Down with the Wind, up with the Unicorn
It’s odd how once a bad show opens — like Gone with the Wind — all people seem to want to do is jump up and down on its corpse. The gloating of the gossips is deeply repellent, much more so than the sad sack of a mediocre show itself. I’ve found myself defending Trevor Nunn’s staging way beyond its virtues just to be cantankerous.
I certainly think Trevor Nunn is a genius whose work is wildly uneven and not even predictable these days. He can console himself with the fact that he should have two much better received productions up and running in London before the end of the year, both of them coincidentally based on Ingmar Bergman movies.
The West End transfer of his Coventry production of Scenes from a Marriage starring his wife Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen, is well in hand; and his Menier Chocolate Factory revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music should be a treat for Christmas.
Mind you, Nunn’s Sondheim will have to go some to better my memories of Hal Prince’s original London production which starred Jean Simmons, Joss Ackland and Hermione Gingold.
One game being played in intervals at the moment is: well, what were the truly great Trevor Nunn productions, then? I’d submit his RSC productions of The Revenger’s Tragedy, the Dench/McKellen Macbeth, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice and Nicholas Nickleby and Les Mis (both the latter with John Caird); his National productions of Oklahoma! and South Pacific; Porgy and Bess at Glyndebourne; Starlight Express; Skellig at the Young Vic.
In the welcome burst of warm weather I was able to gather up the French family who are staying with us this week and take them off to the Unicorn, where The Man Who Planted Trees, about the forestation of Provence during the last century, told in the story of one old peasant and his puppet dog, was an utter delight. So were the Charles Trenet songs on the soundtrack. The actors wafted us with the scents of lavender and pine and sprayed us with the wet morning mist of the district, too.
My French friends have no particular interest in the theatre but they, and their two small sons, were enchanted. We met the couple, who live in the mountains near Grenoble, on holiday ten years ago on a boat trip setting off from Peniscola, north of Valencia. (The buses in the region bear the shortened destination name of “Penis” on their front windows.)
I had dived into the sea for a post-prandial swim and, on climbing back aboard, had clasped the ladder which had come out of its casing. A big wave slammed it shut, with my middle left hand finger trapped inside.
I appeared over the side of the boat covered in blood, like a creature from the black lagoon, the finger hanging half off. Some people fainted. The crew disappered, unhelpfully. We were three hours out to sea. Thank heavens for Nadia, the French trainee nurse who staunched the wound, bandaged it, found the brandy bottle and finally, back on dry land in the pouring rain, got me to a hospital, where a few big carpet stitches did the trick. Holiday tip: always carry your passport to gain access to hospitals in the EU.
We have kept in touch with Nadia and her husband Pascal — and their subsequent little boys — ever since. The least I can do is have them to stay for a few days and treat them to a puppet show at the Unicorn.