The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 45

THE GUARDIAN Wednesday April 12 1989 ARTS GUARDIAN 45 THEATRE: A short, sharp shock from Caryl Churchill and Alan Bates and Felicity Kendal in early Chekhov Killing cousins Terry Hands is leaving the RSC. John Vidal looks at who could takes his place at the head of a huge theatrical institution The Shakesp shake-up Michael Billington at the Royal Court can lead us into temptation. I found the play darkly funny and mentally bracing: it is like one of those puzzles in which you complete a picture by linking up the dots. But its elliptical cartoon-like speed contains its own danger which is that Ms Churchill begs too many questions. Isn't there something a touch patronising about the assumption that American reverence for family would lead to connivance at killing? Isn't there something a bit odd about Phil's ability to get away with murder without any repercussions? In a longer play, one would ask questions; but the quickness of Ms Churchill hand almost deceives the eye.

Max Stafford-Clark's production, however, has a clarity of outline that exactly matches the writing and the actors imply more than they state. As the Jackson, earnest in tartan trews, and Carole Hayman, fretful in white ankle-socks, suggest they are burdened with a troubled conscience. David Thewlis, lean and ragged as a pipe-cleaner, and Saskia Reeves, solemn and aggressively quiffed, are deeply disturbing as the murderous Brits. And Allan Corduner plays a variety of roles with quick-change precision. In the theatre, the play works like a short, sharp shock: an acidly entertaining statement about mutual cultural incomprehension.

It is only when you get home afterwards that you begin to suspect it contains the kind of lurking chauvinism expressed by Dr Johnson when he remarked, "I am willing to love all mankind, except an American." buries him in Epping Forest. Back in the States the American couple are haunted by their nightmare. Vera reports the murder to a disbelieving shrink, Lance all but confesses it to a colleague in a bar. Then Phil and Jaq turn up trailing gory clouds and importing their peculiar affinity with death. Phil comes to a sticky end and Jaq takes to the road meeting born-again Christians and an itchy professor before plunging Lance and Vera once more into guilt by association.

Structurally and themati-cally, I was reminded of the movies: The Man Who Knew Too Much meets Paris, Texas. The first half is exactly like a Hitchcockian movie in which a pair of holidaying Americans turn up in Europe and find themselves in a dizzying whorl of violence. The second half is a truncated road-movie that sees rural America as a disquieting place filled with pockets of eccentricity. Simply because of its cryptic brevity, the writing is highly comic. "What have we got that's old?" asks Lance surveying some crumbling English ruin.

"Sofa. Freezer," mutters an uncomprehending Vera. Ms Churchill also pins down well the American hunger for genealogy and for some tangible past. As Phil relates how his parents are deceased and how a loony uncle in Brighton shot himself, Vera incredulously inquires, "Do you not like family?" What Ms Churchill seems to be saying is that we are all innocents abroad and that our dream-images of each other's countries fed by travel brochures and popular culture EARLY next week the governors of the RSC will meet at the Barbican to open the official debate on who will succeed Terry Hands as artistic director of the RSC in 1991. It is not a problem they have had to face before.

While there have have been rumours and rumbles that Hands was on the point of leaving or being asked to leave, there has been little real doubt that he would continue until 1991 when he will be 50 and will have been 25 years with the company. As with other British institutions the RSC has always favoured the neat approach to great matters. Peter Hall, the founder, naturally handed over to Trevor Nunn who very early chose Hands as his heir apparent and worked with him for eight years before leaving. Hands leaves no clear line of succession. The choices for the governors are many and the stakes are high.

While there is no great urgency to come to a quick decision, the debate will be long and will centre on three questions; whether it is sensible, artistically and financially, to have one person in overall command of Britain's largest company, whether to plump for youth in place of experience and who will galvanise a company with daring productions and can attract and keep the best classical actors in Britain. The RSC which Hands has worked with for so long has almost ceased to be. As arts funding has withered in the last five years so what was once a relatively cosy club which naturally drew on the best British actors and directors of its time has had to change radically to survive. Using the impeccable new logic of the marketplace, the Hands recipe has been to grow in quantity and to seek to diversify. Where the West End hit was once a nice thing to have, today and even more so in two years time it is vital.

As the right to fail and therefore experiment becomes increasingly difficult to justify commercially so the pressure on Hands from the press, his fellow directors and the company of actors has grown. Hands himself has tacitly acknowledged that running the RSC and directing are not complementary. Only last year he stepped back for a while to devote more time to administration and forward planning. One option would be to appoint an administrator with wide-ranging powers like David Aukin at the National. It would free the artistic director for matters creative but could add another layer to the hierarchy and act as a brake to visionary work.

