Review The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus

The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus
by Tony Harrison

Mind The Gaps
http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

In a world where the collection of data has become inextricably linked with cultural dominance, Tony Harrison's 1988 funny yet ambiguous The Trackers Of Oxyrhnchus has a welome revival at the Finborough Theatre in a cut-down production directed by Jimmy Walters.

To our untutored classical ear, this verse play, written shortly before the end of the Cold War by Tony Harrison, cannily mixes the archaic and the contemporary, the allure of Tutankhamun-like archeological digs with the then in-the-news music and recording industry's exploitation of young musicians.

All within the framework of the lewd and bawdy satyric play with the potential for tragedy, an almost-lost theatrical form which accompanied the ritual tragedies and comedies of ancient Greece.

This strange but compelling piece is itself  divided into three fragments. An imperial 1907 archeological expedition with two dons seeking to export in crates their papyrus finds to an Oxford University collection.  A 5th century BC mythological age of Greek gods and cloven-hoofed phallicly well-endowed, part goat, part horse, part human, satyrs. And then current-day London, via National Service, the South Bank's 1951 Festival of Britain and the 1970s' National Theatre.

The two obsessed dons, Bernard Grenfell (Tom Purbeck) and Arthur Hunt (Richard Glaves) are supervising a phalanx of Egyptian workers uncovering ancient scraps on a rubbish heap.

Disappointingly for the intense Grenfell, legal petitions from disenfranchised citizens outnumber slivers of literature including a long-lost satyr play of Sophocles - every legible word matched by an equal number of illegible phrases and huge gaps in the papyrii.

Grenfell's mental state proves to be the gateway to a past mythological world where Apollo possesses the don's mind demanding the mortal puts together the lost play without any gaps where the meglomaniac Greek god is both main character and superstar actor.

Apollo also demands total control over the arts maintaining an artistic class system which excludes satyrs from creating or playing.

Nevertheless the call to excavate the long-lost play also acccompanies Apollo depending on the satyrs, lured by a reward of gold and freedom, to find his lost herd of cattle. Indeed, the herd only proves to be another gateway to the production and reproduction of music unlicensed by Apollo.

Harrison is a Leeds Grammar schoolboy who read classics, not at Oxbridge, but at his local redbrick university. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus takes a niche piece of historical and literary excavation, tracking its wider implications.

He takes as his starting point a reality - the expedition of Grenfell and Hunt using Grenfell's historically recorded real-life mental illness to lead us finally into a world where the past, the contemporary and the mythological uneasily co-exist together.

The leader of the satyrs (Richard Glaves transformed from Hunt) brings the audience through a Good Old Days Leeds Variety type singalong. Except the audience is instructed in a smattering of Greek to sing along to as a charm to raise the  boozy, lusty satyrs. They burst out from the confines of the crated papyrii on which Sophocles wrote his satyr to erupt into a spirited proletarian clog dance choreographed by Amy Lawrence.

It's certainly a very male play, a hold broken only by the fragile yet self sufficient nymph Kyllene (Peta Cornish) bringing a statuesque female dignity, a Victorian view of nymphs, contrasting with the rumbustious satyrs as they seek Apollo's lost animals.

Mixing classical stanzas, what snobby bloggers (!!!) might call popular culture, a kind of Dr Seuss frivolously serious didacticism, the dramatic conflicts over translation and artistic creation widen and darkens into the failure of idealism, increasing suppression and censorship.

Walters' energetic direction safeguards the lively pace and comedy but also clearly delineates a grevious uncertain, repressive status quo.

Designer Phil Lindley's tattered papyrii hangings, stone slabs and one dimensional pillars ingeniously evoke the Egyptian excavation and transform into a mythological backdrop before the archeological layers are completed by projections of modern London on the backcloths.

The costumes by Alexander William Connatty are equally unfussy and effective. Last, but not least, the lighting of Tara Marricdale takes on a central communal status and tellingly obscures as the ideal retreats into more violent consequences. 

And somehow Harrison's fidelity to multiple sources, the orginal history and texts, yoked together with a fluent train of thought rather than cut and paste as they emerge into the modern world,  insures a resonance in our current digital environment. Director Walters has only to make the lightest of updates - mobile phones, capable of filming violent acts, and isolating earphones instead of boomboxes - to keep the play pertinent.

