Drama
Wash your mouth out young man!
Splitting Anna concerns three characters in a bookshop, and a conversation you'd never wish to overhear. This humorous and confrontational piece of new writing pulls no punches with its choice of themes and language. The three characters, all male, are brought together for the book launch of a feminist scholar, the eponymous Anna, who is never seen but often quoted. While they wait, the audience is treated to an exploration of the male obsessions with sex and violence, love and dominance; inseparable concepts throughout.
The language is frequently explicit, violent and coarse, but there is a strong contrast between the naked aggression of the male characters and the reasoned passages read from Anna's book. As soon as the personal connections between the characters and the author are revealed, the conversation rapidly turns from abstract discussion to the continuation of long-standing rivalries and jealousy. In past relationships all of the characters have attempted to dominate Anna, and whilst the quotations are first used to change the pace of the scene and present the woman's argument, they soon become ammunition in the verbal crossfire between the men.
Performed in a sunken round, the audience is cast as the judge, an impression reinforced by references within the script. The staging emphasises the confrontation, as characters argue across the stage with the pile of Anna's books stacked between them. Despite confined space and times when the men each read from the book, the expressive delivery avoids the play appearing too static.
Though the aggressive style and explicit language may make this play not to everyone's taste, three great performances, the challenging subject matter and some black but very comic moments will make this play a successful part of the New Writing Festival.
Take a good long look at yourself.
This play looks with disturbing honesty at the realities of Oxford student life. The script's not flawless, but this play really captures the central characters' attempts to understand not just each other but also the world around them.
On a superficial level, it's simply about students who spend a lot of time in pubs consuming a great deal of alcohol. There are moments, however, when it delves deeper and we are given an impressively realistic portrait of how fine the divide is between sensitivity and neurosis.
As the central character (Bella) struggles with her ability to 'feel too much', she is contrasted with Frank who tries hard to feel as little as possible. Frank substitutes honesty for charm, effortlessly adapting his beliefs and views to fit those who he is speaking to without any crisis of conscience. You'll recognise these characters in your own friends.
To some extent this works to the play's disadvantage, the claustrophobic and overly intelligent 'Oxford' atmosphere exposes it to the criticism that the play's concerns are indulgent and trivial on the greater scale.
New writing... again...
The most important lesson I learnt from 7 Seconds is never to give a press preview at Borders. The harsh lighting and regular announcements that some bloke you've never heard of, "...will be signing copies of his new book 'Learn To Love Yourself - And Each Other' next Wednesday from 6", really kills any atmosphere on stage. Especially when there's very little to begin with.
To be fair to Teodorescu (writer/director), it's an interesting approach - replacing characters' names with colours in order to remove stereotypes, focusing instead on the relationships and contexts of their lives (although Becket beat her to it with 'Play'). So we have the Blue couple, rather appropriately wearing blue, the Green couple wearing green, etc, etc.
Each scene is introduced by group rhyme, with snapping fingers aplenty. It's quite striking to watch, and different from anything else you'll see all term, but the dialogue feels a bit childish, and I couldn't stop thinking of Play School and Play Bus - "where is goes, nobody knows..."
The acting was universally wooden, but it's never easy to deliver a speech when someone's trying to squeeze past in an attempt to grab the latest Jamie Oliver cookbook from behind you. More than anything, I felt sorry for the cast - I'm sure that they're all capable of delivering much stronger performances when called upon next week. Joanna Keith (the Green Woman) deserves a mention for the incredibly realistic depressed/unfulfilled faces she pulled, although I wasn't sure if this was more a reflection of how the preview was going. By the end my attention had wandered across to the children's section, and I spent the last few minutes reflecting on the classical genius of The Tiger Who Came To Tea.
Hearts are in the right place...
There is no denying that The Colour of Justice was produced with the best possible intentions. Unfortunately, as theatrical work, this has little dramatic effect, and the initial weaknesses of the play - if transcripts of a trial can really be called that - are further laboured by some very weak performances and bizarre directorial choices.
As based on the transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence case, this is being produced as part of the Oxford Access Scheme, which unfortunately means that it often feels as if it's being done out of a contractual obligation, rather than any genuine enthusiasm for the material. While everyone knows the basic facts of Lawrence's tragic murder, and the subsequent chaos of the resulting trial, the interpretation placed upon it here is that the trial's failure was an all but racist failure of nerve on the part of the English legal and police establishment, a sweeping and potentially libellous statement, and one that the seemingly endless and dramatically inert moments of reconstruction do nothing to bring to life. The producer's statement describes this as "harrowing and hard-hitting"; a more accurate description would be "turgid and didactic".
A side-effect of the play's incompetent staging is that, in dealing with real people, it only trivialises the very real pain and suffering that the Lawrence family have undergone. Neville Lawrence, an articulate spokesman against the racism that he and his family have undergone, is portrayed as a character (unintentionally) more akin to someone out of Goodness Gracious Me.
The play has other faults, but its ultimate weakness is that it takes a potent, important subject and, by dint of poor staging, trivialises it to the extent that it becomes hard to engage with any of the issues raised, making this a hugely disappointing undertaking.
13th Feb 2003