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Directed
by
Andrew Loudon
Set
and Costume Design by
Rachel Payne
Music
by
Paul Weir
Cast
Jo March
Sarah Grochala
Meg
March
Sarah Edwardson
Amy
March
Diana Eskell
Beth
March
Phoebe Thomas
Aunt
March
Sarah Crowden
Mrs.
March
Lizzie Conrad
Laurie
Paul Hampton
John
Brooke
Tim Fessler
Sallie
Gardiner
Ann Micklethwaite
Fred
Vaughn and Professor Bhaer
Daniel Betts
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The
Duchess Theatre
27
September - 15 January 2005
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This
is a production that is going
to divide audiences, as it
already has divided critics.
This may seem a peculiar judgment
about what is an underwhelming
and anodyne adaptation of
Louisa May Alcott's classic
novel, but sometimes even
small productions can raise
big and interesting questions.
The production is a labour
of love. Adapted by Reeves,
it has already been performed
at Sadler's Wells, New End,
and elsewhere, and has clearly
been re-written and reworked
along the way, and now rattles
along at a brisk pace, covering
all the key moments of the
novel. Many of the cast (including
three of the March sisters)
have acted in previous productions,
although there is one particularly
welcome new addition, Daniel
Betts, as Professor Bhaer.
It has a sort of Edinburgh
Fringe feel ‚ lots of enthusiasm,
both for the original text
and an Am Dram relish for
putting on a show, but at
West End prices many will
expect more, both from the
acting and the adaptation.
This is where the arguments
will begin. Clearly, one kind
of viewer will ask for nothing
more: a much-loved classic
brought to life by a keen
young cast, with particularly
strong performances by Betts,
both as Professor Bhaer and
Amy's English suitor, Fred
Vaughn, and by Sarah Grochala
as Jo, the passionate would-be
writer and erstwhile tomboy.
Among the smaller roles, Ann
Micklethwaite is particularly
good as Sallie Gardiner, who
takes poor, dowdy Meg under
her wing in the ball scene.
Many in the audience had already
seen the production before,
enjoyed the jokes hugely and
gave the cast a handsome ovation.
They enjoyed every minute,
in a Rocky Horror groupie
kind of way. When Beth is
about to set off on her ill-fated
visit to help a poor women
in the town, you half expect
members of the audience to
cry out, 'Don't do it, Beth!'
Above all, many clearly cherish
Alcott's work, both the famous
Little Women (1868) and the
later stories of the March
sisters, growing up during
and after the American Civil
War (Good Wives, Little Men,
Jo's Boys). Little Women is
the bluestocking's bible chronicling
the constraints and choices
of the four girls, their passions
for Art and Literature (with
capital letters), their hard
experience of material deprivation
in wartime, with their father
away on the front, and their
battle against the moral and
cultural constraints of the
time, embodied by Aunt March,
with her strictures about
being 'left on the shelf'.
The books, and perhaps the
play, clearly speak to the
experience and aspirations
of many girls and women.
Another kind of spectator,
witness Michael Billington's
splendidly dismissive review
in The Guardian (14 October,
2004), will have less patience
for any of it ‚ either the
over-the-top inexperienced
acting, the uninspired work
of director Andrew Loudon,
or the clunky, sometimes intrusive
music. Above all, this (older?
male?) theatregoer might reserve
their full criticism for the
thin, rather lazy adaptation,
which has failed to rework
the novels as a play, or even
to begin to think through
the challenges and opportunities
this poses.
It's important to distinguish
between reservations about
the novel and the adaptation.
Alcott's novel is part of
a particular moment in mid-19th
century Anglo-American culture,
what the literary critic,
Ann Douglas, called 'the feminization
of American culture', and
what Jean Strouse calls 'a
Feminine Age'. Alcott (1832-88)
published Little Women in
1868, and Good Wives in 1869.