For  we live in an age where artistic creation is now subsumed into and consumed as "content". The most popular, easy-to-reach websites often dominate with one sole interpretation of events and  control of such data, whether collected by companies or the state, raises the possibility of abusive monopoly commercial exploitation.

The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus still feels seriously relevant. Even the unwieldy title seems to anticipate our cookie-tracked digital age and it's a green light for this intriguing, humorous yet troubling play. 

Review After October

After October
by Rodney Ackland

The Wolves of Hampstead
http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

At the end of the "The Wolf of Wall Street", an ex-rogue trader holds up a pen and invites the multicultural participants in his global touring seminar to invent a good story to sell the product. (32 seconds into the video link).This scene popped into our thoughts as we watched Rodney Ackland's 1936 play, After October.

Of course, the recent movie is about financial wheeler dealing and only one off-stage character in Ackland's screwball comedy is a convicted thief, although there is some 1930s' product placement.

Still, this two-act semi-autobiographical piece is filled with stories and plots brought to the impecunious Hampstead household by the widowed, still attractive Rhoda Monkhams (a nicely judged performance of grace under pressure by Sasha Waddell), a former Gaiety Girl, and her children including playwright son Clive (boyishly intense Adam Buchanan).

The play follows the trials and tribulations of the debt-ridden family. This includes Clive's sisters Joan (Allegra Marland), a would-be artist currently the lover and secretary of hard-drinking married text book publisher Alec Mant (Jonathan Oliver);  and Lou (Peta Cornish), whose musical theatre ambitions have melted into the reality of being a taxi dancer while her charming but lightweight husband Armand (Andrew Cazanave Pin), cast adrift by his family, serves in a wine shop.

All their hopes are pinned on Clive, a Grub Street hack  and aspiring playwright, whose anti-war play is about to be put on. Even if, in a play set in 1935, during the Spanish Civil War, when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and Winston Churchill warned about Nazi Germany, it's perhaps not the most auspicious time.

If Clive succeeds (strange as it may seem now, a West End hit at that time could turn a struggling writer into a millionaire) it could also trigger a chain reaction in other directions.

The career of his working class fellow writer,  dark and brooding poet Oliver (lugubrious Patrick Osborne), could also twist around if Clive follows through on his promise to be his financial guarantor. As it is, he's reduced to selling bristle brushes door to door and has a penchant for entering the Monkhams's home through the bay window like a spy or a burglar.

Their housekeeper Mrs Batley (Josie Kidd in a finely tuned understated performance) appreciates her treatment by Rhoda for whom she keeps unpaid tradesmen sweet. But she has her troubles, retreating to the cinema to avoid her bullying Mussolini-loving son-in-law, and could find a new role if Clive succeeds.

It's only eccentric Marigold Ivens (Beverly Klein), seemingly the woman least likely, who appears to be coyly laying little claim on Clive. He enjoys her company, even if she harbours her own, apparently vague, thespian ambitions.

Now we admit to having a soft spot for Clive, especially as he's left-handed like your very own reviewer and his chaotic paperwork with orange Allen Lane Penguin paperbacks scattered round his writing space reminded us of something closer to home.

Clive himself would like to join the moneyed rentier class, with his name up in lights over a hit play. He would also be able to marry the lodger, the  manicurist Frances (Jasmine Blackborow), whose rent helps supplement the family's meagre income, grabbing her away from stick-in-the-mud retired colonial civil servant Brian (Stephen Rashbrook). 

The snug Finborough space is transformed cleverly by designer Rosanna Vize into a light and airy Hampstead living room complete of course with bay window. After October is fluently directed by Oscar Toeman with only a few lapses of pace, perhaps owing to the almost cinematic nature  of the piece.

There's a feel of Noel Coward's Hay Fever and, transatlantically, George Kaufman and Edna Ferber's The Royal Family while retaining its own feather-light individuality.

For, despite the the superficial frothiness of the plot, there are clever meaningful literary pastiches and a subtle gender mash up. One character when told Clive has written a drama even innocently asks if it's a musical comedy or a detective story. Plus ça change ...

This proves to be far from a playwriting equivalent of a quota quickie, even if Ackland himself seemed to have suffered the burdens of and enjoyed little of the success of his illustrious playwriting circle. With its acute grasp of the entertainment industry's line of dependency and sly, sharp but humane sense of the ridiculous, After October sold itself to us and it's a TLT green light.