THEATRE
Padded cell
HILARY SPURLING
They Don't Grow on Trees (Prince of Wales) The Lunatic, the Secret Sportsman and the Woman Next Door (Open Space)
The Czech group Quidam, from the university of Brno, is the latest in a small, distinguished, not to say delectable list of visiting companies 'ti:i which the International Theatre Club has played host this year. Quidam gave two pieces
ro ii mthe past fortnight: Octagon, which is per- rmed by a cast of eight for an audience of
4 5 :-.■
.9, enclosed together inside a small, green, sealed and padded cell; and Archimitnus which • Cts fifty minutes on a conventional bare stage. Archiminnts concerns a dangerous and visionary individual who, envisaging a glorious ,ne'w future for mankind, is arrested as a menace to society—here represented by a chorus of six —and methodically tortured to death. Two half- nl'. e ,
a:k d bound and drooping slaves, posed at the ck of the stage, testify to the perils of sub- !.
mission; Archimimus prefers suicide. The beauty of the piece lies chiefly in the move- ments of the chorus, in their slow wheelings and convergings, their brutal lunges and their sudden, vicious tremors of pleasure. They circle their victim, enlacing in a frieze of bare legs
and arms, ashen green or purple tunics, pale faces and flickering eyes watching with male- volent concentration under strange cloth hel- mets, like the curls which frame the faces of archaic Greek heroes. This balletic grace is heightened probably by the fact that, if one knows no Czech, their voices rise and fall like a musical accompaniment to the physical ten- sions, the savagery or the sensual caresses with which, after a peculiarly ferocious climax, they stroke their victim back to life. The whole is a most delicate exploration of ambivalence, complicity and pain in the relationship between the torturers and their victim; and yet the final impression is 'not so much of venom, still less of gloating triumph on the faces of the victors, rather of a harsh and sombre melancholy. The piece is directed by Jiri Pavlousek, who also wrote it with Jiri Biinisch.
The imaginative subtlety and precision of Archimimus is rather startlingly confirmed by Octagon, a workshop piece based on the jealousy of Cain and Abel, and performed with the spectators in the middle. For here, im- prisoned by the company who thud and lumber and leer alarmingly around their huddled vic- tims, the audience finds itself cast in the role of Archimimus—weak, harassed, browbeaten, manfully upholding the rights of the individual against this ruthless collective solidarity. Emotional conflict is reduced to glaring eyeball- to-eyeball matches, as members of the cast stare down members of their luckless audience. Not that this kind of thing will be unfamiliar 41- to West End playgoers trained in the past few years on the cumbersome, hulking carcasses of what was once a living form : They Don't Grow on Trees is a typical example of the genre and stirs in the audience a compensating anxiety to please, a kind of nervous willingness to be en- tertained at all costs. Among so much that is trite, wan and well-thumbed, only Hugh Pad- dick, as the hero's passionate admirer, has a quirkiness which, being unique, is also genuinely comic. What is odd is that your ancient bour- geois stronghold and your revolutionary cell should both lay precisely the same burden of hard work on the audience. As between fifth hand trad and the banalities of fifth hand mod, a choice is hard to make: Stanley Eveling's The Lunatic, the Secret Sportsman and the Woman Next Door is a prime example of the latter, Used on absurdist notions which even in their heyday were none too hot, and comes as a bitter disappointment after the brilliant oilgin- ality of his Strange Case of Martin Richter at Hampstead last month.
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