Unrevived great plays of the last 50 years

[bordeaux]

A fair number of plays by the greats get revived:  most of Pinter, Ayckbourn and Bennett, lots of Stoppard, Friel and Hare, some Churchill, Hampton, Frayn, Shaffer and others, but do other posters have any favourite plays they saw once and would dearly love to get a major revival, or plays they've read about but never seen and would like to? I must admit the ones I'd most like to see are by familiar names:  I've never seen Stoppard's Night and Day, Hare's Pravda, Hampton's Savages, Churchill's Serious Money, and would love to see the National or Donmar or Almeida revive them.  And I'd be fascinated to see what Albee's Three Tall Women would look like now, without Maggie Smith in it.  What about playwrights who were once fêted but seem to have dropped out of the conversation?  Would David Edgar's work stand up?  What about Howard Brenton's early plays?  

[Jon]

The Invention of Love is one I'm surprised hasn't had a revival yet. Pravda would be good with a name in the title role

[profquatermass]

May 6, 2016 19:55:44 GMT Jon said:

The Invention of Love is one I'm surprised hasn't had a revival yet. Pravda would be good with a name in the title role

 Pravda was done at Chichester a few years ago with Roger Allam. I think it will be a long while before it will get another production - at the moment it's set just long ago to be a bit irritating as older members of the audience struggle to remember this specific issues it is based on and younger people haven't a clue. Just think how quickly Great Britain dated.

[Deleted]

Anything by Stephen Poliakoff, strangely ignored as a writer for the stage, plays like Hitting Town, City Sugar, Strawberry Fields, Shout Across the River or Breaking the Silence. Also, Jim Cartwright's Road is overdue a revival.

[Deleted]

Pravda was written by Howard Brenton and David Hare.

My hunch is that most of the plays listed above seem not to lend themselves to a fresh directorial approach and so they're unlikely to be revived in today's theatre climate until they are much older and may become discoveries to a new generation. For now, they might be seen as a bit too stale and predictable.

Which plays of the last fifty years might interest Robert Icke or Ivo van Hove or Blanche McIntyre?

[lynette]

I'd like to see Translations and Pentecost. Both about cultural and racial ? conflict.

[Deleted]

ETT did a lovely touring production of Translations the other year, well worth heading out to Kingston for.

I'd like to see The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?, though I'd accept a time machine to the Almeida production just as willingly as a revival.

[peelee]

May 7, 2016 9:50:41 GMT peelee said:

Sean O'Casey's The Bishop's Bonfire

Henry Chapman's You Won't Always Be On Top

Eric Bentley's Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?

Giles Cooper's Everything in the Garden

Howard Brenton's The Churchill Play

Stephen Poliakoff's Strawberry Fields

Trevor Griffiths Occupations

Shelagh Stephenson's An Experiment With An Air Pump

Alan Bleasdale's On the Ledge

[emsworthian]

Another thumbs down for Pravda from me. I saw it at the NT with Anthony Hopkins and only sat through it for Hopkins' performance. When it was revived at Chichester, although I'm a big fan of Roger Allam, I really couldn't face seeing it again.

On a more positive note, I'd like to see Simon Gray's "Otherwise Engaged" or "Simply Disconnected."

[Mr Crummles]

I'm not sure these have remained unrevived, but I do hope to see:

Hugh Whitemore's Pack of Lies

C. P. Taylor's Good

Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound

Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy

Oh, and if bringing back whole productions were possible, I'd be delighted to be able to see Thea Sharrock's After the Dance, and Michael Longhurst's Constellations. I just can't believe I missed them.

[Jon]

May 7, 2016 11:29:55 GMT Mr Crummles said:

I'm not sure these have remained unrevived, but I do hope to see:

Hugh Whitemore's Pack of Lies

C. P. Taylor's Good

Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound

Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy

Oh, and if bringing back whole productions were possible, I'd be delighted to be able to see Thea Sharrock's After the Dance, and Michael Longhurst's Constellations. I just can't believe I missed them.

Black Comedy was done at Chichester IIRC

[profquatermass]

There was a double bill of Black Comedy/Real Inspector Hound about 15 years ago at the Comedy Theatre. It starred David Tennant and Desmond Barrit

[johng]

The Pravda at Chichester was 2006, so that may be pushing "a few years ago" a bit! I suspect it's the effect of the way time speeds up in middle age - I was shocked after chatting about it to someone at King Lear in Brighton the other day to discover that I saw the brilliant View from the Bridge at the Duke of Yorks 7 years ago next week! My only knowledge of Pravda came from the extract performed so well at the NT50 show, and based on this I would certainly be happy to see a revival.

