This Is London 23 September 2016

22
Fionn Walton (Jack Clitheroe) and Judith Roddy (Nora Clitheroe) in The Plough
and the Stars.
Photo: Johan Persson.
THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS
National Theatre
We are in a tenement house in
Dublin. A char lady pops in from the
hallway to receive a parcel for her
neighbour. She is soon pirouetting in the
hat which was delivered, declaring it to
be worth more than a shilling and its
purchaser the mistress of all
extravagance. An elderly uncle is called
a lemon whiskered old swine. It is
November 1915 and we all know what
will follow.
But the first Act of Sean O'Casey's
play is a delightful romp through the
social mores and sexual intricacies of
Irish working class life at home during
the First World War.
Judith Roddy is Nora, a pretty young
thing not long married, whose passion
for her husband is slowly turning to
despair, as his interest in the militia
which will rise up in the Easter Week of
1916 overtakes his tenderness for her.
In the end she is literally mad with
grief – stark staring bonkers, despite
being the only one who is clear sighted
enough to discern the fear in the
soldiers' eyes as they go off to defend
their country in the narrow lanes around
their meagre homes.
The political is deeply personal in
Jeremy Herrin and Howard Davies'
co-production. Before the bloodily put
down uprising, a young fitter attempts to
explain the meaning of Socialism to a
prostitute who just wants another drink.
He is right – there can be no revolution
unless it is economic – but no one hears
him. Nora tries to warn the freedom
fighters that the net result of their
struggle will be death and failure, but
male camaraderie trumps her concern.
We are drawn into the lives of these
dun coloured Irish men and women
with the tug of real heart strings. A
consumptive young girl tries to reassure
her mother all is well, but she is carried
out in a wooden box and we know
poverty and ignorance are the causes.
A costermonger sings Rule Britannia out
of her bedroom window but is shot by
mistake through an open window and we
have to wonder what it is all for.
There may be no fathoming of right
and left, oppressor and oppressed. But
in this comi-tragedy there is much to
think about and even laugh at. A
hundred years ago there were people as
brave and as stupid and as wrong
headed as we are today. We can only
pray to do things better – and thank the
playwright for his lesson.
Sue Webster
THE RED BARN BY DAVID HARE
The Red Barn a new play by David
Hare, based on the novel, La Main, by
Georges Simenon, opens in the Lyttelton
Theatre on 6 October.
The great detective writer Georges
Simenon escaped France at the end of
World War Two, and arrived in the USA
to start again.
With his American wife, he settled at
Shadow Rock Farm in Lakeville,
Connecticut. Years later, he wrote La
Main, a psychological thriller set in a
New England farmhouse.
David Hare has taken this novel and
forged from it a startling new play that
unfolds in Connecticut in 1969. On their
way back from a party, two couples
struggle home through the snow. Not
everyone arrives safely.
The cast is Elizabeth Debicki, Hope
Davis, Michael Elwyn, Stuart Milligan,
Anna Skellern, Mark Strong, Oliver
Wilson, Nigel Whitmey and Jade Yourell.
NATIONAL THEATRE SHAKESPEARE
Released to mark the 400th
anniversary year of Shakespeare’s death,
National Theatre Shakespeare draws
together a wealth of incredible archive
material from the 55 main-house
Shakespeare productions the NT has
staged to date, from Peter O’Toole as
Hamlet in 1963 and the 1964 all-male
production of As You Like It, to the
critically acclaimed 2013 Othello and
Sam Mendes’ production of King Lear
in 2014.
Packed with videos, production
photographs, costume and set designs,
annotated scripts and more, it gives a
unique glimpse behind the scenes of the
NT, and demonstrates Shakespeare’s
continuing relevance to the modern
stage.
The history of the creation of the NT
is inextricably linked with William
Shakespeare. Effingham Wilson’s
proposal for a national theatre was partly
inspired by the purchase of
Shakespeare’s Birthplace for the nation
in 1847.
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