Peter Viney's Blog

Absolute Hell
by Rodney Ackland

Directed by Joel Hill-Gibbins
Set Designed by Lizzie Clachan

National Theatre London

Friday 4th May 2018, evening

CAST

Esh Alladi – Cyril Clatworthy
Elizabeth Andrewartha – ensemble
Ashley Byam – PC Molson
Jonathan Coote – Non-member, ensemble
Rachel Dale – Fifi, a prostitute
Carol Dance – Mrs Pratt
Joanna David – Mrs Mariner, Hugh’s mother
Charles Edwards – Hugh Marriner, alcoholic writer
Patricia England – Julia Shillitoe
Kate Fleetwood – Christine Foskett, club owner
Jenny Galloway – R.B. Monody, lesbian critic
Frazier Hadfield – ensemble
Aaron Heffernan – Butch
Simon Hepworth – DI Roach
Lloyd Hutchinson – Michael Crowley
Martins Imhangbe – Sam Mitchum, USAF officer
Stephanie Jacob – Doris
Fiz Marcus – Cook
Sinead Matthews – Elizabeth Collier, young socialite
Connor Mills – ensemble
Prasanna Puwanarajah – Nigel Childs, Hugh’s boyfriend
Anita Reynolds – Bill
John Sackville – Douglas Eden
Liza Sadovy – Lettice Willis (THe Tracle Queen)
Jonathan Slinger – Maurice Hussey,  a film director
Eileen Walsh – Madge
Danny Webb – Siegfried Shager, Austrian black marketeer
Jade Yourell- ensemble

Christine (Kate Fleetwood)

A cast of twenty-eight? Thirty-seven roles? No wonder it hasn’t been revived that often. It was a flop in 1952 as The Pink Room. It had been written in 1945 (when it takes place) and is set in La Vie En Rose, a Soho drinking club. Ackland was hot in 1950, nominated for an Oscar for 49th Parallel, starring Laurence Olivier. The eventual 1952 production was financed by Terence Rattigan, and was such a critical disaster,  that Ackland more or less gave up writing in spite of having written more than a dozen commercial plays and many screenplays before it. In my student days in the late 60s, Coward and Rattigan were (unfairly) condemned, but Rodney Ackland had the worse fate of total invisibility.

The programme notes by John Gardyne tell the story. Ackland re-wrote The Pink Room in 1987, at last able to write the REAL dialogue he wanted, gave it its current title, and it was a success in 1988. It was on BBC TV in 1991 with Judi Dench, then produced at the National Theatre in 1995, still with Judi Dench in the lead role of Christine.

La Vie En Rose club

The time is 1945, after VE day, and leading up to Labour’s election victory. There are four acts. It takes place in Christine Foskett’s Soho drinking club, home to the drop outs of 1945 … drunks, gays, black marketeers, socialites, artists, writers, mixed in with American GIs. Throughout the play, Fifi, a prostitute slowly circles the stage at intervals, waiting to be picked up. Throughout the play too, we see the decay of the club in crumbling falls of masonry from on high. In Act 4, the building has been condemned as dangerous and they’re clearing out.

Act 4: The club has closed. High Marriner among the boxes (Charles Edwards)

The central character is Hugh Marriner (Charles Edwards), a gay writer. He’s down on his luck in every area. No money, constantly cadging cigarettes. He hopes to sell a story to film director Maurice (Jonathan Slinger). In some of the play’s best scenes, we find his partner, Nigel, has decided to go straight, and go off with a woman, Victoria. There’s discussion of Nigel’s sudden conversion to heterosexuality and his apparent revulsion for acting “queer.”  Then Hugh has the complication of his mother (Joanna David) boasting to her friend of his fictional wealth while chugging down cherry brandies (a drink I had forgotten existed). Edwards shines in the role of Hugh.

Mrs Mariner (Joanna David): Hugh’s mum

Elizabeth is another major role, girlfriend of Siegfried, an Austrian chancer. She goes off with Sam, an American airman who Maurice wants to become a film star, and who instead wants to go to India and pursue an interest in yoga. In between we have Madge, a Northern Irish Prot. convinced that Jesus Christ was born on Boxing Day (actually, I’d have been interested in the explanation).

R.D. Monody (Jenny Galloway)

Then we have R.B. Monody (Jenny Galloway), a lesbian critic in an orange wig, who had destroyed Hugh’s book in a review. Add a mad scruffy artist with a gun (whose name I didn’t catch).  It’s a cross section of the outsiders of 1945 … John Gardyne’s programme notes that when the play appeared seven years after 1945, Britain was emerging from the Festival of Britain with a national mood of optimism (and a young Queen, I’ll add) and the play’s “feel” of entropy and disillusion  just didn’t fit.

Conga line

It starts very well indeed, with the entire cast trooping onto stage in front of the curtain and singing La Vie En Rose together. Unfortunately that first minute is easily the best bit of the play. Early reviews complain of the length, which according to the programme is 3 hours 40 minutes including a 15 minute and a 5 minute interval. The signs in the theatre tonight said “3 hours  including intervals.”

