Theatre
Medea (Wyndham's) She Stoops to Conquer (Queen's)
Tamhurlaine (Barbican)
Star quality plus
Sheridan Morley
Four performances this week are linked by nothing more than the most important of all theatrical qualities, as defined more than half a century ago in a little-known short story by Noel Coward: 'And then, my boy, you pay your money at the box-office and go in and watch them, and suddenly you are aware that you are in the presence of something very great indeed, something abstract and beyond price. Star quality plus. It's there as strongly in tragedy as it is in comedy, magic and unmistakable, and the hair will rise on your addled little head, chills will swirl up and down your spine, and you will solemnly bless the day that you were born.'
Not the most fashionable of qualities, now that we have a theatre run by directors and dramatists rather than actors, but it is on show around the West End now in a rare and very varied triple treat. At Wynd- ham's, the Diana Rigg Medea has lost noth- ing in its transfer from a brief and triumphant season last autumn up at the Almeida. This is still one of that theatre's highly chic, cutting-edge classical rediscov- eries in miniature, one 'dominated by Rigg's lacerating performance as the Moth- er from Hell in a colloquial new translation by Alistair Elliot hot on sexual politics and not averse to the odd she-devil joke: 'It's natural for a woman to be angry with a husband embarking on a second marriage,' Jason tells his unsuspecting children as his mother is preparing to dismember them in a fit of classical pique.
On Peter J. Davison's beaten-bronze set, there is tremendous support from Madge Ryan, John Turner and Tim Woodward: but the importance of this magnificent Medea is its timelessness and its reminder that great classical work can still be done away from the great classical companies.
The Peter Hall/Bill Kenwright travelling classical roadshow (no town unvisited, no revival too familiar, no star unemployed) rolls back into town with Oliver Gold- smith's She Stoops to Conquer in a produc tion joyously conceived to bring together Donald Sinden and Miriam Margoyles as the Hardcastles. This, you'll recall, is the one-joke romp from 1773 about the young blood from town mistaking the country house of his prospective father-in-law for an inn, but Hall's staging allows Sinden to get back to his London Assurance form as the lover of old wine, women and songs unwillingly yoked to Margoyles, our most richly eccentric female Falstaff since the demise of Margaret Rutherford.
Together they grab an otherwise not hugely distinguished or focused production and wrestle it down to the footlights in a miraculous reminder of the old theatre the- atrical. Whenever they arrive on stage, alone or in harness, they lift the whole oak- timbered farrago right off the ground, only then to put it right back there as they exit, leaving David Essex (as a bland Tony Lumpkin) and the rest of a lacklustre cast to stand around wondering where the laughs have gone. Sinden has long cor- nered the market in pop-eyed indignation and querulous amazement, while Mar- goyles rattles and quivers around him like a vast plum pudding filled with firecrackers.
These are two great, over-the-top star turns and we should celebrate their energy and pace rather than shrinking from their current unfashionability. At a time when most actors approach classic comedies in the low-key mood of drama professors at a regional further education college, Sinden and Margoyles go for this one like bulls at a matador's cloak and they are wondrous to behold.
Meanwhile, over at the Barbican, the spirit of Olivier's manic Mahdi in the movie of Khartoum lives on in Antony Sher's superlative, scenery-chewing perfor- mance as Tamburlaine, in from last sum- mer at Stratford. Half-shepherd, half- Hiawatha, all-epic, the scourge of God and terror of the earth quite literally kicks his heels at heaven, clambering 30 feet above stage on a rope to deliver Marlowe's rant- ing verse head below heels.
What Sher and his director Terry Hands have realised is that Tamburlaine was the Terminator of its day: not only is it passing fair to be a King and ride in triumph through Persepolis, but it is a lot of fun to slaughter several million along the way.
Like Medea, this is a bloodbath of a show but on a huge, Cinerama scale, one which takes full advantage of the enormousness of the Barbican, even drafting in neigh- bouring drama students from the Guildhall to swell the ranks of the RSC for Tam- burlaine's avenging hordes. Most of the supporting cast pale into the shadows in the dazzling headlights of Sher's full- frontal attack, but Claire Benedict has some touching moments as his beloved Zenocrate: the rest is largely choreograph- ic, and none the worse for that.
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