Where’s the Conflict in this Deadly War of Words?

Marc Sidwell reviews ‘Called to Account: The indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq – a Hearing’ at the Tricycle.

Peter Brook once wrote that a man walking across a bare stage is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. But what if he just sits there?

In this two hour fantasy tribunal, the Tricycle theatre takes its pacifist politics even more seriously than normal, choosing to eliminate any suspicion of conflict from the script itself. Instead, two men in suits take turns to put their jackets on and off while questioning bureaucrats. In a rare moment of tension, a secretary fumbles as she tries to slip her shoes back on before it is her turn to stand up and sit down again. And I made the tension part up. Her feet slip in and out of her heels just as smoothly as I slipped in and out of consciousness throughout the second half.

It would be easy to dismiss this as cheap criticism. But a cheap play deserves nothing better. The reason this play lacks any spark is not just that the devising team have purged it of all normal sources of theatrical diversion and variety, but that the tawdry subject matter wastes our time. We’d all have been better off with our heads down.

The real tribunal plays at the Tricycle, edited from actual, existing transcripts, provided a startling new kind of dramatic realism, dragging onstage characters from the very eyries of contemporary power, their words for once inescapably exact. The action moved towards a real verdict, on which justice and truth hinged. ‘Called to Account’ does nothing of the kind, because it never happened. The writers have fabricated a “tribunal” with the C- and D-listers who suited their agenda and were willing to take part in a phoney exercise, only Richard Perle adding a serious counterweight to Bob Marshall-Andrews and Clare Short (the latter admittedly well-played). It all ends with a sputter, as the fake inquiry fails even to reach a fake verdict.

Yet who cares? With a title like this one, the chatteriat were out in (peacekeeping) force for the press night: from Menzies Campbell to the Guardian’s top-ranking commissars, all revelling in the fantasy that they matter. On Newsnight Review, one critic was so deep into false consciousness she was reduced to praising the play’s bold use of tedium. You don’t realise how hard it is to act dull, she gushed, not remembering it is even harder to watch.

For those of us who haven’t been looking for a voodoo doll of Blair to stick pins in, much better stay home and get some shuteye. This is a fantasy play, a distraction in dangerous times. As David Aaronovitch protested to the blinkered audience in a post-show discussion, where was the play detailing abuses in Darfur and calling for action? That would be to blend investigative journalism with the tribunal play format in a fresh and engaging manner. Where was the reconstruction of a terror trial, as has just ended today? Why not gather a collection of soldiers, journalists and foreign policy advisers and make the case for sticking with the Iraqis, whatever one’s thoughts about the invasion, in the interests of fighting off the murderous fascist gang of thugs now trying to steal their country? A play where we don’t know what we think, or that sharpens our appreciation of moral horrors we could do something to mitigate would be worth watching.

Instead, the Tricycle is sitting still, speaking words that don’t matter to an audience who already agrees about something that is never going to happen. Peter Brook would have understood where their theatrical experiment has ended up. “To make matters worse there is always a deadly spectator, who for special reasons enjoys a lack of intensity and even a lack of entertainment… who emerges from routine performances… reciting his favourite lines under his breath… he lends the weight of his authority to dullness and so the Deadly Theatre goes on its way.”

DECIVILISATION

David Cameron yesterday called for a challenge to the increasing acceptance of anti-social behaviour as the norm.

"We all have experience of road rage, Tube rage, never mind what is said if you ask someone not to drop litter or cycle on the pavement," Mr Cameron told the Royal Society of Arts in London. "All these are sad signs of a culture that is becoming de-civilised."

He should be applauded for talking about a subject which, on a day-to-day level, concerns people perhaps more than any other. The cultural and lesiure worlds are also far from immune from increasingly selfish public behaviour - to the extent that many are increasingly taking the option to 'go private', stay at home and avoid the public arena altogether.

