Absolute Hell - NT

[Deleted]

I really enjoyed this! Glad I didn’t see the 3.5 hour version though

Regarding the silent characters - looking at the cast list they mostly double as understudies for the main cast.

[Deleted]

Rodney Ackland’s Absolute Hell has the curious distinction of having had three different names. Originally entitled The Pink Room, and subtitled The Escapists, it's the latter which points us towards the theme binding the characters in the play...

Because every one of them, in or around the club, is escaping from something. Or someone. Hugh’s trying to get away from “mummie”; Julia’s avoiding lonely evenings in “Earlsie Courtsie”, and Ziggy's had a narrow escape when he managed to dodge the Nazis.

And each has found their own means of escape: a lot go in for drink. Quite a bit of it. Some like the sex. The kind they wouldn’t get elsewhere. Mrs Marriner loves to lose herself in a book, any book. As long as it helps to take her away from reality. And towards the end of the play it’s clear that some will resort to moving abroad, to try yoga or to assist the “displaced” population who in turn have escaped the horrors of the concentration camps.

In a line I don’t recall from yesterday’s performance, Doris, Christine’s exploited dogsbody, can’t understand the club’s members who she sees in “just one long never-ending effort to escape from reality”.

All this when Britain was about to change- the Conservatives would finally be ousted and places like La Vie En Rose would soon be crumbling along with the rest of bombed out London.

I remember this being rather good when I saw it back in 1995, coincidentally in the same venue. The cast was excellent, and the production cleverly evoked the period with its seedy setting. I loved it so much that I went out and bought the script, followed by the rest of Ackland’s collection, and over the years I’ve travelled to various venues up and down the country to see a fair few of them on stage.

I think Absolute Hell is a bit of an overlooked gem.

So what’s gone wrong?

Quite a bit, in my opinion.

For a start, this recent revival has the curious distinction of adding a new dimension to the central theme: a lot of the audience are taking the first opportunity to escape at the interval. And I really don’t blame them.

I can’t say I wasn’t forewarned, having read the press reviews and comments from fellow posters on here.

From the off I could tell all was not well… It opens with a song which isn't in the play. The entire company line up and sing La Vie En Rose for us, but it’s all a bit awkward, and they look like children being made to perform in front of an old auntie. Rose? It’s probably an attempt to show us the actors before they become their characters… And this alienation effect continues with the set design which is revealed as the pink curtain rises. It’s vast, and far too big to suggest some seedy tucked away drinking den in 40s Soho. We see exposed lighting, the side and back walls of the stage area. It’s all a bit Bertolt Brecht. And the individual stories become lost in it as voices are thrown away in all directions without ever letting us in on the quieter conversations.

In fact this production bears little resemblance to the play I remembered. The biggest gripe is that the director hasn’t settled for one medium. Some of it is played straight, but it seriously lacks pace. Some of it is stylised- some of the highlights in fact- so we get the actors rushing around creating tableaux. But I’m not sure why. There are segments that simply aren’t in Ackland’s work as written: the Act One finale comes out of nowhere, playing like a nightmare sequence which is at direct odds with most of what’s preceded it. Equally ridiculous is the opening of Act Two, which recreates a scene straight out of Morecambe and Wise. By the end of the three hours we’ve had a bumpy ride, and it’s this unevenness that jars.

There are too many liberties being taken here, and they’re doing the play no favours. There are some glaring examples of miscasting: Kate Fleetwood is no Judi Dench, who played Christine with a world weary resignation but who still made us roar with laughter with her exaggerated, exotic-sounding spin on “Spaghetti Bolognese”. Christine’s flirtations should be rather desperate. And her dependency on her members she constantly berates should be obvious. Kate Fleetwood seemed to be forever running around, throwing each line away as if it didn’t matter. Anita Reynolds’ Bill lacked conviction as did Prasanna Puwanarajah’s Nigel... sadly misguided performances here, particularly the heart-breaking moment when we see Hugh and Nigel embrace, here played for laughs. What a waste… Even Jenny Galloway, usually reliable, isn’t quite the larger than life character she’s supposed to be. Having reread the script fairly recently, I’m pretty sure some of her lines had been cut, as had many belonging to Treacle Queen whose role was more or less reduced to shouting profanities. The standout performance was delivered by Charles Edwards- I believed his situation, felt his desperation, understood why he’ll never get out of his mess, the way Ackland would have wanted.

