National Theatre – Alwyn Marriage

Poster I had an interesting three days this last week, with Everyman at the National Theatre neatly sandwiched between a gig in which I was to be found playing the cornet as I marched down Kingsbridge Fore Street accompanying the townspeople as they danced the Floral Dance, and an open air performance of The Taming of the Shrew by Guildford Shakespeare Company. All three were hugely enjoyable, but this blog is about the National Theatre production of ‘Everyman’ on the middle evening. The play is based on the mediaeval morality play, updated with a script written by Carol Ann Duffy.

Every now and then it is necessary to swallow my feminist ideals, and as this play is based on the mediaeval morality play that evolved many centuries before our awareness of the inequality that can be perpetuated by exclusive language, I won’t complain at the title. I’ll just point out that it’s a morality play about everyone, including women. (OK, that’s all I’ll say on this occasion!).

It is courageous to stage a straight morality play in the 21st century, and even though the programme suggests that it’s adapted for a secular age (whatever that is), the message of the play is old-fashioned religious, and at times probably reflects Carol Ann Duffy’s Roman Catholic upbringing. The story is of Everyman being visited by death at the end of his bacchanalian 40th birthday party, and told that he has to give an account of his life before God. Everyman tries various devices to get away from this horrible truth, and appeals, unsuccessfully, to friends, family and wealth to put in a good word for him.

It was a fast-moving, slick and satisfying performance. The wonderful actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor, was an appealing and convincing Everyman, well capable of representing us all. God who was played as an office cleaner by Kate Duchene, and Death (with an Irish accent) by Dermot Crowley, were both impressive. There were familiar songs such as ‘You’ll never walk alone’, Latin chant and plenty of contemporary music and dance, and the play starts with Everyman’s dramatic descent down from the roof to the pit. There was also some delicious humour.

If I had any minor criticisms they would be first that the dramatic first scene of the party, though brilliant in terms of cho with cast reography, sound and visual effects, could have been cut a little: we really had got the message by half-way through the sequence; and occasionally we lost some vital words and therefore missed a joke or punchline. But all in all it was a wonderful evening, with fine dialogue, and exciting sound and visual effects, including a terrifyingly realistic tsunami.

The modern slant to the morality aspect took the form of an environmental emphasis, and as Everyman moves from mindless materialism to knowledge and humility, he also becomes aware of the way he has mistreated the planet, treating it as a coin to be tossed away. The message comes across strongly, and anyone watching the play must surely be reminded not only of the harm the planet has suffered through our ecocide, but also of our continuing complicity if we don’t work tirelessly to change the way human beings are squandering the earth’s resources and raping the planet that is our only home.

One of the pivotal points in Everyman’s journey occurs when he meets his younger self, Everyboy, and is told by him in no uncertain terms that he should remember to say thank you.

The final scene is probably the most moving. Everyman, having ended up being helped and instructed by a tramp (Knowledge) gains not only knowledge but also humility and gratitude, and comes to an understanding that he has a soul. I was reminded in the first case of T S Eliot’s ‘humility is endless’, and in the latter by the Ancient Mariner finding blessing when he became aware of beauty. Everyman’s paean of thankfulness was beautifully expressed, and covered all of his life and experience.

with God God (still sweeping and cleaning) is heard to comment on how she still loves him, which is a religious message if ever there was one. But apart from that, the splendour of the performance and the strong environmental message, the play reflects in the cast and the production the rich diversity both of London, and of life.

This modern version of the mediaeval morality play may seem a surprising choice for the 21st century London stage, but it was skilfully adapted, beautifully acted, challenging in its message, and offers an extremely rich and satisfying evening.

Comments closed

As my sister has a season ticket to the Royal Academy, she kindly invited me to join her to see the Richard Diebenkorn exhibition there last Thursday. I knew only a little of this artist’s work before, and was pleased to have the opportunity to get to know more of his work.

There were three distinct rooms in the exhibition. The first room, representing Diebenkorn’s earliest work, comprised abstract paintings; the second room was entirely figurative; and the third room, though predominantly abstract, was in fact a very satisfying synthesis of the two.

Most of the figurative work was based on the female figure, but I was particularly taken with Diebenkorn’s pair of scissors. It’s amazing how a mundane household item can express what used to be called such ‘gay abandon’!

The abstract work displayed beautiful colours, mainly tending towards pastel shades. The early abstract paintings often used interlocking forms, some of which were tantalisingly recognisable as objects in the real world, so that one felt on occasions that the figurative was insinuating itself into the abstract. This is less the case in the maturer work, where one of the recurring motifs is the use of lines. These sometimes create dimensions or unexpected angles in the paintings and sometimes just emphasise the geometric nature of the work. This one, which was one of my favourites, was tiny, but others were huge. In the large ones it was perhaps easier to see some of the influences on Diebenkorn, such as Hopper, Matisse and even some mediaeval artists.

My one disappointment in this exhibition was that I had hoped to see some of the etchings done by the artist to accompany poems by Yeats, but there was no reference to this project.
I had read that in 1990, Arion Press published a catalogue of Yeats’s poems, selected and introduced by Helen Vendler and accompanied by six etchings by Richard Debenkorn. That treat will have to await another occasion.

Our intention was to move on to Tate Modern to visit the Sonia Delaunay exhibition. However, the rain which we had been needing for weeks had arrived with a vengeance, so we took refuge in the National Gallery and decided to enjoy the ‘Inventing Impressionism’ exhibition instead, particularly as the Delaunay is on until August, whereas the Impressionism one finishes at the end of this month.

This exhibition takes an unusual approach to Impressionism, by basing the exhibits around the art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel – who was, of course, instrumental in the history of Impressionism, as he bought so many of the works and helped to make them known and eventually accepted. Initially it felt slightly uncouth to be approaching the art through the medium of a dealer, but the exhibition is so successful, showing the gradual development of the movement and celebrating a wide range of artists, that it felt OK. The first room was set out as a French salon, which immediately put us in the right mood and set the scene for the following rooms.

Despite wet clothes and shoes, the day ended by calling at the local cinema for the live screening of ‘Man and Superman’ from the National Theatre. G B Shaw’s plays can appear rather ponderous and preachy to a modern audience, but the acting was so superb that we were all carried along in the fun and the action. Unusually, the director had decided to include the amusing scene set in Hell, which is normally omitted. This meant that the play was a full three hours forty minutes long, including the interval. I very much enjoyed this extra scene, but don’t think it actually adds anything of much value to the play. All the acting was superb, and Ralph Fiennes, in particular, gave an absolutely stunning performance.

Comments closed

Tag: National Theatre

Everymanandwoman

Day off work: two exhibitions and a play