Blood and Gifts, National Theatre, NT Lyttelton, September 2010

On September 9^th, 2001 Ahmed Shah Massoud (aka The Lion of Panjshir) was assassinated by two suicide bombers — Al Qaeda agents posing as journalists. Two days later more suicide bombers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The rest is history, as they say . . . meaning history that we remember. What we don’t remember is what led up to these events in 2001, and more particularly what led up to the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan in 1989 to 1991, and the subsequent evacuation of American interest in the country. That’s what this new play by J T Rogers is about.

Lloyd Owen for the CIA and Adam James for MI6, photo by Richard Hubert Smith

The characters are fictitious, but true to history, and various historical figures, such as the Northern Alliance leader Massoud, and the viciously fundamentalist warlord Gulbudddin Hekmatyar, are mentioned in passing. I particularly liked Lloyd Owen as the young CIA agent James Warnock, who understood what was going on, and was able to some extent to influence the raising and spending of American funds. His British counterpart, MI6 agent Simon Craig, was flamboyantly portrayed by Adam James as a brilliant chap who had no money to spend, even on his own transportation, and fell rather too easily into an irascible mood, catalysed by alcohol. His criticisms of Mrs. Thatcher’s tight-fisted policy with money for MI6 were trenchant, and made a stark contrast to the well-lubricated CIA machine, where the issues were of policy rather than lack of interest by the powers at home. The CIA tried calling the shots and circumventing the ISI (Pakistan’s InterServices Intelligence) by supporting another warlord, rather than Hekmatyar, but in the end Craig was right about not trusting anyone, “All this — it’s chess, Jim. Never good to get attached to one particular piece”. We found that out the hard way following the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and we ought to realise it now with the ground prepared for a second Taliban takeover.

The CIA with the Mujahideen, photo by Richard Hubert Smith

Among the large cast, Demosthenes Chrysan was very good as the fictitious Abdullah Khan, an Afghan warlord who looked rather like the real life Ismail Khan, one-time governor of Herat. His son Saeed was well played by Philip Arditti, and Matthew Marsh played the KGB agent Dmitri Gromov as a very sympathetic character. The ISI head, Colonel (later Brigadier) Afridi was played as decisive and smug by Gerald Kyd, leading an organisation that was, and still is, trying to hold Pakistan together by promoting Islamists to fight battles around their borders, but it’s a doomed strategy, just as was the American strategy of supporting Islamist extremists against the Soviet Union. You feed a monster to fight your perceived enemies, but when they are defeated the monster turns on you to feed its increased appetite.

Good direction by Howard Davies, clear simple designs by Ultz, and atmospheric music by Marc Teitler. If you don’t really know the chain of events, this play is a good history lesson, and if you do remember all this stuff, it’s well worth seeing if only to feel yourself trapped within the frustrations of the secret agents. They try to avoid being pawns of the ISI, as well as battling the personal frustrations of being barely in contact with their pregnant wives, yet unable to share the pain that their postings put them in. The play ends as 1991 turns into 1992 and the Americans leave for home — I await the sequel.

Performances continue until November 2.

After the Dance, National Theatre, NT Lyttelton, June 2010

“I love you, now change” is not a line in this play, but the young Helen lives this cliché, and at first seems to make it believable. Within a month she’s fallen in love with David Scott-Fowler and manages to get him to stop the drinking that’s destroying his liver. Her determined superficiality shatters her fiancé Peter Scott-Fowler, upends David’s 12 year marriage, and destroys his wife Joan. While these people wear the masks of gaiety and jest, and seem almost to have become their masks, reality persists beneath the surface, and the only person to fully comprehend it is John Reid, who lives with David and Joan in their spacious London flat as a self-confessed court jester, with a strong penchant for the drinks tray.

David with Helen

In the end it is John who tells David the truth about himself that kills the incipient marriage to Helen, and returns him to his former life, now as a widower. In the meantime we are treated to superb acting. Adrian Scarborough is brilliant as John, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Nancy Carroll are entirely convincing as the ever cool David and his wife Joan, who loves him but gaily pretends to be just as cool, so as not to bore him. Faye Castelow portrays Helen as a bossy little ingénue, and John Hefferman is a rather edgy Peter, who tries to take life seriously, but doesn’t quite succeed.

David playing Avalon for Joan

What I loved about this fine production by Thea Sharrock, apart from the spacious and elegant designs by Hildegard Bechtler, was the music. Certainly the play features the 1920s foxtrot ‘Avalon’ towards the end of each act, but the melody was pinched from Puccini, albeit in a disguised form, and in this production we also hear the original. For those who know it, this is powerfully suggestive because it’s the music behind E lucevan le stelle from the opera Tosca. Cavaradossi sings it before he dies, knowing that these are his last moments, and it was played here just before Joan goes out to the balcony on her own, never to return, and again at the end when David decides to return to the drinking that will destroy him.

This riveting play by Terence Rattigan had the misfortune to open in June 1939, shortly before war was declared, and when the country’s mood rapidly changed it was taken off. So it failed to enjoy a good run, and Rattigan left it out of the collected plays he published in 1953. It’s been somewhat ignored for that reason, but this production and cast do it full justice, and I recommend booking tickets before word gets out.

Performances continue until August 11^th — for details click here.

Mother Courage, National Theatre, November 2009

This play by Bertolt Brecht — Mother Courage and her Children — was written very swiftly after the German invasion of Poland that year, but is set in the period of the thirty-year war from 1618 to 1648. It deals with a shrewd canteen woman who follows the troops across northern Germany, making a living from the business of war. At one point there is an ending of hostilities, which distresses her since she has just stocked up with provisions, whose value will rapidly fall. But in fact the war carries on, and the action is contained in twelve years during the middle of the war, represented in twelve scenes. An important technique used by Brecht is his Verfremdungseffect (alienation effect), which he says “prevents the audience from losing itself passively and completely in the character created by the actor, and which consequently leads the audience to be a consciously critical observer”. This is achieved by the use of very simple props and scenery, often named by placards, and using the same actors in varied roles. It works in the sense that we are observers who remain unmoved by some of the terrible events that occur. Nor indeed do we feel any sympathy with Mother Courage herself, who was brilliantly played by Fiona Shaw. Her wily toughness comes over as part of her personality, rather than a survival mechanism, but who is to say? Her mute daughter Kattrin was well portrayed by Sophie Stone, and her younger son, the simple but honest Swiss Cheese was beautifully played by Harry Melling.

There is not a single character for whom one really feels much sympathy, and the dark side of war is ever-present. The play was well directed by Deborah Warner, with songs by Duke Special and ‘musicscape’ by Mel Mercier. The fine translation was by Tony Kushner, and the narrator’s voice was that of Gore Vidal, whose extremely bleak view of war, seeing it as a way of balancing the budget, was quoted in the programme. It was rather odd to have a variety of accents, American for Vidal, Irish for both Mother Courage and Stephen Kennedy as the chaplain, and English for most of the cast, but in some ways this conveyed a sense of internationalism to business carried on by other means, and aided the Verfremdungseffect desired by Brecht.