THE ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSE; till 21 June
Leicester
THE ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSE: Tariq Ali
Haymarket:
Runs: 1h 35m, no interval, till 21 June
Review: Rod Dungate, 18 June 2003-06-19
An important voice that needs to be heard: a play with moments of fire that needs some attention
THE ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSE is a play in three parts. There's the opening – a terrifically strong representation of a political rally marvellously realised in Kate Unwin's ingenious set and Iqbal Khan's production. Then there's the middle part where it loses its way and Tariq Ali is not in command of his material. Finally the third section when Ali brings his politics to the fore, his heart begins to work with his head and passionate debate begins to carry the day.
Tariq Ali is in the forefront of radical political thinking – has been for most of his adult life. A committed left-winger, he is opposed to the directions taken by the Labour Government (old New Labour) and genuinely disappointed by it. I guess he feels let down. This is the passion which underlies his creation of CORPSE. Ali's is an important voice that needs to be heard.
The story centres around the murder of the UK's first black Home Secretary by his wife. She murders him on the face of it because she feels let down by his political compromises – supporting the government selling out to Conservative policies. But as the debate continues she argues that she has carried out a pre-emptive strike in order to save many thousands of other lives (Iraq war is the background.) An engrossing debate. Ali transmutes his anger into farce – New Labour is a farcical shell of the true Labour movement: again you can agree or not, but the debate is real and vital.
This is where Ali's play falls down. He doesn't handle the farce structure well. He's writing his farce on the same intellectual plane as his debate and farce doesn't work like that. In farce you construct a world with clear rules that the main character collides with getting him or her into a deeper and deeper mess. We laugh because the world's rules are broken. Our laughter is instant and instinctive – thinking can come later.
Ali and Khan fail to set up a solid enough world. Characters speak to the audience all the time ensuring a world is not created. The wife's bizarre behaviour, the even more bizarre Chief Constable do not make us laugh as they should because, although intellectually we can see they are breaking society's rules, we don't see the society reflected in front of us. Half the equation is missing. The play fails to find its rhythm and has an unsettling feeling of self-conscious uncertainty: actors strain for laughs that don't come. This section should be revisited.
As the wife Desdemona argues her case though, Kristin Milward has something tangible to get her teeth into. She gets into her stride placing the debate with moving conviction. Smoke turns into fire as she breathes life into it. Her description of Labour's election victory in 1997 is genuinely moving: we begin to see what makes her tick. And the more serious the play gets, hey presto, the more genuinely funny it becomes. At one glorious moment the Chief Constable says, in all sincerity, 'I'm just not political.' Oh yea?!
Russell Dixon is terrific as Sir Richard Everall, the Metropolitan Chief Constable. He is both delightfully funny and terrifyingly dangerous – reminiscent of the piggy policemen in Spitting Image.
Sir Huntley Palmer Jones: Trevor Thomas
Dr Desdemona Jones: Kristin Milward
Sir Richard Everall: Russell Dixon
Ms Andrea Adelard/ A Female Newscaster/ Prosecutor: Beverley Longhurst
Direction: Iqbal Khan
Design: Kate Unwin
Lighting: Miriam Spencer
Sound: Ben Harrison
Assistant Director: Sarah Chiswell
Dramaturgy: Noel Greig, Esther Richardson
2003-06-19 09:42:49