Apparently after the previews they cut FORTY MINUTES.  That’s one hell of a cut, and you have to ask what they were doing in rehearsals to end up in previews at that sort of length, only to find it too long to for audiences. People complained in the first place that it lacked plot and narrative flow as well as being interminably long. Now it’s still quite long but when we saw it, there seemed no trace of connected narrative flow nor much of a plot. Plot was replaced by situation. Maybe what little plot there was went out with the cuts. It’s hard to tell what was lost, but take Siegfried. Apparently he is an Austrian black marketeer. Sounds exciting. The only remaining evidence is that he had a spare pack of cigarettes to give Hugh. Otherwise, he’s just a late middle-aged man with a German accent, who implausibly has the young attractive Elizabeth as a girlfriend (though she’s off with US Air Force captain, Sam). Very little characterisation left.

Elizabeth (Sinead Matthews)

The Lyttelton is as very wide proscenium stage. Too wide. We had seats right at the side and found it hard to hear dialogue. What with five empty seats in Row F at the start, and 8 empty seats after the interval, we just moved in more centrally and it was much better. However, some of the cast projected poorly, others compensated by shouting. Charles Edwards stood head and shoulders over everyone else. He has the same ability as Kenneth Branagh. While others bellow to be heard, he is perfectly clear at anywhere from a whisper upwards. Superb articulation and performance. Jonathan Slinger is also very clear, as one would expect from his long RSC and West End experience in lead roles.

Hugh Marriner (Charles Edwards) and Maurice (Jonathan Slinger)

Sinead Matthews was another we could hear easily, though she was also obviously speaking very loudly rather than getting the volume by almost magic like Edwards and Slinger. While Kate Fleetwood looked perfect as Christine, she was especially a culprit in being hard to hear. She often spoke to the back or the side or descending the stairs of the three level set – so that’s direction rather than her fault. Sound was not helped by having some scenes shouted over 40s jazz music, and for five minutes we had the low rumble of beats music which I presume was leaking from the Olivier Theatre. Or was a very bad sound idea.

There is a tremendous amount of coming and going. Rodney Ackland’s film experience came out in the way it then moved from crowd noise to focus on a two person dialogue : I thought “wide shot to medium CU” in film terms. That was interesting and well executed.

Christine (Kate Fleetwood). End of Act 2 (I think)

There are references worth investigating. The crumbling structure of the club as crumbling Britain? Act 2 ends with most of the cast dressed as GIs in masks about to have an explicit gang bang with Christine, stretched out on the stage with one at either end. (Is that in the original play?) Hmm, Captain Mainwaring (and others) might see that as a symbol of US / British relations in 1945. Or at Suez in 1956. And Bush and Blair. Oh dear, and with Donald Trump and Teresa May.

The end has Christine lying on the stage (again) muttering “Hell … hell” while offstage the rest of the cast sing The Red Flag, celebrating the Labour victory in the 1945 election. Not hell at all to me, though it might be a comment on Corbyn.

It was so highly rated in 1995. Tonight they lost many patrons in the interval. Four more left near us DURING Act 3, not to return. A couple more left in the 5 minute gap before Act Four. OK, with a cast of 28 and an extremely elaborate set, the National Theatre has hoovered up a mighty pile of money which would comfortably finance three plays with a more modest cast … in fact, I’m sure you could do this one with half the cast, fourteen actors or 50%, even though it was originally twenty (rather than 28).  There are only seven or eight major roles after all.

The play as it stands here is too choppy, too disconnected, the lavish National Theatre version smelling too badly of  excessive budget – “loadsamoney.” I liked Rodney Ackland’s “Before The Party” very much. “Absolute Hell” was daringly experimental in its day and failed then, but was a success in the 1990s.  Nowadays, it can get way with the plot about gays and drunken sex and prostitutes with ease. The Lord Chamberlain has gone, but with it the sense of shock has disappeared too. Not worth doing as it stands in this production.  The critics I normally concur with are 3s and 4s on this, but this time I’m down with the 2’s. Maybe the cuts wrecked it, not that I could have taken an extra forty minutes of it.  Two stars.

**

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4 star
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ****
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ****
Nick Wells, Radio Times ****

3 star
Michael Billington, The Guardian ***
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ***
Holly Williams, The Independent ***
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail ***
Scott Matthewman, Reviews Hub, *** (3.5)
Aleks Sierz, The Arts Desk, ***

2 star
Susannah Clapp, Observer **
Ann Treneman, The Times **
Patricia Nicol, Sunday Times **
Michael Arditti, Daily Express **
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage **
Connor Campbell, The Upcoming **

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

RODNEY ACKLAND
Before The Party, Salisbury Playhouse 2017

JOE HILL-GIBBINS
Measure For Measure, The Young Viv, 2015

JONATHAN SLINGER
Macbeth, RSC 2011 as Macbeth
The Tempest RSC 2012 as Prospero
Comedy of Errors RSC ’12  as Dr Pinch
Twelfth Night RSC 2012    as Malvolio
Hamlet RSC 2013  as Hamlet
All’s Well That Ends Well RSC 2013 as Paroles
Plastic, by Marius von Mayenburg, Bath 2017

CHARLES EDWARDS
Richard II, Globe 2015 (Richard II)

KATE FLEETWOOD
King Lear, National Theatre, 2014 (Goneril)

JENNY GALLOWAY
Forty Years On, Chichester 2017 (matron)

DANNY WEBB
King Lear, Chichester 2017 (Gloucester)