Here's a piece which NCF director Peter Whittle wrote for The Spectator back in 2005 on this particular aspect of a hugely important issue:


SLURPS, BURPS AND BLEEPS

Peter Whittle on the misery of being surrounded by slobs in theatres and cinemas.

A few weeks ago I left a performance of Vera Drake emotionally drained. As the lights came up I felt a mixture of indignation, suppressed anger and loathing for the injustices human beings inflict on each other. It took a couple of stiff glasses to settle me down.

Unfortunately it wasn't the abortion theme in Mike Leigh's drama which had brought this on, or Imelda Staunton's quivering performance. It was rather that I had just endured two hours of sitting next to a slob who'd loudly munched his way through two bags of popcorn. With legs sprawled and eyes fixed emotionlessly on the screen, he could have been channel surfing in a hotel room. His hand went robotically from bag to mouth, the motion unaffected by any of the movie's highs or lows. Caught in the corner of my eye, this monotonous action was like an irritating eyelash obscuring my vision. Discrete attempts at registering disapproval – subtle coughs and sideways glances - failed to have the desired impact. He was utterly, noisily oblivious to my discomfort, and he ruined the film for me.

As anti-social behaviour goes, this was hardly Asbo material. But then neither is queue jumping, or the use of train seats as foot rests. They're widespread habits which fly well under the radar of arrestable offence but which in their ugliness impoverish everyday life. And, whether it is brain-dead grazing and incessant chattering in cinemas, or the ringing of mobile phones and group coughing in theatres, or mindless American-style whooping at the end of a ballet, the cultural world is not immune. 'You should get out more' might be one of today's mantras, but maybe the cool option really is to stay in with your books, CDs and DVDs. Either that, or risk feeling genuinely homicidal by the end of what should have been an uplifting, thought-provoking or even just mildly diverting evening out.

Last year Kevin Spacey, just installed as artistic director of the Old Vic, railed against the ever-growing chorus of sweet sucking and ring tones during theatre performances. 'My feeling is if people don't know how to behave, they shouldn't come,' he declared courageously. He'd already shown the strength of his feeling on this by snapping 'Tell them we're busy!' when a phone went off while he was on stage during The Iceman Cometh. Similarly the actor Richard Griffiths went so far as to stop a recent performance of The History Boys at the National Theatre, exasperated by the persistent beeping of a pager. 'I'm sorry, but I can't compete with your electronic device,' he declared to the mortification of the culprit, receiving an enthusiastic round of applause from the rest of the house.

Of course when actors speak up they risk being mocked as typically precious luvvies. And some theatre people, aware of charges of elitism and endlessly straining to appear modishly accessible, play down disruptive behaviour. It was ever thus, they say, and quote the tired old comparisons with the unruliness of Shakespearean audiences. Or they see it as the theatre's responsibility. David Lan, artistic director of the Young Vic, asserts that if people aren't paying attention, the theatre isn't doing its job. 'You cannot blame an audience if it isn't engaged with what you're doing,' he says.

Well, up to a point. But what if large sections of the audience are indeed engaged but are having their enjoyment of a play or film sabotaged by the growing yob tendency, those people from all parts of the social spectrum who do what they want, when they want, and bugger the rest? It can make one feel murderous. Watching The Nutcracker at the ENO at Christmas, we had a family in front of us who, attention span presumably stretched to breaking point, had obviously grown restless. They fidgeted, chatted, and sat dangling their trainer-clad feet over the empty row in front of them. As the mother dozed, the two teenage daughters got up and wandered about from seat to seat, indifferent to both what was happening on stage and the obvious irritation of those of us square enough to be sitting quietly.

For many, the experience of live performance is probably to be approached in the same solipsistic way as watching a DVD at home. So they dress appropriately too. You really don't have to be a reactionary old fogy to find demoralising the sight of ropey tracksuit bottoms amid splendid architecture built to celebrate the highs of the artistic spirit. Such torpid lack of effort goes along with inconsiderate behaviour; it suggests at the very least no sense of occasion, at the worst a general cultural enervation. What's the big deal?

