An imagined conversation:
Mr Norris: Great news! We have TV Land's own Nicola Walker coming back to the National.
Mr Cooke: Coolio! What to do?
Mr Norris: So... it's got to be a Strong Independant Woman, out there on her own, facing down prejudice and division. So maybe something which is "heritage"? THE CORN IS GREEN has been mooted...
Mr Cooke: But that's a warhorse fit only for Chichester all-star revivals... it's hardly National Theatre is it? Maybe once upon a time but not now...
Mr Norris: I know... so let's do the two Rs... Radical Reimagining!
Mr Cooke: Leave it to me boss!
THE CORN IS GREEN... but not as we know it. For 84 years. Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical play of a dedicated teacher in a Welsh coal-mining village focussing on a young lad with a gift for writing to get him a scholarship to Oxford, has been delivering it's remit as a Well-Written Play with a beginning a middle and an end and a stonking female lead role. But no. That is not enough for the National Theatre... it has to be Radically Reinterpreted to make it Relevant.
The trouble is that all Dominic Cooke's meta trappings do is make a long play longer and appear tacky, lazy and shallow framing such a well-constructed piece, standing in the audience's way shouting LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME for no good reason at all.
Cooke has taken a look at the play, snapped his fingers and said "Of course, it's a memory play" so has staged it as one - no matter that it detracts from the material. So Emlyn Williams is now an onstage character, first seen walking out of a 1920s dance party to struggle through composing his play. Although by the time he wrote THE CORN IS GREEN, Williams was already a successful playwright and had just had a huge success with his thriller NIGHT MUST FALL.
So we sit through an interminable set-up with Williams being serenaded by a Welsh pit choir as he envisions on an empty set his setting, the makeshift classroom for the soon-to-arrive Miss Moffat. Oh yes the set... a totally empty stage until the interval, after which the curtain rises on a rudimentary stage set which by the final scene is fully 'realistic' and has it's own cutsey proscenium border. Again this does absolutely nothing for the audience's understanding of the play, having run the first half's gamut of radio-style special effects to signify doors opening and closing, footsteps going upstairs etc.
Oh yes the singing... Dominic Cooke has scattered throughout the action, passages of singing from a group of Welsh miners - if he was so desperate to make his production a musical one wonders why he didnt just have a go at the 1970s US flop musical MISS MOFFAT in which Bette Davis attempted to revisit the role she had filmed in 1945, rewritten for the deep south instead of Wales, thankfully it died on the road.
The Emlyn Williams character reads out stage directions and the set design, occasionally changing lines as the characters say them and seemingly re-inventing the last act as it's being acted out. As I said it all smacks of a director who doesnt trust his material - THE CORN IS GREEN is several things but what it isn't is THE GLASS MENAGERIE or OUR TOWN.
The emphasis on the Emlyn Williams / Morgan Evans character also tends to shift the focus from Nicola Walker as the centre of attention which should never be the case, it's her star role to play. Miss Moffat was originally played by Sybil Thorndike in London and Ethel Barrymore on Broadway, Bette Davis made the afore-mentioned film while Katharine Hepburn made a TV movie in Wales in 1979 directed by George Cukor. I had seen it before at the Old Vic in 1985 with a matronly Deborah Kerr as Miss Moffat and an Olivier-winning performance from Imelda Staunton as the teenage troublemaker Bessy Watty.
Nicola Walker certainly has a presence onstage, her Miss Moffat was determined and driven but it made the character hard to actually admire as she really showed no light or shade, hardly any emotion at all. Iwan Davies had moments of fire but otherwise his Morgan Evans was hardly a match for Miss Moffat. By far the best performance was from Saffron Coomber as Bessy, she actually made the best counter-point to Miss Moffat - as determined to better herself as the teacher wants for her pupil, but with inate knowledge of how to get what she wants now. not later. Jo McInnes was fine as her cockney mother, former petty thief now a Salvation Army officer - a bit of a stretch there Emlyn - but the remaining cast hid behind their stock characters - spinster teacher, nice-but-dim squire, straight-laced teacher - without bringing them to life at all.
Again at the end of the play Cooke robs his leading lady of the final moment of quiet triumph; he has his production end with his Emlyn Williams character do a foxtrot to a 1930s tune with his fictional younger self. What on earth was he thinking??
I won't be going back before it's last performance on 11th June.
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