The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 50

OBSERVER SUNDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 1990 60 Of sphinxes and spirals Comedy without errors Michael Covonoy hails Terry Hands's beautiful farewell to Stratford. Jcnn Perry on stage riddles in Edinburgh and London. modern dance; and the texts ware spoken and ptifutimd by Martha Grabanvs o-w-tlme partner, Bertram Ross. The dancing, by Deborah Zell end Dudley's former rtu-dents, showed the vitality of the technique evolved by Graham and her contemporaries a vitality that has been attcmiattd A HUMAN being' Is always the best answer to a riddle, including the Sphinx's. It Is the by their successors, who have Light-hearted or intense, the tagonists of Half Gods, performed by the Yume no Yuminsha company at the end 8 choreography was always expressive, hands moving from the breast outwards, flung wide in despair, resignation or aclcnowliedgernent.

Because the movements were all imbued with meaning, they were equally graphic performed by young and old. Ross, at 70, moves with humorous dignity. Rudolf Nurevev, takint the of the Edinburgh Festival last weekend. The play, based by Hideki Nods on a convoluted story by a Japanese cartoonist, a manic exercise in physical theatre. The cast of 12 actors, acrobats and dancers flipped through changes of scene and S25 i 0 character as it zapping teievi role of Dr Coppelius for the first sion channels EluuinciB or swnppinK i5 AT i comic books.

The performing ESFJC y.L stvle is a mixture of kabuki, t'll' fZ2rrn burgh Playouse, refused to make the eccentric investor ham movie-acting and Disney IT I op 8 is 3t. 'MattjfConsisimL'l)atMTm Wood as LnArmaJo in 'Love's Labour's -a THE park of Navarre shimmers like a French garden landscape of Henri-Edmond Cross, a pointillist agglomeration of autumnal leaves yellow, red, gold and brown glinting in the dense greenery of aprivate, idyllic forest. Timothy O'Brien's setting for Terry Hands's revival of Love's Labour's Lost, the director's farewell (we presume) to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, could not be more beautiful. Interdit aux femmes reads the notice by the enticing glade, where Simon Russell Beale's King of Navarre, a tubby head boy with a hidden singing talent and a propensity for sliding into ditches, convenes his court of renunciation. Women they may be without for three years, but the wine seems readily available; the blanket is spread with goodies as if fox Manet's lunch-etssurl'herbe.

The comedy proceeds in clear stages of monastic edginess, weakening resolve and playful deception. An onset of emotional responsibility is triggered by the announcement of Mir-cade, whom Griffith Jones, plus bushy white beard, presents as a sombre undertaker in the darkling wood. As usual, Mr Hands does his own lighting (with Give Morris) and never has he caught more subtly the shifting elements of poetry, mood and climatic variations. Despite a slow start, this is the best RSC Love's Labour's Lost since John Barton's, and the most magically consistent. The corruption of the court's academic insularity is ensured, not just by the imminence of the French Embassage, but by the satirical collision of the local clowns and the absurdly pedantic Holofernes, whom David Troughton invests with a surprisingly salacious energy and a funny Porter bemused by knockings; he gets his knockers in a twist.

John Wood was initially announced as Macready, but the part is now taken, somewhat cautiously, by John Carlisle. The alleged muter of modern psychological realism comes across as a self-conscious ham, while the uncouth Forrest Qohn Forster rated him 'a roaring pantaloon'), is tenaciously interpreted by Anton Lesser as a perturbed repository of colonial and artistic hang-ups. A Stratford double of exceptional interest is completed by the premiere in the Swan of Richard Nelson's Two Shakespearean Actors. This elaborates on the New York riots of 10 May 1849 when the audience at Macready's Macbeth took violent exception to cultural encroachment. Police thronged the streets surrounding the Astor Plce Opera House, bullets were fired, 34 people were killed and 100 injured.

In his journals, Macready comments mistily on the furore and reckons that, all things considered, his performance that night went reasonably well. The root of the trouble was his rivalry With the American tragedian Edwin Forrest, though Mr Nelson refrains from speculating on the part Forrest played in fanning the flames. Instead, we are treated to a sharp and witty dramatic meditation on transatlantic rivalry, the Bobby Charlton hairpiece (thinning strands vainly plastered on a bald pate). But the crucial performance is that of John Wood as Don Armado, a decrepit remnant of the Spanish Wars, who finds unexpected lustful regeneration in the arms of Alex Kingston's promiscuous wench Jaquenetta. Tearfully anxious and quivering with regret, a spindly green misfit with a Napoleonic hat and a stabbing, strangulated voice, Wood's Armado is driven by the sudden onset of uncomplicated lust.