No, in the narcissistic spirit of our age, it's all about letting others be damned. Even in expressing your appreciation of a performance, you have to be saying something about yourself. Those who've shown every sign of utter boredom (such as sleeping), rally themselves enough to whoop like demented hyenas on a TV game show when the curtain comes down. This imported practise makes the self-centred feel part of the artistic process – you've had your moment, they're saying, now I'll have mine. 'Is it another mark of the Me generation?' wrote Arlene Croce in the New Yorker when it was first heard on the American scene years ago. 'All the traditional audience vocables – Bravos, oles - say You were wonderful; they're directed to the performer. These wordless woofs say, I'm wiped out.'

Perhaps old-fashioned clapping is just too, well, altruistic. But what about making equally quaint requests of others to desist from talking, playing with sweet wrappings or dumping partners by mobile? This can be hazardous; much of our interaction with strangers now carries a bat squeak of underlying violence, and the friends I canvassed for their cinema experiences said roughly the same thing: it's not worth the aggro. Civil codes have been up-ended to the extent that now you're considered the rude one for protesting, however gently you do it. You wait, shoulders taut, for the stream of foul-mouthed abuse, or the kick in the back of the chair. It's easier to move, and let them win.

In the theatre however, you're stuck in the same seat. Jonathan, a TV producer friend, witnessed an incident at a West End matinee which resulted in the police being called. "Two teenagers had been making so much noise during the performance that a middle-aged lady had to turn round and ask them to be quiet, a heroic act in the minds of most of us,' he says. 'For this, she was rewarded with a slap across the back of the head and all sorts of unpleasant threats for the rest of the play. From the point of view of these kids, some stupid middle-aged stiff had shown them a colossal disrespect by daring to ask them to be quiet.'

An extreme example perhaps, and on the general scale of social breakdown, bad audience behaviour remains low priority. It's not going to make Panorama. But ignored it becomes just another little incentive for us to abandon the public arena in favour of an increasingly private existence. We could follow the lead of the French, who have recently installed phone signal blocking in their cinemas, theatres and concert halls; if we can't rely on personal restraint, then maybe Nanny will have to intervene. In the meantime, there's nothing for it but to continue suffering in silence - albeit one punctuated by slurps, burps and bleeps.

Politics and the Theatre: What's Left - Watch the video

On Tuesday February 27th at The New Culture Forum, Chris Campbell, Shelley Silas, Minette Marrin and Richard Bean discussed 'Politics and the Theatre' with Peter Whittle. We're very grateful to our friend Alex Story who brings us the following videos of the event.



Watch Part II & Part III & Part IV & Part V

More on the event

Politics and the Theatre: What's Left? Tuesday, February 27th 6.30 for 7.00pm

You are invited to

‘POLITICS AND THE THEATRE: WHAT’S LEFT?’

A discussion with playwright Richard Bean, Associate Director of the Royal Court Ramin Gray, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin and playwright Shelley Silas

Tuesday, 27th February, 6.30 for 7pm

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London WC1 (nearest tube Russell Square)


Last year, the National Theatre’s director Nicholas Hytner said that one thing he would really like to see there in the future would be a ‘good, mischievous, right-wing play.’

The implication in Hytner’s statement - that such a production would be an unusual occurrence, a naughty aberration, a guilty pleasure - would certainly have confirmed many in their conviction that when it comes to politics, the theatre stands firmly behind left-liberal lines. Recent productions in both the subsidised sector and the West End would seem to bare this out. My Name is Rachel Corrie, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, Guantanamo, Stuff Happens, Playing with Fire…the political approach in these plays remains unvarying. And when there is criticism of the prevailing orthodoxy, it comes firmly from the Left.

But if this is all true, why are there no alternative voices? Is there, or should there be, such a thing as a right-of-centre play? Are there untouchable subjects in the theatre? Would different political approaches bring in new audiences? And why are voices on the Left apparently silent about important issues thrown up by radical Islam and the growing debate about multiculturalism?