I’m all for re-imaginings. But a director’s personal vision is one thing; it shouldn’t be at the expense of a play. I was left with the impression that by extending some scenes, cutting others, exaggerating a few here and there, Joe Hill-Gibbins was more of an attention-seeker than a director. The decision to spotlight the non-speaking prostitute, endlessly walking in front of the main action, is a case in point. We already understand Ackland’s point that in this period many of the country’s women were working – Fifi stalks her patch, the typist across the way day toils day and night for the Labour cause; Doris and Cook work their fingers to the bone to keeping the club afloat. It was all a bit OTT and unnecessary.

And with this bombardment of his interpretation upon us, the individuals’ stories- what should have been the backbone of the piece- became lost. I can see why so many have felt little sympathy with any of the characters, as we simply weren’t allowed to get to know them. And as for the leitmotif of escaping, it simply... escaped us.

Disappointing.

As a footnote we experienced a rather strange curtain call yesterday afternoon. When the curtain came down, we seemed to be applauding endlessly, for much longer than the show deserved, and it got to the point where I thought the curtain wasn’t going to rise. When it finally went up many of the actors seemed to be talking and muttering to each other. They didn’t look happy. It was quite obvious. Not sure what all that was about. Strangely as we left the auditorium we could hear them all singing Happy Birthday backstage!

[jek]

I'm afraid that we fall in to the category of people who left at the interval during last night's performance. When I originally booked I really thought this would be up our street. My partner and I met over 25 years ago when we were both doing doctorates concerned with aspects of Labour Party history - in fact his was about how people had been politicised or not by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs during the war (credited as having played a role in the 1945 Labour victory). So it was properly in line with our interests. While we didn't feel it was terrible it was boring and it was repetitive. And I felt that the themes had been dealt with so much better in the recently seen ballet based on Leonard Bernstein/W.H.Auden's Age of Anxiety.

To be honest if we had been sitting in more comfortable seats and been at a matinee we probably would have stayed the course just because the performances were good. But crippled in Row C by the lack of legroom (something that hasn't mattered to us in other long plays such as Oslo because the play was enough of a distraction), the unsurprisingly very hot environment (no doubt magnified by those narrow seats) and facing a late Saturday night tube journey we cut our losses and went home. Judging by the number of people leaving the National with us this was not an uncommon reaction. I did feel a bit guilty about the actors possibly looking out on empty seats but not enough to stay the course.

[basi1faw1ty]

That’s a real shame, caiaphas. Sorry the revival didn’t live up to expectation, especially considering how much you love the play. Yeah, you were warned but at least you stuck to it, if only for the actors’ sake. I’ll give my verdict in just under 2 weeks time, and I won’t be afraid to point out any flaws, if there are any. It surely can’t be as boring as the last show I saw at the NT, which was Waste.

Also somebody on Twitter is enjoying telling everybody to avoid this play at all costs whenever the NT decide to tweet about it, even going so far as to rant to one of the AH actors informing them of the interval leavers. Why? What did they do to deserve that? How awful for the actor.

Yes OK you didn’t like it, fine. It’s a very Marmite play (at least this revival is). You hate the production to bits, fine. You have the right to vent, but you don’t need to go on and on and on and on and on CONSTANTLY.

[jek]

I must admit that I tweet a lot about things that I have seen (more concerts and exhibitions than plays in my case) but in a case like this where I haven't enjoyed something I just don't tweet about it at all.

