 'dandies'. The audience delighted in the ease with which Noel and Gertie 'played'. It was difficult to decide whether they were acting or just being themselves.Whether they were acting a script or improvising. Sometimes they extended the night hilariously and at others cut it off, precipitously. The problem, then, with this production is that neither, Mr Schmitz nor Ms Newman, with the second act design choices, no piano etc, have the opportunity to reveal the triple threat virtuosics that Mr Coward and Ms Lawrence had, to improvise with, and so what with Mr Myers 'bent' to promulgate the 'love' aspect of his production, the play as written, reveals itself to be repetitious and a little tiresome. We get that they are unable, really, to sustain a 'loving' relationship – if not on the first "Sollocks" (their safe-word to break the tension as it rises to a personal antagonism, danger point) – then definitely on the second one. We don't need the reiterated third "Sollocks', for we get that without the fascination of others admiring them, boredom with themselves, soon overwhelms their love interest. Thus the second act becomes a little exaggeratedly overlong. The two characters "believe only in themselves and their talk is unremittingly self obsessed" [2]  Elyot and Amanda's charm in the offerings of Mr Schmitz and Ms Newman become less and less bearable as the act winds on.

I bubbled quite happily with the first act with Victor and, even this Sybil, and was enormously relieved when they arrived at the end of act two and then featured so wonderfully in the third. The cruel talent of the bickering quartet, when together, to amuse, certainly bears out Evelyn Waugh's dictum : 'Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything." The play is really frivolous about the serious.The direction of the actors by Mr Myers is first class.

I essentially went with the Australian 'sounds' because the speed of the style was paramount and worked. I still had to go through tedious mental gymnastics in hearing the European sites of the play and just, as I did with SEX WITH STRANGERS, just read that these were Australians on a very European honeymoon (I know I am boring, I know!). Mind you the verbal wit of these Australians seemed fairly uncharacteristic to me, except in the milieu of some of my gay friends' drunken parties. If you can locate Australians with this ability to sustain comedy of this quality, and not be necessarily drunk, please send the address and/or arrange a meeting/dinner – I will come, just to be entertained – but I am a doubting Thomas about that possibility. Seeing life like that, will be believing the world of this production, which, as it stands in the Upstairs Belvoir Theatre, I am a little pushed to swallow - I know I am boring and maybe just un-Australian for not going quietly along with this artistic conceit.

The less said about the really awkward choices of the set, the better (Set Designer, Ralph Myers.) I had heard that the play was not, despite rumour, set on the Gold Coast, but in the original locations. Well, the first act location of this production presented us with the dull hall way to the elevator shafts with hotel doors to the apartments without architraves - a low cost architectural statement, and door locks that fell away when said door is slammed, suggested to me a very cheap hotel, in the realm of a backpacker's financial capability. To drink cocktails in the elevator hallway seemed to me a fairly dreary, less than romantic idea, no matter the 'expressionistic' lighting touches of Damien Cooper. The second act Parisian apartment was a cheaply modish jerry-built job indeed with next to no furniture of any taste. The wardrobe, costumes for the characters, supplied by the usual , House of Alice Babidge was very declasse indeed, but up to the usual look we have come to expect from almost every piece she has designed. It is consistent in its visual achievements - and like all good fashions, fairly subjective as to whether it is of good taste and indicative of the wearers.

I was sad not to have the potency of the Cheap Music of the original play (Composition and Sound Design, Stefan Gregory) but that, too, is a subjective response - some liked the Muzak in the hallway and truly loved the collection of gramophone/L.P.'s that Amanda had in her apartment and were played and mimed, too. I missed the grand piano and wished for some of the brandy they were drinking.

Despite the above, I had a very pleasant night at PRIVATE LIVES. The writing was marvellous, the acting mostly terrific, the direction clean, clear and respectful. Mr Myers should just get himself a better set designer and all would be near perfect.

A choice of play that might reflect a contemporary generational expresion of a time of disillusion. Mr Coward writing after the Great War and having lived through the boom of the Jazz Age, then  the crash of the world financial markets and the Great Depression, may have for the artists at Belvoir written a very Australian response to the present world at war and  the Great Financial Crisis. His song TWENTIETH CENTURY BLUES may also be just as relevant a tune for our times as this play. Or, not? Am I simply trying to justify or put the square peg of contemporary reinterpretation into the round hole of Mr Coward's work? Pat East, in her letter to Editor (Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, October 19, 2012), suggested that this is what Simon Stone, the resident director at Belvoir, was inferring in his article responding to the DEATH OF A SALESMAN copyright infringement story: "The true classics are ripe for reinterpretation at any time" (Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, 18th October, 2012)? Twentieth century 'blues' onto the twenty-first century disillusionments.

