30
Critics
Theatre
Uncle Vanya
Theatre Royal Bath
There Is a Light That Never
Goes Out
Royal Exchange, Manchester; until Sat
Malory Towers
The Passenger Shed, Bristol;
until 18 Aug and touringClare
BrennanRupert Everett’s astute
direction of Chekhov
results in a meeting
of minds, a luddite
history has a modern
edge, and Emma Rice
keeps it simple with
Enid Blytonto the workers and threat to the
establishment. Documentary
sources, threaded together, provide
multiple, contrasting viewpoints
(“lower classes” to one observer are
“workers” to another).
Events shuttle machine-fast
through time and space (sometimes
too fast for comprehension).
Little by little, people, places and
situations patchwork into drama.
In the process, we start to thread
links between then and now. Some
of the luddites’ aims we thought
were achieved – fair pay, decent
hours, the right to unionise – but, as
a programme note points out, these
same aims are still “being advocated
by Deliveroo riders, Uber drivers and
Amazon ‘associates’”.
Malory Towers is a fi ctional
boarding school for girls, the setting
for a series of six novels launched
by Enid Blyton in 1946. Her tales
about the pupils who pass through
this converted Cornish castle have
been read and loved by generations
of (mainly) girls (myself included).
Their “jolly hockey sticks” tone,‘Beautifully pitched performances’:
Katherine Parkinson and Rupert Everett
in Uncle Vanya. Photograph by Nobby ClarkA Vanya for
all seasons
(“You may tire but they never do”);
sliverings of tinkling glass “show” us
shattering windows and chandeliers
in the Royal Exchange’s dining
rooms during a protest (a site-
specifi c moment).
This adroit use of technology
to illustrate the story of people
mainly remembered as machine-
wreckers is just one striking feature
of this devised show , created by
James Yeatman, Lauren Mooney
and members of the company
(seven quicksilver performers).
With sound and lights creating
scenery and atmosphere, the visual
emphasis is always on the human
body (movement evokes images,
including, harrowingly, a worker
trapped in a machine). The action
connects disparate classes and
individuals: mill workers unionising
and taking action; an informer-
agitator; the colonel who unleashes
soldiers against protest ers; a
pseudo-reformist factory owner;
the dissipated Prince Regent and
his partying entourage; Ludd,
mythic fi gure of encouragementUncle Vanya is Rupert Everett ’s
fi rst attempt at stage direction;
also his fi rst Chekhov as an actor
(he plays the title role). Vanya is an
unfulfi lled man, only just squeezing
a profi t out of the family estate
for the past 25 years. Now 50-ish,
he is hopelessly infatuated with
Yelena , the beautiful young wife
of his late sister’s husband , a once
feted, now retired professor, come
to live on the estate for reasons
of economy. Vanya’s helpmate,
his niece Sonya (the professor’s
daughter), is also hopelessly in
love – with an occasional visitor,
the district doctor Astrov. Astrov,
like Vanya, is a frustrated character.
Overwhelmed by the impossibility
of tending the needs of the peasants,
he fi nds solace in reforesting the
area to save its ecology for future
generations. He, too, is hopelessly in
love, also with Yelena.
As so often in Chekhov, this
appears to be a play about a
privileged section of society in late
19th-century Russia. But Chekhov,
although famously associated withthe naturalists, is also a symbolist
writer, exploring universal inner
realities. Everett’s direction
sensitively develops this aspect of
the drama. His period production
slowly builds up a sense of human
experience as part of the cycle of
nature. Real-world sounds instil a
feeling of place : owls hoot, crickets
chirrup, thunder crashes. The play
of light creates an impression of
diurnal time and the passing of
the seasons. Charles Quigg in’s
set suggests the permeability of
nature and human life, especially
in the opening scenes where the
impression is of an outdoors that is
also an indoors, with leaves draping
the walls of the family house outside
of which furniture is set on carpets
as in a drawing room. Later, the
back wall will disappear and an
interior will merge with a seemingly
endless, mist-shrouded vista.
Another (notoriously tricky)
aspect of Chekhov’s plays that
Everett – as actor and director –
gets just right is the humour. He is
aided in this by David Hare ’s sharp
adaptation and by the beautifully
pitched and perfectly timed
performances of his ensemble
cast (special mention to Katherine
Parkinson ’s Sonya and the injured
John Light , incorporating a crutch
into his performance as Astrov).
Situations and lines are laugh-aloud
funny – segueing seamlessly into
tears, anger and despair; as much
a part of life as birdsong and snow.
On the evidence of this production,
Everett and Chekhov are made
for one another.
The setting of There Is a Light
That Never Goes Out is also
historical : Lancashire, 1811-12, time
of trouble at the mills (the play is
subtitled Scenes from the Luddite
Rebellion ). The treatment, however,
is contemporary. Moving on and
about the raised scarlet platform
that dominates the centre of the
Royal Exchange’s theatre-in-the
round, actors in modern dress
deploy microphones like wizards’
wands, conjuring sounds to swirl
around the stage ( Pete Malkin ’s
sound design). Rhythmically
percussive clangs and clatters
shape relentless factory loomsthough, has been disliked and
derided by almost as many, who
feel her stories are based on , and
endorse , elitism and privilege.
Emma Rice’s adaptation
(which she also directs ) opens
in a contemporary school where
unsupervised pupils bully a girl for
reading Malory Towers. Knocked
unconscious, the youngster
dreams herself boarding a train at
Paddington station and becoming,
in the words of the school song,
“One of the lucky girls to have the
chance / To grow at Malory Towers”.
The framing device sets up a (to me,
jarring) contrast between what is
open to these “lucky” few and what
is available to the many.
As in Blyton’s books, the values
Rice praises are powerfully
expressed through friendships,
confl icts and cliff hanger adventures
(shadow projections on to the
back of the set add to the thrills).
Izuka Hoyle’s fi ery Darrell must
rein in her temper; Sally (the
ever-excellent Francesca Mills )
РЕЛИЗ must let go of her need to control.
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