The Sanctuary Lamp written and directed by Tom Murphy – Arcola Theatre ****

Murphy delivers a fraught drama about three people on the edge of society in a play that plunges the depths of humanity in its ‘unhoused, free condition’ and yet retains a warm sense of humour. Harry is an outcast and shadow of his former powerful self; an itinerant ex-circus strongman, he is hired by the Monsignor of a Catholic church to act as caretaker. He only lasts one shift but it is an eventful night in which he is visited by a ghostlike waif, Maudie, and his nemesis, the Irish blackguard Francisco. These three, battered and bruised by life’s onslaught, entertain and protect each other in ways that are by turns nurturing and beastly, but in every way all too human.

The dingy church setting is realistically rendered with pews, a pulpit, a confessional and the sanctuary lamp but the echoing effect that persists throughout the play is an unnecessary distraction. The very dominance of the church-as-set is ironic because of the very fact that religious faith doesn’t feature as a strong redemptive force (the church echoes because it is an empty signifier); Harry speaks to the sanctuary lamp, remembering his young daughter and lamenting her loss, but he can derive no comfort from it or from the notion of God. Only Maudie maintains her belief in Jesus and his powers of forgiveness because of the extremity in which she finds herself and the guilt she suffers over the death of her child. Francisco is a bombastic drunk but also a plain-speaker who goes someway towards convincing Maudie that the ghostly visitations she believes she has experienced are mere dreams.

Robert O’Mahoney gives an excellent and warm performance as Harry. By way of his compulsion to talk and his antic verbal expression, where he tirelessly appends almost every utterance with a ‘you know’ or an ‘actually’, he counters loneliness by filling emptiness with words - after all “silence is loneliness” in this play. His eccentricity is humorous but also pitiful as his verbal tics reveal that something about his character is amiss. He mentions to the Monsignor that he has a compulsion to do something bad, this ‘something’ remains unnamed but it lends a sinister air to the proceedings, especially when the young and vulnerable Maudie shows up.

Kate Brennan’s Maudie is a strange creature who fetishises the telling of her own story by hinting at the sexual violence in her past and then excitedly asking ‘shall I tell you…?’ when Harry or Francisco provides an audience. Unlike Harry, Francisco is willing to listen to Maudie’s story which serves to demystify it just as his atheistic rant deflates the Mystery of religion – “God made the world, sure. But what has he done since?” Declan Conlon gives an energetic performance as Francisco and manages to capture his Irish charm as well as his disturbing sexual interest in Maudie. This play shows how the religious morality cannot serve as a template for life with all its complexity and nuance. Maudie is young and her religious conviction strong, on the other hand Francisco and Harry display the cynicism that comes with experience. It is obvious that Maudie will lose her spirituality and become a pragmatist – religion has no place where humanity exists in all its imperfection. Murphy’s play is unintentionally all too timely - Harry’s question “is the Pope infallible?” is distressingly resonant at the present time as sexual abuse in the Irish Catholic church is once again making the headlines.

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Twelfth Night - directed by Gregory Doran ****

The RSC's current production of Twelfth Night is riotously funny but, thankfully, does not ignore the darker elements of the play. Previous versions have done so (notably, the 1997 RSC production), playing the entire thing for laughs to the detriment of this complex play, possibly Shakespeare's finest comedy. But Gregory Doran's Twelfth Night is not short on humour and it is always a joy to experience a production of Shakespeare which doesn't just exist as an historical curiosity but is a relevant and vigorous play in its own right. This Twelfth Night didn't just seem like something which should be enjoyed and appreciated because it is Shakespeare - it wasn't in the least tired or bombastic but full of life and interest.

Set against an ostensibly Ottoman backdrop, the action in Illyria is lent an exotic and hedonistic quality by the incense bearers, hookah pipes, and colourful lanterns which process across the stage at various points. And then the characters arrive in English Regency costume with a few pairs of harem pants thrown in (looking like a nod to Renaissance pantaloons) – a bit of a visual non sequitur along with the plastic sea wave protruding from backstage right, confusingly behind a high city wall. Although the set and setting do not make complete sense, the atmosphere that they help to create is spot-on; this is a far away and isolated wonderland which operates under different rules from those at home.

Malvolio's discovery of the prank letter is the crowning glory of a very funny play with an excellent cast. James Fleet stands out as the preening Andrew Aguecheek, and Richard McCabe is effortlessly hilarious as the gross Sir Toby. One cannot forgo a mention of Richard Wilson as Malvolio, possibly the biggest lure of this production; he gives a good but predictable performance with more than a hint of Victor Meldrew in it, but his advanced years definitely add another element to the abasement he is made to suffer at the hands of Sir Toby and Maria. Miltos Yerolemou gives a nuanced performance as Feste; he is a fool with a tragic bent, crying real tears when Olivia uncovers the cruel jest in which he played a part. Accompanying the musicians on stage at the end of the interval, Yerolemou entertains the audience, not in the character of Feste, but as a courtly fool and this is just one example of the exquisite attention to detail that makes this production such a joy. Doran has really thought about the conventions of Elizabethan theatre and brought them back to life here – this is art as pure and unadulterated entertainment.

