Theatre

King Lear (Old Vic)

Blue Heart

(Duke of York's)

Enter the Guardsman (Donmar Warehouse) Shakespeare as I Knew Her (Theatre Antibea)

Save Hall!

Sheridan Morley

This seems to be the year of King Lear's triple crown; thus far we have had Kathryn Hunter playing the role in a weird kind of reverse drag, Ian Holm at the National in Richard Eyre's stunningly Close-up chamber version, and now, at the Old Vic, Peter Hall's admirable, almost operatic reminder of the ancient virtues of the tragedy when played at full tilt behind a proscenium arch as a classic version of the all-time theatrical classic. Sadly, this may well prove to be Hall's farewell production at the Vic, which now faces December clo- sure and sale by the Mirvishes to anyone willing or able to part with £7 million for a theatre building which, happily, can be put to no other purpose.

Though there are murmurings that the beleaguered Royal Shakespeare Company could take up some kind of residence there, it is in truth unlikely that any theatri- cal management can meet the Mirvish price; we should, therefore, not just mourn the Hall farewell but actively try to make sure that money is raised to allow him to stay put. For what is demonstrated, not just by the new Lear but also by such other pro- ductions of his in the current season as Waste and Waiting for Godot, is that in less than nine months Hall has set up one of the great repertory companies of the world, offering a roster of stars and shows which currently challenges even the National Theatre in its prime, and certainly outstrips the RSC on its recent shaky record.

We simply cannot afford to let the Hall company disintegrate, nor is there effec- tively another West End theatre, save the Haymarket, where they would be so suit- ably sited; if the new Blair government is to deliver on its promise of a happier climate for the arts than has recently been evident, then their first mission should be to safe- guard Hall and the Vic, no matter what the cost to the Lottery or the Arts Council.

And if you doubt me or the importance of an urgent cheque, check out the current King Lear. True, it is not in any sense revo- lutionary, nor is it especially topical; it is, simply and superbly, a reminder of the timeless majesty of the play. Alan Howard's unusually Christ-like Lear, Denis Quilley's sturdy, sterling Gloucester, Greg Hicks's noble Edgar, Alan Dobie's weary Fool, Jenny Quayle and Anna Carteret as a brace of wondrously wicked sisters and, perhaps above all, Victoria Hamilton's infinitely touching, St Joan-like Cordelia are all performances to treasure and there are still more where these came from. Hall and Howard's Lear is heroic, mainstream, heartbreaking and dazzling in its confi- dence; unlike many other recent revivals, there is never a moment when the produc- tion, on a brilliantly jagged set by John Gunter, seems in conflict with the text. The fidelity is all, and it is more than enough.

At the Duke of York's, still one of the homes of the Royal Court in exile, Caryl Churchill's Blue Heart is a double-bill heav- ily indebted to the N.F. Simpson tradition of 1960s experimental eccentricity, the world of One Way Pendulum and other long-lost homages to Ionesco.

Here we have a kind of elongated cur- tain-raiser in which a family awaits the return of a daughter from Australia, tying themselves up in increasingly circular detours as they restart the homecoming dialogue over and over again, in the hope that it might shed some kind of light, how- ever oblique, on the traveller and her actu- al desirability in the homestead alongside a hopelessly surreal ostrich.

The second and vastly better play con- cerns a confidence trickster who pretends to be the long-lost son of dozy old bats, until he and his girlfriend are struck down by an inability to utter any words other than Blue and Kettle. Thirty years ago, the likes of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Alison Leggatt might have had some bizarre kind of fun with all this, but Max Stafford-Clark's oddly humourless staging leaves a large and talented cast at a loss for words, even those denied them anyway by a contorted kind of a plot. Not for the first time, a production heralded in the blazing hot-house of the Edinburgh Festival looks a lot thinner in the colder, clearer light of the West End.

At the Donmar Warehouse, after its tri- umphant victory in last October's Musical of the Year contest, Enter the Guardsman is .an enchanting chamber piece built around the Molnar classic about the actor who disguises himself in uniform in order to win back the love of his apparently fickle backstage bride. The plot will be familiar enough to addicts of Pirandello and Pinter, but we need to recall that this same Molnar also gave us the roots for one of the great- est of all Broadway musicals, Carousel.

Here he has been admirably served by a Canadian-American trio (Craig Bolunler, Marion Adler and Scott Wentworth), all of whom have been superbly faithful to the spirit of the original grease-painted green- room sketch, and the result is an utterly winning if somewhat winsome musical in which Alexander Hanson, Janie Dee and (as the all-knowing playwright) Nicky Hen- son brilliantly recapture a 1911 period piece and move it subtly forward into the age of Sondheim and cynicism. Jeremy Sams's magical staging is a sharp reminder that, contrary to the views of at least one of my colleagues, this is precisely the kind of show the Donmar was built for and does best.

And, finally, on an intermittent interna- tional tour (I caught it at Hilary King's enchanting and invaluable and courageous Red Pear Company at Theatre Antibea in Antibes, France, one of the very few English-speaking playhouses left abroad), Jane Lapotaire's Shakespeare as I Knew Her is an unusual mix of autobiography, recital and feminist. teach-in based on the many classical roles she has played over the years at Stratford and elsewhere; it is not often you see a Juliet on hormone replacement therapy, and when she gets a little more confident of her material and less nervous of her audience, this might well grow into a one-woman show of considerable distinc- tion and even rarity.