Katie Mitchell's Cleansed

"All I want is a room with a view
A sight worth seeing, a vision of you
All I want is a room with view.
I will give you my finest hour
The one I spent watching you shower
I will give you my finest hour, oh yeah"

Blondie, "Picture This"

When discussing a piece of theatre, it seems logical to begin by discussing the piece of theatre itself. 

This is not one of those discussions, because this is a piece of theatre directed by Katie Mitchell - and there are few directors working today who are burdened with suitcase after suitcase of useless critical baggage like she is. Her naturalistic productions of Chekhov, Euripides and other writers at the National were divisive, and her multimedia productions (which fused live performance with technology to create what she called "live cinema") were practically groundbreaking. In the years following however Mitchell quietly disappeared, instead working in Europe at theatres like the Schaubühne where she felt she could create her most radical, extreme and feminist productions. 

So her production of Sarah Kane's Cleansed  is quite a big deal. Not only does mark the National Theatre of Great Britain staging a play by one of the best playwrights in Great British history for the first time - I never quite believed this, yet somehow it seems that even our biggest theatre is capable of committing such an injustice - it marks something of a homecoming for Mitchell herself - an institution whose misogyny caused her to leave it.

The play itself follows various figures attempting to survive in some kind of bizarre torture institution. We have Grace, who has come to look for her dead brother Graham, and then Road and Carl, a young gay couple being tortured to test their love, and then Tinker, a psychopathic dealer/doctor who craves the love of a peep-show dancer yet doesn't know how to feel love.

While the use of a university setting was clearly the intention of Kane, Mitchell instead opts for a psychiatric institution which, due to abandonment or other reasons, has been overrun by dirt and trees, gorgeously summarizing the clash between love and hate Kane portrays. It's a beautiful design by Alex Eales. Not because it's aesthetically pleasing in the way an Ivo Van Hove production is, say, but because it's just so realistic. What he and Mitchell have done is create a small slither of a fully-realised world, and it just so happens that the slither they chose was one where such horrific, atrocious things happen. The lighting by Jack Knowles is also top marks: dark enough that this place seems like hell, but bright enough that we can see every act of mutilation crystal clear.

It's this idea of a *fully realised* world that brings me to the performances, which are some of the most un-naturalistic yet naturalistic performances I've seen. Like her production of Alles Weitere Kennen Sie Aus Dem Kino at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Mitchell has the characters perform their lines under duress, with Tinker and his attendants being an inescapable force who are often present even in the scenes the text says they aren't. Dialogue is sparse, and it's interesting to note just how little of it there is full stop. Words just sort of crop up in the haunting soundscape (sound design by Melanie Wilson and music by Paul Clark) which mixes helicopters passing overhead with ghostly replayings of lines screamed by the characters. When there are exchanges, the characters speak fast because they know they could be dead in a few minutes. All of the performances are fantastic, but Michelle Terry (on-stage the whole time, often fully nude for long stretches of it) is once again proving to us all that she's one of the best actresses working today. Her performance is worth the cost of admission alone, if I'm happily honest. And this is a demanding play, especially on Peter Hobday as the tortured Carl. Over the course of the play he has his tongue pulled out, and then his fingers and toes shredded. 

And the violence itself is disgusting. Realistic enough that it seems to be plausible, but not realistic enough that it distracts (like the working taps in Othello a few years back). When Carl has a large metal pole pushed up his anus, we see the pole lubricated and a small cardboard tray placed beneath him to catch any droppings. It's this horrendous attention to detail that just makes you squirm, and yet you can't look away because the world Mitchell presents is just so beautiful even in the moments of torture. On a personal note, the scene I found toughest to watch (after the needle being put into the eyeball) was the scene where Robin is force-fed an entire box of chocolates he bought as a present for Grace. This was the weaponisation of romance, affection as a noose. 

But the thing I loved most* about the production was how completely and utterly un-British it was. This is the kind of frightening, shocking yet ultimately moving work that just wouldn't be made under the National's previous artistic director, Nicholas Hytner. It was incredible to watch Cleansed and then step outside into the chilly London night. If this marks the start of the National producing more challenging work that will - one day - put us in the same league artistically as theatres in Germany and the rest of Europe, then this really is a significant production. Not that is isn't significant without all the contextual baggage about our relationship with Europe - it's pretty much a flawless production in every regard. It's one of the few pieces of theatre (re: Oresteia) that I've become utterly and completely *lost* in. The sum experience, the emotions that emerge organically from every single individual reaction it causes are so overwhelming and powerful. It's relentless in both horror and love, so uncompromising in the message it blasts into the head of anyone who watches it. 

And hearing a song by Blondie in a National Theatre production put a big fucking grin on my face: 

* I didn't, actually. I loved everything about it.

July in Theatre

This July was defined by four trips to see four very different plays. 

We kicked off the month with a trip to see Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree, which was in the National Theatre's Temporary Space. I've already written a lengthy post on just how much I loved it. But I'll just say it again: it's an incredible piece of theatre and is about to embark on a short tour. It's well worth getting to one of the venues to catch it. 