Black Comedy had a superb production two years ago in the Minerva at Chichester (paired with Miss Julie) with Paul Ready and Rosalie Craig, although Marcia Warren almost stole the show as the elderly spinster with a fondness for Gin.

I would love to see any of the early Stoppard's (I've only seen R&G are Dead). In February 2015 Simon Russell Beale mentioned that he had talked about a revival of Travesties to be directed by Nick Hytner (not at the NT) and maybe that will come to fruition at the new theatre near Tower Bridge next year.

[Nicholas]

May 6, 2016 22:14:33 GMT @honouredguest said:

My hunch is that most of the plays listed above seem not to lend themselves to a fresh directorial approach and so they're unlikely to be revived in today's theatre climate until they are much older and may become discoveries to a new generation. For now, they might be seen as a bit too stale and predictable.

Which plays of the last fifty years might interest Robert Icke or Ivo van Hove or Blanche McIntyre?

You say that, but who’d have read the frankly minor Arthur Miller that is A View from the Bridge, bearing in mind too how stubborn the Miller estate is, and gone “Gee, set this in a shiny box, have everyone barefoot, have Michael Gould skulking about looking tired, and that will be the show of the year!”? I loved last year’s Husbands and Sons, and in isolation those DH Lawrence plays are slight and dated, but give them to Marianne Elliot (the most underrated director working today?) and watch them shine. There’s no reason a Hampton, a Hare, a Stoppard, an Edgar wouldn’t work with a new directorial approach.

I’d love to see Rupert Goold do Wesker’s The Merchant, building from his re-interpretation of Shakespeare and bringing that to Wesker’s flawed reclamation of Shylock. I’d love to see van Hove do Bennett’s George III and treat it as grittily as he does Shakespeare’s kings. I’d love to see Robert Icke do Edgar’s Nicholas Nickleby, probably lasting a week given his sense of pacing, but bringing his clinical eye, his humanist edge and his interesting understanding of legacy to Dickens would be fascinating. And I’d love to see Joe Hill-Gibbons do No Sex Please We’re British.

Conversely, I’d love to see a workmanlike director like Lindsay Posner do a problematic text like Sarah Kane, or a play which requires directorial innovation like Simon Stephens, and see what happens in a purely functional production of those plays. And I’d love to see a Samuel Beckett revival where the Beckett estate finally go “Fine, do it how you please”.

Looking more recently, I’d also love to see Morton-Smith’s terrific Oppenheimer (how did he not get an Olivier nod?) revived as a chamber piece – Jackson’s production was very good, but there’s a Pinter-esque sparse intensity to the script that a claustrophobic setting would bring out brilliantly – and I’d love to see The James Plays revived as individual plays and not a saga (James II would make a blisteringly intense hour and a half). There are some plays, like almost anything Simon Stephens does, which will end up being frequently revived because of how easily they allow directors to take the fore, but I’m sure there are plenty of current, great plays which will end up being lost due to directors not seeing them as such springboards for something new, and that would be a crying shame.

There’s been a lot of great modern European drama that’s either not played here in twenty years, or hasn’t played here ever. Following that Oppenheimer, I wonder how In The Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a flawed verbatim play, would manage under a fairly re-interpretative directorial eye. Peter Handke’s Offending the Audience (ever been done here?) would still offend audiences now. A few years ago I had a period really obsessed with the writing of Vaclav Havel, and there’s a real timeless profundity about Largo Desolato (and actually, wouldn’t his life make for a great play itself?). In short, I’d like a revival (perhaps a season) of late twentieth century European provocative drama (it’s seasons like that which probably made them choose Emma Rice over me), partly for historical interest, partly to see theatrical history from across the pond, mainly because I think they’d still be provocative, edgy and forward-thinking dramas which would offend, aggravate and anger in the same way Cleansed is, devoid of its Bosnian political framing, many years down the line.

There’s also a great deal of political drama from the 60s that now, I’m sure, doesn’t hold up at all, but I wonder if that would be a terrific reason to revive it – take a boldly anti-Thatcher play and play it not under her leadership but under her legacy, or take a play written about the cold war threat and see how we consider these international relations in a post-Litvinenko world, or take a play written about the bomb and see how we feel with no less of a threat of the bomb, only less talk about it. Last year’s Each His Own Wilderness was a strange one, as it wasn’t a great Lessing play and had dated somewhat, but in bringing it back into the limelight and playing it so straight and so sadly it was a chance to reflect on what good protesting did then, what a legacy that period set and what a world we live in now. I was quite a fan of that show and want more like it.  Robert Bolt's The Tiger and its Tail is an interesting play covering the same period (actually, A Man for All Seasons deserves a revival too) and I'd love to see that done somewhere like the Orange Tree again. It would almost be to those play’s benefit, not their detriment, that they’re so stuck in their time.

