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Whistling the Technology?Dateline: 7th November, 2004A friend went to see The Woman in White last week and came away disappointed. He was impressed by William Dudley's design concept, the use of projection and computer generated graphics, but found that they began to pall after a while. he said, in fact, that he began to wonder why there were live actors on the stage at all. Why not use holographic projections instead? After talking to him, I took another look at Kevin Catchpole's review. There was one significant paragraph:
My friend had hoped for "rather more" too. I think it was Clive Barnes who said that one comes out of British musicals "whistling the scenery": perhaps that should now be changed to "whistling the technology"? What, I wonder, is the point? Are we trying to beat cinema at its own game? The barricade in Les Mis, the helicopter in Miss Saigon - I can accept them as part of a particular style of theatre, a style of spectacle which has been part of theatre for a couple of centuries (or longer: what was the deus ex machina but a bit of spectacle?), but I suspect that, with Bill Dudley's rollercoaster ride through the settings of The Woman in White, we have gone a step too far. There is a major qualitative difference between the way we react to a piece of theatre and the way we react to a film, even a piece of theatre which, like the helicopter scene, attempts to achieve an almost filmic realism. We are always aware that we are in a theatre watching, not a recreation of a scene (which is what we watch in a film) but a symbol. We know the helicopter isn't real (if we look very carefully through the cleverly arranged lighting, we can even see the fly-lines by which it is suspended), whereas in a film it is a real helicopter. Theatre always has that feeling of alienation (in the Brechtian sense), constantly reminding us that we are not watching an actual event played out before our eyes but a representation of that event. Film, on the other hand, recreates that event: there is a huge difference between the two in terms of the effect on the audience. I am not suggesting that one is more valid or better than the other, merely that they are different. Nor am I suggesting that theatre should not use film/video as a backdrop or in any other way - there was a superb use of it in Wim Vanderkeybus' Blush. What I am suggesting is that, used in the wrong way, it can diminish rather than enhance a play. I have not seen The Woman in White, but there is unanimity about it from those who have whose opinions I respect: it is, they say, clever and, indeed, impressive in its use of technology, but ultimately unsatisfying. I have no doubt that it will attract the crowds - the combination of Michael Crwaford and Andrew Lloyd Webber, enhanced by the buzz of the new technology, should see to that - but if it is the direction in which theatre will go in the future, then I am worried. I would much prefer to see theatre concentrate on its strengths rather than try to emulate film! Articles Indices:
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