Then it was to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see the RSC's Othello, which left me disappointed in both the production and the director Iqbal Khan's seeming lack of trust in the play itself. It was full of annoying gimmicks; at one point a television was lowered and a scene was acted out over a live video link, but it was blatantly prerecorded. Cheek By Jowl's production of Ubu Roi is how you use multimedia, and the work of the Toneelgroep Amsterdam  also demonstrates a brilliant use of live video. The actors never stood still, they were always fussing about enacting mundane tasks like setting up wi-fi and changing items of scenery. Khan didn't seem to understand that this play is still so popular for a reason, that reason being that the language and characters are brilliant. Lucian Msamati was a very good Iago, but even his pantomime cackle at the end seemed cliche. The RSC'S Othello is an uninteresting reading of a brilliant play, which the elderly Stratford audience lap up, calling it 'radical' and 'out there'. It just left me feeling a bit cold and a bit numb from the three hour running time. 

Then it was to London's Donmar Warehouse to see Temple, a new play by Steve Waters about the Occupy movement and the action initiated against it by the City of London. The play was nice. It was a calm, measured production directed by Howard Davies, with a lovely, powerful performance from HRH Simon Russell Beale as the Dean. Sure, it's not going to change the ways we look at theatre as an artistic medium, but it was a well written, brilliantly acted piece which trusted the audience to answer the questions the play raised themselves. And SRB could be an underdog Olivier nominee. 

And finally, back to Stratford to see Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, directed by Justin Audibert. It was brilliant. And I'm not just saying that because the RSC has, on a whole, been a bit disappointing this year. It's a really brilliant production. Jasper Britton is hilarious as the titular Jew, Barabas, and it makes great use of the smaller Swan Theatre. There were some goregeous period costumes, and having the choric Machiavel appear in a Royal Marlowe Company t-shirt was a clever touch. Basically, if you see anything in the RSC's summer season, go and see The Jew of Malta.

Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree or: How I Learned To Stop Caring and Just Watch

When I first booked tickets to see Tim Crouch's An Oak Tree at the National Theatre's Temporary space I didn't really know what I was going to see. I knew that Crouch wanted details of the piece to be kept deliberately secretive, and I knew that half of the cast changes every performance and hasn't read a word of the script until they step onto the stage in front of the audience. To be completely honest, my main reason for going was because I'd sat in front of Crouch when I saw Our Town at the Almeida Theatre last November and wanted to see him on stage.

I also knew that the cast was two people, including Crouch, and that the show was Kind of a Big Deal. It was Kind of a Big Deal in that this was the tenth anniversary revival after runs in London, New York and Los Angeles, and it was also Kind of a Big Deal because famous people have done it. People like Mike Meyers, Sophie Okendo and Frances McDormand. People that you tell your friends about over dinner. And tickets were £15, so even if it was awful, it was only £15 worth of awful.

So when we sat down in the theatre, the start of the show was indicated not by the dimming of the lights or a loud sound effect, but by Tim Crouch strolling onto the stage, completely out of character and saying hello, which we warily replied to.

"Hang on", I thought. "This is supposed to be experimental! Shouldn't he be contemporary dancing around the set to an unsettling ambient score, while we all try to figure what's actually going on? Maybe it'll start normal and get weirder."

I was wrong. An Oak Tree is a simple, raw piece of theatre. It's the complete antithesis of the stereotypical 'experimental' piece. There's no gimmicks. The other characters in the piece are played by white chairs. The script walks the line brilliantly between beautifully abstract and language so simple it could have been improvised on the spot.

But the thing that made me fall in love with An Oak Tree is that every performance is just so, so special. The inherently repetitious nature of theatre means that, even if you're in love with a production, you're always aware of the fact that what you're watching will happen again. And again. And again until closing night and then if the show gets a West End transfer the process just repeats itself.

Every performance of An Oak Tree, then is a completely individual performance. Even the cast lists could be seen as collectors items. I wondered why no programmes were being sold until I realised that it would be kind of of impossible to do so. On a side note though, I'd happily pay for a commemorative limited edition book on the play, a bit like what Punchdrunk just did with their book on The Drowned Man. It's this feeling of individuality which makes every performance of An Oak Tree so special. Because the second actor changes every performance, the bond between cast and audience ceases to exist after the cast take their bows. We can't look at pictures on the website to bring back memories, nor watch a trailer on Youtube. We just have in our heads what we saw with our eyes and listened to with our ears. I even felt my eyes getting a bit damp at one point, which has never happened to me in a theatre ever.

And as much I hate the word, An Oak Tree is defined by the metatheatrical. Crouch plays a hypnotist, who hypnotises a man whose daughter he killed in a car crash. But isn't that just theatre in itself? Aren't the actors on stage the magicians, and we the willing participants? We hand over our tickets, find our seats and wait to be amazed? The piece is so dense, so jam-packed with clues and puzzles that it would be impossible to analyse it in the theatre. You come to appreciate the language not for what it symbolizes, but for how it sounds. When Crouch halts the piece to ask the second actor how they're finding it, never have questions so mundane sounded so shattering. Even as the lines between author and performer start to blur, I've never felt so emotionally exposed as I was on that sunny Saturday afternoon in July. I've been wanting to write something about An Oak Tree since I first left the theatre, but words have just escaped. Only three weeks later can I speak about it in a vaguely coherent way.

Because, ultimately, An Oak Tree is a love letter to theatre. Crouch (who seems to know much more about theatre than any Oxbridge-educated director does) has constructed a tender, heartfelt piece about something which the government want to cut to oblivion. The play could be seen therefore as a piece of political protest, standing tall in the face of everything. But I think it's best to just appreciate An Oak Tree for what it is: two people transforming themselves before our very eyes, and as a result, the audience transforming with them.