[Deleted]

May 6, 2018 15:03:42 GMT basi1faw1ty said:

That’s a real shame, caiaphas. Sorry the revival didn’t live up to expectation, especially considering how much you love the play. Yeah, you were warned but at least you stuck to it, if only for the actors’ sake. I’ll give my verdict in just under 2 weeks time, and I won’t be afraid to point out any flaws, if there are any. It surely can’t be as boring as the last show I saw at the NT, which was Waste.

Also somebody on Twitter is enjoying telling everybody to avoid this play at all costs whenever the NT decide to tweet about it, even going so far as to rant to one of the AH actors informing them of the interval leavers. Why? What did they do to deserve that? How awful for the actor.

Yes OK you didn’t like it, fine. It’s a very Marmite play (at least this revival is). You hate the production to bits, fine. You have the right to vent, but you don’t need to go on and on and on and on and on CONSTANTLY.

I didn't find it boring, it just wasn't right. And I did feel for the actors, yes, as they're obviously a talented bunch but they're expected to do stuff in this they must know isn't right. I can't imagine some of them haven't thought, "Why are we doing it this way...? This isn't working... This doesn't make sense..."  Especially now the reviews are in.

I wouldn't tell anyone to avoid it; I just can't recommend it, I'm afraid.

Your 'chap' is rather good, as I said, but as others have remarked he's standing alone a bit.

Will be interesting to hear your views in a couple of weeks' time...

[basi1faw1ty]

May 6, 2018 15:09:54 GMT jek said:

I must admit that I tweet a lot about things that I have seen (more concerts and exhibitions than plays in my case) but in a case like this where I haven't enjoyed something I just don't tweet about it at all.

Yeah, but then I’ve had a good rant at things I didn’t enjoy before and it’s good to let it out sometimes. What’s not good is tweeting/ranting about a thing you didn’t enjoy for every day of your waking life like this plonker is doing. That would just make me depressed.

[Deleted]

Hill-Gibbins forte is to be radical but here he is trying to be commercial and only a bit radical and that ends up pleasing nobody. Take his The Changeling or Measure for Measure; no holds barred reinventions that were highly theatrical and which got great reviews and audiences and were in my favourite productions of the years they were performed in. Maybe he thinks he needs to soften things up to be successful but it doesn't seem like his heart is in it. It doesn't seem like his sort of play to choose either, is it a case of play coming first and director later? My advice would be to go back to what you do well.

[Deleted]

I mean, I absolutely loathed Ivo van Hove's Obsession at the Barbican, if you're new here and/or just avoided any conversation about that play. Mostly I follow the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" rule about plays on Twitter, but I *did* have a lot to say about that one because it *was* so bad that I wanted to spare any of my friends the misery. But I never tweeted *at* the Barbican, and I hope I'd've been a little more apologetic if I'd attracted conversation from a cast member. Yeah, I banged on about hating it (see me still banging on now!), and even I think that Twitter guy is taking it too damn far. He's probably spent more time tweeting at the NT about it than he spent watching it at this point!

[basi1faw1ty]

May 6, 2018 15:25:45 GMT @caiaphas said:

May 6, 2018 15:03:42 GMT basi1faw1ty said:

That’s a real shame, caiaphas. Sorry the revival didn’t live up to expectation, especially considering how much you love the play. Yeah, you were warned but at least you stuck to it, if only for the actors’ sake. I’ll give my verdict in just under 2 weeks time, and I won’t be afraid to point out any flaws, if there are any. It surely can’t be as boring as the last show I saw at the NT, which was Waste.

Also somebody on Twitter is enjoying telling everybody to avoid this play at all costs whenever the NT decide to tweet about it, even going so far as to rant to one of the AH actors informing them of the interval leavers. Why? What did they do to deserve that? How awful for the actor.

Yes OK you didn’t like it, fine. It’s a very Marmite play (at least this revival is). You hate the production to bits, fine. You have the right to vent, but you don’t need to go on and on and on and on and on CONSTANTLY.

