Review Demons

Demons
From The Book By Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dramatised by Peter Stürm

The Revolution Will Be Dramatised
http://www.splitmoontheatre.org/repertory/demons/
 
Tackling Fyodor Dostoevsky's Demons for a stage production is always going to be a mighty task. Inspired by an 1860s' real-life murder case of student murdered by his fellow nihilist revolutionaries, the novel prophetically warns of the dangers of fanatical ideologies.

Peter Stürm, artistic director of  SplitMoon theatre company, is the latest artiste to grapple with this sprawling satiric work in a patchy production at St Leonard's Church in Shoreditch, London.

On the plus side, there's no lack of ambition in this modern dress production with its parade of carnivalesque grotesques.  There are strong actors in the cast, Jeffrey Kissoon, Samuel Collings, Timothy Allsopp and Valerie Grogan, and some beautiful work on lighting, although the lighting designer is unnamed in the programme

St Leonard's Church is magnificent, a venue fittingly reflecting Doestoevsky's religious preoccupations. It could have been a glorious setting and audience experience for a carefully thought-out production.

Unfortunately, the pluses are outweighed by the minuses in what turns out  to be a gruelling and jumbled three hours for the audience, shepherded from nave of the church to various other rooms, up and down staircases.

The problems start with the church's acoustics - audibility is a major issue, even sitting up close. The sound is better when the action moves to the smaller rooms.

The play's framework, as far as TLT could grasp,  is that of a court case, the story of a botched uprising then told in flashback. What happens between the beginning and the end? It was often hard to grasp and there's something amiss when one needs to consult the programme's description of characters in order to try and work out what is going on.

There is a possiblity of some spectacular staging - the image of a duel on one balcony watched by the audience on the opposite balcony sticks in the mind. However it was impossible to follow a narrative line.

Collings as the manipulative, amoral Stavrogin is undoubtedly charismatic and Kissoon makes an impact as both a bishop and also Stravrogin's intellectual mentor. However, this feels like a tangled production, with only occasional moments of clarity where basic technical problems could have been solved beforehand,

While Dostoevsky is famously wordy, the script could do with some filleting to allow more of both the subtlety and the bold satiric humour to emerge.  This seems like a script  shoehorned into the space rather than tailor-made.

It made TLT wonder whether in another space, more convenient for the audience and actors, this particular production would have worked better. However, as it is, this is a frustrating experience for the audience, sealing a red light. 

Review The Knowledge

In an era of satnavs and Uber, a classic comedy drama about black cab drivers in training passes the test for Peter Barker.  

The Knowledge
by Jack Rosenthal
Adapted for Stage By Simon Block

Be Lucky!
http://charingcrosstheatre.co.uk/theatre/the-knowledge

The Knowledge, for those without the knowledge, is the ordeal all would-be taxi drivers of London's iconic black cabs must undergo to earn the right to ply for hire on the city streets.

Those applying, known as Knowledge boys and girls, need to learn the 20,000 streets within a six miles' radius of Charing Cross and how these link together in what are called "runs".

In 1979 a tale of unemployed men and one women attempting The Knowledge caught the imagination of the British public in an enormously popular TV film written by the late Jack Rosenthal and directed by Bob Brooks.

Now The Knowledge has reached  Charing Cross Theatre in a stage adaptation by Simon Block, directed by Maureen Lipman who appeared in the original TV film 38 years ago and also happens to be the wife of writer Rosenthal.

The play's bones and flesh remain Rosenthal's work in a faithful adaptation. This does mean however it still retains a screenplay feel with a series of quick short scenes and a multiplicity of characters.

Nevertheless director Lipman keeps up the momentum and a nine-strong cast play out the trials and tribulations of the oddball applicants on Nicolai Hart-Hansen's two tier set.

The Public Carriage Office examiner's office, ever-present, perches on a central mezzanine while the domestic scenes roll out front of stage.

Above are London street signs -- Kennington Park Road, Brixton Road, Whitehall and a pair of traffic lights which signal the progress of the would-be cabbies.

The main focus is on taxi novice Chris (Fabien Frankel), goaded by his girlfriend Janet (Alice Felgate) into trying for his cabbie's green badge.

Ted (Ben Caplan), aided by wife Val (Jenna Augen) is also trying to join the ranks and live up to a tradition of passing The Knowledge and joining the family taxi driving dynasty.

Gordon (James Alexandrou) uses The Knowledge as an alibi to cheat on his long-suffering wife Brenda (Celine Abrahams) while Miss Staveley (Louise Callaghan) is the only woman applicant. 