The other option would be to return to the system of joint artistic directors. Nunn and Hands worked together for five years but the situation then was entirely different because Hands was being consciously groomed to take over completely. If the RSC runs to form and appoints from within the decision becomes awkward because there is a generational division of directors in the company. Ron Daniels, Bill Alexander and Barry Kyle, John Caird and John Barton have been with the RSC for years but they are not seen as front-runners. Adrian Noble would be a safe choice as a fine director of the classics.

A braver decision would be to look to the new generation of RSC directors such as Deborah Warner and Nicholas Hytner. Beyond the Barbican and Stratford the choice widens. Jonathan Miller is another fine director of the 'wrong' generation. The National has a good young stable but few with enough experience in the classics. There are fine, starightfor-ward directors at the Young Vic and in the provinces but a natural successor is hard to see.

There is nothing except tradition and hidebound attitudes to stop the RSC looking abroad. As 1992 approaches and isolationist, cultural barriers are seen to be falling, there would be a certain sense in looking to Europe where the most innovative theatre is currently to be found. Given British penny-pinching arts funding the best, long-used to giant, opera-sized budgets, might refuse and the likes of Peter Brook (ex-RSC anyway) and Peter Stein (how do you upstage the Schaubvirme?) would not want to be so restricted. A grand inspection of European theatre might be rewarding. Whoever takes over in 1991 will have to to reconcile the demands of an English institution with the new commercial realism which demands visible success, sponsorship by the.

shovel-load, and is currently seeing the best actors reluctant to commit themselves to long seasons of relatively poorly paid work. As Terry Hands said last year: "There is is no-one else we can look to to see what happens next. No other theatre has done what we are doing." PLAYS are getting shorter. Caryl Churchill's Icecream at the Royal Court runs a mere 75 minutes. But it packs an astonishing amount into that time.

Using shock cuts and rapid transitions, it relies on the ability of a TV and movie-trained audience to supply missing information for themselves. It is a sharp reminder of how much play-writing is changing in the video age. Ms Churchill's theme is the false view the Americans and British have of each other's countries. Americans look to us for history, tradition and cream-teas and then stub their toes against a primitive violence. We likewise are fed tourist-trap images of Disneyland, the Grand Canyon and the Everglades and then find ourselves confronting the kind of oddball solitude and religious fervour that Studs Terkel recently uncovered in The Great Divide.

The first act is set in Britain. Lance and Vera, sightseeing Americans, are cruising the tourist-spots from the Highlands to Devon and searching for family. Finally they dig up remote third cousins in East London: the boy, Phil, is a surly paranoid and his sister, Jaq, a spiky-haired drifter. But, having found the roots they were after. Lance and Vera become unwitting accomplices to murder when Phil bumps off his extortionate landlord and A wretched dusk of injustice setting of Ivanov's terrace at dusk, as meticulously described by Chekhov, has almost vanished.

In Mark Thompson's stage design it has been replaced by a bare and almost win-dowless cell, like some large prison space. The high walls seem to be built of green-white planks, the room, empty save for a park bench and workmen's dustsheets, is lit from the similarly constructed ceiling, with huge, high doors that swing mysteriously open to the sides and rear. The only relief from this Nicholas de Jongh at the Strand ELIJAH Moshinsky's production of Chekhov's rarely revived first play, to be played in repertoire with Much Ado About Nothing, greets you with a sharp shock of surprise and challenge which never quite leaves you throughout the evening. The curtain does not rise on any traditional Chekhovian garden view of a country estate. The first act He would not.

Suspended, then sacked, he fought his own case at an Industrial Tribunal and won on every count The tribunal ordered reinstatement but this has no legal force. Robertson has applied for 31 jobs but, like Cormack, he has never worked since. "I suffered the greatest depression in my life, completely dispirited and lethargic. Betty, my wife, picked me up. Financially I've lost everything but I've no regrets.

It was the only right and honest thing to do." Jim Smith, very gentle and restrained, refused to ratify false figures. He is threatened with bankruptcy and repossession. (His company had to repay the government Burgess Cooper lives in a room where the paper loops off the walls. "I told my boss I wanted to be out of the swindle. And he got me out of the swindle.