Both books fall between Harriet
Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852) and Lucy Montgomery's
Anne of Green Gables (1908).
In that period, the highpoint
of Victorian, male-dominated
society, it is no coincidence
that we get a flowering of
women's writing, in particular,
girls' classics.
It was also, of course, a
highpoint in boys' classic
literature ‚ Moby Dick (1851),
the stories of Poe and Twain's
Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberyy
Finn (1884). The difference
is, leaving literary qualities
aside, that while Ishmael
could go to sea and hunt whales
on the Pequod, and Huck could
go down the Mississippi, those
kind of adventures were not
available to the March girls.
The most they could aspire
to was going to Europe with
two elderly spinster aunts
(like Amy) or going to New
York to become a writer (like
Jo).
All this raises a number of
fascinating questions, mostly
absent from this production.
What you don't get, amidst
all the jokes about dresses
and awkward young boys, is
the darker side to all these
constraints. There is something
terribly one-dimensional about
these earnest girls, with
their piano-playing and play-acting
(ìA library? Teddy, you've
got a library!î). We could
argue about whether this is
Alcott's fault, but what is
undeniable is there is no
attempt to break free from
a Sunday afternoon, BBC dramatisation
piety, and go for new and
exciting meanings.
In his Director's Note, Andrew
Loudon falls at the first
hurdle: 'My concern throughout
has been to make Little Women
real [my emphasis] ‚ to encourage
the actors to do justice to
Alcott's characters and the
real-life men and women who
inspired them. Little Women
is a story about people ‚
individuals we can recognise
and care about, facing timeless
problems we can all understand.
Put simplyÖ, ìThere's truth
in it,î Ö and I hope you will
find truth in our production.'
The result is a very two-dimensional,
literal adaptation which is
perhaps fine for people who
passionately 'care about'
these characters, but doesn't
offer enough interest for
anyone who doesn't. If this
mix of sentimentality and
Christian piety, complete
with death-bed scenes and
gospel songs, makes you long
for Ibsen, Chekhov and modernism,
this production isn't for
you.
What happened to the culture
of Alcott and Stowe? How did
it become the darker, less
earnest and sentimental world
of Ibsen's Nora, the young
women of Chekhov and the wives
of Wilde? This may seem rather
high-faluting, asking for
what's not there. The thing
is, of course, that it is
there. Beth is perhaps the
most fascinating character
on the stage. While the others
charge around with their slang
and their longings for lives
full of Romance and Art, she
is full of silence. What would
happen if Reeves and Loudon
had really listened to those
silences and used them to
bring the play to life, instead
of indulging in several versions
of death-bed scenes ý la Little
Nell? Because, of course,
there is something deadly
in the choices faced by the
March sisters, about their
world of spinster aunts, the
invisible patriarch, Mr. March,
and the snobby, chattering
better-off friends with their
dresses and balls. You could
say that Alcott doesn't open
up these choices. It's a bluestocking's
book because one sister marries
a tutor, one marries a former
student and the third marries
a professor. The choice her
novel presents, it seems,
is education/culture, death
or domesticity as the only
ways out. The only one who
doesn't marry is Beth and
she dies. But it really is
more interesting than that.
Throughout the text, there
are references to things that
don't get finished, books
that get destroyed, burnt
or torn up, the constant playing
with the idea of home (Amy
goes abroad, Jo leaves home
to go to New York to become
a writer, Meg starts her own
home). None of this is opened
up and explored in the play.
It's too busy laughing at
its own jokes. Everyone is
in such a rush to fit everything
into two hours ‚ the Marowitz
Alcott - that there's no time
to listen to the silences.
What is it like to be Beth?
To be Mrs. March? If Aunt
March wasn't a one-dimensional
caricature, what might she
be?
Shared Experience and Théâtre
de Complicité have
shown how to open up great
stories and novels on stage.
It's a shame that this production
took such a different path,
towards a watered-down naturalism
in a hurry.
David Herman |
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