Financial Times Europe - 06.09.2019

6 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday6 September 2019

ARTS

Promise:

Eliza

Scanlen in

‘Babyteeth’

Raphael Abraham

It took about a week, but the Venice

competition has finally given us the sec-

ond of two films directed by women —

and a pretty good one at that. Shannon

Murphy’s feature debutBabyteethis an

Aussie charmer about first love and last

regrets. Eliza Scanlen (of TV’sSharp

Objects) is outstanding as a spirited but

vulnerable schoolgirl who falls for a

feral boy seven years her senior.

Soon after their first brief encounter

on a train station platform, Milla is gaz-

ing lovingly at Moses’s rat’s tail and face

tats and he is giving her a scrappy

hair-do to match his own with the aid of

his mum’s poodle clippers. “Your boy-

friend gave you mange?” asks her violin

teacher incredulously when she shows it

off. It feels wild and dangerous, and

Milla likes it.

At first the laissez-faire attitude of her

parents (winningly played by Essie

Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) is baffling;

Moses (Toby Wallace) burgles their

home and is promptly invited to stay for

breakfast. Then you realise why: Milla is

battling a deadly disease and the dread

Moses may represent her best chance of

a new lease of life.

Paradoxically, by embracing bad

parenting they are doing the best for

their daughter — a truth that becomes

intensely touching at the film’s end. But

is Moses really hooked on Milla or just

on her mum’s array of prescription

drugs, which he frequently pilfers?

Rita Kalnejais’s script deploys many

ingredients beloved of the indie dram-

edy: a free spirit imprisoned by circum-

stance, comically inept yet loving par-

ents, unlikely friendships and spontane-

ous dancing under glittery lighting. But

just when the story threatens to tip into

excessive cuteness, along comes some

earthy Aussie humour to leaven the

sentiment. At times the film exhibits

an amiable naivety, at others a sly

knowingness, and it is helped along by

an eclectic and energising string and

pop soundtrack.

WithBabyteethher first bite of the

cherry, Murphy has marked herself as

one to watch for sprightly direction and

storytelling that doesn’t feel the need to

spell out every plot progression. And

Scanlen has confirmed her status as one

of the most promising young actors on

either side of the world.

Boy meets girl meets danger

F I L M

Babyteeth

Venice Film Festival

aaaae

Max McGuinness

Harold Pinter’s early plays include some

memorably garrulous oddballs such as

the shoeless tramp Davies in 1960’sThe

Caretaker nd the bullying patriarcha

Max in 1963’sThe Homecoming. By con-

trast, in this acidic portrait of a seven-

year love triangle, first staged in 1978,

the three principals all seem remark-

ably inarticulate.

Whereas Davies and Max’s cockney

patter is imbued with coarse, elliptical

poetry, Betrayal’s London sophisticates

speak in lifeless bourgeois clichés. The

plot — man bonks best friend’s wife — is

the stuff of daytime television. Even the

initial seduction seems weirdly

mechanical and passionless as the play’s

Lothario drunkenly mouths the hoari-

est of sweet nothings.

Pinter thereby strips away all the

mystique of adultery to craft a pitch-

black comedy in the mould of Flaubert’s

Madame Bovary. A pair of lovers who

here imagine themselves to be in the

throes of a unique romance are really

just going through the motions of lust

and infatuation before eventually losing

interest in each other. The play’s reverse

chronology, whereby bitterness comes

before the butterflies, highlights that

wearily predictable dynamic.

Given the knowing triteness of the

story and dialogue, it would be tempting

to ham it up. As the cuckolded husband

Robert, Tom Hiddleston instead

anchors this revival, which comes to

Broadway from London’s West End,

with deadpan discipline and flashes of

searing pathos. Only during a brittle

lunch with his friend Jerry, whose

treachery he has just discovered, does

he indulge in a little light farce as he

seethes with volcanic tension.

Alongside, Charlie Cox conveys the

hollow conceit of a man who is smugly

convinced he is getting away with it all.

As his paramour Emma, Zawe Ashton

resembles a woman who is always hop-

ing to encounter a mirror. Such preening

can seem a little stagey. But it also brings

out her character’s galloping narcissism.

When she and Jerry are together, Rob-

ertcontinues to lurk silently in the back-

ground of Soutra Gilmour’s minimalist

set. It’s a nifty addition by director Jamie

Lloyd that signals that if you’re going

to betray someone, you’d better be

prepared for that person to take up per-

manent residence in your psyche.

To December 8,betrayalonbroadway.com

T H E AT R E

Betrayal

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, New York

aaaae

Sniping: Alex

Jennings and

Lindsay Duncan

in ‘Hansard’

Catherine Ashmore

much deeper and darker. When it

finally emerges, it is devastating

and Duncan and Jennings are exceed-

ingly moving as they reveal their great

unspoken pain.

The trouble is that this comes too late;

having opened up this deep psychologi-

cal well, Woods goes no further into it.

His play has significant and timely

points to make about prejudice, fear and

compassion — both at a political and a

personal level — but just as we reach the

point of real engagement with them, it

stops. Just as the characters skirt the

issues for too long, so too, unfortunately,

does the play.

