Theatre
The Possibilities (Almeida) Bitter Sweet (Sadlers Wells)
Bloodthirsty world
Christopher Edwards
This is an evening of ten short playlets by Howard Barker. His title refers to moral choices made by a variety of indi- viduals living, principally, in a blood- thirsty world of terrorism and war. Cruelty and fear dominate proceedings. They come over his characters not by stealth but in short, stabbing little explosions of feeling and incident. Under a sky where (in Julian McGowan's stark but suggestive set) the clouds have been bricked over, this is definitely a late 20th-century urban world — Beirut? some East European totalita- rian state? Part of the evening's success lies precisely in its making you feel both a local identity — life in the here and now of a repressive modern state — as well as a sense of the wider historical field of human suffering. As Barker himself has put it, these pieces are speculations about how people frame their lives under oppression.
His work is a sure blend of the elegantly rhetorical and the blunt. As it happens, the opening piece is actually the least impress- ive in this respect. A Christian army is on the point of seizing a village. We see a handful of Turkish villagers doggedly weaving away to preserve their stock of carpets. As the Christian slaughter gets nearer the pipes flanking the weavers spew blood. The head weaver, urging on his comrades, declines to drop a stitch for history. Fatally oblivious to anything but his carpets, he prefers instead to consider the new dyes that can be made from human blood. History drops him instead.
When, as here, we find Barker in merely rhetorical mood, the results can seem pretty solemn and sententious. But these are not characteristic features. Indeed, elsewhere he turns precisely this sort of stiffness to comic effect. The fourth piece in the programme is a powerful story about an emperor trying to sleep while, from the outer darkness, come terrible cries of his own wounded men being slaughtered by the Turkish enemy. In the middle of this, an aide observes, straight-faced, that the Turk is swift with the knife, but not as swift as the Bulgarian. Barker does not conde- scend to the easy witticism or joke. Sure enough, the irrestible urge to giggle at this line is all the stronger because of the tension and bleakness of the rest of the scene.
Perhaps the most startling play is the one about the Polish torturer arriving in the village to take up a post at the castle. A brilliantly sustained passage of writing, it combines suspense and Gothic humour with a mini-debate about the relative merits of torture and flattery as profes- sions. It is Barker at his characteristic best, demonstrating a suppleness and emotional force that is irresistible. And at his best he can certainly inspire actors. Under Ian McDiarmid's direction this excellent cast, which includes Nicholas Woodeson, Doug- las Hodge, Katherine Rogers and Suzanne Burden, launch themselves into a venture that draws on all their technical resources. Despite a certain unevenness, this is a powerful production.
Noel Coward's operetta Bitter Sweet (written in 1929) was a cunning escapist excursion into romantic nostalgia — a sort of homage to the popular theatre of about 50 years before. Typically, he contrives to have the best of both worlds. The evening starts (and ends) with brittle Bright Young Things mincing about to the syncopated rhythms of Twenties jazz. Then, by way of a long flashback to the 19th century, we follow Sarah back to the gentler, mistily romantic days of her youth, and to her elopement with a penniless music teacher.
The number that marks the transition is one of Coward's best-known waltz songs, `I'll See You Again' — otherwise known as `I'll Hear This Again'. Melodically it was a happy find, but I have never felt that either the tune or the slight lyric that comes with it could bear quite the number of reprises it is given. In fact the wafer-thinness of the libretto is quite exposed by the need to repeat the song so often, but somehow no one seems to mind.
Even now this production operates pret- ty well as a wallow — just as it did in 1929. And on this level it is hard to fault. In Act Two there is the diverting number, 'If Love Were All', in Act Three the underesti- mated, witty send-up of the gay Wildean Nineties, 'We All Wear a Green Carna- tion'. This all makes for unashamed escap- ism, prettily if unimaginatively presented by director and choreographer, and des- tined — despite any amount of sniffy criticism — to run for ages. A tour of the country is planned.
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