Shouts and Murmurs - February 20, 2024
No paywall this week! Some thoughts on content warnings and ACE! Review round-ups of Dorian Gray, Dear Octopus, Two Sisters and more! Some links to other stuff worth reading! No paywall this week!
Hello, and welcome to Shouts And Murmurs, a weekly email for paid supporters of The Crush Bar, written by me, Fergus Morgan. This week, though, just to show anyone who is not yet a paid supporter the quality content they are missing every Tuesday, I have decided to send it out to everyone. To always get it straight in your inbox, you can sign up via the button below.
This week, there is a bit on two censorship storms - both a bit spurious but one more worrying than the other - plus round-ups of the reviews of a whole host of shows that opened in the last week, from Sarah Snook in The Picture Of Dorian Gray, to Matthew Baynton in the RSC’s new A Midsummer Night’s Dream, to David Greig’s new play Two Sisters in Edinburgh. Then there are some links to a few theatre-related interviews and features worth reading elsewhere.
Thanks for reading The Crush Bar, whether you are a free subscriber or one of an increasing number of paid supporters. I really appreciate all of you. If you want to do me a favour, then you can share this newsletter and encourage others to subscribe via the button below…
Previously in The Crush Bar:
If you only read one thing: Lyn Gardner on Arts Council England and the real risk of censorship
People got worked up about two forms of censorship this week, both fabricated, but one more worrying than the other. Firstly, comments made by actors Ralph Fiennes and Matt Smith about the existence of content warnings resulting in a shock-free, “sanitised” version of theatre prompted a deluge of tedious, tub-thumping takes online, the general gist of which was that the arts industry was infected with woke freaks who refuse to let anything exciting or experimental happen on stage anymore.
I like Ralph Fiennes and Matt Smith. I don’t think they are bad guys at all and I do not think they would like to be associated with this kind of rhetoric: see last week’s issue of The Crush Bar. I do, however, think they are mistaken about how content warnings work and why they are necessary. I also think that there simply is not a problem here. No-one is being stopped from saying anything on stage and no-one is having their evening ruined because they have to walk past a sign with some vague information about the story they are about to witness. I go to the theatre all the time and I am lucky enough not to have to worry about content warnings - and I genuinely cannot think of a single instance of one spoiling the show I was about to see.
Much more alarming was the second censorship storm of the week, which came after Arts Council England updated some of its policies to advise the organisations it supports that “activity that might be considered overtly political or activist and goes beyond your company’s core purpose” could run a “reputational risk” that would breach funding agreements. The Guardian goes into more detail in this briefing.
Many were quick to raise their concerns about this policy update. What exactly were ACE saying? Were they saying that a subsidised institution that did anything explicitly anti-Tory, or anti-union, or pro-Palestinian, or pro/anti-whatever, would be de-funded? Did that include the actions of individuals working for that institution? Who would be the judge of what was considered beyond a company’s core purpose?
Again, I am not convinced that there is any real risk of censorship here. The truth - as emerged in a statement subsequently released by ACE, and by ACE boss Darren Henley when he spoke to BBC Radio 4’s Front Row - is that the funding body was simply clumsy in the way it presented a revision of its “relationship framework”, revision actually resulting from arts organisations approaching ACE for guidance on how best to navigate the choppy seas of social media, rather than a top-down diktat:
“Over recent years, we have all, on many occasions, seen individuals and organisations working in the cultural sector subjected to aggressive attacks for the art they have presented, the positions they have taken, or statements they have made. In this context, and in response to requests for guidance on navigating this environment from a number of leaders of cultural organisations, we refreshed our framework on managing reputational risks.”
Of the many, many opinion pieces published in response to all this, the only one really worth reading is from Lyn Gardner in The Stage. She explores the fraught relationship between ACE and its organisations, and how open to misinterpretation its updated policies are. Most importantly, she points out that it is no wonder these policies provoked such concern, in a world in which the “arms length” principle of state subsidy for the arts has already been eroded by Nadine Dorries, and in which this Tory government is intent on whipping up culture wars to avoid electoral oblivion:
“Maybe this is simple clumsiness on the part of ACE and no more than a storm in a tea cup, but in the current climate, I’m not surprised that people have reacted so strongly and feel the need to be alert.”
