Journalist John Simpson won few new admirers of the profession of war correspondent in 2001 when he entered the Afghan capital and told viewers it was “extraordinarily exhilarating to be liberating a city”. It turned out that Simpson was not even the first BBC man to enter Kabul, to say nothing of his vast exaggeration of the role of a mere reporter in the conflict. One thing that he and his many colleagues do seem to agree upon is that when they first ‘go into combat’ the gunfire does not sound real. What this extraordinary statement means is that actual gunfire does not sound like the correspondents think it will after years of watching TV shootouts.
The power of the screen over our collective imaginations was in evidence at The White Devil by John Webster at the Menier Chocolate Factory last week. Simply staged on an elegant traverse stage, the play’s high body count and vicious skulduggery failed to impress a party of sixth formers because “you could totally tell they were using blood capsules and the colour’s all wrong – waaay too red.”
It seems reasonable to assume that the gaggle of floppy-haired Toms, Tristans, Katies and Camillas thronging the foyer have no prima facie experience of poisoning and stabbing their nearest and dearest in order to observe their death throes with academic detachment. Notwithstanding homework, French exchanges, skiing holidays and Facebook, these students have probably seen so many hours of televised violence that even the terrifying convulsions, so convincingly contrived by Claire Cox as the ill-fated Duchess who starts off the slaughter, failed to impress.
Jonathan Munby’s production of Webster’s revenge tragedy is ambitious and effective. Strong characterisations and the relatively small playing area make the auditorium seethe and teem with menace and corruption for nearly three hours. The focus and intensity are electrifying while elaborate, detailed costumes more than supply the absence of set. The play was written in 1612 and chunks of it are in blank verse but you would never know it from the clarity of diction of the entire cast. It is hard to see how more meaning could be extracted from the text.
Aidan McArdle plays Flamineo, the antihero, with such subtlety that it is impossible not to pity him in spite of the havoc he wreaks within his own family. Claire Price similarly avoids stereotyping the adulterous and murderous Vittoria as a wholly ‘bad’ woman and she looks fabulous in her red dress. The moral ambivalence and uncertainty conjured by the company make the play less clear cut and more intriguing than it seems at first: you are left wondering exactly who the White Devil is.
Theatre and, perhaps especially, high drama such as Webster’s play depend upon audience members to make a conscious effort to engage with it$$s$$ you have to actively suspend your disbelief rather than rely on HD and plasma screens to do it for you. It is artificiality you are paying to see: if you’re after truly authentic murder and misery, there’s plenty available for free. Just ask John Simpson$$s$$ he’s seen it all.
The White Devil by John Webster
Menier Chocolate Factory, London
Until November 15 2008
Box office:
020-7907 7060
