Trouble and heartbreak
Lloyd Evans
World Music Donmar On Blindness Soho Theatre And All the Children Cried Battersea Arts Centre
Woe, woe, and three times woe. There was so much misery being flaunted in the theatre last week that I wanted to cry 'whoa' long before it was over, World Music at the Donmar analyses the countless agonies of Africa and the motives of all the guilty parties. Superb acting apart, this is a listless, chatty, well-meaning melodrama. The writer is anxious to present every cultural standpoint — our meddling decency, their calculated outrage — and he hopes thus to shepherd us towards an enlightened understanding. Question is, will understanding help? I've tried 'understanding' and you have too, no doubt. I've followed the news, I've watched the documentaries, I've sifted many hectares of troubling newsprint, I've sat at the feet of our 'Wild life' correspondent, Aidan Hartley, as he held forth at fog-horn volume about the calamities of his adopted land, and still I know nothing about Africa except this. The phrase 'What Africa needs
' inspires instant deafness in all listeners. Understanding has created what, so far? An aid-basket for the locals and a guilt-plantation for Europeans. I suspect the solution to the problem is for white people to stop having solutions.
At the Soho Theatre, a new disability drama. The d-words conjure rather gruesome images: earnest paralympians with titanic arms and foldaway legs scooting around in wheelchairs delivering heated soliloquies about the shortcomings of busdesign policy in the Greater Manchester area. But Paines Plough have created an effective and amiable romantic comedy. The show offers an ingenious solution to one of the big drawbacks of signed drama: the distracting visual presence of the signer. Instead of a hand-puppeteer standing to one side, the performers on stage mirror the action while signing the dialogue to the deaf. A simple and brilliant innovation. Sign language itself is amazingly expressive. The action for 'tree', upheld forearm, fingers waggling, is strangely lyrical, while 'hidden pregnancy' and 'early grave' are like visual gags, they make you want to giggle. But although this is a funny and spirited show the script strays a little from its stated destination. It loses momentum and turns into a flimsy soap opera about sexual politics.
One way to tackle issue-drama is to create characters who are obsessed with their problems to the exclusion of all else. This is the approach of Bea Campbell and Judith Jones, whose new play And All the Children Cried focuses on two women jailed for murdering infants. First we are presented with Myra, an enigmatic Catholic northerner. When she's not listening to Puccini, she's praying ostentatiously to the Virgin Mary or boasting of her ability to 'initiate a debate in the Guardian letters page'. A cold, smart, pious, conceited, self-vindicating and rather regal snob. Hindley to a tee, I thought to myself. Indeed, fool that I am, I was hoping that the prison door would clank open and an ancient, wild-haired peer would totter in with his arms outstretched, 'Myra, how are you I brought you some Toblerone. Lady Antonia sends her fondest.' But it wasn't that kind of evening.
The writers have taken on one of society's gravest problems and done it full justice. Myra's cell-mate Gail, played by Gillian Wright, is an astonishing creation. This abandoned wretch was born into a family of out-and-out paedomaniacs. Enthusiastically violated by both her parents, she was pimped out to taxi-drivers and other local dignitaries. By 15 she had had two baby girls, sired by her rapists. When she realised the babies were destined for the family business, she smothered them. Gillian Wright shows complete mastery of the character's emotional life.
Moving seamlessly from goofy, fidgety charm to the very depths of heartbreak and despair she creates an utterly convincing portrait of a simple woman driven beyond the edge of endurance. And Wright always holds something in reserve. Here is an actor who knows that to watch a human being struggling not to scream is immeasurably more powerful than to watch one screaming. As her harrowing confession unfolds, the killing of the babies seems an act of courage and defiance, a necessary sacrifice, a piece of virtue even. And society begins to look contemptible for holding murderers automatically in contempt. Gail's case is clearcut. She deserved better than her cage.
Myra is more complex and, in this script, not quite fully realised. A monologue offering a comprehensive portrait of Hindley would make a fascinating contribution to the debate. If anyone can uncover the secrets of that dark heart, these writers can. And they should.
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