The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 25

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH FRIDAY JUNE 27 1997 25 ARTS How will Michael Jackson shake up the TV station where he takes over next week? Maggie Brown discovers his plans in store for Channel 4 Picture: ROGER BAMBER nation) Many of Channel staff are edgy with good reason In the past few days Jackson has been meeting commissioning editors individually to discuss their approach and plans In a preparatory move seen by some as a sign of how much of the bureaucatic Birtist approach Jackson absorbed in the past 10 years of working there he has asked each commissioner to write a short mission statement For it has also become abundantly clear that Michael absorption in lobbying to stave off privatisation meant that bigger questions such as how Channel remit should be modernised and advanced into the next century were barely addressed Grade also seemed to lose touch with its output as the last-minute panic over the spoof current affairs series Brass Eye demonstrated Jackson plans to introduce a systematic rigorous review of all Channel programmes He sees himself as a conservative revolutionary taking the channel back to its original aim of appealing to and interests not generally catered for by Channel and to foster the new and experimental in television think those are the watchwords now as they were 15 years he says question is how you interpret them now We have a new government close to the millennium entering the digital age of TV but the purpose remains the Jackson arrives at Channel 4 at a golden moment programme budgets have been boosted by £40 million to more than £300 million (with more to come in 1998) as the hated payments from Channel 4 to ITV are phased out The new government has a far greater interest in encouraging public service television There will be less emphasis on imported American shows more investment in primetime British programming the end of the day this channel will be remembered for what it puts back into British production and for the talent it encourages that comes from he says think the got a big future It's got a mission got things to say that can't be said at the WHEN Michael Jackson held a drinks party last week to say hello to everyone who will now work for him at Channel 4 those who stood next to him as he made a brief non-commital speech noticed with amazement that his hands were shaking And that in subsequent conversations the former director of television at the BBC seemed shy After nearly a decade when Michael red braces red socks Havana cigars comic one-liners a tendency to a messy personal life and extravagant love of ocean-going yachts have set the scene 39-year-old Jack-son can only be a complete shock to the station He cuts a very different figure but one far more in tune with its raison On first acquaintance Jack-son thin and slightly stoop- ing seems self-effacing During his past month of enforced from the BBC he was more likely to be found relaxing in a pure white T-shirt in his home territory of Notting Hill London than hob-nobbing with media moguls But the quiet exterior conceals a highly competitive shrewd operator As he has risen like a rocket through the ranks of television from media student to youthful independent producer to his £400000 job at the pinnacle of Channel 4 he has learnt to control a tendency to blush and begun to relax under pressure from the press John Birt director-general of the BBC valued him highly as a focused very person and sent him away last year on a high-powered business school course in preparation for top management When Jackson took control of BBC1 last summer some producers feared he would have little real interest in the more populist shows His interest in gardening programmes or Animal Hospital was thought to be minimal But as one executive producer confirmed it was quite the opposite asked us in for one-to-one chats wanted our views on how we saw BBC1 developing He told me never to be afraid of just picking up the phone to him if I had a good idea People at the BBC were devastated he was Conservative revolutionary: Michael Jackson wants to go back to the original brief to be innovative and find new ways to fulfil it HOW THE SCHEDULES WILL weekend is to his taste remains to Output had been identified as and changes are already under here with more to come 4 has a relatively new commissioning editor (ex-Late Show) an autumn of serious well-crafted documentaries after dissatisfaction with the scrappy Walls now axed Jackson is to demand a reinvented artsreview programme and a great deal of attention to this cultural area There has been a lack of European input DRAMA Expect a hard look at the way Channel 4 has concentrated on big expensive productions Shows such as Alan Melissa Dennis Karaoke and Cold Lazarus may be consigned to history Jackson is expected to steer Channel 4 towards