Lloyd Evans

Samuel Foote (1720–77) was a star of the 18th-century stage who avoided the censors by extemporising his performances. Today we’d call him a stand-up comedian specialising in improv. He served tea to play-goers and claimed that the show was a free accompaniment to the beverages. Dogged by homosexual scandals, he was hounded out of England at least once despite the patronage of George III. A riding accident left him with a compound leg fracture (bone piercing flesh), which required amputation to prevent gangrene. The limb was hacked off in 20 minutes. Foote hobbled back to fame and fortune playing Sir Luke Limp in The Lame Lover. At his burial the preserved limb was reunited with its owner.

Michael Grandage’s latest show is about an old snap. Geneticists regard the X-ray of the hydrated ‘B’ form of DNA as one of the loveliest images ever captured. To laymen it looks like some woodlice drowning in yesterday’s porridge. The pic was taken in 1951 by the British biochemist Dr Rosalind Franklin but she failed to realise its significance. When James Watson passed through her lab he took one glimpse and instantly twigged that it revealed the helical structure of DNA. With his pal Francis Crick he built the famous double-helix model which bagged them the Nobel Prize. Dr Franklin (played by Nicole Kidman) won nothing. We know all this in advance, of course, so the play lacks any suspense.

To examine an ancient text requires an understanding of the ancient imagination. The Oresteia is set in a primitive world where people believed that every animal, tree, stone, river, mountain, star, cloud and clap of thunder was inspired by a spirit controlled by the gods. Heaven signalled its wishes through dreams, oracles or chance events which were interpreted by prophets. What we understand by ‘faith’, i.e. a volitional fealty to a particular religious code, didn’t exist. There was no free will either. Mortals chose between one divine instruction or another. The genius of Aeschylus was to commit his characters to a cycle of moral conflicts where every act of obedience was also an act of betrayal.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/merkelstragicmistake/media.mp3" title="Kate Maltby and Igor Toronyi-Lalic discuss Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet" startat=1642] Listen [/audioplayer]You can’t play the part of Hamlet, only parts of Hamlet. And the bits Benedict Cumberbatch offers us are of the highest calibre. He delivers the soliloquies with a meticulous and absorbing clarity like a lawyer in the robing room mastering a brief before his summing-up. And though he’s a decade too old to play the prince (the grave scene sets his age at about 28), he cavorts about the stage like a ballet dancer delighting in his own athleticism. But he’s also much too nice. The darkest shades of melancholy and the raw emotional ugliness are missing.

Sam Mendes once said there is no such thing as the history of British theatre, only the history of British press nights. That observation takes us closer to understanding the taboo that constrains journalists from reviewing the opening performance of a West End play. A dozen or so previews take place before the critics are invited in for a star-studded gala, or ‘press night’, which is fixed by the producer to make the show appear in its most seductive light. Newspapers are usually wary of censorship in any form, so their assent to this convention must be considered a great anomaly. The vanity of the lead actor is a significant element. A first night is usually full of hazards and mishaps as the cast acquaint themselves with the props, costumes, door-handles and so on.

Showstopper! The Improvised Musical offers a brand new song-and-dance spectacular at every performance. It opens with a brilliantly chaotic piece of comedy. A theatre producer on stage telephones Cameron Mackintosh and pitches him a new musical. Mackintosh answers and the producer invites ideas from the audience. ‘What’s the setting?’ Someone yelled ‘Late-night sauna’ at the performance I saw. The producer, without missing a beat, told Mackintosh that the show would be called, Sweat, Sweat, Sweat. If that was improvised it was world-class. The show develops along the lines suggested by the crowd and a number of hit musicals are parodied. The audience, I suspect, enjoyed this more than me.

In the clammy shadows of Cowgate I was leafleted by a chubby beauty wearing all-leather fetish gear. ‘Hi! Want to spend an hour with a prostitute for nothing?’ Yes, please. Her show The Coin-Operated Girl (Liquid Room Annexe, until 30 August), part of the free fringe, deals with the seven years she spent servicing sex-starved men in swish London hotels. One of the commonest fantasies was ‘GFE’, which has nothing to do with threesomes or gimp-masks. ‘The Girlfriend Experience’ means sex, kissing, cuddling, chatting, bickering and everything involved in a normal relationship.

