What is Theatre for, eh?

An idea that comes up again and again - especially when I interview Andy Arnold - is that theatre has a special place for the discussion of public concerns. Whether this existed in the earliest days of staged performance, I can't say (if it did, the Athenians of the fifth century had a few issues with patricide and mother-fucking). Of course, I think Diderot started it off. 

His writing on theatre - especially when he tries to explain why his plays are quite good, actually - emphasises the important of reflecting the worries of society. He invented a new genre, known as the drame, to make this point.

Even Kenneth 'Whiplash' Tynan, patron saint of critics and swearing on TV, argued with Ionesco that theatre is always political (the example he gave of how far political decisions impinge on life was, inevitably, in the purchase of cigarettes). He was not keen on what Arnold calls 'existential theatre', which privileged existential angst over more specific anguishes. 


While I am uncomfortable with my responses to The Citizens' recent Endgame, I believe that my complaint against its familiarity reflects my assumption that theatre ought to challenge the audience. Beckett is obviously a master playwright, and Endgame's vision of a post-apocalyptic world straddles the divide between abstraction and more specific paranoia (a hostile universe and a nuclear winter respectively). Although Dominic Hill did a solid job, getting great performances and playing out the script with clarity, I thought that Beckett's nightmare is too familiar, and draws heavily on 1950s' fears. 

The Beckett estates' conservatism on matters of interpretation - manifested in Hill's production - leaves Endgame as a period piece, lacking the immediacy of Hill's direction of, say, Crime and Punishment. It allows the audience off the hook, to read the event as performance rather than a critique. That is, it's easy to eulogise the actors, enjoy the words and revel in the dystopian rather than embrace the challenge of a play that reflects contemporary alienation.

Back with Andy Arnold, who recently directed Beckett's Happy Days: his choice of Mike Barlett's Cock was a far more bracing confrontation with the audience. Given its frank discussion of sexual identity, it did respond to modern dilemmas. Its basic premise - a man torn between male and female lovers - reveals a society more comfortable with observing same-sex relationships, but also going beyond a simple message of positivity. 

Despite sharing a certain bleakness with Beckett, it conforms to Diderot's ideal of the bourgeois comic tragedy. There were laughs, but the protagonist ended up alone on stage, the darkness slowly encroaching.

Cock was more uncomfortable than Endgame. It is set in a familiar domesticity which becomes more sinister than Beckett's blasted planet both because it fails to recognise wider catastrophes (the characters do reflect on their self-absorption) and it is more difficult to 'other' the characters' experience. Most people haven't existed in a post-apocalypse twilight. They have had dinner parties and worried about their ambitions and desires.

However, my reading of both plays is predicated on the assumption that 'theatre ought to challenge'. It's a variation on Diderot's claim: contemporary social relevance does not need to be provocative. One function of the critic might be to recommend productions - hence the star rating. My reviews are aimed at audiences who are, at least, in sympathy with my assumption. Endgame and Cock were well worth the time and money, although Gareth Nichol's Blackbird at The Citizens ticked the box harder.

Whether the purpose of theatre is to annoy the hell out of the audience is not necessary proven... the production of Cleansed, which is apparently ever so shocking, has bought back some public debate about the acceptability of on-stage violence. And sometimes, as Vanishing Point are currently showing in The Destroyed Room, breaking the format can be a powerful way of shoving the shit right in the audience's mush.

Dramaturgy's Cock: Andy Arnold Long and Uncut

Looking ahead to the next season at the Tron, it strikes me that there is something new spreading across the programme: is it fair to say that you are taking the disappearance of The Arches seriously and providing opportunities for artists who might previously have been there to come across to the Tron? And what made you decide on this?


A strong part of my ethos when I started working at the Tron was to provide a platform and support for young and emergent artists – much in the same way as I had done at the Arches.  So, a lot of the programme we are now developing is in the context of that commitment - particularly under our new banner of Tron Creatives.  
It’s something I believe in very strongly – a theatre building can be enriched immeasurably by the energy and risk that emergent artists will deliver.  The demise of the Arches – a tragedy which should never have happened – means that there is a whole community of artists – many doing amazing work - who now finding themselves homeless.  

We are trying to accommodate and support as many as we can but we have a relatively small building and a packed programme.  I’d love to find additional space because we could fill it all the year  with new people producing new work and Glasgow needs it.

I know that you have a special enthusiasm for theatre that deals with existential matters - is this something reflected in your programming?


I like to think that we present an eclectic programme that suites a wide range of tastes.  You’ll only be reaching a small part of the Glasgow theatre audience if you don’t.   

However, I personally prefer the surreal and off kilter to the mundane and naturalistic, and the Tron programme does veer towards the existential and absurd whenever possible.  It’s the type of work that suites the medium of live theatre more than anything else in my view.  

Last year included the revival of Ulysses for our trip to China followed by Happy Days at Mayfesto and this year we have a rich programme of such work leading towards a season of the absurd in the autumn. 

What made you decide on Cock for the New Year?


Ever since Cock opened at the Royal Court in London six years ago I have been trying to acquire the rights.  They simply haven’t been available for any theatre company in the UK since that premiere.  

I’m delighted that Mike Bartlett has now given Tron Theatre the go ahead – I finally wore him down.   It’s a brilliant play about relationships, sexual identity and confusion and has an eye-catching title – which always helps. The dialogue is so sharp and witty and the narrative is very clever.  