To November 25,nationaltheatre.org.uk

Sarah Hemming

Timing is everything, in both theatre
and politics. On Tuesday night, with an
astonishing political drama unfolding
just a mile away in the House of Com-
mons, the National Theatre opened a
new play about another febrile era
of British politics involving another
Tory government.
It says something about the current
wild state of affairs that the pace of
events in the late 1980s looks almost
sedate by comparison. But all political
theatre is really about now, and one of
the points of Simon Woods’ debut play is
that its exploration of the interplay
between privilege and power, and
between politics and populism, is all too
topical. It reflects on the long and lasting
reach of the huge political and economic
shifts of the 1980s. More specifically, it
considers an issue back in the news —
sex education — by focusing on the noto-
rious ocal government bill (Section 28)l
which forbade teaching about homosex-
uality in schools.
It’s obliquely timely, then, often wasp-
ishly funny, ultimately very moving and
beautifully delivered by the superb Alex
Jennings and Lindsay Duncan. Yet
there’s also something oddly unsatisfy-
ing about it: the brittle arguments are to
the point, yet often feel too engineered
or too pat, and it ends just when it needs
to start digging down.
We’re in the elegant cream Cotswolds
kitchen of MP Robin Hesketh and his
wife Diana — a room expertly designed
by Hildegard Bechtler to include all the
trappings of domesticity with none of
the warmth. Robin is back for the
weekend, but scarcely for marital bliss:
from the moment he walks through the
door, the couple are sniping at each
other with practised accuracy. “My
God,” he cries, bustling in with his pile of
mail. “She’s still alive!” “I know!” she
shoots back, wafting by in a diaphanous

dressing gown. “It’s a nightmare.”

It’s Coward-meets-Albee territory,

mixed with class conflict and political

dialectic. Diana, leftwing, sardonic,

takes shots at Conservative cynicism;

Robin, patrician, condescending,

deflects the blows. Woods, also an actor,

writes somesharp one-liners, which

both actors deliver with consummate

timing in Simon Godwin’s deftly cali-

brated production. “I tell you, it’s the

great mystery of our time,” muses

Diana. “The insatiable desire of the peo-

ple of this country to be f***ed by an

Old Etonian.”

That certainly hit its mark on opening

night. But we soon realise that this

elaborate dance is about something

Privilege, power — and pain

T H E AT R E

Hansard
National Theatre (Lyttelton), London
aaaee

Richard Fairman

A lot of attention this year

has gone on the BBC Proms’

embrace of an ever wider range of

musical styles. Faced with the

publicity given to classic pop,

world music and new, genre-

busting experimental works, it

can be easy to overlook the long-

established classics.

Whether it likes it or not, the

Vienna Philharmonic is a stand-

ard-bearer for tradition. It is

rooted in its inheritance of the

Austro-German classics and still

holds to its own tradition of refus-

ing to appoint a chief conductor.

For this 2019 tour the orchestra

as usual brought a pair of guest

conductors, but chosen as if

looking both to the future and the

past — one at the sunset of his

career, the other still at a relatively

early stage.

At the age of 90, Bernard

Haitink has announced that he is

taking “a sabbatical”. He says he

has chosen his words carefully,

because he does not want to say he

is stopping. After so many years in

the UK, first at the London Phil-

harmonic Orchestra, then at

Glyndebourne, then the Royal

Opera House, it seems this was his

last concert here.

There will be an opportunity to

sum up his career when he con-

ducts his very final concert in

Lucerne at the weekend. Suffice

to say, this Prom was an epitome of

the natural, unforced music-

making that has always been

his trademark.

Pianist Emanuel Ax offered him

a meeting of minds in Beethoven’s

Piano Concerto No.4. Haitink then

bowed out with Bruckner, a com-

poser to whom he has given a

life-long dedication, and a per-

formance of the Symphony No.

that seemed even a touch more

stately and more resplendent of

sound than before. Or was that just

the playing of the Vienna Philhar-

monic at work?

On the second night, youth was

represented by theColombian-

Austrian conductor Andrés

Orozco-Estrada. At 41, still youth-

ful in the conductors’ stakes, he

brought a popular programme by

two European composers writing

from the other side of the Atlantic.

The evening started with an

atmospheric, often daringly

hushed performance of Dvorak’s

The Noonday Witch, the second of

his tone poems composed after

returning from the US.

As the centrepiece, Korngold’s

Violin Concerto gave Leonidas

Kavakos the opportunity to

show off a silken thread of

Hollywood lyricism against an iri-

descent orchestral backdrop,

though little can be done to dis-

guise the poverty of invention

in Korngold’s finale. Dvorak’s

Symphony No.9,From the New

World, is so straightforwardly lucid

in its orchestral writing that it

C L A S S I CA L M U S I C

BBC Proms/Vienna

Philharmonic

Royal Albert Hall, London

aaaae

Tom Hiddleston and Zawe Ashton

cannot pose many challenges, but

Orozco-Estrada gave it a fresh lilt

and held back from playing up the

big moments.

The symphony ends on a dying

wind chord, which for once was

precisely in tune. Earlier, the soft

string playing inThe Noonday

Witchhad been not only well bal-

anced, but alive with quivering

intensity. And which other string

section beyond the Viennese

sounds so rich and full at the back

of Royal Albert Hall?

bbc.co.uk/proms

Bernard Haitink conducts the

Vienna Philharmonic

WEEKEND ARTS

Actor Mark Strong

(right) talks to

Danny Leigh about

co-producing and

starring in ‘Temple’

— a strange new

TV series for

strange times

ft.com/arts

SEPTEMBER 6 2019 Section:Features Time: 9/20195/ - 18:11 User:david.cheal Page Name:ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition:EUR , 6, 1