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Ah! Wilderness, or, Come in Chekhov, Your Time Is UpDateline: 7th December, 2003Mourning Becomes Electra, by Eugene O'Neill, is playing to packed houses in the National Theatre's largest auditorium, and was even before the press notices (Five Stars Guardian, Financial Times) were published last week. And yet, as one critic noticed in passing, the last time this play was revived was in 1991, some twelve years ago, and then in Glasgow. On this basis, having missed the 1998 Almedia revival of The Iceman Cometh, also directed by Howard Davies, I will have to wait seven years before I get the chance to see this major theatrical work. Meanwhile, I will have to make do with my DVD of the US TV production made in the 1960s and imported from a US website. Productions of Chekhov, by contrast, positively pullulate. I have counted at least three major revivals of The Seagull this year, not to mention two productions of Three Sisters in London alone. And I've seen three major productions of As You Like It - I'm sure there were others. What on earth is going on and what does it say about the state of the theatre in Britain today? Having watched and reviewed productions at theatres up and down - and across - the country over the last few years - I would not be so naïve as to suggest that the theatre-going public in the UK, is on the whole, anything other than conservative, with a small c, although, as the £10 Travelex season at the NT proved, it is possible to successfully reach out to a wider audience. But it beggars belief - and the ticket sales for Mourning support this - that there is therefore no audience for, say, one of America's greatest playwrights. And I would also point to the comparative - though better - infrequency of productions of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, to name but two more. Can there be many theatregoers who haven't seen A Midsummer Night's Dream recently, Three Sisters, or The Cherry Orchard? And if they have, would they really rather go and see it over and over rather than something unfamiliar. Our loyalty to the Bard and that honorary Englishman, Chekhov, is touching, but the theatre this year particularly has begun to resemble terrestrial TV. John Peter, the retiring Sunday Times critic, has apparently seen 69 Hamlets. Commendable, and all that, but shoot me before I ever reach that landmark which, if things continue as they are, will be very soon. Reading a collection of writings by the critic Kenneth Tynan, it feels uncannily like we're returning to the sort of conservative theatre charted by Tynan in the early 1950s. Of course, this is a sweeping statement, and I'm well aware that major West End productions this year have included new work by American writers on 9/11 and the work of new Russian writers, to give but two examples. But there have been too many transfers of regional productions which have proved their box office worth - step forward A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Betrayal, The Taming of the Shrew and The Cherry Orchard. That there is a crisis is underlined by the recent comments of Sir Peter Hall on the 'celebrification' of the West End which scuppered his plans to stage a new play by Simon Fray, even though the cast lined up included Corin Redgrave. Hall made the point that it is now not enough to have a name actor; increasingly backers want a star from the world of popular entertainment. God help us if the likes of Ross Kemp taking on the classics becomes the norm! I began my now frequent visits to London some years ago precisely because I wanted to see the sort of drama - and actors - I didn't get the chance to in the provinces. It now feels increasingly like there is little room even in London for the sort of drama I want to see. Isn't it time to call a moratorium on Chekhov, for one, the more popular Shakespeare, for another, until someone comes up with something new to say about them, and turn our attention instead to other works in the canon which currently languish, unloved, silently gathering cobwebs. Theatre, which has no or little room for the work of a major dramatist like O'Neill, seems to me to be in ill-health. Ah! Wilderness indeed. Pete Wood This article is part of our series on British theatre in the 21st Century Articles Indices:
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