Perhaps the revelatory last scene, where Cesario/Viola's gender-bending comes to light, isn't as much the carnivalesqe inversion it may have once been; the shock with which Jo Stone-Fewings' Duke Orsino contemplates having had the hots for a girl dressed as a boy, and mistaking Sebastian for his sister, doesn't quite resonate with a modern theatre audience. We can live with Orsino's dalliance in bisexuality, but Antonio's exclusion is more troubling. The final scene is sill humorous and can be taken in the rip-roaringly funny tone intended, but Antonio's pain at being denied by Sebastian lingers on as does Malvolio’s cruel humiliation. A final procession of dispossessed and broken individuals follows that last scene, where comedic custom would have everyone neatly paired off, to stress that the loose ends are far from being tied up in a world where men can harm others for their own sport.

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11 and 12 by Marie-Hélène Estienne and Peter Brook– Barbican Theatre ***

The setting is French-occupied Mali in the1930s and the dramatic action is the violence that resulted from a deep disunity in the Muslim community. Two opposing sects disagree over the recitation of a prayer, whether it should be said eleven or twelve times, and the result is a schism which weakens the native position in the face of the French colonialists. Using this disagreement to their advantage, the colonisers label those who recite the prayer eleven times as political dissenters and rebels requiring punishment and exile.

Having just read Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God it is obvious that Brook’s play fits into a tradition of post-colonialist representation of Africa. Like Brook’s cast of characters, the novel’s tribes are weakened by internal conflicts which have arisen because of the seductive presence of the coloniser. But the same problems which make this particular novel a slow and difficult read afflict this play. Characters are underdeveloped and appear very wooden and un-individuated. They tend to speak proverbially and in the abstract so that each character becomes representative of a type rather than a personage in their own right. And it isn’t just the otiose script that contributes to this stiltedness; the delivery is very flat with little voice modulation so that the audience really has to pay attention to avoid drifting off.

And, as brilliant and accomplished as Toshi Tsuchitori is, his music (played live and on-stage with breathtaking beauty and variety) was soft, gentle and constant but coupled with the monotone of the cast’s delivery and their slow movements about the stage, it had the effect of a lullaby – soothing the audience gently into a state of semi-slumber. Brook, who once wrote in ‘The Empty Space’, that drama resides even in a single man crossing a stage, has perhaps taken this pronouncement a little too much to heart and has forgotten how to make a drama immediate and affecting.

The play owes a lot to Greek tragedy and has much in common with how these plays are habitually staged; the set is minimalistic but highly effective, the costumes are simple and timeless and the characters are keen on declamatory speeches. But unlike Greek tragedy, this play is lacking in passion, the subject is great but is dealt with in too small and muted a fashion. The religious leaders locked in dispute retain the reverence of their disciples; this is not a tragedy because the status quo is not significantly questioned, the populace not seriously disaffected. For my money I wanted to see a more damning indictment of the religious mindset which allowed the violence supposedly at the heart of this play.

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Heldenplatz by Thomas Bernhard – Arcola Theatre ****

The predominantly middle-aged, middle-class demographic of theatre-goers attending Heldenplatz at Hackney’s Arcola Theatre are unlikely to find anything in this play that they would deem controversial or challenging to the prevailing status quo. And it is a shame that, in watching this play at a remove of more than twenty years from its specific historical moment, what must have been an electric and destabilising drama when first performed is now somewhat dampened in effect. Indeed, Thomas Bernhard’s play was condemned in Austria and the playwright himself prohibited its performance there in his will. Exploring the right-wing anti-Semitic sentiments of those in power, Bernhard’s play shows how a post-war Austria has continued to treat an intellectual Jewish family, the Schuster’s, in such a way as to make Vienna just as uninhabitable in 1988 as it was when they fled it in 1938.

Bernhard structures his play with a succession of powerful and expressive monologues and it is the characters delivering these who manage to hold our attention. The minor personages fade into the background as if only there as a foil to those that do speak eloquently about their situation. Hannah Boyde, as the housemaid Herta, delivers the only strong performance from a minor character in this play. She speaks very infrequently but her nervous movements across the stage and her furious shoe-shining manage to convey her sense of entrapment and unease. She is cornered by Barbara Marten’s excellent Frau Zittel and made to listen to her erratic and often hysterical tale of life with the Professor whilst being admonished for her laziness and her naïve devotion to the family to which she does not belong. The performances lack polish with both Marten and Clive Mendus as Uncle Robert tripping over their words but no doubt they will become more self-assured as the run progresses.

