Friday, February 15, 2013

On critics


I used to be a critic once.

I was thirty years old and had just discovered I was a playwright.

A useful discovery, as it turned out, but it didn't really seem so at the time. 

The main difficulty was that I knew nothing about the theatre. I had been a nurse and a bus conductor and a yoga teacher and an academic teaching classical Arabic and 17th century Spanish literature. I had read hundreds of 17th century Spanish plays for my PhD thesis but knew nothing about contemporary British ones. 

And because I had no job, no chance of getting one, a partner who was an artist and a wee baby daughter there was no way I could afford to go to the theatre and find out.

A wise friend suggested I become a theatre reviewer for the 1981 Edinburgh festival and showed me how to go about it. I sent a sample review to Allen Wright, the legendary Scotsman arts editor, and he took me on for the Festival. And kept me on once it was over.

So for the next few years I would see one or two or sometimes even three plays a week. And try to be passionately open about the experience. Try to understand what worked and what didn't. Try to note my response and the audience's and then try to express it all in 250 words. Often within two hours of the curtain going down.

It was a fantastic training for me. I learnt to refine my taste, and write about it vividly and economically. And write fast.

Hard to do well. Hard to watch plays, really watch them, and not turn off. Hard to resist the temptation to show off irrelevant knowledge. Hard to remain respectful; especially in the uneasy knowledge that I would be praised for my rudeness but not always appreciated for my praise.

Above all hard not to get resentful at always trying to evaluate the work of others and never having the chance to develop my own.

When that all got too much, I stopped reviewing. And started to have to deal with reviews.

Very early on, when my LOSING VENICE was briefly on in London, I remember getting very deeply hurt by a malicious review that hardly mentioned the play at all, but focused instead on mocking my programme note and sneering at the fact my biog note had mentioned I had a PhD.

It was written by a reviewer notorious for his nastiness, and I really should have known better, but when I saw someone reading the review in their newspaper on the tube I wanted to snatch the paper out of their hand and burn it.

Perhaps I have got a little bit calmer. And I have subsequently learnt that my own review of one paticular Fringe show was so hostile that it put its author off ever writing a play again. So I try to be philosophical about it all.

All these memories come back just now as I try to deal with the reviews for GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Last autumn, when the show was out on tour, they were better than I've ever known.

Now in the WestEnd, when the show is actually very much stronger, the reviews are...
'mixed' is the correct term I believe.

Very mixed.

I could think of a great many other adjectives, but for the moment these will do.

The positive remarks have all been extracted by the production company and have been put up on the show’s website (http://greatexpectationstheshow.com/reviews-new.php). But as for the rest... 

Reading them helps me understand that while praise is always nice to get, what one really wants is a record. One wants an intelligent honest view of what happened when a knowledgeable and hopefully good natured person engaged with the play.

But actually engaging with the play seemed to be the last thing on most of their minds. Instead they seemed unable to resist the temptation to use the title as a pretext for half-baked attempts at witticism. They seemed compelled to show off the fact they had heard of, or possibly even seen, the RSC adaptation of Nicholas Nickelby and the David Lean film. 

And they all had at least to pretend they had read the book.

And so they reproached us for not being seven and a half hours long. For leaving out the novel's descriptive passages. For leaving out its subplots. For moving the story along too fast. For moving the story along too slow. For only having one set. For forcing the audience to use their imagination. For having the actors wear theatrical make-up. For being suspiciously continental. For trotting out Miss Havisham in her wedding gown. 

The consequence of this is that we are left with a written record that mostly does not do justice to the quality of the play, or of the production, or of the audience response. 

An uncomfortable position to be in.

Not for the first time. And almost certainly not for the last.

I am tempted to make elaborate plots for revenge. To prepare exquisite packages of bullshit to be dispatched to their office desks, perhaps, or else publicly denounce the lot of them. Denounce them as narrow-minded, ignorant, parochial, spiteful and mean spirited. Point out the deficiencies in their grammar, the poverty of their imaginations, and the contemptible deficiencies of their style.

But I won't do that.

Better to remind them they really matter. That we all need intelligent feedback. We all need a passionately knowledgeable and well-informed audience unafraid to express their opinions and intelligently engaged in theatricality, and that they, the critics, have a crucial part to play in framing the debate.

Better to remind them that no-one is helped by petty spite. And especially not themselves.

Better to remind them that as well as describing my work their words also portray themselves. And it is not always a pretty sight.

And my dear dad suddenly pops into my head, reciting Kipling:
"If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same..."

And then there's the pride I feel. And want to affirm: pride in the writing, in the acting, in the production, in everything the show has to give.

