Drama
It seems a theatrical oddity in Oxford to find a cast who are genuinely passionate about their script; the company of Speed the Plow are very much so. This is a story of Hollywood relationships, of comradeship destroyed by sex and money. The trademark Mamet-Speak is funny and powerful and the actors obviously enjoy the language. It's tricky stuff and it seems like they have been working on it pretty hard. This does show, but not always to good effect. Cues are sometimes anticipated, and some scenes did seem to lack the spontaneity the language really deserves. John Washington directs and acts but the other two actors are adamant about the direction; democracy is the key and since most scenes involve two actors, the third generally sits as the outside eye. Washington has deftly managed to sidestep the always thorny issue of objectivity in his obviously egalitarian directing style.
Jessie Burton (Karen) is a pleasure to watch. She treads an invisible line between naivety (a word much overused by the character), and manipulation. The temptation to 'sex up' the part is very high in this piece, but Burton has thankfully avoided it; less is most definitely more with Mamet. Kuang Liu, (Fox), is a confident actor. His voice is pretty strong and provides a good contrast with Washington's (Bob Gould), whose deep tones are meaty and will fill the BT with ease. Liu's accent is shaky in places, most probably where he is uncertain - by sixth week I imagine this problem will have been eradicated. The friendship between Gould and Fox is vital; without it the betrayal of the second act is meaningless. No real intimacy seemed evident between them, and they seemed more at home in argument. Perhaps this is something that can be improved in time for the first night, though.
Occasionally the movements of the actors seemed a little vague. Washington is very at ease onstage; the other two actors, however, seemed a little unsure and at times their movement lacked any real purpose. When movements did seem definite, they often appeared affected, almost as if the actors weren't totally comfortable with them yet.
A good performance has been achieved at this point. Hopefully by sixth week we shall see a great one. Washington boasts of one of the coolest sets ever for the BT, (designed by Jane Anderson), and of working with the "Ferraris" of the acting world. I look forward to seeing the finished product.
When your tutor begins a class with a question as simple as 'What is one plus one?' you would be forgiven for not knowing whether to laugh or cry. This is exactly the predicament presented to us by Ella Kaye and Emma Garner's production of Ionesco's The Lesson. The play, contemporary to the dramatic work of Beckett and Genet, radically questions the everyday reality that we seem to experience. Ionesco may seem like the ingenuous little brother to the hulking ontological beast of Beckett, but is not as innocent as he may seem. In The Lesson, an ordinary situation is made absurd by the violent ousting of logic by non-logic, provoking a troubling challenge to the very assumptions that our society depends on.
The play itself is simple and static in nature. In the main teaching scenes, having both protagonists in profile was as frustrating as it was necessary. But this production turns this structural problem into an asset. Ionesco's real strength is his extraordinary use of language, which turns its own logic against itself: something that the directors recognise and exploit with much success, and where Emma Garner's careful comparison of the translation with the French original really shows. The pace of the exchange between the Professor (Henry Merivale) and the Pupil (Jo McGinley) is controlled and taut, bringing to life the symphonic climaxes and crashes of Ionesco's dialogue. The absurdity of the language is enhanced by clever directorial touches. In the tangle of language that ensues when the pupil insists that four minus three equals five, you begin to desperately wish for those ten, hundreds and units counters you had at primary school. And just as you think the Professor is going to explain subtraction using this tried and tested method rather than his own bumbling theoretics, he produces invisible matches that do not help anyone, least of all the Professor. You ask yourself whether the entire practice of teaching consists in explanations as insubstantial and stupid.
It is an important function of art to question what we take for granted. Much of Oxford drama promises to do this, but few plays have actually delivered. The directors confess that they would like to see their audiences leaving the BT shaking - a wish not misplaced, on the evidence of the meticulously and intelligently, if slightly unimaginatively prepared scene of the play I witnessed. Is The Lesson taught in Ionesco's play really the pupils', or is it the audience's? What is it that we learn? Can we ever learn at all? Trust me, you will never look at tutorials the same way again.
14th Feb 2002