The Daily Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 18

18 WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1997 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Outlandish spectacle: Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan as the old couple in Ionesco's The Chairs It's absurd, but I like it THERE really is no accounting for fashion. At the start of the year, if you had asked me to name two forms of entertainment that had surely reached chine very nadir of naffness, I'd have said "progressive" rock music and the theatre of the absurd. And then Radiohead released the brilliant OK Computer and Caryl Churchill reinvented absurdism with the marvellous Blue Heart, and your reviewer was left feeling like a wally. Now the long-derided oldies and originals are beginning to crawl out of the woodwork. Only this week a double live King Crimson album (erk!) landed on my desk; and now along comes dear old Ionesco in a coproduction of The Chairs (1952) by those two hippest of theatrical outfits, the Theatre sketches.

Yet I have to admit minutes of The The Chairs Chairs aren't nearly as Royal Court at the unendurable as I feared. Duke of York's Ionesco described the play as a "tragic farce" and it Royal Court and Theatre concerns an old man of 95 de and his devoted wife (94) Ionesco, who died in 1994, who live in a dark, dooronce defined what he meant filled house (excellent weird by "absurd" as "that which is and gloomy design by the devoid of purpose Cut off Quay Brothers) on an from his religious, isolated island. The couple metaphysical and trade memories and play transcendent roots, man is games like the tramps in lost; all his actions become Waiting for Godot, but the senseless, absurd, useless." It real meat of the play doesn't sound like a barrel of concerns the man's decision laughs, does it? to deliver his message to The saving grace of humanity. Ionesco, however, is that he He has invited scores of combined his existential people to hear it, and an angst with a sense of orator to deliver it. But humour.

It's not a sense of when the audience arrive, humour that has worn they are invisible, and when particularly well, and it's the orator (a wonderfully likely to appeal most to disconcerting performance those largely humourless from Mick Barnfather) people who can recite page comes to speak, he is capable after page of Monty Python only of impenetrable sign- RYMAN HAVE A GIFT FOR REAL CHRISTMAS SAVINGS SPARKLING IDEAS SPARKLING VALUE BROTHER P-TOUCH 110 Electronic Labelling Machine 5 type styles, 4 sizes, 2 line printing, sequential numbering, 9mm or 12mm tapes. 2 PSION SERIES 3c £299.95 £29.99 plus FREE 9mm tape BACKLIT worth £6.99. The Series 3c Backlit is now great value the perfect gift vodafone for Christmas. CASIO 256K5 as youTalk' MOTOROLA No Contract BS MR No Connection AS MENU OK Charge ESC. FUNC 5780 No Monthly CASIO £89.99 Check A No Credit ORGANISER Invoice 3 telephone directories and £7.50 256k memory, 26 x8 line backlit display, character- 30 PLUS DAYS ACCESS £99.99 many more features.

WORTH OF CALLS Ryman FOR THE ADDRESS OF YOUR NEAREST STORE OR TO ORDER DIRECT FREEPHONE 0800 801 901 ARTS Picture: ALASTAIR MUIR language, grunts and a few enigmatic words scribbled on a blackboard which include "God is The meaning, or rather the glib lack of meaning, is perfectly clear. But Simon McBurney's production gives the play real humanity and moments of outlandish theatrical spectacle with the help of lovely performances from Richard Briers and Geraldine McEwan. Briers plays the old man with virtuosic mood swings. One moment he is petulantly bad-tempered, the next childlike and dependent, sitting on his wife's knee like a little boy lost. The way in which his man-of-the-world affability shades into selfpity and paranoia as the guests fill the room is superbly achieved.

As his wife, McEwan, with rumpled stockings and a shock of white hair, somehow contrives to look both ancient and as innocent as a baby. Her love of her husband introduces a positive note into Ionesco's absurd world and, with that creaky, croaky voice, she makes even dull lines distinctive and funny. The great triumph of the production is the scene when the "guests" arrive at an ever faster rate, and McEwan and Briers have to set out chairs for them. McBurney choreographs it brilliantly, using a body double so that McEwan seems to exit on one side of the stage before instantly reappearing on the other. It is a wonderfully arresting scene, but to look for any deep significance in The Chairs would, I think, be an absurd mistake.

Tickets: 0171 565. 5000. Telegraph box office: 0541 557000. CHARLES SPENCER Richard Dorment's gallery Tomorrow controller Nicholas Kenyon will announce changes at Radio 3. They won't be enough 11 O'CLOCK tomorA will row undergo morning another Radio of 3 those spasms that are supposed to signify its entry into the real world.

A press launch, called by controller Nicholas Kenyon, will announce new presenters and programmes including a Century of Singers series inaugurated by the Earl of Harewood and the scrapping of Musical Encounters, the weekday mid-morning show. "No one knew what it was there explains a dissident executive. That admission was more cutting than intended, for it could apply to the a whole. An identity networkas suppurating at Radio 3, impairing its sense of purpose. While Classic FM breezes ahead with "the world's loveliest music', Radio 03 weakly offers "something to suit just about every taste and musical That kind of mission statement, published in a guide aimed at "new" listeners, is a confession of the muddled thinking and unresolved conflicts that bedevil the BBC's last bastion of highbrow values.

