Theatre
Muted trumpet
Kenneth Hurren
I cannot, of course, speak for the vintage car rally, the volley ball and karate matches, the fireworks displays or the cookery demonstrations in the current Fanfare for Europe, but the involvement of the arts, in a programme of events that would look desperately anaemic without them, is a fraudulent foolishness. The arts have always had their own internationalism, existing independently of political arrangements, and often, indeed, in opposition to them (as, for instance, in the case of Peter Daubeny's World Theatre Season which annually gathers nations of conflicting ideologies on the same stage, and which was once generously described by a member of a visiting Israeli company as the ' Mecca' of the theatrical world). Nothing presently arranged, has added, or could have added, anything to the AngloEuropean artistic intercourse which has been cheerfully going on without benefit of treaties.
There can have been no lack of applicants for, the hand-outs which Lords Goodman and Mancroft disbursed among those willing to organise events celebrating the success of our European supplications (the moment was never more opportune for bringing out begging bowls), but I am glad to see that the theatre has kept fairly aloof from the scramble. The official programme lists but a handful of theatrical occasions, most of them mysterious ('King's Head, Islington: Fringe theatre ' is listed for every day of the Fanfare) or conspiciously irrelevant. The National Theatre whimsically declared its production of Twelfth Night to be its "contribution to the celebrations," apparently on the grounds that the play was originally performed at the court of Elizabeth I in honour of an Italian count. (Whisked quickly in and out of the Old Vic, the production makes its next appearance in February in Basildon and Horsham, presumably with no such nonsensical justification.) The Royal Court's affectation that its Beckett double-bill, Not I and Krapp's Last Tape, is a part of the Fanfare is evidently sardonic; and the Theatre Upstairs is not much less capricious in offering A Fart for Europe. Out of town, my eye is caught by Lord Byron Lives!, at the de Grey Rooms in York, described as exploring the character "of one of this country's first committed Europeans," which is the ingenious excuse of the producer, Richard Digby Day (now employed in York), for the revival up there of the show he first presented a couple of summers ago in Regents Park.
I cannot even be certain that Scapino, which I saw last week at the Young Vic, has turned up at this time as a result of any "full-hearted consent" to Mr Heath's enterprise. It is, to be sure, listed in the official Fanfare brochure, but the company has been kicking it around for years with mounting success, and I daresay they. always had in mind another London run — which comes most appropriately in the pantomime season. As you doubtless know, it is a vivaciously free, English adaptation of Les Fourberies de Scapin, in which Moliere emphasised his indebtedness to the frolicsome commedia dell'arte by setting the action in Naples. It's an engaging little romp, led with inspiring energy by Jim Dale, and demonstrates as nicely as anything you could hope to see that when the British are handed a French script under an Italian sky, the result is quite a pantomime; and perhaps also that the Young Vic's director, Frank Dunlop, Is quite a card.
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