The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 60

10 the Observer Review Sunday 1 7 December 1995 the Critics 'If the Ghost of Christmas Future were to appear at my bedside with a sawn-off shotgun, I couldn't speak -a word in favour 'His shoulders are narrow, his pectorals soft; he appears to have no waist and, most disconcertingly, no buttocks' 'An inflated, larger even than life Pavarotti impersonation, waving his hankie and gobbling spaghetti' 'One of those people whose fascination with ideas tends to obscure the. fact that they are not connected to the earth at any point' A week in the arts Eight days to Christmas: The cinema is fullof turkeys; the circus is coming to town; and Simply Red cast a festive glow Philip French on Three Wishes Andrew Porter on Belle Vivette John MICHAEL The a old daze In a Prozac-swallowing, coke-sniffing age, Sondheim GOVENEY This really wasa milestone: the first new play at. the National, the debut of a dazzling, witty -playwright, a glorious series of 'takes' on the philosophical nihilism of Beckett, the 'theatre as life' of Pirandello, acting itself, even John Osborne ('Don't clap too hard, it's a very old world'). In his debut RNT production, director Matthew Francis is blessed in the coruscating sparkiness of Simon Russell Beale as Guildenstem. and the -stooge-Tike innocence of Adrian Scarborough as the other one ('Eternity's a terrible thing: where 's.

it going to Alan Howard is the eccentric Player 'We're more of the blood, love and rhetoric school' -whose troupe becomes a metaphorical conduit of the Hamlet action. By the third act." though; the conceit has worn thin and the sheer length of the play begins to conspire against its ingenuity. This was always the case, but Stoppard's own brilliant 1 990 film version and a heavily politicised production by the immigrant Russian Jewish company Gesher, in Tel Aviv, have revived my admiration for an astonishing theatrical debut The RNT's produc-. tion tells me, and I imagine you, nothing new-, apart from confirming Russell Beales continuing progress-to the front rank; Byron's Cain (1821) is an unexpected pleasure in the Pit. John Barton, who believes with Goethe, Sir Walter Scott (the piece's dedicatee) and Schiller that this is a great work, has tucked arid trimmed the text and topped and tailed it with direct quotation from Genesis.

His careful and unpretentious production clears the stage for a riveting duet between the rebellious Cain and the magnificent grey wTaith, the angel Lucifer. Excluded with the family from Eden. Cain refuses to worship Jehovah and is ripe for abduction through the Newtonian universe, and into the Realm of Death. Although, as the Bvron scholar John Jump has said, the verse aspires to the condition of prose, one is continuously delighted by the lucidity of the arguments and the sudden shaft Intriguingly desperate: Sheila Gish Sam TajflOP on MicK Hucknall loses his effect of glorious expression. The debate is joined superbly by Marcus D'Ami-cq, inquisitive and impressionable as Cain, and ohn Carlisle as a beaky, authoritative Lucifer, a part for which he was palpably destined.

Ten years after Cam Dumas pere chronicled another tale of human fallibility without any moral purpose whatsoever. His historical melodrama La TourdeNesleil 832) has been rendered by Charles Wood as The Tower, a style-free mishmash of wild sentiment, sexual appetite and blood-letting among the fourteenth-century French aristocracy, with many a corny old cry of 'Cest toif, 'Cest moiT, 'Acesoirf, 'OuF and, best of all, 'A demain, demon)! Yes, look out, she's behind you, 'she' being the lustrous Sinead Cusack as the insatiable villainess Queen Marguerite de Bourgogne, a serial sex killer who lures young men to the dank tower by the Seine, seduces them, slits their throats and dispatches them in the ooze. An. adulteress and a parricide, she has also borne two children by the sol: dier Buridan (pJayed with suppurating relish by Adrian Dunbar). He blackmails her into giving him political office and they take over the country.

