FANSHEN. To 2 August.
London.
FANSHEN
by David Hare.
295 Regent Street To 2 August 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.
TICKETS: 07708 740913 (for next performance only).
www.theatredelicatessen.co.uk/fanshen/tickets.html
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 July.
Rare revival worth a look by the interested and those with memories of the play’s premiere.
Despite their name, Theatre Delicatessen performs in an office block north of Oxford Circus. Their Fanshen dissects the audience on the lines of society in the play's setting, the Chinese village of Long Bow in the later 1940s, as Communism arrives.
Spectators are designated Poor or Middle Peasants, or Landowners. Duly created a landlord, I was sent to the raised rows of what were optimistically called the more comfortable seats. Yet, as the fate of Long Bow’s landowners became clear, it became apparent I’d been designated a class traitor, a somewhat endangered species.
‘Fanshen’ means to ‘turn over’, which is what the villagers do, willingly or by compulsion, as Communism establishes itself. The Party is the people’s servant, and party members must own up to mistakes. Yet it’s obviously the Party that decides how the people want it to serve them.
The Party keeps changing its mind about this, doing their own unacknowledged Fanshening. It all seems very different from the 1975 premiere, an early production by Max Stafford-Clark’s Joint Stock Theatre Group.
That was a third of a century ago, a long time for memory to fade and distort. But the bright clarity of this most Brechtian of British plays darkens here into a procession of individual histories. The battered wife of a Communist official, driven by her hurts to giving evidence against her husband and son, is a suffering individual, rather than a representative of ‘the beaten person driven to give evidence’. She’s a wife and mother, but not The Mother.
Fanshen now seems far less positive. Memories of Joint Stock light on the process of solving problems. But Roland Smith’s revival makes clear the way new problems emerge, often through individual temperaments, and how changeable political decisions are: a whiff of Westminster in Regent Street?
Efficiently acted, it has a suitable rough-edged quality on a space defined (if awkwardly lit) by Chris Gylee’s earth-and-sky coloured screen. And, if the play now seems less enchanted with events in Long Bow, it’s possibly an unsurprising perspective, seeing this drama of socialism in premises donated by The Property Merchant Group.
Shen Ching-Ho/Official/Yuan Lan/kuo Te-Yu/Ch’ou-Har/Went-e: Andy Bainbridge.
Chung Lai’s Wife/Hsin-Ai/Hsien-e: Olivia Brown.
Cheng-K’uan/Hseh-Chen’s Husband/Secretary Liu/Ting Fu: Josh Cass.
Yu-Lai/Lai Tzu: Dan Crow.
Fai-Liang/Hou: Pethrow Gooden.
Ching-Ho’s Daughter/Ch’i-Yun: Anneka Haskins.
Man-His/Ch’ung-Wang/Little Li: Isaac Jones.
Tui-Chin/Tao-Yuan/Secretary Chen/Man in White Scarf: James Russell.
T’ien-Ming/Chang Ch’uer/Huan-Ch’ao: Pedro Reichert.
Hu Hseh-Chen/Old Lady Wang: Bethany Webb.
Director: Roland Smith.
Designer: Chris Gylee.
Movement coach: Alexandra Baybutt.
Vocal work: Sarah-Louise Young.
Assistant director: Alex Turner.
2008-07-13 14:56:28