Performance

The panel discussed the years performances.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

KIRSTY WARK:
Paul, can we just begin first with the National? This was Hytner's view, there was going to be cheap seats and greater accessibility and he signalled his direction with Jerry Springer: The Opera. Which you've seen twice now?

MORLEY:
Yes, I saw it at the National, Jerry Springer: The Opera, where the word opera has a different meaning from when it goes to Shaftesbury Avenue. Both times it was a kind of gag. It's a purile, wonderful gorgeous thing. It is dirty. It's that wonderful thing that sometimes when you're seeing an opera, you really, really wish that the stuttering is going to lead to a gorgeous swear word. In this it does. It's a satire of the Jerry Springer Show; it's a great piece of TV criticism.

MORLEY:
What I kind of love about it is visually there's so much to look at. Because it takes from Jerry Springer that idea you're seeing on television people you don't usually have a voice, that has to be represented in the stage. So you have a gorgeous line-up of unusual people. God is huge!. "It isn't easy being me", he sings.

WARK:
Is it a one-trick pony, though?

GERMAINE GREER:
I think the second half is dire, most of it.

WARK:
It's Andrew Lloyd Webber the second half.

GERMAINE GREER:
It's him all the way through. This kind of writing is always based on Handel. You've always got the C major chord,you've always got people singing words over and over again. Musically it's so boring. The interesting thing is that I saw it before all of you. I saw it at the Battersea Art Centre where Tom Morris was still involved in developing it. And then it was a lot wilder. It was very messy. It was very improvisational. And it was great fun

BONNIE GREER:
And shorter.

GERMIANE GREER:
Not as camp either.

BONNIE GREER:
First of all, Nick Hytner was a genius this year. This was his only problem. Aside from putting more women in theatre. That's the next thing he's got to do - have more women at the National. But other than that, maybe it's because I'm from Chicago and Jerry Springer is about Chicago. I just looked at this thing and I thought right, the performances are wonderful, Michael Brandon is wonderful, that's worth the price of the ticket. But it's sort of like Cambridge Footlights, this English view of look at the weird Yanks, aren't they strange?

PAULIN:
I thought it was extraordinary. There was a great feeling of redemption in it. It was religious in some ways. I became fascinated by it. It really moved me.

BONNIE GREER:
But it's a musical, Tom. It's supposed to have musical numbers in it. All the numbers are a bunch of opening numbers. It's Stephen Sondheim pastiche 1983 Sunday in the Park with George and you just sit there and go when is this thing going to start? Musically it never does. Performance-wise, it's wonderful.

PAULIN:
Drama of redemption, I thought.

WARK:
But if it never starts, what about political theatre? That was perhaps a stronger suit for you this year.

PAULIN:
I thought, obviously, David Hare's The Permanent Way. Iphigenia, Edna O'Brien, just when the Iraq war was starting about to start. Fallout. Very, very interesting political plays, I thought.

WARK:
Let's stay with Fallout. Talk about the theatre of Roy Williams and Kwame Kwei-Armah. They were both strong performers this year.

BONNIE GREER:
This is sort of almost, I believe, the return to Black Theatre in a sense. Paulette Randall has taken over Talawa Theatre with a wonderful production of Urban Afro Saxons at the Theatre Royal Stratford East; the most consistent supporter of the black voice, in probably the whole of the country. There's this whole sort of renaissance of Black British theatre now. It's quite, quite wonderful, quite diverse. The Catholicity of voices is something that is coming back now. It's very exciting. I think next year will be terribly exciting.

WARK:
Let's talk about the Catholicity of voices in another territory and that's in performance. Dizzee Rascal took the Mercury Music Prize. You just think he's fantastic?

MORLEY:
Yeah, I don't want people to be put off by the fact that he won a Mercury Prize. Apparently it increased his sales by 150%. It is a fabulous album. Hip-Hop's taken over the world, it's a global phenomenon. This album is a wonderful example of East London Hip-Hop. It has that English angst as well that makes him someone who has a tremendous future. It's a mixture of sonic excitement and genuine contemporary protest.

BONNIE GREER:
Dizzee went through a programme that was associated with the Royal Opera House. One of the education programmes so he's got that sort of background as well. It's a wonderful sort of what classical music and what street music can do together. So it's wonderful.

WARK:
Germaine from your point of view, after Miss Julie, the reworking of the Strindberg was one of the hits of the year.

GERMAINE:
Well, I had a tough time with it because I'm a Strindberg maniac. To me it wasn't the same thing as at all. Thinking about it afterwards, it made a different thing. In some ways, it was a lesser thing, but it had so much edge. And it was so witty and taut and sophisticated and it was also again, we're up the noses of the actors in that tiny theatre. Their performances were completely seamless, they were real.

BONNIE GREER:
I just have one question; my play of the year was Jumpers, Tom Stoppard with Simon Russell Beale, to me they are two gods of the theatre. This play is 30 years old. It has just about everything in it. It deals with God and marriage. It does it in a beautifully theatrical way. I always wonder why do we go backwards in art. Why if you had something like Jumpers, 30 years old, why do we go back all the time and reinvent things?