Or, should we, Belvoir, just encourage Australian writers to write culturally-relevant plays with a confection of laughter coating and put them on the stage instead? Perhaps: Ian Meadows with BETWEEN TWO WAVES at the Griffin, for instance, seems a probable candidate, as he manages a  Climate Change 'discussion/debate' within a vivid romantic comedy; Lachlan Philpott with his TRUCKSTOP this year at the Q Theatre and the Seymour Centre is alive and challenging our cultural flabbiness- not so funny though; Damien Millar with his THE MODERN INTERNATIONAL DEAD, surely, one of the best Australian plays in the last decade, especially as far as cultural relevancy is concerned - again, not so funny. Or what about PRIVATE LIVES assistant director, Kit Brookman? What does he have on his desk at the moment - a play for sure? Four living Australian writers that I have named. Any other suggestions? I am certain that there are......

Meanwhile, at Belvoir, we can see PRIVATE LIVES by Noel Coward as a serious examination of love, life and the difficult pursuit of happiness, within the confection of a few laughs? A Profound Experience.


REFERENCES:

  1. Modern Dramatists. Noel Coward by Frances Gray, Macmillan, 1987.
  2. Coward the Playwright by John Lahr, Methuen, 1983.
  3. Noel Coward by Philip Hoare, Sinclair-Stevenson,1995.










7 comments:

John said...

Kevin- what a fascinating link you propose:Coward to Beckett. Reading your essay brought to mind vivid memories of the routine relapses into full-throated mutual bawling-out that are as much a part of the relationship of Amanda and Eliott as sexual attraction. They fall to their arguing as the two tramps fall to their stories and routines. The difference is -perhaps - that Coward's pair don't define their situation as one of dependency on an unknowable power-figure.They think that they themselves, just in themselves, have all that they need to secure perfect happiness.
I was looking forward to this production....I suppose I felt sure that Toby Schmitz- with his comic instincts and relish of words and
their explosive potential - would bring Coward's wit to life in a way that would pay tribute and give it a shake.
Alas,I watched most of the time
with sinking spirits.The initial worry was hearing actors talk of going down'to bathe'...you know, SWIM. Two or three times we heard about this desire 'to bathe',and we pictured them dipping their toes into the Mediterranean or the hotel pool; but as they spoke with broad Aussie vowels , it didn't come across as a believable plan. Soon they were longing for times when they felt 'gay',or admiring ...I don't know... someone's oh-so-'gay' air as he bade everyone good night, and I began to wish that they were not dressed in today's little black dresses and twelve inch heels. Before long our fabulous lovers were throwing themselves into blasts of air guitar and drum whacking to the loud sounds of Phil Collins' droning tune 'In the Air Tonight' , and we were just so far from anything like the easy wit and cheeky insousiance of Noel and Gertie.
The action was played out against a set that suggested the latest in post-GFC new hospital wards.
Would it have been beneath everyone to play the thing in a manner more true to Coward's personality? A few days ago I heard on the radio his rendition of 'Let's fall in Love'-with Cole Porter's lyrics embellished with the performer's own gossipy,brilliantly rhyming bon mots - and at a time when i really didn't want to stop and listen , I did just that: here was something just too clever and delightful to pass up. In his own way he was OUTRAGEOUS, following in a tradition not long beforehand established with languid moves and verbal rallies by Oscar Wilde.
My feeling is that Belvoir's first crack at Coward would have been more fun had Ralph Myers encouraged Toby and the other actors to embrace the elements of style and attitude that a little familiarity with Coward's music and drama suggest.Perhaps there is a little of Coward in each of his characters: and if so, they need to seem as if at any moment, they would be more than capable of flourishes of great wit, acts of great compassion and marvellous musical comedy routines.

That Guy said...

You state, with a fair degree of certainty, that the plays of Noel Coward are out of copyright. I don't believe they are - my understanding of copyright law is that any work that was published in the lifetime of the author who died before 1 January 1957, is out of copyright, and any work that was published in the lifetime of the author who died after 31 December 1956, will be out of copyright 70 years after the author's death.

Noel Coward died in 1973. So his work should not be out of copyright until 2043.

Kevin Jackson said...

To That Guy,
Thanks for the information.
A god deal for those published and performed authors, alive an dead. And, of course,their estates.
Kevin J.

That Guy said...

The other thing to discuss is your point about original work (which seems to be one of your other common pet peeves with Belvoir). Frankly, that seems to be a case of Belvoir accepting what they do well and what they do not do well (and where an appropriate setting for original work is). The original works I've seen in the current upstairs season ("Buried City", "Baby Teeth" and "Every Breath") have had much lower audiences than the, for lack of a better word, "un-original" works. In the case of "Every Breath", they also drew reviews which were, frankly, personally abusive in several places.

So it makes sense that a company reflects what its audience wants. The Downstairs season, which is mostly original works, seems to be of the right size to suit the audience that new Australian writing is capable of drawing (similar to the smaller auditorium at the Stables, in fact).

