Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 15

FRIDAY 6 MARCH 1998 1 5 EVENING STANDARD FIRST NIGHTfll by Nicholas de Jongh Not About Nightingales The Cottesloe Troubled waters sink £7 Paul Simon show from PHILIP FINN in New York PAUL SIMON was in hiding today as it was announced that the plug was being pulled on his first Broadway show The Capeman It is the biggest flop in the history of the Great White Way costing Simon and other investors nearly £7 million The curtain will go down on 28 March after only 68 performances The show was dogged by universally bad reviews and by protests over its subject Salvador Agron a Puerto Rican gang member who stabbed two white teenagers to death in New Kitchen in 1959 Agron 18 at the time was called by the New York press after his black cape In jail he turned to literature and writing poetry A death sentence was commuted The murders in the year West Side tale of strife between young whites and Puerto Ricans played on Broadway raised fears among many white New Yorkers over the rights supporters raised banners of joy at last decision to close days are here said Cornelius Fanelli 71 uncle of one of the victims Simon who is out of the US was devastated last night In a brief statement he said: I enjoyed the most apart from the creative process was the intensity of the audience in particular the Latino audience in responding to the Cast members were in tears is a wonderful said singer Marc Anthony so sorry it has to close so The show was troubled from the outset going through three directors reputation as a hit-maker brought it £4 million in advance bookings but that was not enough The flop tops previous record losses of £6 million suffered by a show called Big in 1996 During the protests Christine Baumbardt a member of Parents of Murdered Children said: Simon think that murder is something to sing and dance by ROBIN STRINGER Arts Correspondent SEAN CONNERY co-producer of one of the West most successful plays Art is offering a limited number of free performances to young people between the ages of 15 and 18 The move is intended to be part of a broader educational experience for students There will also be study guides for teachers workshops at the Theatre Museum and a discussion after the show with its stars Jack Dee Roger Allam and Mick Ford The scheme is being adminis- tered by the Sean Connery: Art offer for students LtupJast year to encourage play-going The initiator is Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen producer of the longest-running play The Mousetrap The free tickets under the scheme are for matinee performances on 26 March 21 May and 18 June and are available only to teachers through the foundation Interested teachers should write giving the name of their school to Susan Whiddington Mousetrap Foundation St Theatre West Street London WC2H 9NG Modern-day warning from Williams of a world without humanity THIS is one of the most remarkable theatrical discoveries of the last quarter century I came away astonished and appalled from the world premiere of this lost Tennessee Williams play left untouched to moulder in the anterooms to oblivion for 60 years Not About Nightingales based upon a real-life Philadelphia prison scandal involving hunger-strikers torture and gruesome fatalities ought to rank as one of the best theatre-documentaries With a cinematic structure an almost Jacobean sense of horror and suffering and poetic flashes of later Williams the play remains unlike anything else he wrote As a warning-message for end-of-century Britain and America whose prisons remain reception-centres for institutionalised violence cruelty and abuse Not About Nightingales has hardly dated at all Trevor fervently acted though too leisurely production ingeniously performed on a traverse stage may have the nostalgic look of a black and white period film But nothing faded or fuzzy about its impact The brutal and brutalising regimen crocodiles of prisoners shuffling in single line and each man with hands upon the man in front is brought to vituperative life Indeed the final punishment ordeal was almost too horrible to witness Richard Hoover the terrific designer has created a grim two-tiered edifice of steel prison-cages with sliding doors bunks grilles corridors and platforms Chris lighting is suffused in mistily subdued shafts of silver just little suburb of Williams imagined The central area which becomes an almost literal torture chamber is bare Opposite the prison cages stands a mountainous array of filing cabinets and a high frosted window Here at his desk sits Corin moustachioed Boss Whalen Warden in charge aspiring to charm the brassiere off Eva Crane the new stenographer he has rescued from the Depression This staging beautifully suits the Picture: ALASTAIR MUIR Shattering Prisoners finally turn against Corin menacing Warden terse though sometimes vey agitation and menace retaliates repetitive cross-cutting scenes as by impounding the men in a sweat-the action jumps between the box where four of them are literally Warden's office and prison cells cooked to death Neon captions flashed upon a screen Williams intensifies the theatrics emphasise the filmic atmosphere by making the trusty script written when he prisoner youngish Canary Jim the was only 28 does not however sue- avenging angel who plots the War-cumb to black and white simplici- murder in alliance with Eva ties It brings an alienated angry the smitten stenographer outcast into close sometimes black- Jim beautifully played by Finbar comedy view Lynch in a pall of glowering desola- The prelude with a mother tion is a true mordant Williams struggling to discover from the character who sees himself as being Warden what has befallen her pris- in coffin with a glass and part-oner son artfully reveals just how ners Sherri Parker scared Eva corrupt this island institution with in doomed love-play as the prison 3500 inmates has become Williams riot rages It is a shattering view of a pits the sadistic Warden against world from which most humanity Butch the hard- has gone man underplayed by James Black who brings the prisoners out on Ratings: adequate hunger strike good This Warden dynamically incar- very good nated by Corin Redgrave with a outstanding croaking voice a swagger of a walk poor and a body whose gestures all con- More reviews: Page 50 Mow you east afford to take the whole squad to frame this summer a.