And in what the audience give back in return.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Red carpets and beauty therapists

I've not had much experience of red carpets.
None at all, in fact.
Before last thursday, my knowledge of such affairs was largely confined to surreptitiously reading celebrity magazines.
There was a time when my younger daughter was addicted to them: the ones who specialise in photographs of beautiful young women in gorgeous dresses being sneered at  for defects in their appearance.
Not encouraging.
In fact in the weeks leading up to the opening I was hardly concerned about the show at all. Instead, I was mortified to discover, what really worried me was what I would wear at the gala.
One thing for sure was that I needed help. I could have gone to a psychiatrist, but  went to John Lewis' instead. And so began to understand how consumerism thrives on anxiety.
I made an appointment to see Lorraine. She is a fashion adviser: sympathetic, knowledgeable, and really pleasant to be with. And she found me a lovely dress at a reasonable price in a stress free way. Something I could never have done.
And on the morning of the event I went to see one of my daughter's beautiful friends: a gorgeous and skillful hairdresser called Jess who works in the basement dressing room of the Soho theatre (jessdewahls.com) and who shoved a fistful of pins into my hair with astonishing dexterity.
Another beautiful friend called Verity did my make-up in the evening (veritycumming.com); and between them all they created a look I felt comfortable and confident in.
And which really did help me cope with the live interview for the cinemas just before the show, and the whole event itself, including a quite impossibly glamourous reception in the Waldorf hotel afterwards that normally I would have felt utterly intimidated in.
I know that women are under strong pressure to take disproportionate care over our appearance, and this pressure is undermining and debilitating. And I know that were I still living as a man I wouldn't have taken a fraction of this care and expense and trouble.
I'd have shoved something on and felt most likely shy and unhappy. And drunk too much. As it was, there was pride in all this preening. And pleasure too.
But I'll try to resist the temptation to endorse beauty products.  Because it wasn't just that. Or even the skill and care and lovely supportive presences of the women involved.
An early stage of my transition coincided with a beautiful production of my ANNA KARENINA at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh.
I remember meeting a group of teenage girls on the street and them laughing at me.
Their jeers were designed to communicate to me the sense that I looked, and was, a grotesque.
I could think of nothing to say at the time; but inwardly defended myself with the knowledge that at the time a play I had written was each night giving several hundred people the most profound pleasure.
And I suspect that creativity is the best beauty treatment of them all.


Saturday, February 09, 2013

Theatre and cinema

Imagine what would have happened if the music industry had collectively decided it would turn its back on recording technology on the grounds that recording could never capture the magic of live performance.

How stupid would that have been, you think. How unbelievably short-sighted and self-destructive.

Actually you don't need to imagine. You can look at the state of theatre instead.

Of course there are challenges. You have to work to create a cinematic language that translates the theatre experience onto the screen. The human eye, for instance, is much more advanced than the camera which profoundly affects the qualities of stage and film lighting. (And how I empathised with our meticulous and incredibly skilled lighting designer, Kai Fischer, when he saw what his filmic counterpart was doing to his lights). And of course it's not just lighting: it's voice projection, facial expression, body language, costume and gesture...

On film it's very easy for these to look 'stagey' in the worst sense. But the opportunities offered by digital technologies are so immense. How foolish and short-sighted theatre has been to ignore them.

So I'm very proud of the fact that my INÉS DE CASTRO was one of the pioneers of all this, way back in 1990. Ian Brown's extraordinary Traverse production was broadcast on Portuguese television and on BBC2, and still looks and sounds beautiful. (Extracts can be seen here http://www.besite-productions.com/film/moving-image-ines.html)

Even more proud, of course, that GREAT EXPECTATIONS was the first West End production was tEransmitted live to cinemas - 150 of them in the UK and Ireland. It's now being rolled out internationally to at least 500 plus and counting. I am so fascinated to see what happens. I wish I had been at the cinema on Thursday, too, to learn from audience response. Shame (in a way) I was otherwise engaged....

Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Seeing the show. Or rather, trying to think about it.