He fired me." (His company had to repay the government Neither has worked since. "All companies have got some little fiddle," said Burgess Cooper. "I wouldn't think there's a chance of employment for me or anybody like me." I feel a real sense of moral outrage and unforgiveable affront. Four just men are ruined. If Cormack took out his broken down trawler and threw himself on the mercy of the sea, he would have nothing left to lose now but his life.

Zara Lee, a beautiful 16-year-old propelled into pop celebrity as a publicity stunt, was being interviewed by No I Magazine. "Can you remember your first snog?" Zara gave her ear-to-ear beam: "Do you think up these questions?" How assured, how amused 16-year-olds are now and what wonderful teeth. If I had teeth like that I would go around biting people. The Lowdown (BBC I), a neat little documentary series for the young, was about pop stardom going pop. Very striking was the cohesive strength of the Lee family.

When the contract was not, to his mind, fair, Mr Lee reached for his solicitor "My Dad's been really good, really helpful." And never were there such devoted -sisters. "Everyone's gonna think she's totally beautiful." "That's my sister," explained Zara. "She was perfect, she was fabulous, everyone loves her." "That's my sister too." So when it all fizzled out, Zara's smile was still as wide. What a lucky girl. Just For Laughs (C 4) is the first excerpt from that surreal event, the Montreal International Festival of Comedy of which General Wolfe memorably remarked "Oh God! Oh Montreal!" The international bit is fresh and idiosyncratic not as good a swimmer as I used to be, thanks to evolution" Emo Philips) but the Canadian comedy verges on the mysterious.

There was Bowser and Blue, who sang rather a lot of songs about cats while wearing whiskers, and Les Foubrac, who hit each other slowly and speechlessly. These things, of course, would pass the long, moose-infested winter nights. It's better than going out and meeting a mad hatstand. The producers offered special thanks to the Ministry of International Relations, Quebec, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Quebec, and the Ministry of Communications, Ottawa. Sometimes I think this is a good joke.

And sometimes I just sit here and worry about it. Kendal photograph: oouolasjeffery BECK'S BIER SPONSORS THE ARTS 'OUT OF FASHION' An exhibition of photographs by NICK KNIGHT CINDY PALMANO at The Photographers' Gallery 8 Great Newport WC2. 7 April 27 May Scales 'I can do no Martin Luther JIM Cormack is a col-, ourful figure. An abounding beard in continuous peril from a great, curving pipe. An intense white face and a scarlet, woolly cap.

He was carefully pouring tar ftom a tea pot between the warped boards of a derelict trawler in Hartlepool docks. There was no inch of the boat that was not peeling, warping or weeping rust. It is, said Taking Liberties (BBC 2), the only job he's got, the only thing he owns, it is where he lives. Four years ago he was a tanker driver, detached house, two indulged sons, holidays abroad until what he calls the Faslane carry-on. Workers at the Scottish submarine base and tanker drivers were passing off pure diesel as waste oil.

It was a multi-million pound fraud and it had been going on for years. "Well," said Cor-mack, "I thought it was He told the police and he hasn't worked since. No haulage firm will employ him. He lost his house. He lost his wife.

"She said to me 'If you'd kept your mouth shut, we wouldn't be in this position' and she was damn right. There's only one losfir in this. Even the criminals are out of jail." Charles Robertson is an accountant. If they come any greyer than that, they're squirrels. As chief tax accountant with Guardian Royal Exahange he discovered that 1,700,000 tax had not been paid.

Further possible irregularities are under investigation. He says he was asked to conceal the position from the Inland Revenue. WORLD PREMERE OF 4 NEW DANCE-WORKS ferns by WitiBsferM, imHiti nitiiwi llwaMtri oimveiiiiMlrlMM uMKurHtiaMMSia niwhtirFifMr leaagBn i Nancy Banks-Smith London J. Moshinsky's production is at its strongest in creating a sense of gross, insensitive provincials carousing, drunken, anti-Semitic and repellent. They are neither farcical nor caricatured, save perhaps in the case of Nicky Henson's blotch-faced estate manager, merely lurid and extreme.

Sheila Staefel's grim red-haired moneylender, with winged hair and face as grim as hatchet, Peter Sallis as her husband in a befuddled alcoholic stupor and Cherith Mellor's spidery, scheming widow in black and false gentility, are sharply etched comic creations, kept just away from the grotesque. Their revelry and gusto may be a touch muted, but their sheer unpleasantness shines through. And at the play's emotional epicentre Felicity Kendal, pallid, wretched and quietly devastated, totters with an emotional affect which is otherwise absent. stifling uniformity is a square hole, a glass-less window cut high in the back wall, through which can be seen a passing vista of blue and white clouds, and where Ivanov's watchful wife appears. This back wall does slide back to reveal a fledgling silver birch against a white backcloth or a posed tableau of drunken party guests.

