I was once accused by the late Ned Sherrin of getting a production hopelessy wrong. I replied, pleased with myself, that I was paid to be interesting, not to be right.
Oh dear, a failure on two counts, Ned shot back.
So, like any critic, I’m perfectly capable of getting it wrong without any help from anyone else, though my old friend Mark Shenton seems to be policing our copy to point out its flaws when he might be better occupied trying to improve his own critical writing and judgements.
He seems to think there’s a general consensus of approval for Helen Mirren’s Phedre at the National, when there isn’t, and that because I disagreee with him I must have somehow seen a different show, which I didn’t.
The idea anyway that there’s a “right” or “wrong” opinion of anything in the theatre is palpably absurd. It’s nearly as absurd as supposing that because a few critics agree with each other that they are therefore in some way “right.”
At the root of my displeasure at the National’s production is the argument that Racine is virtually impossible to render in English. Ted Hughes’s translation is a very good text, but it’s not Racine, not even close.
Surprisingly, Diana Rigg was far more successful in the title role ten years ago when this Hughes version was first used. I say surprisingly because I was really expecting Helen Mirren to boil over magnificently as the dying queen, but she treads a measured step towards her own calamity that barely raises the temperature, let alone the roof.
The best British Phedre in my experience was Glenda Jackson at the Old Vic in a production by Philip Prowse of high baroque opulence which used a translation by Robert David MacDonald that corresponded to Racine’s extended rhyming metres and challenged Robert Lowell’s view — Lowell did a fine tranlation of his own — that Racine’s alexandrines are untranslateable.
I like to think such remarks are more interesting for blog-readers than bitchy misrepresentations of other people’s reviews.
Mark’s usually on safer ground when he blogs in The Stage on manners and peripheral goings-on in the theatre, though I simply don’t recall the apparently troublesome woman I sat next to at the first night of Arcadia. If she was an intrusive fidget she was obviously worrying me a good deal less than she was Mark who was sitting behind us.
And if I was moving about a bit in my seat, it was more likely because I was trying to focus more closely on the play, which demands concentration, than on getting away from a woman I didn’t know and her (to me) imperceptible intrusions.
I tend to think people should behave how they damned well please in a theatre, anyway, though my patience was sorely tried by about two dozen well dined guests at Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens the other night marching disruptively into the theatre almost twenty minutes after the show was supposed to begin.
I’m more irritated by bad manners in the cinema, where the endless chatter, consulting of mobile phones and consumption of huge tubs of popcorn is a constant challenge to my social equilibrium.
I like to see all the adverts, and especially all the trailers, too, but the sound is invariably submerged in the customers’ own gossip and conversation. And you will have noticed that it always those with little to say who insist on everyone else hearing them. And I could identify a few of those in the front stalls and on the aisle, too.
Isn’t Mark Shenton some big cheese in the Critics Circle? Surely he should be standing up for, not slagging off, fellow critics. Could it be that he is jealous of your role at the Independent and thinks, if he casts enough doubt that maybe he could destabilise your presumably lucrative and, lets face it, more prestigious gig. He does seem to have a considerable interest in your career.
No comment, Stephen, beyond saying I’ve had a wonderful career, still continuing at Whatsonstage, temporarily at the Independent and in many other fields, and I have nothing to prove to, or learn from, Mark Shenton.
I saw Phedre in the 9th June preview and thought it so overly melodramatic as to be farcical. Worse, I found it utterly lacking in believable passion – not only in the case of Phedre/Mirren’s desire for her stepson, but also in the case of Hippolytus and Aricia. I enjoyed your review (in the Independent) of the play far more than the play itself! How could it get a plethora of 4 stars in the press?
I now assume they’re rewarded for effort expended, rather than results.
Christina, you are wrong. You may not have enjoyed the show and you may agree with Michael but don’t you see? You are wrong. Only Shenton is right. Only his opinion counts for anything so, unless you agree with Shenton, your are wrong. Incidentally Front Row (on Radio 4) had the show reviewed by a Racine expert who also didn’t like it and agreed with you and Michael. She is clearly wrong too.
I would not dare come between two big cheeses like you and Mark, but what really struck me about Phedre was the gorgeous sculpted gowns that Helen Mirren got to wear. They were perfect evening wear for a lady of a certain age and so lovely that they overwhelmed her acting. I couldn’t take my eyes off the dresses but somehow couldn’t quite see the Dame. As for the set, I think that big rock mid set supported a roof if you sat in the stalls, but from the circle it supported nothing and also concealed arguably the worst exit ever designed, one which patently lead nowhere judging by the way the terrace wall on the right went. None of this has nothing to do with Racine or the acting, but it has everything to do with what gets put on stage. I really do get tired of reading reviews by critics who never sit in the upper circle or the gods watching plays staged by directors who do their work from the middle of the stalls. And while I am on about things, why did nobody wonder why Jude Law walked about Elsinore barefoot in the snow and then sit down in it and ruminate? As for those stars, well I do occasionally dish them out myself, but they are a marketing ploy beloved of publicists and theatre managers which should be ignored by theatre goers. Read the review and then go and see and make up your mind, but don’t go just on the strength of stars.
William, very good point about design as seen from the circle and gods. As for stars, publicists and theatre managers may love them, but they did’nt ask for them and didn’t invent them — it was newspapers themselves who started the rot, so we’ve only got ourselves to blame. Like you, I’m fed up with being asked, not, what did you think of it, but how many stars? It’s all part of a dumbing down in the discourse!
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