The first of the two plays produced by Westminster's new House - Milne's - was enough to convince me of the House's high proportion of 'Thesps'. Dogg's Hamlet is, for some, difficult to understand, but nonetheless all the members of the audience seemed to find the 'Stoppard- speak' hilariously funny - despite numerous shoulder-shrugs and protestations of not knowing what on earth was going on. The play is set in a very remote and idiosyncratic public school which is putting on Hamlet as an end of term play. Thomas Munby, as the headmaster, had an authoritarian and fatherly air, whose demeanour made me much less inclined to call him 'git' ('Sir', in Stoppard-speak) than some of my present masters. The type-casting in the play was superb, and all credit must go to David Hemsley-Brown for that. Charlie Ashcroft appeared to be simply acting herself in a vicious take off of Ophelia. Meanwhile, Georg Ell's serious and straight way of portraying Hamlet himself (whether deliberate or not) contrasted well with the camp over-acting by the other parts; none more so than Neil Fisher's appearance as Polonius, which brought the house down. As rip-offs go, this play continued the Westminster tradition of being able to extract the Michael out of practically anything.
The second of the two plays, also a Stoppard, After Magritte, shows the surreal homelife of a dysfunctional family, with Amy Dixon playing excellently a frightful mother-in-law with a predilection. The incompetence of the Met was exuberantly portrayed by William Dunbar, who made his character seem rather too larger than life, and slightly eclipsed the other actors, whose acting was on the whole good. The period where Clare Fraenkel (as Thelma, the daughter-in-law), found it necessary to partially undress was done with the kind of disarming frankness which caused more shock than making a great play of it would have done, as was evinced by the attitude of the audience members sitting near me at the time. Alasdair Donaldson as Harris - the uncaring son who thinks that he is a superb ball-room dancer and has a very high opinion of his own machismo - was well type-cast, and his efforts in carrying off the ridiculous waders he was forced to wear at the beginning were awe-inspiring.
All in all, Milne's first House-plays show very good promise for the future, and Thomas Munby, Charlie Ashcroft, William Dunbar, and especially Neil Fisher (both as actor and director) deserve special commendation for their talent and effort.
Max Usher (Busby's)
'Your parents sent you here under the misapprehension that in school you might become educated and disciplined. In my experience, you are all delightfully meek and mild until you cross the threshold of my house, at which point you regress into a horde of barbaric uncouth simpletons....'
The Reverend Rigaud's harangue to his rowdy class opens Nick Clark's An Original Future, written to commemorate the centenary of the building of the present House. In the play Clark pays tribute to Stoppard and the way he plays with time in Arcadia, combining elements from the life of Bishop Rigaud and an Orwellian world of 2047, with internal references to itself as the centenary play. The juxtaposition of Bishop Rigaud's Victorian values with those of the House and society of 2047 is used to demonstrate the effect of prejudice upon historical analysis, which is one of the play's major themes. It is to Clark's credit that his first work for the stage, a full-length play, creates a world which interests, illumines and frightens as the world of 2047 plunges towards destruction. There are familiar ideas in the play: three vast political regions dominate the world, books are an expensive status symbol, the computer and the internet provide all information and the reading experience. The concerns of the pupils are, as today, prep (its avoidance) and relationships: schoolboy humour and pretentious philosophising abound. The writing of a play within the play is the central and self-referring argument of 'an original future'. This device effectively moves the action between the two time periods, as Bishop Rigaud guides Selwyn towards his future and moves towards his own dreadful end.
The dialogue works well, at times simple and child-like, at others using more complex and philosophical idioms. It is effective because its aims are clear; Clark has limited his world to what he is familiar with and not attempted to introduce too many complex ideas.
Robert Wilne's return to Westminster is marked by his direction of this work. He took the difficult task of staging a multi-scene play and set it in a single classroom, against the garden wall of School. This created a good space through which the scenes could rapidly flow. The classroom scenes, set at a slight angle to the audience, made particularly effective use of this space, filling it with babbling, shouting Victorian children or the quieter, reflective, older pupils of 2047. Other scenes used portions of the stage and, with careful lighting to focus attention, enabled the set to function throughout without the need for any set changes that would have impeded the flow of the play.
Selwyn, clearly written for himself, was played by Nick Clark with his usual sensitive and detailed delivery, showing his understanding of how to communicate subtext as well as the text to an audience. Tara Hacking's first performance at Westminster as Sarah was of the same high standard, beautifully balancing the growing, clumsy relationship with Selwyn and reacting well to Dan's sexist jibes. Perhaps Dan was too close to Charlie O'Farrell for him to develop the role sufficiently, particularly in terms of his body language. Meera Kumar had the stage presence and authority to carry the difficult role of Miller, the female Housemaster in 2047, with panache.
There were many good first performances and cameo appearances: John and Hilary Arthur as Bishop and Mrs Rigaud; the Fifth Form as the tail-coated Victorian children, at one point donning bonnets to become Victorian Westminster's girls in Selwyn's imagination.
One criticism I would raise was the slow transition from scene to scene. This impeded the dramatic development in what was a successful production, making it feel unnecessarily episodic.
It is impressive that a first play should work so well on the stage and it is clear that Clark's wide ranging experience in the theatre has contributed extensively to this ease of transition from page. I trust that he will be encouraged by this success and continue writing.
Philip Needham