Theatre: July News

Theatre: July News

25 July, 2008
by: Joe Harrod

There's plenty exciting in theatreland right now, (and we've got free tickets to the wrestling) but first we want to tell you about someone we met. Al Gilmour will place his finances and future on the line this month with a bold venture in the West End – a new production of John Osborne's anti-establishment classic Look Back In Anger. Gilmour has cast, directed and produced the show himself.

You have a very experienced cast. Does this make life easier?
Much easier, maybe 80 percent of directing is casting. Part of this for me has been that most actors don't get paid for a show like this, or they get paid very, very little. All of these actors are being paid their union rate, which means it is mathematically impossible to break even. Considering the amount of work that goes into a show like this, and the amount of talent on display, this is... disgraceful.

How have you directed it?
The most obvious initial choice that I have made is to cast a black actor as Jimmy Porter. I hope that I have directed it, Jimmy particularly, as a burning light against the apathy that he finds all around.

Is a black Jimmy a device to shock?
No. In 1956 Jimmy shocked a bourgeois audience because what they saw was a white, working class man attacking, articulately, his upper class wife and the establishment from which she came. The decision has been taken to cast a black Jimmy, with a modicum of artistic license, in order to get closer to what I believe is the spirit and truth of Osborne's play. It's a point about class rather than race. I hope that what will be seen is how British sense of class has shifted.

Is there an issue with Alison, Jimmy's wife, being a doormat?
When I first met Gary Raymond [who plays the out-of-touch Colonel in this production and starred as Cliff in the 1956 original], his neighbour Sheila Hancock asked me why I was putting on a misogynistic play. I believe very strongly as Osborne believed that Alison's silence is as strong as Jimmy's rhetoric.

What did the play mean to you at the time that you read it?
The play is essentially a story of love and there is a famous speech that Jimmy delivers, 'you can't go into love like falling into a soft job, it takes muscle, and guts, and if you're not prepared to mess up your nice, clean soul then you better give up the idea of life altogether and become a saint because you will never make it as a human being. It is either world or the next.' That struck me. It also has political feelings that I shared... disappointment and impotence after the invasion of Iraq.

Is Jimmy an Everyman?
He is completely extraordinary and unique and alienates his fellow man, but in many respects represents the frustrations that exist everywhere. People don't feel that they can do things in the same way that someone like Jimmy Porter feels that he can't have a foothold, a voice.

Standing with a million people in Hyde Park [on an anti war march] you cannot believe that that would be ignored, then it goes to nothing and you think, what the fuck? That creates feelings of disempowerment, which lead to inertia, then apathy.

Is Osborne your favourite?
No, Shakespeare is, you dummy. But in his own way I think he was a very great man and a great writer. That period when his writing kept the Royal Court afloat and changed drama, opening the way for Pinter, Stoppard and the rest, was the most exciting time since Shakespeare. 'Look Back…' was their third show, it flopped, then two positive reviews from Harold Hobson and Kenneth Tynan came out. Audiences went up a little bit, the BBC put it on for half an hour, and thereafter for the next ten years Osborne's plays did extremely well, and that more or less paid for a lot of worthy flops.

Who is your equivalent of a Kenneth Tynan or a Harold Hobson?
Billington [Michael Billington of The Guardian] by miles.

Were you an angry young man?
I was being custard-pied every night in a terrible show here in the Tabard theatre. I was 28, still living with my grandfather – who at my age, was in a position to do more or less anything he wanted – and I was getting a custard pie every night. I wasn't being paid, and yes, I was an angry young man.

So you are making a loss on this production?
To put on a show like this and pay actors their union minimum you cannot make a profit without corporate sponsorship. It is sad. Theatre will not die, but everything is stacked against actors who wish to work in theatre. But… there is a human animal need for theatre that will always be there.


Look Back in Anger promises to bring a dose of much needed controversy and an uncomfortable voice to the West End, to offset the general predominance of the saccharine musical. We're looking forward to it.

Speaking of feel-good musicals, the biggest opening of July is Zorro. With book and lyrics by Sondheim acolyte Stephen Clark, plenty of corsets, swordfights and stunts, and a score based around the music of the Gypsy Kings, the masked crusader promises pure feel-good entertainment.

There's a Tinseltown fetish in theatres of late, exemplified by the Old Vic's production of Speed-the-Plow, and underground revelation Rock. One of July's most interesting shows is at the Tricycle who dust off their old production of Moonlight and Magnolias. Following Hollywood money men as they dismantle a classic American novel, this is theatre with brains and laughs.

And finally, we're childishly excited about the wrestling , arriving this 4th of July for an all-in extravaganza. Two standing tickets for the first person to answer this question. (email competition@spoonfed.co.uk) What is the name of the wrestler who starred in Jack Black's film Nacho Libre?

See you ringside!

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Joe Harrod