The film release earlier this year of the world’s longest
running musical, ‘Les Miserables’, divided some fans into two distinctly
opposing groups: the ‘nationalists’ of ‘Les Mis’, who were unimpressed by this
adaption, and those who felt that the big screen enhanced the musical in a way
that, due to its limitations, a stage can not. To some, this may have raised
the question: which is superior, the cinema or the theatre? In a world of
rapidly advancing technology, as demonstrated by the pioneering special effects
in films released today, will the plays of tomorrow be surpassed by their
counterparts in the motion picture industry?
The cinema may hold the simple appeal of an afternoon immersed
in escapism, and always contains the extra allure of warm popcorn, but, in my
opinion, the theatrical experience is unrivalled. Nothing is left to the subtle
maturing of imagination in a film, for the cinema-goer is presented with a
domain woven wholly from the fabric of others’ minds; in the theatre, as with
literature, our own consciousness shades in that which is not shown. A play
also has the appeal of different dimensions; it can be savoured both on the
page and visually. A great play, however, is almost an embodiment of our own visions;
tragedy and comedy acted live in front of the audience, the actors close enough
to touch.
I have been fortunate to see several plays recently,
encompassing a diverse range of plots and settings, from an apocalyptic Scotland
in the future, to a staff-room in 1960s Cambridge with Rowan Atkinson playing
the title character. Perennial plays never lose their relevance: take the
example of Shakespeare’s extensive and enduring oeuvre, which has been performed
for centuries, being adapted and interpreted on countless different levels. For
the price of a cinema admission, one can purchase a ticket to stand in the yard
of the Globe as a ‘groundling’ (seats are available for a higher price), and
witness the finest of dramas. It was surreal to watch ‘Twelfth Night’, with one
of the greatest Shakespearean actors, Mark Rylance, as Olivia, and Stephen Fry
himself assuming the role of the puritanical antagonist, Malvolio. A visual,
aural and intellectual feast, it transported the audience to a sumptuous, heady
realm unobtainable by any other means; Shakespeare’s words are afforded a
unique vivacity when performed, especially to such a high standard.
Acclaimed actor James McAvoy is currently in the West End
playing the eponymous Macbeth, but in a reworking unlike those seen before, the
audience is not taken to the 11th century Scotland of the original,
but to a ‘dystopian Scotland at some point in the near future’, with chilling,
yet electrifying results. The three witches are nightmarishly depicted wearing
gas masks, while the set is an industrial wasteland with flickering lights and
water dripping from the ceiling. Macbeth enters skidding across the stage
before thumping his machete violently on the floor, and those in the front row
are provided with plastic ponchos to protect them from the volume of fake blood
and water used. It is impossible to do justice to such a brutal and intense
performance, but McAvoy was magnificent in the title role, delivering in his
rich Scottish brogue a taut, raw depiction of a despotic monarch consumed by tyranny
and greed. A flavour of concentrated anticipation infused the theatre as the
audience waited for the play to begin, and this was heightened by the mutual
nature of the emotion: one encounters theatre as part of a group, all subject
to, in this instance, the same physical, harrowing production. This is an
experience that cannot be captured and distilled; it is immediate and
transient, but there is no drop of the curtain on memory, and true drama
lingers ever after.
The theatre critic, Quentin Letts, regretted not asking
theatre staff at the multi award-winning farce, ‘One Man Two Guvnors’ whether
they had any ‘first-aid orderlies on the premises with a tank of oxygen’, so
helpless with mirth was he and the rest of the audience by the interval; Charles
Spencer of the Telegraph described it as achieving ‘delirious comic momentum.’ For
an evening of blissfully unadulterated pleasure and entertainment, one need
look no further than this play, which, whilst being the antithesis of the dark and
macabre Macbeth, still elicits the same collective rapture from its audience.
It leaves one in paroxysms of laughter; a film may add a different perspective
to humour but comedy is meant to be experienced, and there is no more potent
way to do this than to be present at the actual event. It is at occasions like
these when a play truly succeeds, for the audience is utterly immersed in the
world presented to them, and intoxicated by its tangibility.
The theatre also possesses the ability to illuminate a
person’s life for an ardent audience. One such example of this is ‘The Dark
Earth And The Light Sky’, which explored the final years
leading up to poet Edward Thomas’ death, focusing on his turbulent relationship
with his wife Helen, his uplifting friendship with Robert Frost, and his
transition to verse. Thomas is resurrected through the actor, for this is as
close as one can get to being in his presence, his mannerisms and personality
vividly depicted in a way that simply cannot be paralleled on the screen. The film
adaption of Susan Hill’s ‘The Woman In Black’ might have set pulses racing, but
the sheer revulsion and terror that prickles along one’s back in the theatre
production, as a woman in a black bonnet glides down the aisle, is incomparable.
The theatre is an invigorating
enrichment of the mind, and has endured for centuries: the Romans revelled in
it, the Tudors celebrated it, and it continues to entertain us today. The
appeal of a mass audience watching a live event is unparalleled, and it has not
lost its significance in English culture. Whilst not carving out a lucrative
industry on the same scale as films, theatre is the sanctuary of fine drama. In
a world where many films are debased by coarse plot lines, unwarranted violence
and banal predictability, the importance of plays is perhaps greater than ever:
as the oft-quoted playwright and poet Oscar Wilde said, ‘I regard the theatre
as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being
can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.’
