Fringe Theatre
Sour Kraut
Gill Pyrah
Stallerhof, the first of Franz Xaver Kroetz's plays to be translated from the German, is a work of conscious pessimism which receives the unsentimental direction it demands from David Mouchtar Samourai at the Bush Theatre.
A Bavarian peasant family — mother, father, retarded daughter Beppi and hired-hand Sepp, exhausted by the effort of existing, eschew the luxuries of conversation and compassion. It is diffitult to refer to the work as a play — the word has connotations of entertainment; Stallerhof is an unrewarding statement of wretched facts that would cause the blackest despair in a mind that had time or strength for reflection. It is all inevitable, there is no escape: none is even suggested. Sepp, who is turned away from the farm when his rape of Beppi is discovered, will go into the town and become a vagabond with his sordid bundle of old clothes and the body of his dog in his suitcase. The truth is pathetic, but the audience are not moved to care. Such is Kroetz's uncompromising attitude to the theatre he will not allow his subjects to solicit our involvement. They have no pity for themselves therefore none is engendered. The lack .of empathy renders the performance meaningless — the long silences suggest nothing, the speech has no philosphy. We are assaulted unremittingly by drear sordid truths, but are in no way encouraged, perhaps not allowed, to be moved, feel horror, compassion or even revulsion. What should be profoundly disturbing is merely alien and prosaically dull.
At Hampstead Theatre Club the Low Moan Spectacular are back with the slapstick and silliness their fans from El Grande de Coca Cola days expect of them. This time they're romping through Bullshot Crumrnond — a `satirical reminder' of the dashing exploits of that upper-class, ex-Army super-sleuth Bulldog Drummond. I doubt that purists — for whom the mention of Drummond's name sends a surge of spine-bracing upper-lip-stiffening red blood through the (by now hardening) arteries — who revere the very British sod those hand-stitched brogues surefootedly strode on, will forgive these young whippersnappers who 'present Sapper, as it were, quite sapped of the essential bravado and chivalrous heroism, and unsportingly exaggerate the chauvinistic, the idiotic and the trite.
But if true Bulldog buffs find this travesty unsupportable, for the non-cognoscente (and I doubt that many of the club audience honestly remember Vera Lynn from first time round, never mind pretending they're au fait with the social and literary norms of the Jack Hylton era)— for those who know the breed only through send-ups of take-offs of old movies, most of the `satire' is wasted. Frankly, no parody can in any case be more perfectly ludicrous than the originals of the genre. For a send-up of Sapper see Buchan. Or vice versa. Or Dornford Yates for either of 'em.
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