The best plays are ones where you leave the theatre wondering what might happen next.  Cock is that play. Why the New Year?  It feels right.  It’s a spring play….for now any way.

Was your approach to Bartlett's script typical of your usual approach - or did it present any new challenges?
I’ve never approached a play that doesn’t present new challenges – that’s the beauty and privilege of directing theatre.  With Cock Mike Bartlett stipulates that there should be no set, no furniture or props and no miming.  It should all focus on the words.  

That’s brilliant and I look forward to rehearsing on that basis.  Given the fact that the play contains action – cooking, eating, having sex, and so on, it will indeed present challenges – but ones which we’ll enjoy resolving in the rehearsal room.   

It’s quite similar to Beckett in some ways – except that the characters in Cock won’t be buried up to their necks in mud or have their heads protruding out of Greek urns.  The principle is the same though.

As far as the casting goes - how did you get the team together?
Casting a play like this is key.  You have to get it right.  I’d like to say there is a particular method I employ but that would be lying.  Some parts you have one actor in mind as your first choice, others you may think of three or four actors who would be right for it, and other parts where you have a very open mind and want to audition and meet new people.  

I audition more and more these days as I want to know who’s out there.  The most important thing is being mindful of the chemistry between them all.  I think we’ve got a great cast for Cock!

Does 'dramaturgy' as a concept or word mean much to you in your work?
To be honest, it only developed for me in a meaningful sense about ten years ago.  That’s when an Irish dramaturg, Pamela McQueen, came to work with me at the Arches and started to make really useful contributions to the rehearsal room – a full analysis of the play, it’s context and historical background, the relationships between characters, and much more.  

Pamela would bring plays to me I might otherwise not have come across and when she joined me in my early years at the Tron , she played a pivotal role in working on new scripts with young writers.  
Dramaturgy on a new script is vital in my view and all theatre making companies should have the resources to employ a dramaturg – whether they are presenting new work or classic plays.

Is theatre still a good place for the discussion of public ideas?
Of course – where better?  Theatre is all about ideas and good theatre will always provoke discussion at the end of a performance

Is the script still at the heart of your work as a director and artistic director of the Tron?
I have always said in any mission statement for the Tron that the core of our work is the spoken word.  Text is the essential currency of theatre – whether a naturalistic play, a minimalist visual and movement piece or a multimedia experience.   

There are many brilliant theatre companies who devise work from a blank canvass and that’s a totally legitimate approach.  For me, I have to start with the script – whether a new play, a Chekhov, a poem, or a Heiner Muller two hour visual epic with only one page of dialogue…..it’s still the script.

Medea: A Game of Two Halves, Brian.

For all the infanticide, marital strife and general gender warfare, the real tension in this Medea is whether updating the story from ancient Corinth to a contemporary housing estate can make the myth modern. Euripides' original is pretty unambiguous about Medea's power: she has real, nasty magical powers. Suburban housewives in the twenty-first century tend not to be able to conjure chariots led by dragons, and Medea's ultimate triumph does rather depend on her ability to pull off the murders and escape.

Mike Bartlett's version is faithful to the structure of the original: the central agon with Jason is preserved, as is the process of Medea from despairing, jilted wife to cunning avenger. The script is most comfortable when Medea is in full-flow: Rachael Stirling brings the right mixture of malicious rage and self-deprecating charm to Bartlett's words, building sympathy for her plight, respect for her intelligence and belief in the justice of her cause. Adam Levy, as Jason, sadly gets the worst of it: like Euripides' Jason, he is a bland, respectable and self-serving fool, easily seduced by Medea (and his future wife, Kate) and constantly wrong-footed by Medea's sharp intellect.

Despite an uninspiring opening scene - two women bitching about the closeness of their friendship to Medea, which diverts attention from the central battle between male and female into a side-bar on female rivalry - Medea successfully develops the tension: scenes between Medea and her silent son are fraught, Jason and his landlord Carter (the replacement for the original's King of Corinth) are appropriately boorish, and if Medea's seduction of Andrew (formerly King Aegeus, who offers her sanctuary, now a holiday home in Spain) is clumsy, the slow build to the climatic murders is both engaging and sinister.

Sadly, the finale destroys the good work. Opting not to find a modern alternative to the magic, Bartlett offers Medea's attack on Jason's new wife as mysterious - suddenly, after working so hard to translate Medea into a modern woman, he reverts to her as a mysterious witch. The messenger's speech - Bartlett uses the conventions well, and Amelia Lowdell rises to the monologue - is far too close to the original in both detail and spirit. At this point, all the modern trappings are cast aside.

The last speech is even worse: Medea is up on the roof, covered in blood, shouting about how her father liked hacking animals to death and her son's success in an egg and spoon race. She sets her house on fire - this is closer to the wonderful film version by Pasolini - and the police turn up. She's neither vindicated - hard readings of Euripides suggest that she is justified - nor condemned - killing children isn't a good thing. She just announces her fantasy of escape in a speech that will define theatrical bathos for the next year.



There's a real pleasure in watching the plot unfold, despite this absurd ending: Stirling nails the modern Medea, and the supporting cast are solid. There are many moments in the script of sly, dark humour and the various shifts in Medea's mood are carried off skilfully. It might simply be that there is nothing new to say about this skirmish in the war between husband and wife - certainly, children are used as weapons, but the moral is pretty unambiguous.

Until 17 October, Citizens