John Osborne’s classic is often seen as a play of dissent concerning class differences and religious hypocrisy. How would such a play fare in Russia’s stifled atmosphere?
For some it was Catcher in the Rye, for me it was Look Back in Anger. That is to say a piece of writing which captured us in our youth and never let us go.
In my case this seems quite hard to account for. The seventeen-year-old that caught a revival of the play on the radio one summer was not working-class, nor a jazz fan, was not married nor in love and – at that time! – was not living in a flat in the Midlands.
It was the play’s double whammy of tone and eloquence that cut through.
Against all odds.
Look Back In Anger constitutes the third stage play by a 27 year old London touring actor called John Osborne. It was a domestic melodrama and the Royal Court theatre in Sloane Square took it on in 1956 whereupon it was met with a polite disavowal – that is until one Kenneth Tynan, an influential critic from The Observer newspaper penned an enthused description of it as a generation defining piece. Then a TV showing of some of it followed and a new audience flooded in to see the whole thing. The play has been viewed as representing a stylistic trendsetter – towards greater contemporary realism and outspokenness on certain issues ever since. The play even made it to Moscow a year later. The role of Jimmy Porter – the so called `Angry Young Man` – has since become a popular script used for auditions for aspiring young male thespians.
So how would a Russian theatre of the twenty twenties serve up this hoary old classic to a Russian theatregoer?
The great adaptors.
A visible presence on Tverskaya street these last several years, Ermolova theatre was set up in 1933 and was named after the revered actress Maria Nikolaeva Ermolova (1853 – 1928). Today, the role of artistic director is filled by Oleg Menshikov (the military father in the films Attraction and Invasion). Under his auspices the company seems to be pushing at the boundaries somewhat. At the time of writing they are showing a rendering of Glukhovsky’s Text and also something called Russian Psycho which is not from the film of the same name but a tribute to Gogol’s Diary of a Madman. Indeed, some of their reworkings of established drama standards have discomfited audiences and critics alike – and Oglyanis Vo Gneve (Look Back In Anger) is nothing if not an established drama standard.
Nothing is sacred.
The clearest rupture with the original play is the defiance of naturalism. With its dinghy one room flat and above all, its ironing board, Look Back In Anger brought the punch of realism to an audience that had grown accustomed to mannered performances which wee at several removes from the worlds they lived in themselves.
In this revival, nevertheless, we discover the players in a rather commodious and stylish abode. There are wall lamps fixed to the walls and what can only be called French windows at the back of the stage (those emblems of pre-`Kitchen sink` theatre!) Old black and white antique looking pictures are festooned around the place and there are cushions on the floor. This is no bedsit in a Midlands town (although it might serve as a symbolic comment on the attachment to an Edwardian past that bedevils Jimmy).
Then – in a nod to Osborne’s subsequent play The Entertainer – the action gets interrupted by the arrival onstage of a clown- costumed Jazz troupe who seem to comment on the proceedings with their songs. This theatre of the Absurd-cum-circus element represents a thoroughgoing new realization of the play.
Misfit.
Resplendent in bright yellow socks, Andrei Martinev, who plays Jimmy Porter portrays him as very much the romantic-poetic archetype (his mannerisms put me in mind of the young Anthony Andrews). It was difficult to see this oddball adolescent as any kind of generational spokesman, however, still less imagine him running a sweet stall. His loyal sidekick Cliff Lewis – played by Makar Karyagin -is chunky, with blonde-haired clean-living looks that together with his braces make him look like a preppy young American more than a Welsh scruff. He spends a lot of time plucking guitar strings and bursting into song.
Not only is this version of the play vaudevillian in this way but it also seemed to be afflicted with ADHD! The players always had to be doing something as they spoke – unpacking something, fiddling with something – the script was never enough. There was also a fair bit of distracting drumming on tables with it all.
Stuck with the essentials.
What the production remained faithful to was the bare bones of the plot. Jimmy is a malcontent who is married to Alison (Polina Sinilnikova) , a woman from a higher class background than himself (this providing material for him to taunt her with) and Cliff is the more straightforward Welsh working-class friend who looks on as their marriage seems to teeter on the edge.
Enter into this `menagerie` Alison’s actress friend, the more dynamic Helena, come to stay for a week. Regarding her as a `natural enemy` Jimmy clashes with her, but not before she has arranged for his wife (who we learn earler is pregnant) to flee the scene.
Jimmy and Helena, in the classic attraction of opposites, fall into each other’s arms leaving a dismayed Cliff to also later vacate the household. All seems blissful, until the return of Alison, minus the baby….
All of that was there but the dialogue had been shuffled around and some scenes seemed to have been hollowed out: Cliff nursing Alison after she has burnt her arm on the iron, Jimmy shouting at the church bells and the final reconciliation scene between Jimmy and Alison.
It was disconcerting to find that Jimmy and Alison’s game of bears and squirrels – the very thing that keeps their relationship alive in tense – moments had gone. So had Jimmy’s pipe smoking (although we do see a cheeky reference to it when Alison momentarily has one in her mouth). Most of all, the visit from Alison’s father – Colonel Redfern -had been cut, leaving no one to counterpoint all the bohemian chaos.
The stand off between Jimmy and Helena however not only remained but had been placed at the centre of this piece and was played to dramatic perfection. Osbone gained a reputation as a `misogynist`, but the fact remains that he wrote some great roles for women and Helena Charles is one of them. Veronkia Safonova projected a credible take on her as a statuesque, Amazonian Alpha-girl and it was not difficult to envisage how even a despiser of phonies like Jimmy could succumb to her charms.
Overall, this production made the play less like a one-man show than more faithful versions of Look Back In Anger have seemed.
What does it mean here?
The stress on this play was somewhat on the `affairs of the hearts` end of things and it was all viewed through a veil of sadness and tears. What of the sociopolitical undercurrent that made the play notorious? What would a – say – manager from Yugo Zapadnaya – make of the depiction of life in a Midlands town in the Fifties? Or of the subtle, but all too real, distinctions between Working and middle-class culture? Or of Cliff’s Welshness? Or of the mention of Britain’s former imperial role in India?
All of this would be somewhat hard to translate into Modern Muscovite but what would not be lost on a contemporary Russian is the ethos of anticlericalism and antimilitarism that runs through this play.
Likewise, as a man born out of his time and unable to find anything the present scene to fire up his ideals, Jimmy Porter could be viewed as a Superfluous Man, if there ever were one. I am not so sure if anything of this came out in this production though.
Overcooked.
The acting was strenuous but the overall aesthetic was camp, without being effete. Osborne himself might even have approved. However, the `anything-goes` approach to the staging left us with something cluttered and frenetic, with the cabaret aspects of it detracting from the theatrical tension. Sound-wise, there seemed to be too many scores vying for our attention: Jazz, chanson and modern classical.
Osborne’s plays often seem to ruffle people’s feathers. These spectators left bemused and maybe a little dazed but not otherwise indignant. I did, however, notice a lack of laughter (for this is a funny play, for most British people). It might be telling that the only appreciative chuckle came when a theatrical joke was made about passing Lady Bracknell the cucumber sandwiches.
For myself I was just as unsettled as when I watched a play calling itself A Clockwork Orange a few years back. Their production set my mind into gear, however, and I am still processing it all.
Lead image: Ermolva.ru