The spectre hanging over all of them is the prospect of not succeeding and the embodiment of that is examiner Mr Burgess.

The monstrous Burgess is a classic comic creation, here captured by a stand-out Steven Pacey judging the applicants from his desk in Penton Street, N1.

What you get in the film which is missing from the stage are the streets of London in spite of a soundtrack with The Clash's London Calling, The Jam's Town Called Malice and Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street.

But on stage the wide ranging shots of London and the applicants investigating the intricate web of thoroughfares are a lack. For Rosenthal's original script was as much an affectionate look at the highways and byways of the capital as a dramatic glimpse into the training of cabbies.

A little later, Ian Drury and The Blockheads performed their own love song to London the Bus Driver's Prayer - "Our Father who art in Hendon, Harrow Road be thy name".

Rosenthal's earlier The Knowledge comes from a similar place. It is definitely and defiantly a piece of its time. Just as cabbies with The Knowledge retain a human flexibility and nous which cannot be replaced by technology,  so the script remains entertaining, very funny and humane and it's an amber/green light.

Review The Pulverised

The Pulverised
by Alexandra Badea
Translated by Lucy Phelps

The Opposite Of Babel
 http://http://www.arcolatheatre.com/

In the Bible, Babel is the site where all speak a common global language but the universal language is destroyed by the builders of the Tower Of Babel. Now it seems that it's financial jargon and the global corporate chase for the bottom line to maintain solvency at any cost which has become the global language.

The memory of the Icelandic financial crisis when the country's major banks collapsed came to mind when Reykjavik was mentioned late in the one act economic drama The Pulverised, translated from the French.  For the set is dominated by what could be the ashes of a fire or maybe s solidified volcanic lava flow. 

Writer Alexandra Badea is Romanian-born but lives in Paris. The Pulverised therefore looks at a world of outsourcing from a Franco-Romanian perspective.

A call centre worker (Solomon Israel) is in the former French colony of Senegal where employees work, like call centres all over the world, to standard scripts. A young country girl ((Rebecca Boey) is an electronics' assembly worker in the Chinese city of Shanghai, a part of which France once controlled.

Globe-trotting quality assurance  executive (Richard Corgan) is based in Lyon with his family, capital of the recently-formed French administrative region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. However he is more often found in a hotel room and branch offices around the world as he carries out his job.

Meanwhile in Bucharest, another centre for French outsourcing,  a new mum (Kate Miles), a research and development engineer, perfects her language skills for the unnamed French multinational and a chance of the one new job while the company cuts the old ones.
  
The drama emphasizes the repetitive, dislocated, unnatural rhythm of work from the factory floor to the executive level with the underlying crudeness, savagery and humiliation which a screen-based relationship with the world brings.

Paid-for live porn on screen is customized and broadcast in time-efficient slots. The lower rungs of the manufacturing hierarchy allow  for abuse. Even religion has learnt to package itself for the MP3 age with advertisments on African buses. The African call centre clerks must adopt typically French names to answer customer calls.  

The Pulverised is divided into a series of monologues. The production, directed by Andy Sava and designed by Nicolai Hart-Hansen, flashes projections in between (audio visual and sound designer Ashley Ogden), has the four-strong cast doing automaton or zombie like moves (movement director Lanre Malaolu), as well having an electronic music soundscape.

Unfortunately, despite good performances, The Pulverised suffers from a lack of context.

This is not to downplay the issues involved and the strongest and most disturbing moment for us was a viaual one (beautifully played by Solomon Israel) when it dawns on a a call centre worker that promotion is coming to him as a result of an avoidable tragedy involving, at best, covered-up criminal negligence by his company.

However The Pulverized also seems to be either strangely worded or in  a strange translation. We're told that the Shanghai worker is manufacturing "boxes". Yet at another point in the play electronic circuits are mentioned.

In fact we think this play may need amplifying in English for a UK audience. Otherwise it feels like we've seen it all before - whether in the Hollywood version like Up In The Air,  the plays, for example, of Anders Lustgarten or the "selling" of a pen in the Wolf Of Wall Street.

Ironically in a  week when the French and English languages have become a hot issue, our hunch is The Pulverized may have lost something in translation elminating a dramatic discussion of what the French language means in the modern world and becoming a more standard script. 

While Shanghai has an obvious meaning for us all, we felt the names of Dakar and Bucharest simply do not have the same resonance and history for an UK as for a Francophone audience.

So the moment when suddenly we're dragged from the countries which remain in France's orbit to Reykjavik where there can be a glimmer of recognition simply does not have the impact it should have had  and we award an amber light.