{"id":1128,"date":"2015-06-09T16:49:20","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T15:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1128"},"modified":"2015-06-10T08:30:19","modified_gmt":"2015-06-10T07:30:19","slug":"act-of-worship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2015\/06\/act-of-worship.html","title":{"rendered":"Act of worship"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Godot\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Status update: Waiting for Godot<\/em> and I have decided to stop seeing each other. I guess it won\u2019t come as a surprise. Things have been pretty bad for a while. Looking back, I can\u2019t remember when we were last happy. Or even interested in each other.<\/p>\n

In my head, I have a perfect version of Samuel Beckett\u2019s play: not in the details of staging, just one that has some of the effect I\u2019ve had when reading and thinking about it. Hilariously funny, achingly sad, opening a window on a universe of loneliness. Never in the theatre, though. I have huffed at Peter Hall\u2019s maundering Godot,<\/em> smiled genially at Ian Brown\u2019s one, appreciated the fine cadences of the Gate Theatre from Dublin. Last night, Sydney Theatre Company<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0London’s Barbican\u00a0proved the final sullen meal over\u00a0lukewarm pizza. Despite a performance of extraordinary physical grace and sonorous vocal effect by Hugo Weaving<\/a> as Vladimir (above left: photo by Ingvar Kenne), I found Andrew Upton\u2019s production archly unbearable. The same tepid clowning, vocal portent. The barren tree and muddy palate. Words falling dead in the air.<\/p>\n

Bored in the name of art<\/strong><\/p>\n

Look, I have often been bored in the name of art. I have almost as often persuaded myself that it is worth it. Is the problem the famously restrictive<\/a> Beckett estate \u2013 or the way directors try to second-guess its approval? I\u2019ve never seen a dull Happy Days<\/em> or a deadbeat Endgame,<\/em> but my strike rate with Godot<\/em> is remarkably poor \u2013 perhaps I\u2019ve just seen the wrong productions. It may no accident that the one that spoke most directly to me was Luc Bondy\u2019s French revival. Ever since, I\u2019ve longed to go into the theatre and hear the old words sound new, the universe reveal itself afresh.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a sucker for revivals<\/a>, because I never get over seeing the same play performed in radically different ways. Last summer, A Streetcar Named Desire<\/em> was sent spinning by Benedict Andrews<\/a>, and stripped down by Secret Theatre<\/a>. This year, The Merchant of Venice<\/em> was made hurtful and gaudy by Rupert Goold<\/a>, sleek and nasty by Polly Findlay<\/a>. Changes aren\u2019t just a way of grabbing attention \u2013 they reprism a play, find different stories within its plot, unique emotional and political paths through it. Good productions of the same play will each take you to a markedly distinct destination.<\/p>\n

Mixing up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dance doesn\u2019t play by those rules \u2013 as Tamara Rojo<\/a>, the bullish director of English National Ballet, lamented in an interview this week. \u2018I think all choreography in general is too sacrosanct,\u2019 she told Brue Marriott. \u2018I don\u2019t think it\u2019s in the best interest of dance as an art form \u2013 to freeze ballets in time. And you see it with choreographers like B\u00e9jart and Roland Petit. The movement language is still good, but because they are frozen in time in every aspect: lighting, costume, sets, everything \u2013 even the gestures that you do, you have to replicate whatever someone did 50 years ago. What we really in fact are doing is killing ballet. I do love going somewhere like the National Theatre where they take plays and they do exactly that mixing up\u2026 Nobody would expect to see an Arthur Miller play today like they did it in the 40\u2019s and 50s. It would be strange. Writers of the 20th century are not seen as sacrosanct. They mix them up as much as they want, they take them out of context, they put it in a different period of time. They put it on a different planet if they want.\u2019<\/p>\n

Miller was less open to experiment than that might suggest \u2013 as the Wooster Group<\/a> discovered \u2013 and writers like Pinter and Albee also famously had run-ins with mixologist directors. But the point, in general, stands. An original production isn\u2019t the template. Stage directions are suggestions, not commands.<\/p>\n

But, yes, theatre expects that the artists working on a play will be in conversation with it, not merely nodding along while it drones at them. Godot<\/em> has become exactly that kind of bore \u2013 unquestioned, unchallenged. As Rojo says, \u2018sacrosanct\u2019. If everything about that play is holy \u2013 the tree grown from the original cutting, the hokey bits of twinkling shtick \u2013 then we\u2019ll be stuck with three hours of reverence for evermore. The Beckett Foundation\u2019s webpage on performing rights<\/a> includes a winsome quote from Happy Days<\/em>: \u2018Heavens what are they up to!\u2019 \u2013 a self-deprecating little whinny about saucy interpreters. What they\u2019re up to, if we\u2019re lucky, is creating acts of theatre rather than acts of worship.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Status update: Waiting for Godot and I have decided to stop seeing each other. I guess it won\u2019t come as a surprise. Things have been pretty bad for a while. Looking back, I can\u2019t remember when we were last happy. Or even interested in each other. In my head, I have a perfect version of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,54,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-ballet","9":"tag-tamara-rojo","10":"tag-theatre","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}