The boys are, respectively, a captain of the Queen 's Guard (Ben Miles) besotted with his own mum, and an tmwittog victim (John Light) of her bloocl fust in the first act. The revelations are en jdyabry protracted in Howard Dayies's black and elegant production, the whole an exercise in the higher tosh like Webster without genius or poetry -unredeemed by the musical and theatrical qualities of Les Miserables. The latter's designer, John Napier, has provided a set of ramps and grilles around the tower which is stuccoed with male torsos and buttocks. The events are underpinned with a spooky, screeching score by Jonathan Dove. A good year for new plays stutters to a halt with Williani Gaminara's According to Hoyle at Hampstead, a synthesis of elements in two chap-pish comedies: Patrick Marber's Proof that Newt is off his head comes from his obsession with dinosaurs This is because he is one of those people whose fascination with ideas tends to obscure the fact that they are not connected to the earth at any point.

The most celebrated illustration of this is Gingrich's obsession with 'information technology. On 5 January- this year; testifying to the 1 louse Ways and Means Committee, he proposed a hew. means-tested welfare benefit laptop computers. 'Maybe we need a lax credit', he mused, Tor the poorest Americans to buy a Any signal we can send to the poorest Americans that says; "We're going into a twenty-first century, tliird-waye information age, and so are you, and we want to carry you with its," begins to change the NaUghtOn on Newt Gingrich Photograph by Neil Libbert Company Donmar. WC2 (01 71-369 1 732); Roseficrantzand Guildenstem Am Dead RNT Lyttelton, London SHI (01 71 -928 2252); Cain RSC Barbiatn Pit, London EC2 (0171-638 8891); The Tower Almeida, London 'l (01 71 -359 4404): According to Hoyle Hampstead, London NW3 (01 71-722 9301) has.gone in 12 short months, from the heights of electoral triumph to the point tvhere the Republicans how: perceive him as an albatross.

This transformation has been wrought by second-wave media revelations which suggest that Gingrich is ethically as well as drtairnferentially challenged. He hectors people about family values, yet abandoned his first wife when she was diagnosed as having cancer. He lectures America about the need for transparency, yet stipulated oral sex during a colourful extra-marital career so that he could 'truthfully' claim not to have slept with his inamoratas. He castigates Congress for its-endemic corruption, yet is now hinisef under investigation forfinancial irregularities by a government-appointed lawyer, lie comes on as the small-town boy who dared to point out that the federal emperor had no clothes, yet stoops to blaming social welfare system fertile savage murder of a pregnant woman whose killer ripped the baby from her womb. The man is a pariah, but at least he is now unlikely to become President.

St) praise the -Lord and pass die bloody-champagne. Theatre Tokens make a unique. Christmas gift, and are available at most branches of VVH Smith, through Ticketmaster 0171 344 4444, or from our 24 hourTokenline 0171.240 8800 poker play, Dealer's Choice, and Kevin Elyot's time-leaping, male friendship fracas, My Night Witli Reg. Infinitely less good than either, Gaminara's play (his second), direct' ed by Robin Lefevre on a classic kitchen set by Sue Plummet, nonetheless has its moments. The acting of Jonathan Coy as a gallery owner, Rob Stephen Sondheim's Company 1970).

with a-witty, astringent book by George Punh. is touted as a landmark musical and a vrv social document. Robert 'Bobby baby. Bobby booby. Robbie' as the chorus chimes in consort is a heterosexualh- active but emotionally retarded New Yorker.

His surprise trdrry-tifth birthdav party is punctuated with scenes of love" and disaffection among his friends three girls and five married couples. The person he is closest to is himself. There's a curious sense of letdown in Sam Mendes's sensitive but patchily performed Donmar revival. Sophistication and chic are not what the' were. if we're coming into the Nineties, with nev references to Prozac and habitual coke-sniffing, would Bobby's aloneness really be such a problem for anyone? Company how strikes me and I saw.

and was knocked out by. Hal Prince's 1972 London staging as brilliant but with nothing much to yy. The perfection of music lyrics and shimmering city sounds creates a fine tension between tonal cohesion and urban alienation. But that's Bobby is a hollow man made mar-ginalh- interesting by the The Mendes version is very much post-Six Degrees oj Separation in atmosphere the mnhical soda resonance has been drained from that city now. Adrian Lester's Bobby is an angst-driven.

