Symphony of torment
Lloyd Evans
Hecuba Donmar BatSoy Shaftesbuly Fruit Salad Hackney Empire
Woe upon woe at the Donmar. And not just for Hecuba, deposed queen of Troy. En route, my new bicycle flipped me like a pancake on to the ruthless camber of Theobalds Road, and as I dragged my bruised limbs into the auditorium I could feel the empurpled joints seizing up and growing stiff. By curtain-down I was
physically unable to clap. I'm not sure I wanted to. It seemed callous to acknowledge as 'entertainment' the anguish of Hecuba, whose unbearable losses after the sacking of Troy form the subject of Euripides' play. Her children fall like withered roses. Hector is killed, Cassandra is raped, Polyxena is dragged off to be sacrificed, and Polydorus, exiled for his own safety, is murdered by his Thracian protectors. Athenian stagecraft had not yet arrived at the discovery that varying darkness and light within the same play enriches the experience. This is an unrelieved symphony of torment, but if you can bear it there's plenty to admire here; a spare and energetic new translation by Frank McGuinness; decor of great simplicity and originality: two sloping white dunes inclining into a blue lagoonette of real water. The play opens with a brilliant surprise as Eddie Redmayne pops up like a bloodsoaked seal and announces, 'I am the ghost of Polydorus.' I could happily have watched more of Tim Pigott-Smith's sly, troubled Agamemnon, and of Kate Fleetwood's Polyxena, whose heroic defiance awes and shames the Greeks even as they are about to cut her throat.
It may seem timely to revive this play right now, but perhaps it's just a little too timely. TV has hardened our hearts to bereavement. Every night we sit and munch our lamb-chops while in the corner of the room some mother somewhere is pouring out her soul over a shoddy coffin. We know the phrasings and modulations of grief as well as we know the national anthem. Both leave us cold. Clare Higgins's challenge is to overcome this satiety and impress us afresh with a simulation of suffering. She gives a vivid and minutely observed performance, which I found utterly exhausting. The good old Athenians, after watching a tragedy, repaired their shattered nerves with a knockabout satyr play. Not us. We sloped home in time for the ten o'clock news.
The injuries that stopped me applauding Clare Higgins also prevented me blocking my ears during BatBoy. This cult American musical faces a couple of fairly serious problems. One, it's opening just as its audience is departing. Two, it's cobblers. Here's a summary. Orphan with pointy ears gets rescued from pothole near hicktown, falls in love with wrong girl, gets lynched by bigots, is eventually revealed to be son of chief tormentor. Numerous ancient stories have been plundered in the creation of this wit-free farrago: Oedipus, Romeo and Juliet, Frankenstein, King Kong, to name but a few. It's not a plot, it's a crime scene. They should have called it BlipBoy. The music is gruesome, the dancing perfunctory. The songs are so forgettable that the actors deserve Olivier awards for committing them to memory. The Midwest setting means that both the interiors and the costumes are revolting to behold. It must be rare for performers in a West End musical to be worse dressed than the tramps languishing in nearby doorways. The audience looked even rougher. Trekkies, druggies and crusties crowded the stalls, along with a smattering of tattooed school-leavers, widgeted loners and scented misfits holding hands. The male lead fell ill during the interval and had to be replaced. I hope he wasn't pulling a sickie, but I wouldn't be surprised.
It was a real pleasure to see Fruit Salad at the Hackney Empire. This riveting, harrowing and hilarious tragicomedy has the hallmarks of a classic. The framework is simple: two black couples meet for a birthday party; one pair breaks up, the other two get together. The play examines all kinds of social issues with a searching and satirical eye: Christian evangelism, misogyny, black male pride and the babyfather syndrome. But though the play was a treat, the evening was a disappointment. The Empire was barely half full. In Hackney we just don't go out in the evening. Here's why. If you're on the minimum wage the difference between £1.50 (hiring a video) and £16.50 (buying a theatre ticket) is the difference between 20 minutes' work and half a day's. The millions spent refurbishing the Empire haven't addressed the one consideration that make the venue such a terrible commercial hazard. It's still in Hackney.
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