THE PERMANENT WAY: Touring and National Theatre
Touring and NT
THE PERMANENT WAY: David Hare
Out of Joint with the National Theatre
Birmingham Rep: Tkts 0121 236 4455
Runs: 1h 55m, No Inteval, at the Rep till 22 November, touring, then National Theatre
Review: Rod Dungate, 18 November 2003
Quite honestly one of the most powerful experiences I've had in the theatre for a very, very long time.
The Permanent Way is an example that with passion you can transform a seemingly unpromising topic into wonderful drama. David Hare obviously feels passionately about the incompetence, dishonesty and sheer bloody greed of the people responsible for our modern railway system and that has led up to four major disasters in recent years. It's tempting to say 'No single person is really directly to blame . . . ' (our natural reserve gets the better of us.) But Hare has no such qualms, his pen points them out 'These are really shitty people' says one character.
Hare has constructed his drama as a huge sweeping series of statements executives, politicians, passengers, workers, survivors, bereaved. Their speeches interweave but the characters do not interact. I am on record many times as saying how much I dislike this 'monologue' form of drama. But at this point I nearly eat my keyboard (I don't wear too many hats). In this play the form works because it is part of the message: the monologues are a series of witness statements and we are invited to be jury if not exactly judge.
Not only is Hare's dramatic form sparse, so are the settings in William Dudley's stark designs, a few simple chairs, stanchions, platform seats. The effect is cold and brutal but it also lays open the words, the tragedies of lives destroyed, the absolute ruthless greed (political and financial) of the promoters of privatisation and profit.
I particularly like the way occasionally characters mention the writer's name 'If you're going to write a play about the railways, David . . . ': it lends the interview/statements an immediacy and we are repeated jolted out of any theatrical complacency. The whole effect is to present the real life drama without artifice though the true artifice, the ability of writer, director, designers, actors to shape and focus is hidden, a mightily strong base to support the work. Max Stafford Clark's sure directorial hand keeps everything taut, the pace fast, the entire is dynamic and free of sentiment.
A truly ensemble piece, it may be invidious to pick out performances but perhaps I'm rather selecting the people the actors represent. Flaminia Cinque's Bereaved Mother 'I'm not really a rebel I'm an M and S supervisor', Nigel Cooke's British Transport Policeman who ends up out of a job for doing too good a job, the very different ways Matthew Dunster's Young Man in Denim and Souad Faress's Survivor's Group Founder are affected and Kika Markham's so quietly moving A Widow.
As the drama finished, all I could think was 'I want to see it over again NOW.'
A High-Powered Treasury Thinker: Ian Redford
A Senior Civil Servant: Nigel Cooke
An Investment Banker: Bella Merlin
Wendy: Souad Faress
John Prescott: Lloyd Hutchinson
A Very Experienced Rail Engineer: Sam Graham
A Senior Rail Executive: Matthew Dunster
Sally: Souad Faress
A Leading Entrepreneur: Lloyd Hutchinson
A British Transport Policeman: Nigel Cooke
A Bereaved Mother: Flaminia Cinque
A Bereaved Father: Sam Graham
A Rail Union Leader: Lloyd Hutchinson
Dawn: Flaminia Cinque
A Campaigning Solicitor: Kika Markham
A Young Man in Denim: Matthew Dunster
A Second Bereaved Mother: Bella Merlin
A Survivors' Group Founder: Souad Faress
A Managing Director of Railtrack: Ian Redford
Another Senior Operating Executive: Nigel Cooke
A Rector of Hatfield: Matthew Dunster
A Scottish Literary Editor: Sam Graham
A Technical Director of a Maintenance Co: Lloyd Hutchinson
A Squadron Leader: Lloyd Hutchinson
A Widow: Kika Markham
Director: Max Stafford Clark
Design (Set, Costume, Video): William Dudley
Lighting: Johanna Town
Sound: Paul Arditti
2003-11-19 10:14:51