Shelley Silas’s theatre plays include Calcutta Kosher and Falling. She has also written extensively for Radio Four - her plays include a co-adaptation of Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet (with John Harvey.) She compiled and edited an anthology of short stories, 12 Days. Her new play, Made in Glasgow, will be produced by Tamasha Theatre in 2008.

Richard Bean has had four plays produced at The Royal Court as well as plays at the National, Bush, Newcastle Live! and at Hull Truck. He was awarded the Critics' Circle Award for Best Play for "Harvest" last year. His political sex farce which looks at the accession of Turkey into the European Union will be produced by Hampstead Theatre in July this year.

Ramin Gray is Associate director of the Royal Court. He is director of Alastair Beaton’s King of Hearts, which opens this week at the Hampstead Theatre

Please RSVP at events@newcultureforum.org.uk
We would kindly ask for a £5 donation on the evening towards drinks.

We're gonna need a bigger mantelpiece - Sunday Times

A new year, a new round of gongs. But if it's raining prizes, who are the real winners, asks PETER WHITTLE

‘Everybody has won’, said the Dodo at the end of the race in Alice in Wonderland, ‘and all must have prizes.’ So what’s yours? If you’re reading this, probably not McDonald’s Employee of the Year, but you might well be the winner of an advertising industry gong, or be hairdresser or marketing man of the year. You might even be the recipient of one of the world’s hundreds of literary awards which now bubble away anonymously under the Goncourt and Booker; as Gore Vidal pointed out, there are now more American book awards than writers. And if you’re an independent film director, you should count yourself a slouch if, having done the rounds of the ever-increasing festival circuit, you find you still cannot start the new year with the words ‘award-winning’ preceding either your name or your latest labour of love; there are now more American film awards than there are movies to go round.

We are about to enter what used to be called the awards season. This week sees the announcement of the nominations for the BAFTAs, with the ceremony following next month, and, as it is their sixtieth anniversary this year, we’re promised a brand new host and venue. In a couple of weeks there are the South Bank Show Awards, mere babies by comparison, and at the end of February, the grand-daddy of them all, the Christmas of the awards kingdom, the Oscars. But such has been the proliferation of awards ceremonies in the past couple of decades that the very concept of a season – just like the morning rush-hour - is obsolete: the traffic keeps coming all year round.

The giving of prizes dates back to the Greek drama and arts competitions of the 6th century BC, but it was during the last century that ‘creative’ awards moved onto sports territory and became such a dominant feature of mainstream culture, with the first Nobel Prize for Literature appearing in 1901, the Goncourt a couple of years later, and the Pulitzers, the Oscars and Emmys all well in place by mid-century. But it’s since the 1970s that awards – always aping the fake grandeur, suspense and trappings of the Oscars ceremony - have sprung up to reward ‘the best’ in virtually every branch of human creativity and industry. The phenomenon has even been the subject of academic inquiry: in his study The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards and the Circulation of Cultural Value, the American academic James English wrote that we are witnessing ‘a kind of cultural frenzy, with scarcely a day passing without the announcement of yet another newly founded prize.’

We feign a world-weary cynicism about awards. Half the time we think they’re fixed. The actual achievement being celebrated might not match the razzle-dazzle pyrotechnics of a televised ceremony – such as with the recent, absurdly grandiose BBC Sports Personality of the Year show. Yet we watch in our millions. Why are we so obsessed with giving, receiving and speculating about who wins what?

Much of it comes down to money. Certainly founding an award can offer an instant PR solution in an increasingly crowded commercial landscape, whether you are Costa Coffee, which now sponsors what was formerly the Whitbread prize, or Orange, which started the woman’s challenge to the supposed domination by men of the Booker prize. And it can supply a gravitas which maybe wasn’t there before, such as with the Empire magazine film awards. ‘With information overload, and with the increasing fragmentation of commercialism, awards are all about standing out,’ says Amir Amirani, who made a BBC documentary about the awards phenomena. ‘It’s all about visibility. Prizes are increasingly about the giver rather than the receiver – the giver can draw cultural capital from the receiver. Very rarely is it altruistic.’