For although the play is supposed to move to another country estate and to Ivanov's study, the setting is constant. I lay stress upon these matters of stage design because they are crucial, not mere decorative asides. They are the key to an expressionistic production, which uses the set to convey Ivanov's sense of being trapped in a marriage and circumstances which he cannot escape, and a state of mind he finds equally imprisoning. This is Chekhov's first play, a mordant, mocking study of sub-aristocratic provincial Russian society in the late 19th century. It is a world whose materialism and unabashed pursuit of money finds unanswering echoes in our own undear times.

Ivanov himself is a true distillation of this spirit. For having five years ago married a Jewish girl, from whom he hoped to win a dowry and whose appeal has now vanished, he now exists in a life of debt-filled wretchedness. A postgraduate in self-pity, self-absorbed to the point of solipsism, he is viewed on a journey towards suicide, neglecting his tubercular wife for the smitten daughter of the family to whom he is indebted. The play is clear prentice work, its mood wavering be tween pathos and withering satire, its concern with Ivanov ambiguous. Does not this mercenary, humourless and compulsive philanderer, who tells his wife that she is about to die, play upon end lessly reiterated monotonous Barbican Edward Greenfield Ulster Orchestra IT IS both ironic and encouraging that over the period of the troubles in Northern Ireland music has flourished, not least in the achievement of the Ulster Orchestra.

Records over the last few years have amply demonstrated the quality of the Ulster players, notably Vernon Handley's superb prize-winning account of the Moeran Symphony, but it was good to have Handley and the orchestra in person playing in this Barbican concert as a prelude to a tour, showing very clearly that the microphone has not lied. What was disappointing, particularly with Handley on the podium, was not to have any British or Irish music but a popular middle-of-the-road programme of Brahms, Grieg and Dvorak. At least in the two main items Grieg's Piano Concerto and Dvorak's greatest symphony. No. 7 in minor we had red-bloodedly national music, and the Dvorak in par BREWED IN GERMANY.

DRUNK ALL OVER THE WORLD Emotional affect Felicity notes of futility? Moshinsky has tried to escape this sense by his dramatic staging and by casting Alan Bates as Ivanov and Felicity Kendal as his wife, when Chekhov specified that both were in their early or mid-thirties. As a result Bates's Ivanov emerges as a casualty of the male menopause, frozen in attitudes of icy despair. The Bates manner of brittle detachment and remoteness, face and body, giving but small clues to the spiritual inferno within, does not pay great dividends here. Irony, ambiguity and in- -scrutability are Bates's best keynotes and here they do not serve a hero who needs either to be sent up or made vicious. Bates does achieve at first a pompous self-dramatising grandeur, but he proceeds to anchor Ivanov in a standing pool of tranquility.

It makes theoretical good sense, but cannot give the character an exacting sense of momentum. ticular inspired a performance which powerfully brought together the atmospheric folk element and symphonic strength. Following the example of his mentor, Sir Adrian Boult incidentally a nice nod in the direction of the Boult centenary this month Handley keeps to the old tradition of having the violins divided to left and right. With a string band one desk less per section than in most orchestras, with 14 firsts, that would quickly have exposed the more any thinness of sound. Instead with Handley a meticulous balancer of instruments and sections, the result was sat-isfyingly full with the bonus of extra clarity.

The exposed violins were as sweet as one could want in the soaring melodies of slow movement, and the great cello theme of the second subject in the finale was richer than I have often known it, even with only eight instruments. Fine as the string section was, there was much to praise in the playing of the rest, notably the brass. This was a programme which sorely tested the first horn, but any minor blemishes were totally cancelled out by the warmth and artistry of his playing. THE DANCE MU8C LONDON rniiMmiTHiM of the year DANCE THEATRE Food, travel, Where should you go to eat freshly architecture, skinned eels? What's it like and books, in inside the Theatre De La Monnaie? a magazine Who wrote about the undoing of women? that only deals Find out now in Opera Now. with OPERA.

Read about We can tell you what's on, the OPERAS where, and what it's about, months they'll be before the newspapers. reviewing here If you'd rather know now, next month, buy Opera Now. this month. 4 OUEN EUZABETH HAIL BffiCt HI I2S 80S (ikB Nm HntGdttrcnflariMtm (wmtMintii) jM.