So, perhaps I’m wrong, actually? Perhaps the thing we should really be worried about is why we are so quick to get sucked into damaging, delusional debates about censorship - and everything else - that distract from the genuine problems of underfunding and inaccessibility? Perhaps it is the first furore over content warnings - a problem that does not exist, suddenly worked up into a distracting, divisive debate - that we should be worried about, just not in the way Fiennes and Smith think?
The week in reviews: The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Dear Octopus, plus shows in Stratford-upon-Avon, Manchester, and Edinburgh.
A lot of big shows opened in the last week, and I wrote more than I meant to in that bit about censorship above, so we are going to race through them pretty quickly.
In London, Australian import The Picture Of Dorian Gray - a one-person adaptation conceived by Kip Williams and performed by Succession’s Sarah Snook - was showered with four-star and five-star reviews. They praise Snook for her extraordinary performance - she plays all 26 characters - but are most taken with Williams’ mind-boggling, multi-media staging and how it makes Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel relevant for our age of filters and face-tuning. Only a few reviewers find fault with it.
“…a true high-wire act, not only because of Snook’s fleet and fabulous performance but also because of the accompaniment of screens, pre-recorded footage, live film crew, and orchestration of technology that is as dazzling as it is complicated…”
Across the Thames at the National Theatre, Emily Burns’ revival of Dear Octopus received three-star and four-star reviews. Some critics are surprised by how moved they were by Dodie Smith’s portrait of a pre-war family. Others predictably find the 86-year-old play a bit dated. Everyone agrees that Burns’ staging, Frankie Bradshaw’s design and Lindsay Duncan’s lead performance are excellent, though.
“It is what it is: a slightly soppy, unfashionable play whose 90 years are showing. But Burns and the cast honour it, and find truth in it…”
Also in London, John O’Farrell and Luke Sheppard’s Geldof-endorsed jukebox musical about Live Aid Just For One Day is dramatically shallow but exhilaratingly staged. Doom-happy director Yaël Farber’s production of King Lear at the Almeida Theatre, with Danny Sapani in the title role, is everything that Kenneth Branagh’s take on the tragedy was not: well-acted, thoughtfully conceived, and atmospherically staged. And Rhianna Ilube’s debut Samuel Takes A Break at the Yard Theatre is a sharp, spiky satire about colonialism, tourism and more, set in a former slave fort in Ghana.
In Stratford-Upon-Avon, Ghosts’ Matthew Baynton makes for a brilliant Bottom in Eleanor Rhode’s magic-filled staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the RSC, even if the lovers are a bit lightweight. Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory’s provides a trippy soundtrack, too. In Manchester, Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s Bruntwood Prize-winner Shed: Exploded View is a dazzlingly constructed, deftly directed and deeply disturbing play about domestic violence. And in Edinburgh, David Greig’s new play Two Sisters is either a moving exploration of adolescence, ageing and regret or a mid-life crisis masquerading as a play. I saw it for The FT and I’m afraid I’m in the latter camp.
Content warning: next week’s Shouts And Murmurs will feature a review round-up of Matt Smith in Thomas Ostermeier’s version of Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People.
The week in interviews: Marie Mullen, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Jessica Brown Findlay, Blythe Duff, and Tobias Menzies.
“A reluctant legend.” Irish actor Marie Mullen won a Tony Award in 1998 for her role in Martin McDongah’s The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, and recently starred on Broadway alongside Hugh Jackman in The Music Man. She spoke to Lauren Murphy for The Times ahead of Marina Carr’s Audrey Or Sorrow at the Abbey.
