Mark Outhwaite – Theatre Workshop Coulsdon

Animal Farm

One night, all the animals at Manor Farm gather in the barn to hear ‘Old Major’, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. The elderly pig dies soon after the meeting, but the animals — inspired by his philosophy of Animalism — plot a rebellion against the farmer, Jones. When Jones drunkenly forgets to feed the animals, they rise up, and Jones and his farmhands are chased away. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall. But what follows is far from the dream that Old Major promised…

‘All Animals Are Equal – But Some Are More Equal Than Others’

George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ is a powerful and uncompromising allegory of the Russian revolution, with every character and event that takes place in his tale mirroring Russian history from October 1917 through to the Teheran Conference of 1943.

The succession of steps through which, by persuasion, propaganda, lies and force, Napoleon rises to power in ‘Animal Farm’ are a bitter parody of Josef Stalin’s ascent to dictatorship, and what Orwell saw as the ultimate betrayal of the Russian people.

A fable, a satire, a fairy story, ‘Animal Farm’ is one of the great works of English literature, and a revealing study of the effects of power.

The evocative, and by association, now chilling music chosen by the director to open the production was ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The same composer’s ‘Five variants of Dives and Lazarus’ was used to maintain the mood during the interval.

The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ is one of the classics of 20th Century theatre. A fictionalised (or at least in part) account of the witch trials that took place between 1692 and 1693 in the small settlement of Salem, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, New England. Miller wrote it in 1953 not as a historical piece, but as an allegory for McCarthyism, rampant at the time of his writing, where people were shamelessly persecuted for alleged Communist ties, without evidence. The accusation in and of itself was considered damning enough regardless of its origin, and there was the link to that earlier, dark time.

At best, ‘The Crucible’ was an ambitious reach for Workshop, but this was a ‘troubled’ production, as they call it in some circles. Originally slated to be the Spring 1990 production, it had been proposed by Christine Blake and Wendy Cole, who, it was intended, would co-direct. However, the project was almost completely derailed when both of them left the group. This left Paul Ford, who had been drafted in as an assistant director, to carry on in their stead but with no real vision for what the show should look like. One of the immediate difficulties was the presence in the cast of the key character of Tituba. Although her ultimate origin is disputed, it was thought that she was Barbadian, i.e. from the island of Barbados. No-one in the existing membership of the time could pass themselves off as such, and even in 1991, ‘blackface’ was a no-go. And so Paul elected to shift the entire thing into space. Salem became a settlement of puritan theocratic colony on a planet orbiting a distant star. It covered off the Tituba problem, but of course caused others.

The staging was abstract, geometric shapes painted to look as if they’d been scavenged from old starship hull-plating. They could be moved to form different combinations, which would represent various rooms and locations. An over-sized fan behind a grill turned throughout, with a ever-present ‘tic’ as its malformed blades hit the grill.

Despite some eventual outstanding performances, not least from the young girls in the cast, it nearly didn’t make it. The first weekend’s performances were billed as ‘previews’ as even at that last stage, the production was not pulling together. The review picked out that there were beautiful moments, and as ever, Madgwick was right. When it worked, there were some truly excellent scenes, but overall it really didn’t do the script justice.

Macbeth

The ‘Scottish’ play… or so some in the business call ‘Macbeth’, supposedly because of some ill-luck that follows the play around. We don’t believe it. The fact that Paul, who had just been cast as Macbeth himself, fell while running for a bus and broke his arm, was purely coincidence.

But putting superstition aside, what is ‘Macbeth’? Viewed from one perspective, it’s a tragedy, where a good man, a good soldier, finds himself coerced into making appalling decisions that ultimately lead to he and his wife’s death. Towards the end, reviewing the bloody path he’s taken, he is saddened but no less determined to see the story through to what he believes ultimately will be a victorious end, only to find that victory dashed from his blood-stained hands by a question of semantics. Taking another view, it’s a history. Macbeth was indeed King of Alba (Scotland), from 1040 to 1057, but the real man was no tyrant seizing the throne through murder and deception. Macbethad mac Findlaech, or Macbeth MacFinlay as the name is Anglicised, was the Mormaer (Earl) of Moray when King Duncan I led an army against him. Duncan died in battle, and Macbeth succeeded to the throne, where he stayed, unchallenged, for seventeen years. ‘The Red King’ as he was known, was regarded as a generous man, and even made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050. However, Macbeth died of wounds incurred at the battle of Lumphanan in 1057, at the hands of King Duncan’s son Malcolm, and Macbeth’s son Lulach was assassinated the following year, giving Malcolm the throne. King James VI of Scotland claimed a bloodline from Malcolm, so perhaps it’s not entirely surprising to find Macbeth’s character so sorely abused. Shakespeare knew his audience.

The photoshoot for Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s production took place at Bodiam Castle, where, in those days, they didn’t mind a large group of people turning up in the car park to change into studded leatherette armour and start waving swords. From main gates to battlements we posed, looking suitably mean and moody, as befitted the production. Then it was decided that we should attempt a more active series of shots. Gathered at the main gatehouse, we would wait for the signal and then charge toward photographer Mark Hobbs. On the second run, Mark was joined by one or two camera-wielding tourists, on the third, several more. On the fourth and final, it seemed like we had a coach load of them. Fascinating to think that in a number of old photo albums scattered across some part the globe, the cast of TWC’s ‘Macbeth’ is immortalised, and those tourists still have no idea what on earth they had photographed.

R.U.R.

When idealistic young Helena Glory arrives at the remote island headquarters of Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.) with vague ideas about liberating the robots the company manufactures from their lives of enforced servitude, she is unprepared for what she finds. Overwhelmed by the almost evangelistic Harry Domain, she remains on the island, and inadvertently sews the seeds of her and mankind’s destruction…

Written by Čapek in 1920 and set at the end of the 20th Century, ‘R.U.R.’ premiered not on the stage in Prague as was originally intended, but with an amateur group in the far smaller town of Hradec Králové in January 1921. Ahead of its time in its depiction of human-like artificial beings, Čapek’s play introduced the word ‘Robot’ into the English language, derived from the Czech word ‘robota’ which means ‘forced labour’. In their creation, assembled from artificial bones, flesh and organs rather than mechanical parts, we would more likely refer to them as androids, or even (borrowing from Philip K Dick’s ‘Blade Runner’) ‘replicants’. The script was translated into English by Paul Selver later in 1921, and adapted for the stage by Nigel Playfair the following year, but it was far from faithful to the original. Many lines were cut, others added, a robot character removed entirely and his lines given to another. This version, or something similar to it, debuted in New York in October 1922 (featuring, in his Broadway debut, actor Spencer Tracy), and at St Martin’s Theatre in London in April 1923. Čapek complained that his original ending had been suppressed. It would not be until 1989 that a new unabridged translation, by Claudia Novack-Jones would actually appear,

Paul Ford’s first foray into directing also saw him tentatively try to adapt the script for a more modern audience. He started with a 1973 imported American edition of the script, by the Washington Square Press, of the Selver/Playfair adaptation and it was clear that what might have made sense in 1923 was jarring over sixty years on. (Dr Helman, practically the last man standing and desperately shoring up a barricade against the coming army of robot insurgents hears an explosion and says ‘The damned rascals, they’ve got bombs.’ with not so much as an exclamation mark to indicate shock or urgency.) Changes were made, but as the comments of the critic attest, he could have and should have been bolder in his alterations. However, the production did provide a showcase for the remarkable talents of Mark Taylor, who composed here a full original music score for the show, the first time he had done so, as well as performing on stage as Dr Gall.