The tone of the text is well-judged, too, so that the poetry which affects people really does just that. Ralph Fiennes's Berowne discharges his great speeches with admirable architectural control; once he deletes the dangerous Ian Richardson quiver from his voice and finally dispels his flopping quiff from his right eye, this will be the best Berowne imaginable. fellowship of mummers and the art of acting. The piece avoids the sort of nudging coyness that cripples Sartre's Kean, and the issues are topically apt in the light of both the Miss Sauon row and the Ionger-term inverted parochial cringe Nelson first articulated in Some Americans Abroad. Roger Mkhell's production) designed by Alexandra Byrne and with clever pastiche music by Jeremy Sams, compensates in style and energy for a play which none the less flags; it is too long, and its bubbling intelligence is too ungoverned.

The anachronistic introduction of Dion Boucicault (Ciaran Hinds), blabbing about The Corsican Brothers, which he did not write until 1852, in a city he did not visit until 1853, is justified as an excuse for varying the social temperature of the debate. Paul Jesson paints a lovely picture of pragmatic two-way-feeing loyalty, defecting from an offstage role of Macready's amanuensis to take his chance as Forrest was 5 ft 10 in tall, of muscular build and stentorian voice. Lesser is as his name suggests, but he fights with great agility and graduates from an obviously terrible Macbeth to a heartfelt Metamora, the Indian brave Forrest's most famous role. The last of the Wampa-noags was also the first of the great American actors. Athol Fugard's My Children! My visiting the Lyttel-ton auditorium of the Royal National Theatre from the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, is a schematic trio for a black township schoolmaster, his star pupil and a white girl whose participation in a school debate leads to political maturity.

For once, Fugard's sentimentality overwhelms his dramatic lyricism. The author's daughter, Lisa Fugard, plays the schoolgirl, and Rapaluna Sei-phemo the boy who rejects literature for action and joins the banished revolutionary party in the north (the play pre-dates Nelson Mandela's release). The matchless John Kani returns to London as the idealistic Mr who 'feeds children to his hope' and is horrendously betrayed. animation. Although the programme describes the troupe as light, satirical entertainers who prefer gestures to words, Noda's production makes Half Gods into intellectual as well as visual poetry.

The tie that links the twin girls is metaphorical as much as physical, even though clever acrobatic play is made of the stretchy tube that unites their two smocks into one garment. Their banal household slips into surreal spirals and vortices, in which characters pass themselves going down as well as up. Not all the verbalvisual puns translate, though the energy of the performers and the beauty of the set made up for occasional obscurities. The solution to the riddle was clear enough: 24 stands for two heads and four legs the Siamese twins, whose shared heartbeat is the rhythm of the tango. The emphasis on humanity was sorely missing from the Mummenschanz company's performances at Sadler's Wells.

Three Swiss mimes transform themselves into tubes, slinky toys, pillows and monsters with great ingenuity. Sometimes the transformation is an end in itself: sometimes the speechless (often faceless) creatures struggle to communicate, with the audience or with each other. The most they can achieve is dumb longing or a timid fear of rejection. People seemed happy enough to laugh at a potato's efforts to climb on to a plinth or at lavatory paper tears streaming across the stage; and the mating of an electric plug and socket caused howls of mirth. In the end though, the answer to the Sphinx's riddle cannot be a humanoidblob.

Riddles, proverbs and wise-, cracks abounded at the Purcell Room in After the Ark, a celebration of Jewish culture devised by Jane Dudley. The choreographers (Dudley, Anna Sokolow and Sophie Maslow) are veterans of American Forrest's Macduff. George Raistrick makes up for his dull Dogberry with a blissfully Anton Lesser at the Swan. Snake charm in 'Mummenschanz'. into a doddering old party.

Instead, he terrorised the picture-book villagers before being ruefully subdued in the last act. His mime, clear and economic, showed up the clumsiness of die props and decor. Because he can focus attention on the tiniest movements of his hands, he has no need of an outsize key or giant books with 'Spells' on the cover. This is a production that leaves nothing to the imagination, although the dancers' frankness had its charm. Nureyev is a skilled actor who has adapted his interpretations of favourite roles over the years, while striving not to accommodate the choreography to his ageing body.

Now that he is taking on older parts, he will have to abandon the armouring the Nureyev image that prevents him losing himself completely in a non-dancing character's body. As Dr Coppelius, the star still gets in the way of the creator. Briefing The Young Vic's financial crisis has eased. Michael Coveney argues for the long-term preservation of its 'vibrant informality. expenditure on the building of well over 120,000.