There can be little doubt too that in the case of the winner, there can be huge financial benefits, although this depends on where your award falls in the hierarchy of prizes. BAFTAs might be good for prestige and can certainly be useful in your movie’s PR campaign, but their effect on box office is minimal. The Oscars are a different matter. A win can massively increase your box office, so much so that film distributors increasingly market their best products around the time when nominations are announced. Winning Best film makes little difference to a blockbuster like Titanic, but can dramatically improve the take for more esoteric fare; American Beauty for example saw its $80 million total increase by a further $50 million after it won its Oscars.

John Fletcher, Managing Director of film distributors Pathe, offers another example of how smaller films benefit. ‘One of our films, The Pianist, made £1.5 million in the UK when it was released two months before the Oscars in 2003. After Adrian Brody’s win, it doubled its box office.’ Fletcher’s big hope this year, Stephen Frears’s much praised The Queen, has already made nearly £8 million in the UK, but will certainly be reappearing in cinemas should the expected gongs materialise.

The less grubby arts have taken Hollywood’s ethos on board. In the era of the critically acclaimed but unread novel, a big literary prize means far greater sales – Alan Hollinghurst saw his increase tenfold (along with a highly publicised TV adaptation) after he won the Booker two years ago for The Line of Beauty. And even when money is less of an issue, winning can mean elevation to the ranks of a certain sort of celebrity for individuals once only familiar to the cognoscenti. Grayson Perry was unknown before the Turner Prize; now he has a column in the Times, his opinion is sought on Newsnight review and he is snapped in his frock by paparazzi at, yes, award ceremonies, for the benefit of readers who’ve never clapped eyes on his vases.

The importance of the commercial imperative in prize-giving is underlined by the gradual disappearance of theatre award ceremonies from mainstream broadcasting. After years of TV coverage, the Oliviers are now nowhere to be seen on the terrestrial channels – plays cannot, after all, be bought on DVD, and the guests and nominees likely to attend are probably deemed not to be sufficiently of the ratings-pulling Hello variety, unlike those at the British Comedy Awards or the spurious-sounding National TV Awards.

But the proliferation of awards is not all about the bottom-line. It can’t just be a coincidence that they have become so dominant during an era which has seen an odd alliance between the populism of the marketplace on the one hand and the effects of cultural relativism on the other. The claim that creativity cannot and should not be judged like the 100 metres is arguably harder to sustain when the received wisdom of the past thirty years has been so resolutely ‘anti-elitist’. If you demolish one set of yardsticks, new ones - however superficial - have to emerge if the whole thing isn’t to collapse. This need for some kind of order in the information age, together with the marginalisation of traditional criticism, might explain the attraction of awards for those of us who watch and wait for the opening of the envelope, just as it might account for TV’s love affair with endless list programmes, which in their own way amount to kind of prize-giving.

Not that the trophies themselves are the last word. In the US, an outfit called The Award Recognition Association gives out gongs at its yearly convention for Best Award. Best Audience is surely only a vote away.

From The Sunday Times

'The cultural establishment in general stands firmly behind left-liberal lines. For how long?' asks Peter Whittle and his guests in Culture Clash

The thing to watch on 18 Doughty Street Talk TV, at 8.30pm GMT on Tuesday, December 5th

During an interview earlier this year, the National Theatre’s director Nicholas Hytner said that one thing he would really like to see there in the future would be a ‘good, mischievous, right-wing play.’

The underlying implication in Hytner’s statement - that such a production would be an unusual occurrence, a naughty aberration, a guilty pleasure - would certainly have confirmed many in their conviction that the cultural establishment in general stands firmly behind left-liberal lines. The right may have won the economic battles, but in the culture wars, the left were victorious.