low-cost contemporary serials with longer runs and using fresher talent This Life which he pioneered while controller of BBC2 and commissioned from Tony World Productions is seen as the hot property of 1997 and precisely what Channel 4 ought to have been doing Brookside Channel key soap NEWS CURRENT AFFAIRS Channel 4 News's unchanging format is bound to be examined Its executives have been rattled by the way (Channel) 5 News including the 60-second manifesto dedicated to one issue has attracted younger viewers The Big Breakfast acknowledged to have run out of energy and originality last year after a failed relaunch is now showing some signs of life after another feeds on contemporary social issues but can collapse into melodrama It is currently going through a dull patch with a storyline about euthanasia Jackson is not thought to be a fan of the programme or of producer Phil Redmond whose company also makes its teenage soap Hollyoaks But he sees Channel 4 Films as the standard deserving expansion Expect more adult cartoons YOUTH PROGRAMMES Jackson attack on The Girlie Show does not mean a farewell to irreverence or alternative programming pioneered by The Word He is a huge fan of Eurotrash and has problem with rude programmes as long as they are innovative distinctive in their own way and are good He is also well-versed in scheduling themed events though whether the forthcoming Queer TV LOOK prepared full of mulled-over insights about the role television plays in modern life But ominously for Channel 4 the speech also contained forthright criticism of its going to happen to the young thugs who break into a high -rise flat only for their intended victim to jump over the balcony The piece creates a haunting impression of urban alienation selfobsession and pre-millennial be seen ARTS weak way Channel preparing Without expected weekly to pay broad noticeable he has been known to com- mission a second series before the first has been shown as he did recently with Jonathan Creek A natural listener rather than talker Jackson has even mastered the art of giving speeches a rare one last year to the Royal Television Society was as with everything he does meticulously REVIEWS appetite for exploitative lager-lout television epitomised by Channel 4's Girlie Shoic (now dead in the water its commissioning editor has tendered his resig- tension also an exceptional company that includes Linus Roache Timothy Spall Desmond Barrit Euan Bremner and Liz Smith At the end the 15-strong cast take their seats in the auditorium and applaud the A spot of pre-millennial tension Maids malady with audience on the stage There is an element of mockery here just as Daldry seems to be mocking us with this tantalising of a show Is it too much to hope for a complete meal before he bows out at the Court? Until tomorrow Tickets: 0171 565 5000 CHARLES SPENCER Others confirm that he makes decisions swiftly with efficiency watches everything And although people think TV is a backbiting industry what he tells Theatre The Maids Donmar Warehouse by the bed heads bowed as if at some sacred altar Next thing you know though the game has begun and Claire is jumping on the mattress stripping off her uniform and gyrating in a sexual frenzy She soon starts playing the mistress making more stolid Solange kiss her high-heels with more than a hint of the dominatrix Solange (answering to the name Claire) initially responds obediently but then climacti-cally rebels her rubber-gloved hands raised to strangle her superior This THIS is the lowborn French criminal-cum-playvv right Jean macabre three-hander penned in the 1940s and picturing two implicitly bisexual chambermaids who are working themselves up to a murder They ritualisti-cally fantasise and dress up in their domineering fine dresses whenever she goes out In this sometimes disturbing touring production directed by John Crowley the master bedroom looks immaculate at first sumptuous double bed has just been made counterpane tucked in pillows smoothed ready for her return When we first see her maids (Niamh Cusack and Kerry Fox) they are standing you to your face is what he thinks There are no snide remarks planted with other people which you only hear about His programme judgment is highly respected lady turns out to be a routine the pair enact repeatedly This production's strength is the clarity with which it charts the shifting interactions as they slip between pretending games and brutal reality in David highly stylised translation The various implications of Genet's scenario are brought out lucidly enough too hether you see this as a vision of anti-Catholic or class revolution or as a portrait of suppressed lesbian desires The most interesting suggestion here is that the maids are sexually abused youngsters obsessed with and simultaneously angry at Our Lady She is superbly played by Josette Simon who arriving home in a suspicious mood moves