It’s funny, actually – we bang on about how much we want new plays, how good it is that new plays are overtaking revivals, how sad it is to be stuck in the past with plays, when actually there are plenty of great plays that need to be revived, that would push theatre forwards by looking backwards. I think we just have the wrong approach to revivals – either money-making fillers (poor Aykbourn, an interesting, progressive writer damned to be seen as filler fluff) or a play we know quite well, so critics can compare it to the twenty-five revivals of the last however long. Let’s have more Les Blancs or the like, and fewer bloody Shakespeares.

P.S. Lynette, there was a beautiful version of Translations touring a few years ago.  It's a real shame you missed it, it was one of my hits of the year - perhaps touring companies have the capacity to be that bit riskier in choices when they only have to sell out for days rather than four months.

[Deleted]

May 7, 2016 15:03:26 GMT Nicholas said:

There’s also a great deal of political drama from the 60s that now, I’m sure, doesn’t hold up at all, but I wonder if that would be a terrific reason to revive it – take a boldly anti-Thatcher play and play it not under her leadership but under her legacy,

Whoops! Her reign of the Tories only began in the second half of the 70s.

Her public legacy is still evolving as, only in last night's news, her role in the secret and unlawful national police war against the miners moved a step closer to full public investigation and revelation.

[DuchessConstance]

There was a Black Comedy in Richmond earlier this year, irrc.

[bordeaux]

May 6, 2016 22:14:33 GMT @honouredguest said:

Pravda was written by Howard Brenton and David Hare.

My hunch is that most of the plays listed above seem not to lend themselves to a fresh directorial approach and so they're unlikely to be revived in today's theatre climate until they are much older and may become discoveries to a new generation. For now, they might be seen as a bit too stale and predictable.

Which plays of the last fifty years might interest Robert Icke or Ivo van Hove or Blanche McIntyre?

Writers like Martin Crimp, Simon Stephens, Edward Bond and David Harrower seem to appeal to a lot of big European directors.  Pinter always, of course.

[bordeaux]

May 7, 2016 12:23:59 GMT profquatermass said:

There was a double bill of Black Comedy/Real Inspector Hound about 15 years ago at the Comedy Theatre. It starred David Tennant and Desmond Barrit

Wonderful it was too, directed by the much-maligned Greg Doran, if memory serves.

[bordeaux]

May 7, 2016 11:29:55 GMT Mr Crummles said:

I'm not sure these have remained unrevived, but I do hope to see:

Hugh Whitemore's Pack of Lies

C. P. Taylor's Good

Tom Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound

Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy

Oh, and if bringing back whole productions were possible, I'd be delighted to be able to see Thea Sharrock's After the Dance, and Michael Longhurst's Constellations. I just can't believe I missed them.

Michael Grandage revived Good with Charles Dance a few years back - 1999.  It didn't seem as good to me as its reputation warranted.

[Deleted]

The River (Jez Butterworth)

[lynette]

The Real Inspector Hound gets done by students a lot. Check out Edinburgh. It is short so poss not commercial, usually as said done with Black Comedy.

[theatremad]

As with all responses it depends on personal taste, but some of mine:

- David Pownall's Elgar's Rondo
- David Edgar's State of Europe trilogy (The Shape of the Table, Pentecost, The Prisoner's Dilemma), only saw the latter 2 but would love to see this done all in one go. Know an American company (I think) brought a short run over
- The Churchill Play
- Roberto Zucco

[Deleted]

I remember being gripped by Festen in the west end, I'd like to see that return

[oxfordsimon]

There is an amateur production of Festen in Oxford this October

[peggs]

May 7, 2016 19:45:58 GMT bordeaux said:

May 7, 2016 12:23:59 GMT profquatermass said:

There was a double bill of Black Comedy/Real Inspector Hound about 15 years ago at the Comedy Theatre. It starred David Tennant and Desmond Barrit

Wonderful it was too, directed by the much-maligned Greg Doran, if memory serves.

David Bamber wasn't in it as well was he? Only I saw a double bill of this about 17ish years ago and that was I thought my only real memory of it, it was in the West End and can't have been twice so soon can it, have I remembered wrong all this time?