In 198384, when Thacker took over, the total grant aid to the Young Vic was 356,260, and the earned income, with donations, was 138,204. In 198990, the comparative figures were 336,764 and 763,591. So the deficit has been incurred, even though the theatre has earned more than twice as much as its grant. Lambeth Council, which supplements an Arts Council grant of 250,000 with 50,000, is threatening to withdraw the licence on the premises, which fail to meet safety regulations. Lambeth cannot afford to help with refurbishment.

Thacker and his team have restored the roof, installed new heating and seating, redecorated the offices and improved the dressing rooms; and to hell with the cost. Further essential improvements on a building that was only intended to last five years in 1970, when it opened as an independent adjunct of the National Theatre (then resident THE Young Vic, threatened with closure for want of 100,000, has been reprieved. David Thacker, the artistic director, announced last Wednesday that the required amount had been raised in just three weeks. The theatre had declared an accumulated deficit of 220,000 for the past financial year. Two years ago, the books balanced.

In this period, the Young Vic has presented some of its most successful productions: Vanessa Redgrave in Ibsen's Ghosts (which transferred to the West End) and 0'Neffl's The Touch of the Poet, plus three well-received and immensely popular Arthur Miller revivals. So what has precipitated the crisis? A touring policy that in 198788 realised a profit of 32,665, offsetting a loss at the Young Vic itself of 31,431, has gone disastrously wrong. Losses amount to more than 100,000 in die past two years while the theatre's productions have lost nearly the same amount. But these figures also include in the Old Vic across the road) will cost more than 100,000. So the appeal continues, aiming to realise 350,000 by 4 November, when Thacker hopes to re-open with a new Jim Cartwright play.

Last Wednesday, the next stage of the appeal was launched with a 25,000 donation from the Equity Fund. David Land, the chairman of the board, acknowledges that Thacker mis raised the artistic profile of the place, while perhaps neglecting the management side. The Young Vic has a small backstage and front-of-house permanent staff of 22. But the turnover of personnel is rapid, and morale not always of the highest. The theatre remains, however, one of the most interesting in the capital, chiefly because of its indefinable magic.

Invented by accident, its special atmosphere could not be easily recreated elsewhere. David Land insists that the Young Vic is chronically underfunded. His view, and Tracker's, is that, however much money is raised on appeal, the Arts Council must soon decide whether it wishes the Young Vic to continue or to close. London needs the Young Vic. It needs its seedy sense of occasion, its democratic environment, its vibrant informality.

Sponsorship, which Thacker abhors, may not be the answer. As David Land ruefully remarks, it is easier to attract sponsors for Shakespeare and Rigolctto than for new toilets and electrical re-wiring. The NFT screens over 2,000 films every year. But it's how we choose those films that makes any visit to the NFT so rewarding. Because, in any month, we generally run as many as five or six different "seasons? One might be devoted to the work of a particular actor: last year we featured, amongst others, Dustin Hoffman, Yves Montand and Charlotte Rampling, who all came along in person to talk about their work.

One might be devoted to the work of a particular director, like David Lean or John Waters, from their earliest films to their latest release. One might be devoted to a particular genre or country: in the past we've featured everything from film noir to the Spaghetti Western, France to Japan. In this fashion, the NFT shows nearly 40 different films every week. And the best way to enjoy them is by becoming a member of the British Film Institute, which will give you a wider view of cinema altogether. To join, all you need to do is decide which membership is right for you and then fill in the application form below.

As an Associate Member, every month you'll receive a priority booking form and an illustrated booklet with a synopsis on every film. You'll also receive the annual BFI Film TV Handbook. You'll get programme notes at every screening, priority booking for the London Film Festival and reduced prices for visits to the Museum of the Moving Image. As a Full Member, you get all the benefits above, plus our quarterly magazine, Sight Sound. For Discount Membership (Senior Citizens, Students etc) call our Membership Department on 071-928 3535.

wmam mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm av mmm mmm mmm Mi mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mm mm I'd like to become a member of the The British Film Institute. Please enrol me for: Associate Membership 13.50 (J Full Membership 15.75 (For what's included see above) fpHS mmjM mtwmmmmmMmmmmmii "SUBTLE. WILLIAMS BROTHERS imje rMTrtJ mm I enclose my cheque for made payable to the British Film Institute. RESONANT, FUNNY AND DELIGHTFUL" Charce mv AccessVisaArtscard No. ZOZDZE nwiii ins wi iwi.

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