regular black guy whose emotional crisis is triggered by a realisation that he expects too much and offers too little in his relationships. Origmally Larry Kert projected a white city slicker whose self-centredness seemed nTisogynist and homosexual: but he was. above all else, origin: Lester's listless. Mendes restores both a song ('Marry Me a Little'; and a passage of dialogue which imply ingrained sexual confusion, if not exactly ambiguity. lark Thompson's abstract design of flashing coloured squares is fine -on the wall but disconcerting on the floor, where tiie quilted carpet effect Royal National Theatre by Ben jonson "Michael outrageously funny" i EVENING STANDARD DRAMA AWARDS 1995 MICHAEL GAMBON i BEST ACTOR i MATTHEW WARCHUS BESt DIRECTOR "Simon Russell BRILLIANT" "A triumph for the National" cvertng Standard "You will never see a better production of this play" DTI S'JDChj Box Office 0171-928 2252 First Call 0000 IS Dec at 7.15p 20 Dec v.

2G0d-i i NATION A 1 VolpoDie undermines the merely adequate choreography of Jonathan Butterell. No sensational Donna McKechnie dance solo this time. I fear that Sheila Gish's version of 'The Ladies Who Lunch', while intrigu-ingiy desperate, lacks the steaming, gorgonesque assurance and technical finesse of Elaine Snitch. Furth's playlets of poisonous intimacies stand up weU they sound like expanded New Yorker cartoons -though they could survive cutting. Bobby's friends encroach along a galleried vvaUcwrayatthecirclelevel, goading him like a Greek chorus then splintering into their own scenarios: the dieting couple, beanti- Missing ingredients of deep-dyed class and New York pizazz ensure the absence, too, of a killer punch fully done by Rebecca -Front and Give Rovve; the tense wedding breakfast with Sophie.Thompson's brilliant cameo and delivery of 'Getting Married Today': the vocal conv petence of Liza Sadovy's chattering first-timer with a joint; the forlorn post-coital farewell.

of the airline stewardess (Hannah lames). Finally. Bobby sings of 'Being Ingeniously. Lester makes you feel at this point that he has grown through the evening with little reason for doing so. For all Mendes's intelligent handling of the material, the missing ingredients of deep-dyed class and New York pizazz ensure the absence, too, of a definitive killer punch.

Several years before Company arrived, in town, Tom Stoppard made his name at the Old Vic with Rosencrantz and Guildenstem Are Dead U7), and the sight of John Stride and Edward Petherbridge tossing coins as the hapless courtiers entered modern theatrical historv. Cheer up. folks. Things are bad. I admit.

Christmas, with its ersatz cheer and exorbitant pricetag, is almost upon us. Rupert Murdoch still lives and breathes. The Northern Ireland peace process is a. dead duck. Michael Heseltirtes hair continues to grow.

John Sehvyn Glimmer has not yet succumbed to BSE The proprietors of Camelot are. as et. still at liberty- as, indeed, is the Home Secretary. You have not won the lottery, and the numerous fivers which your correspondent invested in Mr Playful at 8-1 in the 1.45 at Exeter last Wednesday now line the pockets of a rurf accountant, owing to the failure of that accursed animal to appreciate the weight of its responsibilities. But even in th depths of my depression, 1 say unto you: bear up, lor veri iy things couki Iw vrse.

you say, 'in what way exactly? To which 1 reply: Newt Gingrich could be President of the" I Jnited States. It is only 12 months since even' commentator in that benighted land (and sonie in this) thought him a' racing certainty to succeed Bill Clinton, who al the time wassiaggeringfrom onecrisisto the next openly derided as a lame-duck President, enmeshed at home in scandal over his financial arid other altairs. and unable abroad to orchestrate a coherent policy on Bosnia. iingrich. in contrast, was die architect of an electoral landslide which hud swept control of the Congress from the Democrats for the first time ialiving memory.