But is this really true? And if it is, why are there no alternative voices? Do not conservatives - or indeed those others opposed to the increasingly stifling and predictable liberal/left line - do these kinds of things? There is the rather complacent view, still cleaved to in the cultural establishment, that broadly speaking the right conserves, and the left creates, and that the most enduring art tends to be subversive. However where does that leave such giant figures as Evelyn Waugh, Noel Coward, Graham Green or Edward Elgar, to name a few from this country alone?

What does seem undeniable is that if there are right-of-centre artists or writers out there now, they’re certainly keeping a low profile. Or is it possible that we’re looking at this the wrong way?

With me to discuss this are Michael Attwell, TV producer and a former chairman of BAFTA, Susan Shaw, senior producer of the South Bank Show, writer and commentator Douglas Murray, and Clive Davis, , journalist and regular contributor to The Times and The Washington Times.

To read as an introduction to the discussion: Arts and The Right, a piece by Peter Whittle for The Sunday Times

Hello and welcome to Culture Clash.

You're watching 18 Doughty Street, it's 8.30pm on Tuesday, November 28th

This week, we’ll be asking, is James Bond really alive and well and living in the 21st century? As CASINO ROYALE gets mostly rave reviews and a massive take at the box office on its first weekend, we’ll be discussing whether Daniel Craig really has given 007 a new lease of life.

Also, as work gets under way on the new Armed Forces memorial in Staffordshire, we’ll be looking at the state of statues in our public places. Artist Ian Rank-Broadley’s traditional sculptures of groups of soldiers will be at the centre of this new memorial, and already look like proving popular with the public. But are they really just kitsch? As Alison Lapper Pregnant gets ready to make way for another conceptual piece on the fourth empty plinth in Trafalgar Square, we’ll be exploring whether we get the memorials we deserve.

And, as The Catherine Tate Show is joined on TV by a new series of Tittybangbang and the appearance last week of Pulling, both on BBC 3, we’ll be asking whether women are really changing the face of comedy.

Peter Whittle's guests today are Helen Hawkins, Editor of the Sunday Times Culture, writer and humorist Dominic Hilton, James Delingpole, TV critic of the Spectator, and Franck Guillory of The New Culture Forum.

Challenging! Fearless! …the theatre tells it like it is!!

Theatre critic Charles Spencer is spot-on in his review of the Royal Court’s almost offensively predictable piece of USA-bashing, Caryl Churchill’s new play Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?

It's not clever, and it's not funny by Charles Spencer

The review says it all, and eloquently.

Frost/Nixon at the Gielgud Theatre

Great news! Peter Morgan's Frost/Nixon is transferring to Shaftesbury Avenue's Gielgud Theatre.
It will open on November 9th and close on February 3rd before crossing the Pond and settling on Broadway.
Definitely a wonderful treat for Christmas but one can't help wondering if it can ever be as good, as rivetting, sharp, witty, haunting, magnificent as in the small and intimate Donmar's amphitheatre...


About the Play -
Frost/Nixon, which is the first stage play by the author of TV serial The Deal and the new film The Queen, is a dramatisation of the real-life events leading up to British talk show host David Frost’s televised interviews with the disgraced American President Richard Nixon in 1977, in which Frost tried to elicit an admission of guilt and an apology from Nixon over his part in the 1972 Watergate scandal. Frost’s battle of wits with Nixon became the most watched news interview in television history.

Frost is played by Michael Sheen, who has twice depicted Tony Blair in Morgan’s The Deal and The Queen, and picked up a 2004 Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Caligula, also at the Donmar. American actor and Broadway regular Frank Langella plays Nixon.

The Curse of Loud Whooping - Peter Whittle on Radio 4's Front Row

When Connie Fisher takes her bow at the opening of The Sound of Music next month, she can be sure that that is the sound she will hear. Whether the show is good, bad or plain indifferent, she’ll be greeted not just with thunderous applause and cheering, but with the sound of a massive pack of whooping hyenas creeping towards her from beyond the lights.