Is it a music station? A culture channel? An academic chat-site? Kenyon calls it "music plus and but that blurs more than it clarifies. The network's self-image has never been hazier. Ever since Kenyon, a convivial music critic, became controller in 1992, Radio3 has embraced John Birt's reforms as Tibet embraced Marxism, sullenly and without much comprehension. When its music department was ordered to submit programme plans to compete with outside bids, there was a stunned hush before an Oxbridge voice piped up: "But does that mean the best would have to be accepted?" About 90 per cent of Radio programmes are still made internally. Kenyon, 45, has softened the lofty tone with cheery "drive-time" strands with and an advised fling Gambaccini.

pop But musical content on Radio 03 remains in the hands of a proudly unreformed music department, which pays as much heed to audience needs as it would to a charlady who The BBC's top brass, while intruded on a a tutorial. publicly supportive, are torn between preserving Radio 3 as a relic of Reithian ideals and retuning it as a sugarplum melody channel. Externally, there is agitation from clock-reversers such as Gerald Kaufman MP, chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Culture. A Save Radio 3 Campaign has sprung up in Oxford (fax: 01865 248833) to press for "the widest range of serious music, presented in as serious a way as Trapped between clashing expectations, Radio 3's senior management long for clear guidance. Some blame Kenyon for lack of leadership, complaining that he spends more time playing with his Proms kit than tending to his network.

Kenyon, it is said, will spend hours proof-reading a Proms programme. On the morning Diana, Princess of Wales, died he was the only BBC controller who did not rush review will appear tomorrow CARTIER 1900-1939 Mondav Saturday (last admission 115) Sunday 2.30-5.50 (last ion 5.151 Closed 24 24 December and 1 January 3 October 1997 to all tickets 1 February 1998 Admission £4.50. concessions E3 family tickets £12.50 British Museum Society BRITISH members and a guest free MUSEUM Advance booking Great Russell Street firsocall 0171-420 0000 London WCIB3DG Tickets Con fee £6.10 Telephone 0171-636 1555 concessions £4, family tickets £14.50 exactly Radio has failed to give his network attract enough young listeners and some diehards are turning away to "friendlier" FM or "classier" Continental relays. "I have been sitting here all year thinking this cannot go on," says one executive. It would be unfair to hold Kenyon singly responsible.

He has, in many ways, done his best and in others has been scuppered by the very rules he was hired to impose. Norman Lebrecht on Music If Musical Encounters was a waste of morning space two hours of dull music linked by deadpan announcers there was little Kenyon could do about it until now because the slot had been awarded to underoccupied BBC regions. He might have wanted to put on superior concerts. But Radio 3 has an "editorial commitment" to the five BBC. orchestras which, astonishingly, consume twothirds of Radio 3's programme budget £26 million out of a total £39 million.

Huge strands of air-time are allocated preferentially to BBC orchestras, making a nonsense of Birt's open market and "producer Kenyon has tried to negotiate better deals with better orchestras, aware that his house bands are neither nor crowd-pullworld (the BBC Symphony is the of Nicholas Kenyon in at dawn. He stayed at home in West Hampstead tinkering with the night's Proms concert while Cathy Wearing, his head of presentation, nursing a newborn baby, took command of live programming from 5am until past midnight. Radio 3 performed magnificently that day yet Classic FM stole the headlines and the ratings with "Diana's favourite Kenyon's authority has not fully recovered and once-loyal colleagues wonder aloud whether he would not prefer to go off and run the Proms, leaving the network to a professional broadcaster. Even after five years in charge, they say, Kenyon has yet to grasp the finer points of scheduling and the financial implications of his indecisions. Something, it would seem, has to give.

The trigger might be the next set of ratings. In the past half-year, 3 has claimed just 1.1 per cent of the national audience (about a third of Classic FM's wedge). Its share is down 1.4 per cent in 1996 and has failed to show the usual summer upturn during the Proms. Should the ratings touch the psychological barrier of one per cent as some analysts expect that would be the signal for an impatient Matthew Bannister, director of BBC Radio, to step in and sweep away the last vestiges of civility. TOR ing ratings IS it against that just are Radio industry turn- 3.

BBC internal polls reveal evidence of listener unease. These data, closely guarded, show that 37 per cent of all radio listeners find Radio 3 "snobbish" and That, perhaps, is unsurprising. What is alarming is that 30 per cent of Radio 3's own listeners apply these pejoratives to their favourite network. The station is failing to a strong identity Picture: PETER MACDIARMID Orchestra has racked up some of London's lowest South Bank attendances). The BBC orchestras enable Kenyon to assemble jigsaws such as The Fairest Isle and but Sounding their cost the and Century quality series.

dragging the network down. If tonight's concert choice on air is the BBC Welsh or the Berlin Philharmonic via satellite, which station would you prefer? In a catholic quest for a credible voice, Kenyon keeps changing presenters. without touching work's middle-aged, middleclass, predominantly masculine tone. Of all Kenyon's men, only Brian Kay on Sunday morning has established the kind of personal following that Classic FM announcers achieve so effortlessly. The formula be retuned again tomorrow with the rehiring of Richard Baker, returning from a poor spell Classic FM to share the mid strand with Peter Hobday and Joan Bakewell.

Familiar names all, but hardly the bait to tempt young listeners or give the network the vim, wit and personality it glaringly lacks. Kenyon is fond of relating that he pitched for the controllership with "two sharply honed sides of He has a contract until the year 2000 and he remains "totally but the job spec shortened appreciably. What Radio 3 needs now can be summed up in three qualities: vision, vigour and a positive sense of direction. The network does not have to dredge downmarket to find a sustainable audience, but it does need to decide where it is going and go there by the quickest route. Tomorrow's relaunch will make little difference.

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