BOOKS & ARTS
Theatre
Speech therapy
Lloyd Evans
Oslo
Lyttelton Theatre, until 23 SeptemberPrism
Hampstead Theatre, until 14 OctoberOslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a mod-
est venue in New York. It moved to Broad-
way and this imported version has arrived
at the National on its way to a prebooked
run at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s bound
to be a hit because it’s good fun, it gives a
knotty political theme a thorough examina-
tion, and it’s aimed squarely at the ignorant.
In the early 1990s Norwegian diplomats
set up ‘back-channel’ talks between the
PLO and Israel. The play follows that pro-cess and it treats geopolitics like a flat-share
comedy. The bickering partners are hauled
in by the lordly Norwegians and forced to
hammer out their differences around the
table. Play-goers need have no prior knowl-
edge of Israel and its fraught relationship
with the Palestinians. Everything is laid out
on a plate and the viewer is made to feel like
a privileged observer at the launch of a con-
spiracy. Each side is guilty of subterfuge and
exaggeration. The Norwegians pretend to
be impartial while engaging in ‘constructive
ambiguity’, i.e. the creation of false obstacles
whose removal can be claimed as a victory
by either party.
Toby Stephens enjoys himself playing
the host, Terje Rod-Larsen, as an oily buf-
foon, and Paul Herzberg’s Simon Peres is an
amusing study in majestic vanity. Director
Bartlett Sher manages to capture the emo-
tional temper of the talks. The delegates are
all chest-thumping males who seem to adore
the romance of the process, the schoolboyRobert Lindsay as Jack Cardiff in PrismMANUEL HARLAN
THE LISTENER
LCD Soundsystem: American
DreamGrade: B+
Number one. Everywhere, just about.
You have to say that the man has
a certain sureness of touch. Hip
enough not to be quite mainstream,
rock enough not to be quite pop. The
knowing nods — to Depeche Mode,
Eno, 1970s post-punk and 1980s
grandiosity and always, always, Bowie.
Fifteen years on from James
Murphy’s first excursion in these
clothes and the man from New
Jersey, now grizzled and greying, has
come up with an album as good as
any he’s made — which is a qualified
nod of admiration: I often find his
tunes too eager to please, the neatly
corralled stabs of funk a little forced.
Murphy always wants to have his
cake and eat it, get the dance crowd
in and the indie kids too. You have
to say that, commercially, this
formula works. But it is a very arch
balancing act.
American Dream — you just know
that title isn’t going to be one of
exultation — is fashionably morose,
full of self-reproach. There are whiffs
of the Bunnymen here and there and,
as the melodies swarm upwards and
power chords come in, even (Christ
help us) Simple Minds. But, leaving
the lyrics — banal, inchoate, self-
pitying — aside, there are some very
fine moments. Few people can tweak
their little synthesisers to such effect.
‘I Used To’ is ominous, thudding,
electro-rock with a crisp, mesmerising
drumbeat. ‘Oh Baby’ — fiendishly
cleverly constructed — sounds a bit
like Yazoo covering Suicide. The best
is last — the 12-minute minimalist
throb of ‘Black Screen’, where at last
the listener is invited to wait a while,
to immerse themselves, before the
pay-off. If only he had the confidence,
or the lack of concern, to do that
more often.
— Rod Liddle