Arts

Creatures great and small

Giles Gordon

Passion Play (Wyndam's) Number One (Queens) The Seagull (Greenwich) Kingdom of Earth (Hampstead)

Hot on the hoof of Strider comes more horse play at the Cot- tesloe, Peter Hall's adaptation with music of Mr 1984's fairy story, Animal Farm. Orwell's translucent prose was, of course, written to be read. Sir Peter, wisely, doesn't pretend this isn't so and has a child actor, dressed in red blazer (I take the colour to be significant) read passages from the book as a means of linking the scenes. Jennifer Carey's sets of farmhouse and farmyard nicely suggest children's cutouts and Puffin picture books circa 1945, the year of the novel. Her clever masks — half face for the pigs, full face for the others — give the lie from the beginning that all animals are equal.

Barrie Rutter plays Stalinesque Napoleon, his wide eyes always guarding his flanks. It's a confident, knowing perfor- mance. David Rya11 is sinister as time- serving Squealer, Greg Hicks innocent idealism as Trotskyite Snowball, and Kenny Ireland sonorous as Old Major, who sug- gests the revolution, uncivil war. Each animal — pig, horse, sheep, cat, dog, donkey — has its own way of walking, mostly with the aid of sticks to provide ex- tra legs. There are some splendid Hall touches: from the gallery hens hurl eggs down onto the stage, where they smash; Napoleon's dogs of war annihilate suppo- sedly treacherous animals in the cowshed; snow falls, then the blood of the dead merges with the snow; Boxer, the horse, is carted to the knacker's yard. Adrian Mit- chell's lyrics ignore the subtle ironies of the novel and are closer to tub-thumping Brecht. Richard Peaslee's rumbustious music increasingly suggests epic. Overall, the tale is told well and the moral plain. The final scene, with the pigs become half human, the humans half pig, is quite scary. All stand there at a long table having eaten, drunk and conversed well, saluting the future but looking like characters out of Arnold Bennett or H.G. Wells.

Leicester Haymarket's production of Peter Nichols's Passion Play is presented in London by the Theatre of Comedy. The play comes across, whether or not because of this, as much more erotic and ribald, both in language and gesture, than when first put on a few years ago. Thus, half way through the second half, when events become heavy and serious — Eleanor (Judy Parfitt is her flesh and blood self, Zena Walker her alter ego) asks her husband, James (Leslie Phillips as the guilty adulterer, Barry Foster his sardonic con- science), to choose between her and his floosie (Heather Wright) — the agony, the passion of the title, did not move me unut- terably as it did in Mike Ockrent's original RSC production. That made Passion Play seem a work of weight, wit and integrity with extraordinary, exceptional insights in- to the condition of marriage. Although much of this still comes across in Mr Nichols's revised text, Mr Ockrent's new production with Martin Johns's efficient, smooth set more suggests a jolly romp for the charabanc trade in spite of the bruised ending (Eleanor leaves James) to enforce the view that the play has a serious message.

The acting is accomplished enough but lacks the commitment of the original pro- duction, although the two alter egos (whose parts have been expanded) sparkle par- ticularly. It's an enjoyable evening but the play does not come across as the master- piece of marital gilt I believe it to be. It's surely the first major play to suggest that male guilt is more to do with the condition of marriage than with whether adultery's adult. Peter Nichols is essentially a moralist, and philosophises here as to how the pleasures of the flesh, which probably

`. . and a jar of non-racist strawberry jam.'

You know what kind of evening youre in for when the programme declares that the leading characters are dressed by Sain Laurent. The assumption, presumably'

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that the beau monde will be attracted hlit. the fact is that clothes worn by actors as i; they're fashion models make them look and even act as if they're off-the-Peg clothes' horses. Jean Anouilh's Number One in Michael Frayn's adaptation comes across a; the smoothest, blandest and shallowest ,f), artifices, like soup in an expert s,,; restaurant that has gone through `"n- Moulinex too many times. Leo IvIciCe,r; growls and barks as Leon Saint-Pe Ils°,'." obnoxious relative of General Saint-Pe .1" The Waltz of the Toreadors), an egocentric' elderly playwright failing to write the Pl?I which, it transpires, we've been watching 3 evening: that's the sop to intellectual, a; tistic pretension. Saint-Pe's familY and sponging novelist friend, Gaston, who him the Goncourt, scrounge cheques from "'"",e Gaston is played by Joe Melia, who has the guile to look absurd in his Saint Latirekns gear. On the other hand, Peter Blythel°° as Bernard, husband to one of Saint-P,e‘,0 born to wear his, and has an excellent scen,cs daughters, who instructs her father to "'is her husband she wants a divorce. Divorciene something that Bernard's aristocratic `let has never countenanced. In Robert Clies; wyn's wooden production, this is the End at its most odious and antiquated. he `What we need is new forms in `110 theatre.' (Tell that to H.M. Tennent, present Number One.) 'If we can't gel thfer I'd rather have nothing at all,' says an°t01"), playwright, Konstantin (Robert GwilYt:00 in Philip Prowse's thoughtful produc of The Seagull. Instead of the usual cla:se trophobic Russian tea room, Mr Prwilich provides a high wall of leaves " liest Gerry Jenkinson cleverly lights from cluw"itti grey to brightest green and dapples. mie sunlight. Chekhov's characters come ln by one and sit on white bentwood chaiiie't Arkadina (Maria Aitken) alone wilt' rug' back to the audience. The beginning arae gests Last Year in Marienbad, or a gles, where no one has told the

Silence lasts for five minutes her Ma° (Julie Legrand): 'Why do Medvedenko (Richard Rees) asks

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black?' The first speech establishes the ° Donald's translation.

loquial, realistic tone of Robert David I've never seen the corn- players the ru_ore sibuti.7 edy, more about angst and the imPos,,eed, of love, lasting happiness. Its lowc,l'ia'raa unromantic, utterly unsentimental. bsesse" Hinds is a very young, stuPtch Trigorin, Johanna Kirby a kadiria unrealistic Nina. Maria Aitken 's dame is a red-headed gorgon, less gran" As so octor: .,ch the

than lonely soul, hissing and spittingj often in Chekhov, the key is the

self-0 David William as Dorn stalks thr°" of humanity. idiocies evening, sympathising with the Tennessee

It's tempting to say that

play done less Williams's 1967 melodrama, Kingdom of Earth, is only receiving its London premiere now because its author is not around to deny it. It's a huge load of hokum about two half-brothers fighting over their late Mother's home, a farmhouse in the Miss- issippi Delta. Stephen Rea is Chicken, he- Man, half-coloured younger child; David Taylor Lot, elder brother with hair bleach- ed blonde and a propensity for wearing Mother's nightgown. He has one lung and is dingdying fast as he bears home his show-girl. fast (Nichola McAuliffe), and the "°°d waters rise. Kenneth MacMillan directs without much awareness of irony against Laurie Dennett's numbingly detail- ed set. The evening is overblown rhetoric; Lt!e hollow, vacuous speeches cannot but give dramatic poetry a bad name.