I didn't find it boring, it just wasn't right. And I did feel for the actors, yes, as they're obviously a talented bunch but they're expected to do stuff in this they must know isn't right. I can't imagine some of them haven't thought, "Why are we doing it this way...? This isn't working... This doesn't make sense..."  Especially now the reviews are in.

I wouldn't tell anyone to avoid it; I just can't recommend it, I'm afraid.

Your 'chap' is rather good, as I said, but as others have remarked he's standing alone a bit.

Will be interesting to hear your views in a couple of weeks' time...

That’s totally fine. Tbh I feel like I’m going to be a bit like that at points, like “What was the director THINKING??” Hopefully I won’t be. It’s going to be a blessing and a curse to sit so close to the action but in the very cramped row B. If it’s engaging enough to make me sit in them seats for nearly 3 hours, it’s a ‘yes’ from me.

Also ‘my chap’? Oh well... I... Well, he’s not bad s’pose ☺️ Like yeah, I came for Charles, no question, but want to stay for the others. I did see one person somewhere say that they thought his character was annoying, always cutting himself off and whinging and that, apparently.

[NeilVHughes]

I hope this play gets another life and is not written off by the reaction to this production.

There is enough in the play, the themes are universal, escaping life with shallow distractions in a time of great change where lifes certainties are taken away. (almost Shakespearian in its ambition)

The biggest failure in this production is, apart from Charles’s character (the reason why he steals the show) the other characters are cameos, an amazing achievement in a three hour play.

Envious of the people who saw the Judi production.

[lynette]

I saw it and that is why I booked this one.

[oxfordsimon]

The TV version is a good way of seeing how Dame Judi makes Christine the real centre of the play.

[Deleted]

TWO hours? What witchcraft is this?

[oxfordsimon]

No intervals remember!

[showgirl]

May 6, 2018 18:47:11 GMT lynette said:

I saw it and that is why I booked this one.

I also saw it and that's why I didn't book this one!  But I am still considering doing so...

[peelee]

I recall this play from a TV version of it years ago that featured a Judi Dench much further into her adult acting career than is Kate Fleetwood now. TV tightened it up time-wise and also the TV cameras were able to focus tightly in some scenes with other variations in other scenes. So make allowance for that, especially if you watch the Judi Dench-led version on CD.

In theatre-stage terms it's not a great play but it is historically a significant play, and the fact that it didn't have much of an initial run before being pulled is neither here nor there. For bear in mind early John Osborne at the Royal Court, or Harold Pinter at the Lyric Hammersmith, and long before them, Arthur Miller with just four performances allowed in New York to his The Man Who Had All the Luck in the mid-1940s. Admittedly, though, this is not by now a new play, and it has always been a controversial play, although this production has critics for other reasons.

I like the play, and I liked this production. I can see why Rodney Ackland set it when and where he did, and he was inspired in doing so. I can see why Terence Rattigan backed it financially, and then why Binkie Beaumont was outraged by and helped undermine it. I'm not gay and suspect he and I would not have the same political view of the world, but I rather admire Ackland for what seems a pattern in his various plays' subject matter and for his intellectual courage, and am sorry he was marginalised and impoverished for so long until a late-life career revival. In this play his characters are well-drawn even if there are so many a number don't get a lot of speaking time individually, but I was amused and intrigued by the characters and the NT ensemble, I thought, portrayed them well. And I admired how the director did his job in keeping things moving, whether characters or where the audience focuses, while the set design was so apt and really did assist this play.

[Deleted]

You can get "top non-premium price" tickets for £15 for all performances up to and including Saturday 12th - www.theatremonkey.com/CURRENTSPECIALOFFERS.htm#Absol

Note most of the stalls is "premium", despite this being a slow seller, but you can get the back few rows of the stalls for this.

[showgirl]

May 7, 2018 18:21:17 GMT @xanderl said:

You can get "top non-premium price" tickets for £15 for all performances up to and including Saturday 12th - www.theatremonkey.com/CURRENTSPECIALOFFERS.htm#Absol

Note most of the stalls is "premium", despite this being a slow seller, but you can get the back few rows of the stalls for this.

