Theatre
Step by step
Giles Gordon
Serjeant Musgrave's Dance (Old Vic) Golden Boy (National: Lyttelton)
Forty Years on and Oh, Kay! (Chichester) Bred' tplates are buckled on in John Arden's 1959 ballad play, Serjeant Musgrave's Dance. It comes across in Albert Finney's lavish production as the most considerable play to have been written in this country since George Devine established the English Stage Company, which is not to imply that John Arden is our most substantial playwright. For two thirds of the evening, Mr Finney — who also plays Black Jack Musgrave, leader of four redcoat army deserters visiting a north of England mining town in bleakest winter to return the skeleton of young Private Billy Hicks, erstwhile townsman, and to wreak vengeance on 25 citizens — seems suc- cessfully to be promoting the cause of ac- tors' over directors' theatre. He allows his handpicked cast to establish their char- acters, especially those in tiny roles (Eileen Atkins is the most Northern landlady ever, pinched and acid; Graham Crowden a haughty, unforgiving clergyman; Cathryn Harrison an available, and lost barmaid;
Willoughby Goddard ultimate bought-and- sold first citizen) and the tale unfolds in words, dance and song at the pace of a Vic- torian triple-decker novel which, in certain respects, the expansive, dark play resembles. But the last act, maybe because there are two intervals, loses momentum and lacks the terror and tension it needs to contain when Billy's skeleton is strung up and the Gatling gun turned on the populace.
That the play has a near-Shakespearian richness and variety is emphasised in that two characters who haven't stood out in previous productions here do. Mark Jef- feris is Sparky, the young soldier desperate to live and love before he dies: he embraces the world and the world destroys him. Max Wall makes of the Bargee a full-blooded chorus, commenting impishly and looking like a giggling foetus. Alun Armstrong and Allan Surtees individualise the other two redcoats. They are, mainly, silent soldiers deadened by the rigours of army life, keep- ing their heads down. Mr Finney gives a selfless performance as the obsessed, Bible- bashing leader of this band of hopelessness. Di Seymour's set, with ever-present pit head, makes the north of England in ferocious winter an Arctic hell.
Clifford Odets's Golden Boy in Bill Bryden's measured production is less soap operetta about the American dream grotes- quely become nightmare than how one father's ambitions for his son destroy the boy. It's terribly well done in a documen- tary way but, as so often with Mr Bryden's work, a deadpan refusal to indulge the ar- tistic imagination deadens the emotional response. I was quite unmoved except by Joseph Brady's playing of Mr Bonaparte, a poor Italian immigrant who sees his son as a world-class violinist. Joe (Jeremy Flynn) is so nagged by dad that instead he becomes broken-knuckled prizefighter, lightweight champ. He loses his humanity, steals his manager's moll (Lisa Eichhorn) and both come to a grisly end.
There's no poetry, no precision in the writing. Honesty and earnestness are there but it's simplistic, manipulative and sen- timental. Derek Newark barks and rasps as Joe's manager, and Trevor Ray is funny as his odious stooge. James Grant is gentle and humane as the trainer, a very Terry Lawless. Jack Shepherd is hilarious as the stylish, tightlipped gangster who buys a piece of the action. Mr Flynn is more credi- ble in gym and ring than as potential Menuhin: the boxing scenes are realistically done. Hayden Griffin's detailed, accurate sets of the underbelly of New York (plus a beauty of Central Park with a glittering carousel singing its soul) suggest the Depression no more than the production does. Whatever Mr Bryden intended he has achieved little more than a 1937 living tabloid newspaper.
'Enjoy the school play,' said the owlish schoolboy who showed me to my seat at Chichester. At Stratford, what is disconcer- ting about this season's Henry V is that it comes across as the Albion House — Alan Bennett's public school that Forty Years On is all about — end of year production. Before Agincourt, the wimpish actors hud- dle in the rain like prefects caught behind the pavilion after hours. Paradoxically, Patrick Garland's wonderfully fluid pro- duction of Mr Bennett's very funny play suggests that the young men of England educated at Albion House, and whose names are inscribed on the war memorial that is central to Peter Rice's clever set of school hall, died for real. 'The magnificent equality of death', as someone ludicrously says.
I didn't see the original, 1968 production but it's hard to imagine how the great Gielgud could, as the Headmaster, have lost his persona and become the bathetic, tetchy, petulant, melancholy, marvellously silly teacher reliving his memories on the day he retires that Paul Eddington achieves. John Fortune as his successor and Stephen Fry as a thigh-squeezing junior master are equally absurd and splendid. The kids are terrific and play many instruments but much of Mr Bennett's purpose seems to be to ponder why any man, become public school master, insists on being diminished to sarcastic, dehydrated nincompoop. And why is it that names such as Bottomley, Crabtree, Rumbold, Wigglesworth and Wimpenny are hilarious from the stalls but not when they're your school contem- poraries or when they become Cabinet Ministers?
Oh, Kay! is abysmal, amateur and em- barrassing, campery run amok on Peter Rice's grand piano of a stage. The main vic- tims are George Gershwin's music and brother Ira's lyrics ('Someone to Watch Over Me', `Do Do Do' and 'Clap Your Hands') and the Garrick Club tie which the actor giving the worst performance sports in two versions: Mr Garland should de- mand their return urgently. Ian Judge misdirects, the choreography is a joke, Jane Carr is horribly miscast and looks silly in a green swimsuit but Josephine Baker is most professional. The highlight of a ghastly eve- ning is Geoffrey Hutchings mixing a salad.
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