mercu-rially between frostiness and alarmingly sexual clutches But too many of the personality switches seem schematic and superficially acted out Theatrics are a crucial part of Piran-dellian puzzle but frankly they can also get damnably tiresome Tickets: 0171 369 1732 KATE BASSETT THE one regret about Stephen immensely successful reign as artistic director of the Royal Court is that he has found so little time to stage plays himself This is only his sixth production since he took command four years ago and it lasts a mere 30 minutes He has of course been busy establishing the Court in two West End theatres while its Sloane Square home is revamped He has also presided over the discovery of a remarkable roster of young and provocative writers Yet when one remembers his great productions An Inspector Calls and The Kitchen it is hard not to feel cheated And soon he will be lost to the theatre when he begins a new career as a film directorproducer This Is a Chair written by Caryl Churchill and staged as part of Lift puts one in mind of the surrealist painter Magritte He would produce a meticulous painting of an inanimate object say an apple and give it an entirely contradictory caption such as is a In This Is a Chair Churchill and Daldry play the same disconcerting game Each brief scene is preceded by doomy tabloid television music and a graphic announcing some Opera SiegfriedNorwegian Opera Theatre Royal Norwich But here he is a reformed character with an attractive conception faithful to written instructions romantically set in the world of painter Caspar David Friedrich (as designed by Kath-rine Hysing) Conductor Heinz Fricke led the excellent orchestra through a light fluent and lyrical account of the Ring's scherzo cunningly adjusted to the relative smallness of the Theatre Royal's acoustic Only in the wonderful storm scene which opens Act 3 did I feel an absence of the momentousness that characterises the greatest readings of the score About the cast I shall be charitable Neither of the Americans Edward Cook Theatre This Is a Chair Royal Court at the Duke of heavy topical subject The War in Bosnia for instance or the Northern Ireland Peace Process Then the performers take to the stage another disorienting trick is that the actors perform on a platform above the seats of the stalls while the audience sit on the stage and play a a scene that has nothing to do with its title During The War in Bosnia a breathless woman rushes up to a man to explain that she has double-booked for their date In Hong Kong a couple of gay men have a tiff finally reconciled intriguing and witty but I think Churchill is also making a serious point Though we are all aware of the global problems reported daily most of us simply carry on preoccupied with our own concerns There is also something disturbing about several of the scenes the creepy father in Pornography and Censorship telling his daughter to eat up her dinner or know of Norway and Carol Yahr are truly ready for the heavy assignments of Siegfried and Brunnhilde and Knut Skram made a positively feeble Wanderer more disgraced Ibsenian pastor than exiled King of the Gods But there was a palpable raising of the temperature when Hartmut Welker burst on stage his Alberich (a proper little Kray brother and not without dangerous charm) was electrifying Arild Helleland made a competent Mime but neither the Erda of Tone Kruse nor the Waldvogel of Toril Carlsen ere up to much The performance though as more than the sum of its parts Whatever their shortcomings everyone performed with commitment and enthusiasm And that as headmasters used to say is what really counts RUPERT CHRISTIANSEN WATCH SILENT MOVIES AGAIN Seduced by Siegfried ONE of the Arts loonier recent initiatives is the notion of picking a region and filling it for an entire year with one art form To date East Anglia's Year of Opera and Music Theatre has predictably proved a flop few decent theatres fewer decent productions not enough punters but this imported staging of complete Ring cycle is cause for rejoicing The theatre was packed and the audience both attentive and enthusiastic I confess to being rather amazed by director Mike approach to Siegfried Ten years ago he was on the crest of new wave of enfants terribles and after his disastrously wild and weird productions of Der Fliegende Hollander and Medee at Covent Garden I think he would ever show his face in town again If you're a Cellnet customer you've got a highly efficient answering service on your mobile phone It's called Callback and it's free to switch on Simply dial 1750 Send To retrieve your messages just dial 901 Send This costs 39p a minute (charged by the second on digital tariffs) So you can leave the talkies till afterwards For more information call us on 0800 21 4000 Offer is only valid on US dollar notes US dollar travellers cheques 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