Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Languorously stretching-out during the interval of John Godber‘s Lucky Sods, I found myself wondering: ‘What of the subversive, political undertones?’. After all, the programme notes had promised me some. The story couldn’t have been more different at full time.
What had happened during Act Two could be neatly summed-up in boxing parlance; a feigned right had scuttled me off-balance, before a neatly-jagging left scrambled my senses entirely. I left the theatre, unquestionably entertained, but feeling like a victim of a very subtle violation.
I was taken by surprise because Act One offers nothing more than the average Friday night sitcom: a running succession of character gags that were as mildly amusing as they were lacking in any telling impact. Morris (Gordon Kane) and Jean (Jacqueline Naylor) are a middle-aged, working class couple who have fallen upon hard times. Morris’ mother lies dying in hospital, whilst Jean’s job behind the D.V.D. counter at ASDA doesn’t exactly flick her switch. To compound their misery, Strictly Come Dancing isn’t all its cracked-up to be (there are some clanging attempts to drag the play, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century).
Everything changes when they win a packet on the National Lottery. They holiday in L.A. and Venice, shop until they drop and gain the grudging admiration of their envious relations. The strange thing is that they just can’t stop winning. Morris and Jean’s numbers, it seems, are permanently up.
It is here that their world begins to unravel about them. The richer they become, the more detached they become from reality, the more alienated they become from one another. Morris runs away with an old flame; Jean resorts to manic, pointless altruism to fill her time. The play ends on an undeniably tragic note. I won’t spoil it - it really has to be experienced, squirming in your seat, to be believed. But I do assure you that I was perversely moved. For Godber had perpetrated the most subtle slight-of-hand. He had given us a truncated dialectic under the guise of light comedy.
For Godber had perpetrated the most subtle slight-of-hand. He had given us a truncated dialectic under the guise of light comedy
Godber’s message is simple: money will tear us apart. It drives wedges between us, breeds illusions of grandeur and ultimately destroys all notions of decency and self respect. A common enough argument. So where do I begin to object to such trivialities? I’ll out with it: just as it is silly to suggest that class no longer plays a significant part in British life, I find it offensive to declare capital the ultimate usurper of working class values. Whilst thrift, humility and temperance remain admirable qualities, there is no sin in aspiring beyond the economic station of your birth.
Ever the propagandist, Godber picks middle class lounge lizard David Bowie’s Changes to accompany Morris and Jean’s inexorable rise up the ziggurat, and cynically appropriates blue-collar The Verve’s Lucky Man to highlight the irony of Gordon’s position as the final curtain falls. If he was a bona fide proletarian culture vulture, however, Godber would realise that that song contains not a hint of irony; when Richard Ashcroft sang of his luck, he meant it. To borrow a phrase from boxing writer Hugh McIlvanney, the working classes are free to dream themselves anew each morning. Money and social mobility are not as inextricably linked as Mr. Godber imagines, and the implied segregation of us clearly into ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ is an act of unbridled inverted snobbery.
Gordon Kane’s brilliant ‘everyman’ performance as Morris won my heart and Jacqueline Naylor’s Jean was similarly impressive as his suffering wife. Nick Lane’s direction was simple and effective, crafting a suburban fantasyland ripe for a whirlwind reaping by Godber’s sentimental Marxism. I for one, though, was not fooled. I have done my reading and know to always beware Greeks bearing gifts, no matter if they are presented with a sneer, or a smile and a light patter of laughter.
Lucky Sods will be at the York Theatre Royal from Tuesday 17th - Saturday 21st March. Tickets are available from the Box Office on 01904 623568 or from the York Theatre Royal website.
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