The cast were battling against the tiredness of a flagging midweek audience who found it hard to keep their eyes open past 8pm in the warm and dimly lit studio. It was a real shame because the play and the triumphant performances given by the cast were far from soporific and deserved more attention. This is far from light entertainment but the play does manage to encompass humour along with its bleak misanthropy. And there is something very Chekhovian about this play; perhaps because this is the drama of a single family played out in the drawing room and the cemetery, or perhaps it is the desolation of the premise: suicide of Professor Schuster. Like Chekhov, Bernhard emphasises the importance of place; the Professor never felt at home in Vienna, Neuhaus or Oxford and his widow can’t stand the flat that looks over the Heldenplatz. After all the Heldenplatz is a major character in this play, characters continually stare out of the window at the looming square and, hearing again the phantom calls of Nazi troops from the square, Frau Professor collapses in defeat abandoning the hostile world in which she lives like her suicidal husband before her.

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Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World – Tate Modern ****

Founder of the De Stijl art movement and magazine, Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) is a key figure of Modernism and the avant-garde and, surprisingly, this is the first major exhibition in the UK to be devoted to him.

Paving the way for Dadaism, van Doesburg uses a strict method of abstraction in his works which is underpinned by a rigorous theoretical system. The artworks, posters, furniture, videos and sculptures displayed here are worthwhile because of the illuminating light they shed on the political and philosophical climate of Europe in the 1920s, rather than for their artistic merit alone. The repetitive geometry of black vertical and horizontal lines with primary-coloured cubes is what is most recognisable about the De Stijl movement, and many of the lesser artists represented here seem to have been producing derivative works in the same style. But it is the application of this style to exquisite pieces of furniture and architecture which reveals that there is more to this movement that a slavish adherence to minimalistic form; hence the subtitle of this exhibition, ‘Constructing a New World’.

The De Stijl art movement was a collective enterprise which infiltrated design on a functional level and on a grand scale and this is expertly represented here. After the devastation inflicted by the Great War, van Doesburg and his contemporaries turned to formlessness and extreme abstraction to create a utopian future where distinctive colour and form was abandoned for the perfection of the straight line. Take the opportunity to see these works before the exhibition ends in May because you will be rewarded with a much richer experience than the simplicity of the works themselves suggest.

And if you visit this exhibition it is worthwhile catching the excellent Gorky Retrospective…

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Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective – Tate Modern ***

You get less for your money here in comparison to van Doesburg; the paintings speak for themselves but there just seems to be fewer works to see with less expertise expended over their curation. One of the American greats of the 20th Century, Gorky was a tormented genius who committed suicide after a series of personal tragedies and injury. His early works clearly show the influence of Cezanne and Picasso but he developed his own style of impressionist realism with his portraits; the two versions of The Artist and His Mother being the stand-out pieces of the exhibition. In his later works he developed an abstract expressionist style dominated by bright colours, curling black lines and fluid forms. Some of these are haunting in their nightmarish non-specificity and their use of dark colours and large foreboding shapes. Serene works like Waterfall (1943), dominated by a wash of green with bright yellow shapes, appear alongside angry paintings like Agony (1947) with its angular black and orange shapes on a background of livid red. There is an infinite variety of mood conjured by these paintings, all expressed in an energetic and individual style which embodies a rich emotional life despite the outward effortlessness of the composition.

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Decode: Digital Design Sensations – V&A Musuem **

An intriguing concept which failed in the execution.The notion of digital artworks, the inventive and creative application of functional computer programming, is explored through three key themes: Code, Network and Interactivity. But this exhibition is small and overcrowded with a very narrow two-way corridor displaying small-screen exhibits on both sides leading into one large chamber housing the interactive installations. This made the Code section which held the most interesting works almost impossible to see let alone enjoy and appreciate. These small and understated creations were fascinating and even unexpectedly beautiful showing that abstract art doesn’t need to be static or non-referential; Stockspace (Marius Watz) uses statistical data to create graphic visual patterns which change and adapt in response to fluctuations in the stock market as they happen. The collaborative works in Network, such as the Exquisite Clock (Fabrica), went someway to redeem technology from the charge that it is isolating and robotic by showing that technology allows artistic relationships and connections on a global scale.

The Interactivity theme is the one that seems to be drawing in the crowds; visiting on a Sunday, the whole day’s ticket allocation was sold-out by 3.00pm. Unfortunately the computerised blinking eye, which has been the image adorning all promotional material, is now defunct and has been removed from the exhibition. Children and adults alike were marvelling at the rather basic and unoriginal concept of a video camera recording their image and then projecting it on a screen along with other videos captured throughout the day. The only theme of Interactivity seemed to be the mirroring of the onlooker, the reflection of the physical world through the digital eye. A giant mirror, which only slowly reveals the reflected image of the figure that stands patiently in front of it, superimposing the image on the one captured previously, Venetian Mirror (Fabrica) is the least subtle exploration of this theme but at least it is honest in its purpose. As appealing as this may be to our innate vanity, I hope this endless and boring reflection of the viewing-subject isn’t the future for art, digital or otherwise.

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