The Independent Review - 21st February 2002
Not feast, but famine.
Famously, in Mel Brooks' The Producers, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder have to find a play that they can guarantee will close "in the interval". In the end, they find a crazed ex-Nazi who has written a musical paean to his hero, Adolf Hitler. But had they run across Olaf Olafsson first, I have a feeling that "Springtime for Hitler" would never have graced the boards. The Feast of Snails is saved from closing in the interval only by the fact that, mercifully, it has no interval.
You emerge, instead, after 100 mind-numbing minutes, from a conversation between two men that is completely devoid of characterisation, tension, change, growth, surprise or drama. As producers, Mostel and Wilder were set on fraud; I can only think that the producers of this play need to find some urgent tax write-offs before 5 April. I can't see it running into the next tax year.
And what a waste of talent! When I was studying Hamlet for A-level, a Yorick-gripping David Warner adorned the cover of my paperback. All my teachers told me he had laid down the definitive Prince of Denmark. Yet by then, stage fright had removed him from the stage, and I was forced to imagine his Hamlet based on his performances in Hollywood dross.
And now he's back. Except that he has opted to play a millionaire industrialist straight from Central Casting, sitting down to eat dinner on his own, surrounded by Picassos, Rothkos and slightly rebarbative but fundamentally obeisant servants (Sorcha Cusack and Siwan Morris).
Suddenly, in from the rain comes a stranger. Equally suddenly, the stranger is invited to join him for the banquet – no metaphorical titles here: they genuinely sit down to a five-course meal of gastropods from different parts of the globe. (No matter that the banquet was meticulously planned for one, and suddenly there seems to be more than enough for two).
Philip Glenister does his best with the cardboard-cut-out stranger. We learn that he is a primary schoolteacher-cum-poet, but the problem is that the dialogue never goes anywhere. They do the nature-nurture debate in clichéd and unremarkable terms. The industrialist turns out to be a racist, hectoring, bullying father. And the stranger turns out to be... a strangely placid stranger who (not a moment too soon) delivers a nature-nurture revelation of stunning predictability.
Is the dialogue witty? No. Do the characters grow and reveal unexpected sides? Not a hope. Do they put each other under pressure and build to a climax that is a surprise and yet, with hindsight, explicable? Get real.
No, you're right, I'm supposed to find something good in everything... Well, I don't think I've seen an Icelandic play before, and now I know whether I want to see another. I've seen David Warner on stage. And yes, I still have that A-level Hamlet text, and I reckon he's going to have plenty of time for signing autographs.
Famously, in Mel Brooks' The Producers, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder have to find a play that they can guarantee will close "in the interval". In the end, they find a crazed ex-Nazi who has written a musical paean to his hero, Adolf Hitler. But had they run across Olaf Olafsson first, I have a feeling that "Springtime for Hitler" would never have graced the boards. The Feast of Snails is saved from closing in the interval only by the fact that, mercifully, it has no interval.
You emerge, instead, after 100 mind-numbing minutes, from a conversation between two men that is completely devoid of characterisation, tension, change, growth, surprise or drama. As producers, Mostel and Wilder were set on fraud; I can only think that the producers of this play need to find some urgent tax write-offs before 5 April. I can't see it running into the next tax year.
And what a waste of talent! When I was studying Hamlet for A-level, a Yorick-gripping David Warner adorned the cover of my paperback. All my teachers told me he had laid down the definitive Prince of Denmark. Yet by then, stage fright had removed him from the stage, and I was forced to imagine his Hamlet based on his performances in Hollywood dross.
And now he's back. Except that he has opted to play a millionaire industrialist straight from Central Casting, sitting down to eat dinner on his own, surrounded by Picassos, Rothkos and slightly rebarbative but fundamentally obeisant servants (Sorcha Cusack and Siwan Morris).
Suddenly, in from the rain comes a stranger. Equally suddenly, the stranger is invited to join him for the banquet – no metaphorical titles here: they genuinely sit down to a five-course meal of gastropods from different parts of the globe. (No matter that the banquet was meticulously planned for one, and suddenly there seems to be more than enough for two).
Philip Glenister does his best with the cardboard-cut-out stranger. We learn that he is a primary schoolteacher-cum-poet, but the problem is that the dialogue never goes anywhere. They do the nature-nurture debate in clichéd and unremarkable terms. The industrialist turns out to be a racist, hectoring, bullying father. And the stranger turns out to be... a strangely placid stranger who (not a moment too soon) delivers a nature-nurture revelation of stunning predictability.
Is the dialogue witty? No. Do the characters grow and reveal unexpected sides? Not a hope. Do they put each other under pressure and build to a climax that is a surprise and yet, with hindsight, explicable? Get real.
No, you're right, I'm supposed to find something good in everything... Well, I don't think I've seen an Icelandic play before, and now I know whether I want to see another. I've seen David Warner on stage. And yes, I still have that A-level Hamlet text, and I reckon he's going to have plenty of time for signing autographs.
Original article can be found here.
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