London Calling with Champagne Charlie Dateline: 9th February
Theatre and politics are and have always been inevitably intertwined. Whether, it's the funding relationships that bring us the 1st taste of work by Stoppard, Pinter etc.
Or in the themes it covers from government corruption, the Iraq war to the US presidency. All of these themes were played out at in works at The National Theatre and the Royal Court just this year - to great success.
This week however, London was rocked - literally with an astounding work taking on the middle east crisis as a comedy driven drama - head on at the Royal Shakespeare Company's London 'home' - the Barbican Theatre; a giant multi million pound theatre complex in the heartland of the capital's financial district.
'Plonter' or 'tangle' features Israeli actors playing Palestinians and Palestinians playing Israelis as all aspects of the conflict were talked in this 130 minute assault on the senses.
Comedy driven, this drama is written and directed by Israel's leading young director Yael Ronen and her team drawn from the 150 cast member Cameri Theatre Company. 'I had the luxury of six months to work with the cast to build up the story.' She told me after that nights sell out performance. 'Clearly neither side are reading the reality - right'. Even for me it was a discovery of my views and how they stand out or might be incorrect.' She added.' The comedy didn't have to be added. Its there, it has to be because real life is like that. It's not a 2 sided situation there are many sides - a play or a politician couldn't see it. But the media is happy as are some of the public to see it in black and white. That's the simple way. Even when Vanessa Redgrave came in she told me how wonderful it was and how I had got the Palestinian side so well captured. I kept trying to think if she had bothered to see any of the rest of the play.'
The black and white nature of media's views and the reporting black out on the recent violence have created huge interest in the play with the run selling out and generating an inordinate amount of press for a show without the traditional 'star features' or name filled cast.
'People in England unlike America hide in the closet about who or what they are. In the US they are upfront. When Tom Stoppard came to see my direction of
'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' he was quite open about the way he was torn and at the same time proud of being Jewish but that's something he'd never speak of in England.' She as produced of the shows success in places like South Korea and Germany.
Yael insisted that she likes to mix genres so alongside the out and out comic laughs is a clever intertwining of the Theatre of the Absurd. This reveals itself most blatantly with a series of scenes prompted by the construction of a section of the notorious security fence through a family's living room, forcing them to seek permission and to go to ridiculous lengths to convince their 'in house' border guard to go to the toilet. This is counterbalanced by the vicious way suffering is exploited for political ends.
Ironically the director believes the situation has became too radical to solve in an outright way but she just hopes this comedy drama will open the dialogue off stage as it does on.
Photo Credit: Gadi Dagon
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