Theatre
Some riches
Mark Amory
The Merchant of Venice (Aldwych) One Mo' Time! (Cambridge) One Night Stand (Apollo) There are those who, reacting against John Barton's reputation as a fusty Cambridge academic, claim that he is really an old ham. In the nicest possible way he is both. His respectable virtues of Shakespearian scholarship and concern with spoken verse are allied to a passion for narrative, telling stories, and a flair for making it work on stage. In 1969 he discovered a melancholy behind Twelfth Night that transformed the whole comedy into something achingly sad and beautiful. Now he has found a touch of melancholy, but more a humanity, in The Merchant of Venice that binds it together but makes it sad only fleetingly; for this is only a comedy from time to time, which is the problem.
Anyone unfamiliar with the play might fail to hotice what a good production this is; there seems to be no particular problem as bits of famous poetry and story fit into a complex but clear plot. Usually however it falls apart into a melodrama of revenge with the gruesome pound of flesh, a fairy story about the third suitor winning the hand of a beautiful damsel by choosing the right casket, a romance and finally some rather routine comedy when Portia and Nerissa make their fiancés give up the rings they swore they would cherish and then chide them. The court scene certainly works if the Christians are made to bay for blood but Shylock can seem to belong to a different play. Here the excellent David Suchet is integrated into a Venetian society of about 1905, not a nice man — his servant and daughter escape him as fast as they can — but a credible one. He is asked to dinner by Bassanio, when he needs money, and is civil, even fawning, to Antonio at first, but he turns like Iago to the audience to tell us of his hatred. Dinner is bluntly refused and when he objects to Antonio who `spit(s) upon my Jewish gaberdine' he uses the `sp' to spit right back. A shrewd businessman in an anti-semitic society, he is after Antonio right away, though it is a long-shot; and when at the moment of his amazing triumph Portia produces her legal quibble he knows immediately that, feeble it may be but it will be enough to stop him in this court. Countless details seem so right that any other approach will now seem foolish. For instance, of course Portia knows that the lead casket is the winner, so her joy comes when Bassanio chooses it not when he opens it. Even the dreaded Launcelot Gobbo, who is made fond of his father as well as irritated by him, and gabbles his worst jokes or allows them to drift lamely away to the failure they deserve, becomes an acceptable character. The rounding off comedy is here the harmony of those who have seen the falsity of the values by which they have lived and may now do better; except Antonio, who began a wiser man than they and, taking off his garland of white flowers, departs a sadder one.
The jokes that dominated the rest were almost as old and less tactfully presented. In One Night Stand they cry 'One more time' and in One Mo' Time! they speak of one night stands. Both are musicals set in the past and a club where a gang of four perform their numbers and bicker offstage. One Mo' Time!, the exclamation mark almost acceptable here, takes place in the Lyric Theatre of New Orleans in 1926 and a black quartet is backed by the New Orleans Blue Serenaders, who play the good old tunes from 'Muskrat's Ramble' to 'There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight'. Of the three women one was pretty and sang ballads like 'He's funny that way', one had so much attack we did not dare not to applaud and one, the big one, reduced 'You've got the right key but the wrong keyhole', which was new to me, to an enjoyable string of single entendres. Best of all is Vernel Bagneris, who devised the whole thing and has in his time won awards as Jesus and as God. With legs and arms that go on for ever, are made of india rubber and are finally attached to his body only by some very loose method, fast feet and a slow smile, he was hardly type-casting. The show is Ain't Misbehavin' with, for me, better music and the great advantage of a wisp of plot and it will be given lots mo' times. I would like to be ecstatic, but can only manageenthusiasm.
One Night Stand is a sort of Manchester Graffiti or Saturday Night Slight Chill. It is 1962 and our four heroes form a rock 'n' roll group. They also worry about spots, girls and homework. The songs, original only in the technical sense, say it all: 'Bad Acne', . . End Away', 'We're Gonna Be Stars', 'Mark's and Spencer's Saraband', 'Fumble and Grope', 'Can Ye Twist John Peel'. When this last is forced upon them (and us) they find success, a Royal Variety performance and even at last, we are told, get their respective ends away with four usherettes; but it has been a surrender to commercial pressures, greeted by one of the boys with 'Mediocrity here we come.' Only the most generous would say that was not an advance, indeed the main appeal of the show is an intermittent authenticity.
A photograph in the programme shows the author, Mike Harding, with one guitar, Buckly Holly glasses, vacuous grin. The charm of the boys is in their extreme ordinariness and the crude, youthful gusto and good humour with which they put over their ancient jokes. If they were going to have a girl saying to her dancing partner, 'What have you got in your pocket?' I think they should have used 'Well then I can I do it till I have to wear glasses?'
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