Arts
Flying finish
Mark Amory
Clay (Pit) Not childish, childlike,' said someone in The Knack and that is what shrewd adults hope they are dishing up for us at the moment. This sentimental tale of orphans, a lovable shaggy dog and Sheila Hancock is reminiscent of Annie, which is among the most successful musicals of re- cent years, and the all-conquering E. T. in- vokes Peter Pan with which it has conscious parallels. Caird, Nunn, Napier and Oliver, the team that gave you Nicholas Nickleby, have mucked about with the text a bit, which is fair enough as it is Barrie's own se- cond thoughts and variations that they use and it was a bit of a rag-bag already. You do however get the feeling that they have in- geniously dramatised a book rather than starting with a play. Some of the ingredients are brilliantly original, like the Old Etonian (though don't you think that might be bogus?) Captain Hook, the ticking crocodile and the dangers of rich damp cake; some are conventional, like the other pirates, the hidden island and the Indians. All is kept bowling briskly along, the com- bination of plot and spectacle making an effective children's play.
The extra power comes from Barrie's feeling for the Lost Boys, which is fascinating and properly incorporated in the play for the first time. Barrie was fully aware of this feeling, though not necessarily consistent in his attitude to it. He portrayed Peter as cocky, heartless, slightly less than human but irresistible. As someone who has always thought that growing up was rather overrated, I was all prepared not to resist him but in this production he re- mains, I am sure on purpose, an unpleasant if pathetic boy understandably feared by his companions. Barrie may have thought a boy forever was a thing of beauty but it is not much fun to have one around; so the conventional view that maturity is desirable frames his ambivalence.
The nauseating quality of the play is re- tained, as indeed how could it not be? A lit- tle girl, doubtless encouraged, used to call Barrie 'Friendy', which when lisped was Tvvendy' and that is how the name Wendy was born. Unlike a fairy, it does not die whenever someone says they do not believe in it; and so on and so forth. Jane Carr makes her funny and convincing, indeed she eases the whole show past the nearest thing there is to a dull patch, without pretending Wendy is anything but a little monster. The whole embarrassing master-
piece works and there is something for everyone. While adults speculate on death and the acceptance of responsibility, children can enjoy an ostrich, a fine crocodile and wolves with red eyes and, though you will not think a man can fly, everyone can enjoy watching actors zoom gracefully 50 feet into the air on wires. The best play for the family then, if it still prompts the thought that Anthony Hope expressed on leaving the first production: 'Oh for an hour of Herod.'
There is no space to do more than in- dicate that Clay by Peter Whelan is a lively look at the familiar discomforts of contem- porary middle age. A little like a naturalistic and British version of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance, it concerns a couple whose best friends of years' standing des- cend upon them with their troubles and threaten to stay forever. Gemma Jones as Wim can admire a pot with the line, `You've created a silence. It's important,' and later win back our sympathy. All re- main capable of surprising you.
Both of these successes are at the Bar- bican which is apt, as a scamper through the year must start in the middle when a production between good and outstanding seemed to open there every night. Henry IV Parts I and 2 contained so much that you could quarrel with details and still be im- pressed; All's Well began better than well and kept it up; Our Friends in the North despaired of a corrupt world more per- suasively than anyone else; Money in- troduced me to Bulwer-Lytton and made me want more; the revival of A Doll's
House bowled me over with a play I thought I had finished with; and there are those who like Poppy very much.
What I caught at Stratford was a little less exciting but included the best King Lear I have ever seen and the performance of the year in Anthony Sher's Fool; all the same, the Other Place is threatening to upstage the main theatre. The National had the smash hit of the year, Guys and Dolls, which was lucky because there was not a lot else. Again, the smaller theatre, the Cot- tesloe, seemed more impressive with, in particular, short bleak works from top playwrights, Rockabye by Samuel Beckett and A Kind of Alaska by Harold Pinter. I liked Bond's Summer and Ayckbourn's leaky Way Upstream more than others did. Much else was mediocre, Don Quixote a full-blown disaster.
At least it faded away, whereas disasters in the West End tended to hang about for months on the power of their stars Elizabeth Taylor in The Little Foxes, the television team in Not In Front of an Au- dience and Glenda Jackson in Summit Con- ference. Starry repertoire at the Haymarket held the middle ground with a top of The Rules of the Game and a bottom that was at least bizarre, the adaptation of C. P. Snow's A Coat of Varnish. Deserved suc- cesses were Michael Frayn's Noises Off and Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, and Christopher Fettes's amazing production of Berenice. The Royal Court improved again with Operation Bad Apple, good acting in a revival of the excellent Not Quite Jerusalem, the memorable Salonika by Louise Page, Insignificance by Terry Johnson and, I am confident, Top Girls, which I am told I may yet get a chance to catch up with. Further out, things were quiet but Shared Experience's A Handful of Dust, the jolly WCPC, and The Hard Shoulder might all have come in to join Robyn Archer in livening up the centre in easier times. Not a bad year but more dark theatres and one-man shows ahead I fear.
`I want to say, Mike, how pleased I am to be here on your home video chat show tonight.'
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