There was a time in my life when I sat on the boards of theatre companies. These were well run endeavours, on the whole, gifted in their art and good with their money. Everything went well with their finances until the companies invariably did the foolish thing: and put on a show.
Then all hell broke loose, financially. After a while it became quite obvious that as a responsible board member I really should have been advising these theatre companies not to put on plays at all. The sums did not add up.
This had artistic consequences too. As a writer, there was a time at first when I was just so surprised and delighted to have my work put on at all. But then I began to see that what was always happening was that I would be working with immensely gifted and dedicated people who never had quite enough time to rehearse.
So the play would open without ever being truly ready. And then it would run for 3-4 weeks, and the actors would settle, and just at the moment when it was beginning to be really ready to be seen: it would close.
Close without fulfilling its artistic potential. Close without reaching a fraction of the audiences who could enjoy it.
Close without reaping a fraction of the benefits that should have come back to the company after all the love and care and attention and skill that had been invested in it.
Close without having had a proper chance to establish itself in the repertoire or find its proper place in the world.
Close: and then disappear for ever.
It's an intensely wasteful and frustrating process.
My last play in a subsidised theatre, THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE, played to 95% of audience capacity and completely sold out for the last week of its ridiculously short run.
I do not want to get into recriminations, but I simply do not understand why a theatre should  decide to turn its back on such a success and choose not to make more of it.
And it is important to keep saying that theatre is a labour intensive craft trying to operate in a capital intensive world. Consequently it is very good at making money for everyone around it but, often through no fault of its own, pretty rubbish at making money for itself. In Edinburgh perhaps we are more familiar with this phenomenon than most; each year the Festival generates astonishing income for our city. And generally off the unpaid labour of its performers.
And all this ignores the immense non-financial benefits it brings.
Theatre needs subsidy. It always has. And that has been true since its very beginnings in the ancient world.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS would never have been written without subsidy. Without subsidy I would never have learnt my craft. Nor would its director, designers, stage crew and actors.
And yet. And yet...
The show is going on without public subsidy. Bruce McKinnon, the producer, has managed to raise an astonishingly substantial sum of money to mount it. Money invested with a reasonable hope of getting a good return. And, being a man of vision, energy, imagination and courage, he has deployed all his skills to ensure his investors receive it. And his artists too.
A crucial part of this process is the creation of a good product. And the result of that is that the play has, almost for the very first time, been properly rehearsed, played in, re-mounted and re-rehearsed.
The script has had the chance to be tweaked. I am (for once) satisfied with (almost) every line. Direction, design, lighting,  stage management: for once, all this beautiful skilled work is working properly together and in its right place.
It looks beautiful. It sounds beautiful.
The actors are at home in the theatre. They are now able to move towards the authority and command they and the play and the audience all deserve.
This moves me profoundly and fills me with deep pride.
It's the press night tonight.
And for once I have no fear of it.
They will say what they like; I know we have created something very special. We all do.
And our audiences know it too.


Tuesday, February 05, 2013

West End dreams


We went round the corner and there it was.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS in big letters jutting out into the street.
'Vaudeville Theatre' very beautifully picked out in a mosaic of stained glass.
I had to stop to look at it.
I had to stop to take it in.
I wouldn't say I'd ever really dreamed of this moment. I'd never had the grounded self-confidence or the self-belief.
Besides, it's not as if being a playwright gives you a coherent career structure. You just get thrown into this jaggedy chaotic shambles. And anyone expecting or dreaming to come out of it rich or famous is being foolish and naïve.
And yet. And yet...
There was a time in the late eighties when I was briefly fashionable. LOSING VENICE had been hugely successful when it opened in the Traverse in 1985. It had toured Sweden, gone to the Perth Festival in Australia, and then to the Arts Festival in Hong Kong. It had been broadcast on the radio and had a brief run at the Almeida. A fraction of what it could have achieved: but still something.
A West End producer called Michael Codron asked to see me. He had an office near Covent Garden and I remember seeing a beautiful dress in a market stall. A dress I wanted to buy but didn't dare.
I felt very shy in the office, as in those days I invariably did, but through all my timidity I remember I liked him. I liked him a lot.
He offered me a commission to write a West End play.
For me in those days a play in the West End meant the pinnacle of success. It also meant a play like QUARTERMAINE'S TERMS (currently on at the Wyndham's: http://www.quartermainesterms.com/): conventionally structured, almost certainly with a sofa and a French window, and a big part for a star. I knew I couldn't write that play.
So I turned him down.
I told him I wasn't ready.
I was diffident, I was arrogant. I was foolish and naive. And maybe I was right.
And yet... Soon after that meeting I wrote GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
For TAG. For a small touring theatre in education company. Without a second's thought for the west end.
And then last night there I am sitting on my own in the middle of the stalls in this beautiful theatre. A theatre that once was owned by Michael Codron.
Twenty six years later: somehow after 26 years of the intensest struggle & chaos & illness & heartbreak & success & setback & broken dreams.
Waiting for the curtain to rise.
And the stalls are full (on a Monday!) and there are cameras in the circle and in each of the aisles, preparing to broadcast my play not just to 150 cinemas in the UK, I have just discovered, but to 500 or so all over the world.
And I know, somehow, that what Michael Codron did when he offered me that commission, even though I wasn't then ready to receive it, was plant a seed of self-belief that helped keep me keep on going to the place where I am now.
Someone else to whom I owe deep gratitude.

