DATED ideas mar this adaptation of Thackeray's novel, but fine performances save the day.
VANITY FAIRROYAL LYCEUM, EDINBURGH
THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICEPERTH THEATRE
OUT ON THE WINGORAN MOR, GLASGOW
AS CIVILISATION hurtles towards possible extinction on an apparently
unstoppable tide of greed and consumerism, William Makepeace Thackeray's great satire Vanity Fair should be a story to make us shiver even while we laugh. Set in the roistering, get-rich-quick Britain of the early 19th century it tells the tale of the penniless but beautiful and quick-witted Becky Sharp, who emerges from a Chiswick boarding school determined to make her way in social circles where worthwhile work is rare, and prostitution of various kinds almost universal.
There are wars, rumours of wars and deaths in battle, banking crises and huge financial losses and a fierce undertow of moral sleaze, in a world where the young and unfunded have little to sell but themselves. It's topical stuff, in other words and, when Declan Donnellan's smart adaptation first appeared in 1983, it was widely seen as turning a sharp satirical eye on the greedy loadsamoney ethos of the early Thatcher years.
Some 25 years on, though, Donnellan's version has lost its edge, even though its themes seem more timely than ever; and Tony Cownie's slick and beautifully choreographed production at the Royal Lyceum fails to breathe any real dramatic life into the story, even while it provides an entertaining display of theatrical skill. The problem lies entirely in the style of the adaptation, which looked fresh and radical in 1983, as it brought poor-theatre Fringe techniques on to the West End stage, but now just seems like a series of tricksy theatrical clichés.
From the constant intrusive narration to the twirling parasols that represent carriage-wheels, it's all routine stuff for 21st century companies trying to make a virtue of having seven actors play several dozen characters. Far from giving the production a radical edge, it seems cutesy, distracting and slightly trivialising, as if the method of telling the tale were somehow more important than the tale itself.
Within these constraints, there are some fine performances, notably from Steven McNicoll as a range of cash-grubbing imperial buffoons, and Matthew Pidgeon as Becky's royally abused husband Rawdon Crawley, the one character on stage whose tragedy momentarily shakes the complacent surface of the show's style. But overall, this looks like a well-executed piece of English heritage theatre, reminding us of a brief early-80s moment in London stage history, and it's difficult to see why anyone thought it worth reviving now, on the stage of Scotland's premier rep.
There's far more raw theatrical energy on show, thank goodness, in Michael Harrison's new production of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, created for Elaine C Smith's RPM Arts touring company, and starring Elaine herself, plus her fine theatrical sparring partner Andy Gray. Written by hard-edged northern poet Jim Cartwright back in the early 1990s and immortalised in a superb film version starring Michael Caine, Little Voice famously tells the story of a teenage girl in a northern town with a huge vocal talent and a mother from hell. Egged on by her latest lover, a sleazy third-rate talent agent called Ray Say, the loud-mouthed, drunken Mari tries to propel her shy daughter into high-earning showbiz. Predictably, the whole effort ends in tears and destruction, at least for her.
This upfront Scottish-inflected touring production is not for the faint-hearted. The language is brutal, the middle-aged drunken sex is grossness itself, and it takes a strong man – or woman – to stand up to the eye-watering sight of Smith as Mari in a series of ever more garish crotch-tight pairs of sparkly leggings and low-cut tops.
Just as the play survives, though, by offering us heartbreaking glimpses of the lost potential beneath the wreckage of Ray and Mari's middle-aged lives, so both Smith and Gray rise impressively to the challenge of capturing that complexity for the audience. In the end, the absence of live music robs Debbie Saloman, as Little Voice, of the chance to make the big, exhilarating theatrical impact that balances the play, but this is still a vigorous evening's theatre, full of the noisy, messy pulse of life.
There's plenty of energy on show, too, in DC Jackson's latest short play for the Oran Mor Play, Pie and Pint season. Out on the Wing is certainly a much less polished affair than Jackson's coming-of-age hit The Wall, currently on tour in a near-perfect Borderline production by Gregory Thompson. Set in a small-time radio studio inhabited by a bored woman producer and two football talk-show hosts who cordially loathe one another, it describes their rat-like response to the news that a leading Scottish footballer has come out as gay in the press.
The play loses momentum towards the end, when their labyrinthine dealings with various newspapers begin to dominate the plot; and Jackson's script plays so boldly with the ugly detail of the underlying homophobia of Scotland's sporting culture that it sometimes misses the comic mark. But this is a brilliantly lively short drama on a vital theme for contemporary Scotland and something of a small-scale treat.
&149 Vanity Fair until 12 April; Little Voice at Perth Theatre until 29 March, then the King's Theatre, Edinburgh, (31 March to 5 April) and touring until 31 May; Out on the Wing until today.
