True amateurs

Recently I attended a performance of Coriolanus; in West Norwood.  The grandly-named South London Theatre Group inhabits its own premises in a disused fire-station - complete with belfry.  It lies at one end of West Norwood, one of those places you only ever seem to drive through, never visit, and filled entirely with burger bars and Prontaprint shops.

It was of course a strictly amateur performance, though given by a group with evident commitment to theatre.  This did not prevent there being many painfully obvious rough edges. The set was practically bare, props were kept to the minimum, and actors were left fully exposed.  And exposed they were - even down to their bodies, which were clothed in tight-fitting all-black outfits that were unflattering to most.

Things were not helped by the fact that Shakespeare rather carelessly - or perhaps maliciously - begins with minor characters only.  In this production they proceeded to ham and muff their way through the opening scene, until you felt that however pious and dutiful your reasons for being there, they were fundamentally misguided.

And yet in a magical kind of way, the play worked. I found myself genuinely gripped by the brazen rhetoric, the stiff-jointed clash of personalities.  This  was partly because most of the players were hanging in there for dear life, which lent a kind of desperation to the play which was particularly well-suited to its unremitting atmosphere of threats and violence.  They had no time to lard the speeches with fine interpretation; this was Shakespeare in the raw.  Where a play like The Importance of Being Earnest depends crucially on the frothiness of its surface for effect, Coriolanus more than most other plays benefited from such lean and hungry acting.

The comparison with the Wilde play is instructive. It is generally true that the greater the play, the less it has need of a strong performance: it provides its own inner fibre.  While weak plays may be amusing given the right level of incompetence, they are never striking; they cannot transcend their interpretation.  The greater plays, on the other hand, almost thrive off such obstacles.  Such is their own individuality that the strong-willed or wilful performer tends to work against rather than with the grain. The inherent and abiding power of Shakespeare's plays is shown by their virtual indestructibility; no matter what asininity is foisted on them, they are still watchable, they survive as drama.

The same is true of music.  While a dull performance of composers like Lehar shows them up for the nobodies they are, no amount of clodhopping with Beethoven will diminish him.  Listen to any school orchestra struggling through Mozart or Schubert: it is as if a jolly Austrian giant is rollicking gently with the children, careful not to harm them, its huge power in reserve but always implicit.  I will go further; I think that freed from all the excrescences and accretions of interpretation and histrionic performance, it is actually possible to learn far more about the essence of a great work through such honest attempts which are, in the best sense, truly amateur.

(23.6.86)

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