Thursday, November 02, 2006

"History. It's just one bloody thing after another."

Regular readers of this blog will know that last year I was involved in selecting music for a play that took place here in Belfast that was performed in Stranmillis by a local drama group called "The Lady in the Van" by Alan Bennett. It was a premiere for the amateur circuit and the group had special permission to perform it by Alan Bennett himself. Most of the music was already stated in the script so it was just a matter for me of sourcing recordings of them - mainly Schubert and Mozart. The rest of the music I selected from old collections I have already and I used a few choral pieces which had been written by Philip, a friend of mine. The music went down very well and the cast in particular loved it.

I love Alan Bennett and last night I went with Smithy to see "The History Boys" in the Grand Opera House (written by Alan Bennett) - this play has been recently made into a film also which is on general release at the cinema currently.

Our Grand Opera House has been recently refurbished. I'm not sure what I want to say about this. The refurbed interval bars are built on 3 levels with open courtyard area in the middle. The new wing is certainly very spacious and the place seems so much roomier - but I'm afraid it seems slightly lacking in atmosphere... it feels like you are going out to a shopping mall food court during the interval. I would have thought it would have been more sympathetic to the old dame of a theatre to make the extension dark and theatrical as well as spacious? Worryingly, there lots of open raised levels with shelves to put your drink on overlooking the floor quite a distance below where more people mill about - it will only a matter of time before someone gets bottled from above by someone accidentally dropping their bacardi breezer over the edge..

The actual play was good first half, and stunning second, as is quite often the way. The first half set up the characters - I'll not reconstruct the story here but you can read the plot HERE if you are interested.

Suffice it to say I enjoyed the play very much - a lot more than Smithy did who doesn't feel comfortable with touchy feely dramatic sessions, but both of us came away feeling that Bennett whilst a brilliant playwright certainly, succeeds mainly in making us all feel very very stupid. Call me a victim of Dumbed-Down-Britain if you feel like it, but I think Bennett's albeit vastly intelligent writing excludes some of his audience. I missed a lot of the concepts especially the references to turning points in history referred to because they were just too clever too quickly. Reading the play is a must and I will do that as I think it is truly worth doing just that. That way I will have time to absorb the ideas - but just to warn you - it's a wordy one this. Don't go expecting Thora Hird and her cream cracker under the settee ...The slick stage work of the production team (seemed like the stage was always being set by the actors themselves) was a treat to watch. Each set change was precisioned to the second with vintage 70's and 80's songs played over rolling black and white VT as flats rolled across stages and furniture was glided into place by the actors themselves. What looked like chaos during the blackouts would suddenly be floodlight with a bang and everyone was in place and the action rolled on. Lighting cues and sound cues were just the best I have seen and for me this was extremely exciting to watch. Of course the actors were also very slick indeed - our performance was subtitled for the deaf so the actors were under pressure to deliver the script in it's exact form - no paraphrasing - which they did exactly.

My biggest complaint however is about our audience. During some of the more delicate subject matter in the play, our Belfast audience clearly could not cope. During a scene where a teacher is being fired for some rather "hands on" teaching with one of the boys, our audience laughed nervously throughout.

My theory on this odd behaviour is that Belfast only goes to the theatre once in a blue moon and when it does it goes there for a "good laugh" and to be "entertained" and most of all to be seen by other people who want to be seen - so any serious subject matter will confuse it and make it feel uncomfortable resulting in laughing away the awkwardness.

I'm sure it was most bizarre for these touring actors to hear hysterical laughter at lines alluding to a teacher being sacked for repeatedly groping an underage boy... but that's Northern Ireland for you...

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posted by Freddy @ Thursday, November 02, 2006 Comments: 3

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