But as she should remember that this ear-splitting demonstration of appreciation is not necessarily for her. Far from it. Now, in the narcissistic spirit of our age, it seems that the only way in which an audience can truly congratulate a performer is by drawing attention away from the stage and firmly onto itself.

Whether it is in the theatre, or increasingly at the ballet or opera, ear-splitting whoops, which have in all likelihood been practised and prepared for silently in the closing minutes of the last number, grande jete or aria, have become the audience’s own special way of putting itself firmly under the spotlight.

It’s not simply that good old-fashioned clapping and cheering is no longer adequate when it comes to showing your approval. We haven’t, after all, suddenly arrived in an era when artistic expression is so transcendentally perfect as to render the traditional ways obsolete. After all, Nijinsky, Callas and, perhaps, Julie Andrews herself reached legendary status on waves of communal clapping and cheers.

No, it is perhaps that these simple, tried and trusted methods are just too, well, altruistic for our self-absorbed times. Far too many of us, even when it comes to expressing our approval of others, have to be saying something about ourselves. And this is what grates with those of us who resolutely cling to the old ways: there is something so egotistical, so essentially thick-headed, about whoopers.

As the curtain comes down, you can almost sense them getting ready next to you. Even those who’ve shown every sign of utter boredom during the performance – regularly checking their mobile phones perhaps, or, heaven help us, slipping off into a light doze – even these manage to rally themselves enough to whoop like an audience being warmed up for a TV game show.

It’s not simply another crack at the Great Satan to point out that, yes, whooping is yet another import from across the Atlantic, like Trick or Treating, or ordering food ‘to go’. The practise has been established long enough in America for the New Yorker critic Arlene Croce to bemoan its first appearance there many years ago. ‘Is it another mark of the Me Generation?’ she asked. ‘All the traditional audience vocables – Bravo, Oles – say ‘You were wonderful’; they’re directed at the performer. These woodless woofs say, ‘I’m wiped out.’


She was right of course. Whooping makes the self-centred feel part of the artistic process. You’ve had your moment, they seem to be saying, now I’ll have mine.

Of course, as anti-social behaviour goes, this is hardly Asbo material. But then neither is queue-jumping, or using train seats as foot rests. It’s not a problem which is going to make Panorama. What it is however is just another nasty little practise which, while flying well under the radar of arrestable offence, impoverishes our experience of public events.

So please, let’s turn over a new leaf on Connie’s first night. Think before you whoop, and rediscover that wonderful warm feeling which comes from doing something for somebody else.

On Peter Morgan

Amid the current trend for dramatic portrayals of real events, writer Peter Morgan would seem to be the man of the moment. The author of The Deal (which was shown to such acclaim on Channel 4) currently has a play on at the Donmar, Frost/Nixon, as well as a soon-to-be-released feature film, The Queen. And next up will be a project based around the odd relationship of Lord Longford and Myra Hindley.

Such has been the praise for Frost/Nixon, it looks set to transfer to a bigger West End venue, and The Queen will almost certainly win Helen Mirren an Oscar nomination.

Morgan’s approach to the events he depicts is extraordinarily even-handed, crisp and believable. In many respects, this is far harder to pull off successfully than one which has a strong point-of-view. Frost/Nixon is as much about the struggle between two egos, a fight for the supremacy awarded by fame, as about politics or TV journalism. Similarly The Queen deals with the collision between two types of cultures in one country, as personified by Diana and the monarch. In each case, whatever Morgan’s own political views, there’s no preaching, and we’re left to draw our own conclusions.

Most importantly perhaps, these productions make the recent efforts of our supposed giants of political theatre look outmoded and cumbersome. David Edgar’s Playing with Fire, and David Hare’s Stuff Happens, both of which were at the National, seemed by comparison mealy-mouthed, predictable and, most crucially, un-dramatic.

The Queen is in essence a sequel to The Deal, and one can’t help but suspect that Morgan is planning a trilogy – one which might finish with The War, perhaps, or The President. It would be interesting to see how this chronicler of the Blair years handled the world after 9/11.