“The pressure of the second show is, now we’ve been given a platform, what do we want to say?” Toby Marlowe and Lucy Moss found fame through Six, the student project that became a blockbuster musical. Last week they revealed their second show, Why Am I So Single? and chatted to Anya Ryan about it in The Times.
“We were in love with each other on that stage.” I spoke to Jessica Brown Findlay about her career so far, appearing opposite Andrew Scott in Hamlet, and starring in Ostermeier’s An Enemy Of The People for my regular interview slot in The Stage. She also spoke to The Telegraph’s Claire Allfree, but read my one first, please.
“It is so precisely and carefully written. You feel it more bodily than intellectually.” Actor Blythe Duff and director Joanna Bowman spoke to Mark Fisher in The Scotsman about the Scottish premiere of Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone later this week.
“I guess on the spectrum, I’m probably something of an isolate.” Star of The Crown Tobias Menzies is in America for the New York transfer of David Farr’s stage adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg’s movie The Hunt, which originally ran at the Almeida Theatre in 2019. He spoke to The New York Times’ Alexis Soloski.
Also interviewed: David Haig ahead of The Minority Report; David Wood on a career in children’s theatre; composer Gus Gowland in Jason Ward’s Substack.
Further reading: 25 years since Sarah Kane died, the history of Hadestown, and another cry of despair about the state of British theatre
“Sarah always talked about her plays being about love.” This month marks 25 years since playwright Sarah Kane died, and Natasha Tripney has spoken to several people involved in productions of her extraordinary plays - Blasted, Cleansed, 4.48 Psychosis, and more - for The Guardian.
“One time, I was driving my car and this melody just dropped out of the sky.” Hadestown returns for a long-awaited London run this month. I chatted to composer Anaïs Mitchell, director Rachel Chavkin and designer Rachel Hauck, all three of whom won Tony Awards for the show, about its extraordinary, twenty-year journey from rural Vermont to the West End for The Stage.
“British theatre’s survival is reliant on a hugely increased subsidy – which now feels unlikely.” This week’s lament about the state of British theatre comes from Ben Lawrence in The Telegraph. He is right about some stuff, like the long legacy of Covid, and wrong about other stuff. I’m not sure that any real line can be drawn between disputes about trans rights and theatre’s financial woes, for example.
“We’re operating in a landscape where a finished script has as much chance of being your winning ticket as a lucky dip-selected six numbers on a Saturday night.” Writer and broadcaster Nick Ahad has responded to news that Colchester’s Mercury Theatre will be using a lottery to decide which new play it will produce with a examination in The Guardian of how tough things are for theatre writers now.
“We had been frustrated by the theatre scene here and we wanted to do something new.” Det Ferösche Compagnie is a theatre outfit based in The Faroe Islands that will be presenting its show Castle Of Joy at the Barbican next week. Natasha Tripney has spoken to the company and surveyed the history of Faroese theatre in her Substack Cafe Europa, which you should subscribe to if you haven’t already:
Also worth reading: the ten best Hamlets; how to get cheap West End tickets; another bit about content warnings; inside the rehearsal room of Mark Ravenhill’s Ben and Imo at the RSC; a Michael Billington production history of Long Day’s Journey Into Night; a letter from Chekhov to WhatsOnStage; a survey of plays about the National Health Service.
Distraction of the week: All Of Us Strangers
I went to the cinema last week to see Andrew Haigh’s new film All Of Us Strangers, starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell. It is a beautifully shot, devastatingly moving piece about parenthood and loss and lots more. I find it baffling that Scott in particular has not been nominated for every award going, and I very much recommend you catch it in the cinema while you can.
That’s all for this issue of Shouts And Murmurs. I’ll be back in your inboxes on Friday with your regular issue of The Crush Bar. Thanks again for reading. A quick reminder that to get Shouts And Murmurs in your inbox every Tuesday, you need to sign up as a paid supporter.
If you want to get in touch with me about anything at all, just reply to this newsletter, email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk, or find me on Twitter/X, where I’m @fergusmorgan.
Have a good week.
Fergus