Personal morality
Lloyd Evans
Tape Soho Theatre Hamlet Royal Observatofy Greenwich and Middle Temple
Clod. I was happy to get into the Soho V Theatre. It's refrigerated and as I sat in the deliciously cool air I was enthralled by Olivia Wingate's production of Tape by Stephen Belber. The plot of this short and brilliantly structured play seems perfectly banal at first. Ten years after high school, three pals meet up and work through the ramifications of a messy love triangle. Big deal, I thought, but within minutes the subtlety and perceptiveness of the writing won me over.
Jon, a prig at high school, has done well. At 28 he is a film director on the verge of the big Hollywood break. Vince, his best friend, has moved in the opposite direction. He is an embittered small-time dopedealer still jealously obsessed with his sexless passion for Amy. The plot turns on what happened to Amy after she and Vince split up. Jon and Amy enjoyed a one-night stand but the suspicious Vince is determined to uncover every lurid detail. He goads and hectors Jon and finally forces him to admit that he raped Amy. He challenges Jon to apologise to her. Jon refuses. Vince then reveals that he has taped Jon's confession and that he intends to hand Amy the tape when she turns up. This threat becomes all the more chilling when we learn what Amy has made of herself. She is a district prosecutor.
The construction of this play, superficially unremarkable, is the product of an ingenious intelligence. The smallest details generate spectacular dramatic results. The incriminating tape, which passes from hand to hand, acquires the numinous power of an unexploded bomb. Belber is mercilessly accurate about the awkwardness of male friendships, about the aggression that underlies men's banter, and about the latent hostilities that are exposed when success and failure alight unevenly on lifelong friends.
With its bourgeois setting, its themes of personal morality and its tense claustrophobic atmosphere this play recalls Somerset Maugham in his heyday. The script is exceptionally well served by the cast. Dominic Fumusa brings a charming swagger to the scheming, bullying low-life, Vince. Josh Stamberg expertly traces Jon's transformation from pretentious artist to exposed woman-molester.
And then Amy arrives, the angel of vengeance, but this play never takes the path you expect. No, Jon didn't rape her, she reveals. He threw himself on her and clapped his hand across her mouth but she happens to enjoy rough sex. And anyway she was in love with him. There are further reversals and surprises, some disturbing, some hilarious. Alison West moves effortlessly between the different registers her part requires, from nervous bemusement when she first arrives, to pretended rage and finally to affecting tenderness. You will rarely find actors so comfortable in their roles. This is one of the best things I've seen all year.
And the very, best thing I've seen is Hamlet. 'You can only fail in the part,' said Tom Courtenay, and I always go to a new version expecting disappointment. It didn't happen. A young troupe called Natural Perspectives stages open-air productions at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. One side of the hill has been scooped out and flattened into a lawn that might accommodate two tennis courts. Mature trees on all sides reflect sound inwards making the area a natural auditorium. It's a lovely place for a picnic on a summer evening. Add Hamlet and you're ascending into heaven. This production is acted and directed with great verve and imagination. Matthew Bulgo, a swarthy, prowling Dane, begins diffidently but quickly assumes the stature the role demands. There are desperately tricky moments to negotiate, not least Hamlet's habit of repeating himself three times.
'Except my life, except my life, except my life,' he says to Polonius. Bulgo makes perfect sense of this strange line by the innovative use of his sword. First he tempts Polonius to kill him and then lunges out violently at the old man who retreats in terror.
One of the oddities of the prince is that although he's a violent, suicidal maniac you would love to have him as your best friend. Bulgo touches both poles of his personality. Sarah Jane Wolverson, investing Gertrude with a majestic iciness I haven't come across before, has reversed my conception of the queen. I used to favour the theory that she married Claudius on the rebound and knew nothing of the king's murder. Wrong. She's guilty as hell. And so to the bad news — Greenwich run finished.
Good news — Middle Temple, 20-24 August. Brolly if wet, Bolly if fine.
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