I noticed this only yesterday and was so glad I had checked.  However, I have never sat further back than mid-stalls (and then only once, for Oslo, due to a disaster when online booking opened, meaning that I couldn't get my usual Travelex front stalls seat) and would never want to sit as far back as the rear of the stalls.  Also, there have been comments here about this production being better appreciated from close up.

[peelee]

I see there are a few such front row seats for this evening's play.

And a few for Nine Night in the Dorfman. Is that any good? Worth seeing?  

[foxa]

'Nine Night' is worth seeing.

[MrsCondomine]

Toying with the idea of seeing this because of Charles Edwards, who as far as I'm concerned could read terms and conditions and I'd watch it...

...but Joe Hill-Gibbins is a clumsy director imho, and has caused my only interval walkout so far - Edward II at the National.

HMM.

[zahidf]

I thought this was overlong but entertaining, and Charles Edwards was ace

[rockinrobin]

I have to say I actually enjoyed it. Perhaps it's because my expectations were quite low after reading the reviews. I love Charles Edwards and Prasanna Puwanarajah (who doesn't love him?) so I had to see it anyway and I'm happy I did. While this isn't the best show I've seen this year, I liked the bitterness of this play, the decadence, as if everyone was just waiting for the world to end.
By the way it's only 3 hours now. Still long but manageable.

[lynette]

Yes 'only' three hours now but it did drag a bit especially after the interval. And it is repetitive as many of the characters appear more than once and do their 'shtick' for example the Boxing Day lady and the critic. Some judicial cutting might have helped.

I did enjoy this; it is still a well written piece. But has it dated? I wonder. We know that the Second World War damaged everyone to some degree or other. We know it ruined the finances of the country and it destroyed cities and homes. Not to mention the Holocaust which comes into the play in a not quite convincing way but which Ackland felt he had to include of course as so much of it was 'forgotten'. We know about the politics, something the play does address but in an oblique way. We can argue and write our essays about the consequences all day long. My point is that this play is now looking a teensy wee bit nostalgic, very far from the shocking effect it had when first presented. And less informative than it was when presented whenever it was with Judi Dench.

In this production the set is far too expansive. This is supposed to be a house in Soho not a warehouse in Dagenham. It belies the pretensions of its owner and so they missed for example the joke about not being able to serve at both sides of the bar at once. How many exits and entrances did this set have? Eh? And the sound was poor. The typing she hears is not supposed to ruin the sound for us is it? And a lot of the speech was lost to the echoing back of the stage. When they bellowed at the front you could hear ok. My hearing is fine but I was straining and to either side of me the punters were straining harder and could not hear properly. We know the sound in the Lyttleton is usually difficult but this was poorer than usual and the main culprit was Miss Fleetwood I’m sorry to say. And here is where I will be hated. She isn’t right for the part. Yes, she is a wonderful actress and a good actress can act anything. I know, I know, I’ve said it myself. But this woman, the club licence holder is over the top, no way 38 as she exclaims, another joke they missed by having her exclaim it to nobody so no reaction possible, and clinging on to the last bit of income and respectability she can muster from the end of the war which is for her a catastrophe. She is down the line from Mistress Quickly through all the other Madams in literature and she is hanging on for grim death. And she has a fuller figure as the joke about her bottom states. Miss Fleetwood hardly has a bottom. So cut the line please. If you want a metaphor, all the rage according to Maria Aberg of RSC fame, then here Christine is Mother England at that time, in the same way that the author and the artist are metaphors for English culture. Finished!

A much closer and more careful reading of the play might have worked. Fewer characters might have helped (I'm all for employing actors but we didn’t need that many people in a private club in a Soho room) A stronger Christine is required. Less yelling, more intense and menacing exchanges required and perhaps a closer look at how people do actually speak and move when very drunk.
Cheers to the understudy who played the film guy, v good stuff. Sorry to miss Slinger in this role. I think he might have that deeper, cynical despair. And Charles Edwards was ace as said above.