VICTORY. To 4 April.
London.
VICTORY
by Howard Barker.
Arcola Theatre 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 4 April 2009.
Mon-Sat 8pm.
Runs 2hr 45min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7503 1646.
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 March.
Rough, tough and revealing.
Sometimes the lapse of time reveals new aspects of a play. Or, repeated viewings bring wider awareness. Amelia Nicholson’s revival of Howard Barker’s scathing critique of power certainly has a new social context. Its first tour, directed by Danny Boyle for Joint Stock Theatre Group, reflected the right-wing backlash of Margaret Thatcher’s conservatism after the social consensus decades.
It’s a wild stab at history. The Restored monarchy in 1660, after almost two decades of Puritan rule, was limited in its vengefulness, and hardly out of kilter with the ways of its age. And Puritanism had hardly been a model for 1960s and 70s British middle-of-the-roadism.
Yet Barker’s sharp flourishes made a strong point, in the dour abnegation of Bradshaw, widow of one of Charles I’s judges, and in the desperate pleasure-, and self-, seeking of a new age when tension would shift to a no-longer absolute monarch and the bankers who payrolled him. Before being subsumed within Allied Dunbar, Hambro (see cast-list) was instantly recognisable as a big name in Britain’s financial world.
Nowadays, banks and governments provoke a different response. But the strength of Nicholson’s variably acted production, with its dark staging, based round a raised diagonal walkway confining characters within small areas, lies in showing how much Barker’s Victory is about the defeated; it’s subtitled ‘Choices in Reaction’. They hide, evade moral responsibility, join the other side, starve and turn on each other. The effects of power flood down the ranks far more than, as Thatcher claimed, wealth would dribble down.
There are good qualities to Nicholas Rowe’s hate-filled monarch, Evie Dawnay’s insolently callous royal mistress, Simon Thorp’s Hambro, caught between the dawn of the financial age and the king’s increasingly mythical power, and Matthew Kelly as a true-believing cavalier maddened by desire for his enemy and defence of the corroding royalist ideal.
But it’s Geraldine James’ intense, internalised Bradshaw, searching for her dismembered husband’s remains where quiet energy focuses. Here Barker’s grimness loses its raucous comic coating, revealing integrity and purpose in opposition to the despair the power-lust for sex and cash engenders amid both loss and victory.
Scrope, A Secretary/Southwark, A Landowner/Street, A Lawyer: Karl Theobald.
Boot, A Soldier/McConochie, Son of Bradshaw/Gloucestershire, A Landowner/Parry, A Stockbroker/Beggar: Leander Deeny.
Shade, A Soldier/Nodd, Charles Stuart’s Intimate Friend/Feak, A Republican: Emil Marwa.
Wicker, A Soldier/Cleveland, A Landowner/Pyle, A Republican Woman/Moncrieff, A Minister: Gemma Johnson.
Darling, A Soldier/Ponting, A Court Official/Undy, An Exporter/Footman to Devonshire/Milton, A Genius: Chris Porter.
Gaukroger, A Captain/Hambro, A Banker/Edgbaston, A Radical Preacher: Simon Thorp.
Bradshaw, The Widow of a Polemicist: Geraldine James.
Roast, A Civil Servant/Clegg, The Poet Laureate/Mobberley, A Builder/Beggar: Tom Godwin.
Ball, A Cavalier/Hampshire, A Landowner/Bank Guard: Matthew Kelly.
Cropper, Daughter of Bradshaw/Devonshire, A Mistress/Gwynn, A Prostitute: Evie Dawnay.
Charles Stuart, A Monarch: Nicholas Rowe.
Director: Amelia Nicholson.
Designer/Costume: Anna Bliss Scully.
Lighting: David Holmes.
Sound/Composer: Francoise Ogier.
Movement: Tom Godwin.
Dramaturge: Bronwen Carr.
Assistant director: Catherine Hooper.
2009-03-09 11:59:11