Arshile Gorky is one of the great enigmas of 20th century art
Posted in General on 04. Aug, 2010
Arshile Gorky is one of the great enigmas of 20th century art. His influence has been vast and yet his name does not carry the weight of his contemporaries – Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Born in 1902, he was raised in a provincial farming community in Western Armenia, and emigrated to America in 1920, where he later flourished in New York’s bohemian circle, evolving into a brilliantly dynamic painter. Perhaps Laird imagines that the overacting sends up the widely spouted view of women as servants, but portraying the Lost Boys as mummies’ boys robs them of the ordinariness that marks Peter Pan as different.Justin Salinger’s Pan conveys both the sadness of a none-too-splendid isolation and the exuberance of boyhood, and David Troughton offers a redeeming blast of panto: leaping with assurance from fretful Mr Darling to the fiendishly arch pirate, basking in boos and hisses Hero and villain are lovable, both. Indeed,Wendy’s presence as surrogate mother should be seen to stir in her young brood something more than fake- filial affection. Their faces smeared, their fully grown bodies covered in imitation skins, Pan’s people ape the mannerisms of Edwardian cry-babies rather than adventurous young shavers.This exaggerated infantilism is unwelcome in a play that delicately tackles the process of sexual maturation. Far more troubling is the portrayal of the Lost Boys by actors who look well past the first flush of youth.
John Napier’s Never Land set, a rotating island groaning under the weight of its landscaped layers, resembles a CenterParcs kind of idyll. And, for a few minutes, it’s hard not to be awed, as the three siblings launch themselves through the nursery window.
Somewhere in the clouds, though, the show takes a wrong turning. On opening night, younger members of the audience were as vocal in their enthusiasm for the flying scenes as they were in pointing out the modus operandi (“You can see the wire!” a high-pitched voice behind me announced gleefully). Despite the fact that it weighs in at a fidget-inducing three hours, the production is clearly designed to appeal to the easily enchantable, though not undiscerning, gaze of pre-pubescents. The depressing thing about John Caird and Trevor Nunn’s version, directed by Fiona Laird, is that, for all its lavish display, it admits defeat so easily, offering a description of childhood that is often muddled and embarrassed. THE JOYS of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan lie in the way it offers a long, lingering look at a state of childish innocence; its pains derive from the fact that, for better or worse, once gone that state can never be reclaimed. In one of the best running gags, a hapless minion at the Ministry (Paul Kemp), who is desperate to catch a train, has to redraft a contract no fewer than eight times.Hennequin and Veber give the shenanigans a lovely spin with hilarious characters like Jeremy Crutchley’s dim, conceited and accidentally suggestive bilingual policeman (“If you need any help, I have two tongues at your service”) and Stuart Fox’s excellent Marius, an old, bent snob of an usher at the Ministry who can’t stand living in a republic and is therefore out to foil his unendurably non-aristocratic boss.A sort of Oui, Monsieur Le Ministre on speed, this is a total treat.To 30 Jan (0181-940 3633).
But an unscheduled visit from the Minister results in her bedding him, while having to pose as Tricointe’s wife.Will this ruin Tricointe or, as the reward for a hush-up, will it provide the back-door route to that longed-for promotion to Paris that has been barred to him thus far, he feels, by his scatty, low-born liability of a spouse, played by Auriol Smith?With real wives and impostors ricocheting around the capital, his chances yo-yo dramatically. The latter belongs to Lucy Tregear’s seductive Gobette, a young musical star, who takes on a bet that she can conquer Tricointe, the fussily proper, self-important president of a provincial tribunal (David Timson). It is a tactic that skillfully pulls the audience in to the idea of the play as an enchantingly elaborate contraption.In Court in the Act, the Minister of Justice (Richard Heffer) declares that the legal system of the country has ground to a halt not by means of a revolution, but because of a beauty spot. The proceedings are given an immediate charm by the way Walters and his first-rate ensemble cheekily point up the fact that an in-the-round theatre like the Orange Tree is, in some ways, an incongruous space for a classic proscenium-stage farce.
In this genre of fast and disastrous exits and entrances, doors play a starring role, but they wouldn’t look at all natural in a set-up where the actors have to dart in and out through the corner aisles.The solution here is to make a droll feature of the fact that there is a very visible sound effects man at the side supplying the noises of slammed doors, creaking turnstiles, etc, to the cast’s mimed actions. Sam Walters’ delightful staging of Court in the Act at the Orange Tree suggests we would do well to rummage deeper in the back catalogue of this talented collaborative team. Not that our knowledge of Gallic ooh-la-la is particularly deep.
A fair bit of Feydeau and a soupcon of Labiche is about as far as it goes. Mention the names of Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Veber, another pair of 19th-century Parisian farceurs, and there is unlikely to be a stampede of recognition, except perhaps up in Manchester where two of their plays had pioneering productions at the Royal Exchange. INTERVIEWING BRIAN Rix on a recent edition of Midweek, Libby Purves wondered if he wasn’t dismayed that, after all those years of heroic trouser- dropping for England, in any word-association game the term “farce” would still trigger the response “French”. All the same, I did have all the normal worries because I don’t think I’m one of those glamorous guys like Rock Hudson.”A smooth, dull Rock or a fascinating, craggy stone archway? I know which one I’d rather look at.”Lost for Words” is on ITV on Sunday, 3 January “Among Giants” will be released next year.. When his agent tried to persuade him to change his hard-to-pronounce surname to something more media-friendly, he dropped the agent, not the name.Postlethwaite will again be under a fierce spotlight with the release next year of Among Giants, in which he performs his debut “full monty” on screen. “I get to play my first romantic lead, and it involves a love scene [with Rachel Griffiths] The scene was absolutely right, so I did it Not bad really at 52 There are bonuses in this job.