Monday, February 04, 2013

Great Expectations. Strong memories.

On the train to London for the opening of GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
And I keep remembering.
Remembering the process of its creation, 25 years ago; and remembering further back still.
To the time when I was maybe 14 and an older boy came up to me and "Clifford", as we did in those days, first names being forbidden and somehow dangerous, "Clifford, would you like to be in the house play?".
He wanted me to play Sylvia in ONE WAY PENDULUM and I was really amazed. I was shy and solitary and being in a play was not something it had ever occurred to me to do.
I had never really been able to recognise myself in the mirror and had an attraction to girls' toys and girls' clothes all my life. I knew this was dangerous and should never be admitted to or spoken of; and the chance of being allowed to be a girl in a play attracted me.
I hated that school. Its aim seemed to be to impose a brutal conformity built on bullying. The surroundings were ugly and the discipline as harsh.
And I had to live there. My mother was dead and there was no-one I could turn to.
We would rehearse in the library; and that improvised rehearsal room was the one place where I felt safe and at home.
When I look back on those years I wonder how I survived. One reason is because of the happiness of those hours in the rehearsal room.
The following year I was Lizzie in NEXT TIME I'LL SING TO YOU, and I so loved that. I wore a purple trouser suit and somehow I wasn't shy any more. I felt I had a place in the world.
But then my father came to see the show, and that frightened me. I felt ashamed of enjoying being the girl so much. I knew if anyone found out they would make my life a misery.
This was in the early sixties and words like 'transsexual' were not in common use. They were completely unknown to me. As far as I could tell, who I was was unspeakable.
All I could do was suppress the girl in me and try to be normal.
I still wanted to act; but when I went for male parts I was embarrassed and shy and couldn't act at all.
And then theatre became a place of shame and terror.
It took me fifteen years to find my way back to theatre, and another five years after that before I found my voice as a writer.
And then another ten years until I realised that this voice inside me, speaking with such strength and passion, was the actress inside me I had tried so hard to suppress.
But although so deeply buried she somehow never died. And it's her instincts that allow me to write good dialogue.
And I owe them to the boy who invited me to be in his play, all those years ago.
I managed to get in touch with him recently and there's a chance we'll be able to meet.
I do hope so. I'd like to say thank you.

Great Expectations. Strong memories.

On the train to London for the opening of GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
And I keep remembering.
Remembering the process of its creation, 25 years ago; and remembering further back still.
To the time when I was maybe 14 and an older boy came up to me and "Clifford", as we did in those days, first names being forbidden and somehow dangerous, "Clifford, would you like to be in the house play?".
He wanted me to play Sylvia in ONE WAY PENDULUM and I was really amazed. I was shy and solitary and being in a play was not something it had ever occurred to me to do.
I had never really been able to recognise myself in the mirror and had an attraction to girls' toys and girls' clothes all my life. I knew this was dangerous and should never be admitted to or spoken of; and the chance of being allowed to be a girl in a play attracted me.
I hated that school. Its aim seemed to be to impose a brutal conformity built on bullying. The surroundings were ugly and the discipline as harsh.
And I had to live there. My mother was dead and there was no-one I could turn to.
We would rehearse in the library; and that improvised rehearsal room was the one place where I felt safe and at home.
When I look back on those years I wonder how I survived. One reason is because of the happiness of those hours in the rehearsal room.
The following year I was Lizzie in NEXT TIME I'LL SING TO YOU, and I so loved that. I wore a purple trouser suit and somehow I wasn't shy any more. I felt I had a place in the world.
But then my father came to see the show, and that frightened me. I felt ashamed of enjoying being the girl so much. I knew if anyone found out they would make my life a misery.
This was in the early sixties and words like 'transsexual' were not in common use. They were completely unknown to me. As far as I could tell, who I was was unspeakable.
All I could do was suppress the girl in me and try to be normal.
I still wanted to act; but when I went for male parts I was embarrassed and shy and couldn't act at all.
And then theatre became a place of shame and terror.
It took me fifteen years to find my way back to theatre, and another five years after that before I found my voice as a writer.
And then another ten years until I realised that this voice inside me, speaking with such strength and passion, was the actress inside me I had tried so hard to suppress.
But although so deeply buried she somehow never died. And it's her instincts that allow me to write good dialogue.
And I owe them to the boy who invited me to be in his play, all those years ago.
I managed to get in touch with him recently and there's a chance we'll be able to meet.
I do hope so. I'd like to say thank you.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]