Propaganda is said to work best when based upon a grain of truth. Ukip! The Musical assumes that most electors are suspicious of the movement and its leaders. And in Edinburgh that may well be the case. The show portrays Nigel Farage as a bewildered twerp with no charisma and little talent for oratory. His first speech at an Essex shopping centre begins, ‘I am not a pretty nationalist, sorry, a petty nationalist.’ He then falls under the influence of a manipulative racist named Godfrey Bloom. I should point out that ‘Bloom’ in this piece refers to the character in the show, not to the retired politician. Bloom is first seen in a Westminster club, Gay Banana, dressed in a grass-skirt and singing the praises of Bongo-Bongo Land.

Chekhov so dominates 19th-century Russian drama that Turgenev doesn’t get much of a look-in. His best known play, A Month in the Country, was written before Chekhov was born but Patrick Marber’s adaptation, with its new nickname, feels like Chekhov scripted by a Chekhov app. Turgenev’s characters, his atmosphere and his scenarios feel entirely familiar but they lack the tragicomic gestures that give Chekhov his unique appeal. There are no fluffed murders or dodged duelling challenges. No one tries and fails to blow his brains out. We’re on a rural estate where a group of crumbling, damaged sophisticates pootle around falling in love with each other. Every affair is doomed.

Like everyone performing at the Edinburgh Fringe I’m about to make a lot of mistakes. I’m about to lose a lot of money too. But after ten years covering the festival as a reviewer I’m at least able to predict which errors I can’t avoid blundering into. First, the campaign to attract a crowd will be pointless. This stands to reason. Five or six thousand hopefuls swarm up to Edinburgh each year and they all use the same marketing strategy. Attention-seeking stunts on the Royal Mile. Tiresome afternoons forcing leaflets on unimpressed Americans. Fly-posting after dark, on tiptoe, by torchlight. Desperate texts to friends of friends promising five-for-one discounts.

Richard Bean, the country’s most bankable playwright, knocks out a new script every four months. Thanks to the success of One Man, Two Guvnors, he’s not short of houses ready to stage his work. And the hunt for treasure in his back-catalogue continues. The Mentalists, from 2002, stars Stephen Merchant (co-writer of The Office) and Steffan Rhodri as two needy chums pursuing a whimsical dream in a cheap hotel room. Chum One is a hairdresser who makes porn films on the side. Chum Two is a salesman who dreams of founding a rebel colony overseas. Chum One films Chum Two delivering a sermon that will kick-start the revolution. That, ladies and gentlemen, is about it.

Easy playwright to get on with, Ben Jonson. His world is simple, his tastes endearing. He likes golden-hearted swindlers and unscrupulous servants who outwit their bungling masters. Volpone, the ‘sly fox’ played by Henry Goodman, is a rich Venice merchant without a family who persuades three wealthy rivals that they stand a chance of inheriting his estate. He feigns mortal illness and accepts their tributes, or bribes, from his sickbed while secretly lampooning their folly. This is hardly the most sophisticated hoax but it’s fun to watch the slick, spruce millionaires queuing up to be despoiled of their loot. Trevor Nunn’s up-to-date version skilfully harmonises the Jacobean and the modern.

Refugee crisis in the Mediterranean! Fear not. Anders Lustgarten and his trusty rescue ship are here to save mankind. Lampedusa consists of two monologues, one Italian, one English, which tackle the problem at home and abroad. We meet Stephano, a cartoon fisherman with a Zorba beard and a chunky woollen sweater who lives on Italy’s southernmost salient about 70 miles off the African coast. He follows an improbable path from xenophobia to enlightened altruism. At first he mistrusts the runaways whose corpses choke his native shore. He asks survivors why they don’t ‘speak the language’. ‘We do,’ they reply, in English. ‘This is Europe’s language.