Arts
Calling the tune
Giles Gordon
Red Saturday (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs) Nightshade (Kings Head)
The Kremlin, Moscow; January 1948. Stalin, Marshal Zhdanov (spokesman on cultural policy, advocate of socialist realism), Prokofiev and Shostakovich are making music round a grand piano, Pro- kofiev at the keyboard. The evening has been long, and all are inspired by an astonishing quantity of vodka. For 20 minutes Stalin, abetted by his brutish henchman, shows the composers how, if their attitude to their country and the Soviet people is correct, they should achieve much that everybody may appreciate.
Stalin recounts an absurd fable from a poem by the Georgian writer Rustaveli and has Prokofiev and Shostakovich compose a cantata derived from it. The piece is played back (if Stalin's Kremlin isn't bugged, where is?) and Stalin bursts into tears; not, as first it seems, because he's moved by the composition, but because he accepts final- ly, whilst not beginning to understand, that artists cannot be cajoled in this way. Earlier he has insisted: 'They're going to sacrifice their individualities as I have done — who am I now?' He mourns for the 20 million Russians killed in the second world war; and that he, who is everything, is nobody. He cannot even inspire great music. The supreme irony of David Pownall's stunning play is that whereas Stalin thinks he's con- ducting the Master Class it is the composers who are.
The premise is that, at the start of Zhdanov's 1948 purge (which two months later led to the closing of Berlin and the Berlin Airlift), Prokofiev and Shostakovich were, unbeknownst to one another, invited to the Kremlin to be accused of adhering persistently to 'formalist and anti-Soviet practices in their music'. Prokofiev (Peter Kelly) arrives first, his body racked and twisted by pain from a heart attack and leaning on a stick, his lips curled in tight, frightened disdain and contempt. Then the trembling, blinking Shostakovich (David Bamber) enters to be told by Zhdanov (Jonathan Adams) that he's late: 'The least we can expect of a musician is that he should keep good time.' Finally, Stalin (Timothy West) appears, having eavesdrop- ped first from the lavatory, and the pressure on the composers begins, Stalin acting as the reasonable, concerned leader who ap- preciates the arts (`Music is as important as
heavy industry or agriculture. It has got to work.') and Zhdanov as the heavy, a merely murderous brute eager to kill the two.
Shostakovich is invited — all invitations are commands — to take a pianoforte ex- amination. 'Do a job for our souls, boys,' says the Russian bear. But he indicates utter loathing of what he hears. Later, Prokofiev offers to play but instead is asked to select his favourite piece from the comprehensive collection of his records which Zhdanov has amassed, the best recordings coming from the despised West. One by one, in front' of their composer, the two bullies smash them to fragments. It is one of the most shocking and effective theatrical coups I've seen. For the remainder of the play, the four actors — particularly the humiliated composers move, at times almost sliding and slithering, on a floor created by Prokofiev's broken music as if living the nightmare their lives have become in a world of black ice floes: the mad, horrible world of the Kremlin has become utterly detached from sanity.
Martin Johns has designed a set of red and gold, an archway with mosaics, a fireplace of marble and chandeliers with candles whose Gothic grandeur accentuates the mediaeval behaviour, and Justin Greene has directed the Leicester Haymarket's pro- duction beautifully. The acting couldn't be more accomplished although I suspect you can't 'create' character and give a perfor- mance of the highest stature when you are impersonating someone whose life is known to the audience, yet empathy here is com- plete. All four actors play the piano, Peter Kelly providing a startling and brilliant parody of his own (that is, Prokofiev's: score by John White) music, and satirises the composition Stalin strove for. Master Class, which is funny, frightening, humane, wondrously intelligent and finely written, is the real political play which so many of our playwrights failed to deliver last year. If the
work for a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary company.'
rest of 1984 provides a more stimulating evening we shall be lucky indeed.
Red Saturday (red as in letter day, and football shirts) by Martin Allen is presented by Paines Plough, the company David Pownall co-founded. It's a finely crafted first play which, in most weeks, would command more space. It is about the tri- bulations of a 31-year-old soccer player, Lee (John Salthouse), whose place in the team is in jeopardy, and the aspirations of 19-year-old Terry (Reece Dinsdale). It takes place the night before, during, and after a semi-final for the English Cup. Mark Drewry is Noel, whose broken arm allows Terry into the team, and Eric Richard the trainer, more Stalin than Zhdanov. The ac- ting is utterly authentic. Caroline Beaver's set that works as hotel bedroom, changing room, playing field and bus is most effec- tive, and John Del'Nero's sound effects ex- ceptional. Tim Fywell directs painlessly. It funny, poignant and instructive and almost persuades me to see a football match.
Steward Trotter's Nightshade is an ex- tremely odd, frustrating play which inhabits Firbank, Orton and Jacobean country, Quinn (Julian Curry) is a mortician and magician (effects by The Great Kovari) who has lost his wife and has a strange relation- ship with his daughter (Madeline Church). Billy Hamon is sharp-suited and mad-eyed Vance who plans to revolutionise the burial business; June Brown an elderly doctor who wants to be buried simply and instead is tarted up before interment; Isobel Mason a naked corpse; Charles Rea a dean who gains a bishopric; and Deborah Norton, with well-oiled vowels, a passionate schoolmistress. The skilful direction is by Peter Farago who keeps the whole farrag° bustling along. It's only at the end You realise that, because it tries to be about everything, it is about nothing. Cf. Stalin above.
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