I notice that in the 2013 season, only two original works are programmed for upstairs ("Forget me Not", by the established Tom Holloway, and "Corranderk" - both are co-productions, presumably to mitigate for risk). Downstairs has mostly new work, with one revival ("The Cake Man") of an australian classic. None of the non-original works are Australian plays - Three out of copyright works (although with Tommy Murphy dramaturging "Peter Pan", Simon Stone adapting "Miss Julie", I suspect some latitude in the adaptation will take place), and three-four in- copyright works (depending on whether you think Angels in America is one play or two - the estates of Tennessee Williams, Tony Kushner and Ingmar Bergman should therefore be keeping an eye out for contract violations).

I suspect some of the movement away from original works may have to do with Belvoir restructuring out of a co-op structure towards paying genuine award wages a few years ago - when you're paying people appropriate amounts, theatre gets logically more expensive, and the more expensive, the less risky you can afford to be.

Kevin Jackson said...

Dear That Guy,
Great input, thanks.
It is an idea of mine that new Australian work and the development of that, of Australian playwrights, needs to be at the centre of the interest for an Australian company. As it is for the National Theatre In London and, say the Steppenwolf company in Chicago. Black Swan in Perth seem to be able to be adventurous with their work choices.
I do get annoyed when persistently, the Companies, insist that that British play, American play etc be done in an Australian accent because it is an Australian story. I look forward to the solution to the vocal choices to ANGELS IN AMERICA next year! Having America in the title may be persuasive to the honesty about the sound. I bet, if they do the play in an American range of dialects the play will still be pertinent to us as an Australian story. It is a great play. As is DEATH OF A SALESMAN.
I reckon that PRIVATE LIVES and SEX WITH STRANGERS, for instance, are a cultural expression of a particular time and place - and in both instances they were not Australia - and just because they were spoken in an Australian multi-cultural range of dialects does not make the play Australian. I just want more cultural expressions more authentically drawn from my, our, everyday experience.
I long for a Sewell to speak to me about me and my culture. Revive him, Upstairs. Any of the plays I mentioned late in my blog on PRIVATE LIVES I would pay to see. And there are other Australian classics besides THE SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL.. that would attract an audience - cast it with the interesting commercial actors and the audience will come.
It was a relief to hear Mr Meadows talk about a vitally contentious contemporary subject amidst a romance with his BETWEEN TWO WAVES. Both things I felt were coming from Mr Meadows authentically. Authentically Australian Not just with an authentic Aussie sound.
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, ANGELA'S ASHES, are two Australian plays that found an audience. The theatre needs an element of risk. I reckon FOOD would have filled the Upstairs this year. What was it, "Build it and they will come'?
To have non-writers, actor trained and or director trained, engaged in adapting old and other works from other origins seems to ignore the economic needs of writers to be able to do what they want to do. By asking the writer to adapt, is, perhaps, maybe, a way to develop the Australian writer's work as well. The auteur director, coming from the contemporary practice of writer/director of film, I guess, is denying the creative living to the writer. And so, logically preventing the means for a playwright to have the circumstances to write new work for the theatre.
As to your last point,in paying the artists at Belvoir, at last, a living, someone has to pay - why is it the writer, so consistently? Do the auteur/writer/directors employed at Belvoir get a double fee or just the one?
The writer, for me, is at the centre of our cultural enterprise. No writers, no stories, no history. Thank God for Euripides and Sophocles - both writers. Thank God for Katherine Brisbane and Currency Press, by the way, for creating our literary history with their publications - now there is real risk and investment in Australia, that one wished Belvoir and the STC could emulate.

By the way CORRANDERK has had a season already this year.

Thanks for your input. Shall we have a coffee and chat? I just love your passion and perspicacity.

That Guy said...

Love to have a chat some time - As you may have noticed from my blog, I'm from Canberra (and pretty much have a Belvoir subscription as my excuse to get up to Sydney occasionally!). My next visit will be in January with Peter Pan - I'll send a private email closer to the date.

I will note, though, your'e unnecessarily bashing the STC by suggesting they're not promoting local writing - 8 of their shows next year are new Australian writing.

I think that our cultural enterprises can have multiple centres, and local writing isn't the only one (you obviously agree, otherwise you wouldn't review non-Australian plays!).

I'd note that Steppenwolf Theatre Company's current season has five shows, only one of which is new writing (although three of the other are recent American drama, with a new production of Pinter's "The Birthday Party" making up the 5). And I'd agree that part of the flaws of Australian theatre companies is that too few new plays get that crucial second production (it'd be wonderful to see what, for instance, the Melbourne Theatre Company did with a "Neghbourhood Watch" with, say, Jane Menalaus or Sandy Gore). But that's different from demanding constant new writing.

That Guy said...

Oh, and presumably you mean "Angela's Kitchen", not "Angela's Ashes". Angela's Ashes is irish...