1 le was the inspiration behind the Republicans' 'Contract with America' as well as -being the new Speaker of the House ofRepresentativesanda uiumphalist vowing to destroy "welfarism in 1 00 days. He sas a Renaissance man whose videotaped lectures on ON LIFE, No Newt is good news ert Glenister as a wannabe writer and Trevor Cooper as a plump actor cheesed off with The fi and moving into stand-up, is excellent. The host, Chris, is oddly played by Nick Dunning as a frightened rabbit caught in the headlights. Chris precipitates a suicide by installing an unseen girlfriend. Hoyle's identity like that of the play, remains indeterminate.

for renewing American civilisation Ls a programme of -honeymoons in space' (I am not. making this up). 'Imagine weightlessness and its he gibbers, 'and you will understand some of the In fact, this notion of weightless copulation is a longstandingGmgrich obsession, possibly due to the fact that he is.himself circumferentially challenged. At any rate, he first essayed the idea in an earlier book, Window of Opportunity, alongside an equally radical idea that the US should focus on 'preventive medicine and good health' by offering Medicare recipients $500 for not going to the doctor But perhaps the clinching proof that the Speaker of the House is off his head comes from his obsession with dinosaurs which, though perfectly normal in five-year-olds, is in grown men often a prelude to insanity. 'Why not aspire, 'he argues in To Renew Anwica, 'to build a real lurassic Park? Wouldn't that be one of the most spectacular accomplishments of human history? What if we could bring back extinct I le specifies 'people interested in dinosaurs' as an example of who might benefit from his proposals for revolutionising American education, and boasts that he has a Tyrah- -uiosaurus Rex skull in die-Speaker's off ice on Capitol Hill Now of course as anyone who lived tlirough the later Hacksaw years knows only too well mental stability is nut a prerequisite for high office.

And Ronald Reagan was President for eight years, duringmost of which he could not have told you the time of day. So we should not be too sur-, prised that it was not Newt's obvious loopiness which has brought him' down. But 'down he most assuredly 'Renewing American Civilisation' were required viewing for Washington's governing class, a distinguished author able to command a $4.5 million advance from Rupert Murdoch's publishing outfit and an inspiration to reactionary fruitcake in Britain. The leading confection in this context course, Baroness Hacksaw. When Newt's book, To Renew America, came out earlier this year, the lady reviewed it for the Wall Street loumaL The lesson of Gingrich's triumph, she maintained, was that 'conservative governments generally come unstuck because they are not conservative enough'.

She went on to hope 'that British conservatives will raise their sights and leam the lessons from America. Reading To Renew. America vyould be a useful induction course for Taking his cue from this, lohn Redwood then sought an audience with Newt who brought in his political and management team'so that the Vulcanite 'could see what we have done and how to export our Redwood, however! was a mite less impressed than the Baroness. '1 he said cautiously -upon emerging froth the Presence, 'that Newt Gingrich is a.grear inspi-. ration for American'conservatives and shows us how, in our own British way and style, it is possible to enthuse people with conservative values and But I don't think you can simply pick up and decant the Newt Gingrich agenda in Smart lad.

that Redwood, could go far. for what he had discerned, albeit dimly, is what most of us have known' for at least two years, namely that the current Speaker of the louse of Representatives is- how shall 1 put it? -one or two planks short of a policy. The fact that the poorest Americans do not pay any tax. and would, therefore not benefit from a tax credit, seemed to escape him entirely. He also ignores the fact that most poor Americans would not know what to do with a laptop computer even if the government gave it to them' gratis.

The writer Gibson recently described how, during the LA riots of 1992, he had watched a store being looted of hi-fi equipment, video recorders and television sets until everything that was not bolted down had been removed. Next door was a computer shop which remained completely untouched, despite the fact thafits windows were piled high with Apple PowerBooks and other goodies. 'I wanted to tell he said, 'that they 'were looting the wrong store. I'm fond of the idea that the minorities and the poor can be empowered by this technology, but I don't see it happening in the real As a refugee from diat of course, such considerations do not trouble Newt, in To Renew America he explains how the recently-downsized (redundant) worker can rebuild his life with a laptop, 'Say you want to learn batik because a new craft shop has opened at the mall and the owner has told you she will sell some of your work. first, you check in at the "batik station" on the Internet which gives you a list of You may get a' list of recommended video or audio tapes that can be delivered to your door the next day by Federal Express.

You may prefer more personal learning system and seek an apprenticeship with the nearest batik hi less than 24 hours you have launched yourself on.a new Among the Speaker's oilier ideas.