Sunday Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 47

THE SUNDAY REVIEW Arts THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH MARCH 8, 1998 11 Clever ringmaster up to his tricks Deep into desperation Finbar Lynch as Canary Jim in down, not even for Nikki's sake. In no time at all the first salvoes are being fired. The complications that follow leave us in no doubt that love hurts. make us resentful and cruel; it can humiliate us and twist us as poor Gilbert increasingly demonstrates into strange shapes. Yet Things We Do for Love isn't nearly as painful as this makes it sound.

At times it has the tone of a lightly humanised farce, at others (in spite all the rough stuff) 1 the feeling of a romantic comedy. Perhaps the strongest passion it reveals is a taste for ingenuity. This is to define, not to com- John Gross Things We Do for Love Not About Nightingales A ible said more judged that effects, like by if Rochefoucauld it its love hatred looks vis- is than friendship. I doubt whether Alan Ayckbourn would not, least, of his disagrees neat comedy Things We Do for Love, at the Gielgud Theatre. There's some frenzied lovemaking in the play.

There is an even more explosive scene in which an angry couple grapple, batter one another, crash their way across the stage, and that's all about love, too. The setting for these unleashed emotions is a house London, somewhere not far from Peter Jones, belonging to Barbara, an efficient, buttoned-up, fortyish executive who has settled for a life devoted to her job and her boss. (Her passion for him was once briefly requited, but that was then.) At school Barbara used to be known, strictly behind her back, as Spike, and she hasn't grown any less spiky over the years. The basement flat in the house is rented to Gilbert, a widower whose boring monologues would be hard to endure if he weren't so useful with household repairs. The flat upstairs is vacant, and a couple called Nikki and Hamish are about to move in while their own house is fixed up.

Nikki, who has had a crush on Barbara ever since the fourth form, has reappeared after eight years in Norway, undergoing hell at the hands of a violent husband. Hamish is the man who came to her rescue (and whom incidentally she detached from his wife). He is kind and gentle. He also rubs against some of Barbara's manga prejudices. He is Scottish for one thing, a vegetarian for another.

She doesn't him anyway; and he isn't one to take her hostility lying plain. At its own level the play is enormously enjoyable. The jokes work, the details divert. If the big "unexpected" development is fairly predictable (there's really nowhere else for the plot to go), still relish the skill with which Ayckbourn lays the ground for it. If the characters are not so much developed as put through their paces.

they are in the hands of a superlative ringmaster. The virtuosity of the writing is matched by the virtuosity of the production. (Ayckbourn himself directs.) The fight, for example, is beautifully choreographed, emotionally no Satanic forces lose the popular vote HE presence on "the rostrum, for the first time during the Royal Opera's first peripatetic season-in-exile, of its music director, Bernard Haitink, did not fill the Barbican Hall on Tuesday for a concert performance of Weber's Der Whether this was because of bad (sometimes malicious) publicity about the Royal Opera or because this opera is not as popular as it ought to be, the absentees missed an evening of joyous music-making. One feature of the company that has remained constant and undimmed during its homelessness is the excellence of the programmebooks. This one contained a stimulating article by John Deathridge which could not fail intensify appreciation of Der His summary of various producers' attempts at political and psychological interpretations of the action made one sigh with relief that such glosses can be avoided in a concert performance and the music enjoyed for what it is, a glorious Romantic score in which light and dark, good and evil, conflict and coalesce.

Haitink's conducting, off to rather a cool start in the overture, soon brought out no music's colours, the soaring freedom of the and Weber's remarkable to melodies, convey atmosphere by the simplest musical means the first scene shows the hero (or -hero) Max being entrapped by satanic forces; in the second scene innocent domesticity enters the music with the appearance of his beloved Agathe and her flighty cousin Annchen, but a simple change of key brings the shadows of Agathe's superstitious fears. All the singing was firstrate, led by Melanie Diener's firm, pure-toned and warmly phrased Agathe. This German soprano, first heard in Britain as Ilia in Garsington's Idomeneo, is rapidly moving to the forefront. Both in Leise, leise and her Act 3 Cavatina she displayed real class. Thomas Moser's Max, if a trifle stolid, grew responsive to Haitink's sensitive direcRydl, wearing shirt as black as Kaspar's soul, avoided over-dramatisation of this splendid role and the Icelandic bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, as beneficent Hermit who puts all to rights in the final scene, made an impressive Royal Opera debut.

A young Austrian baritone, Manfred ALASTAIR MUIR with touches of poetry plays. but until last week it had never been staged. Now at last there is a chance to see it. in a production at the Cottesloe Theatre directed by Trevor Nunn. The story is based on a widely reported atrocity of the time.

Prisoners in a jail in Pennsylvania staged against a hunger bad protest conditions: in the course of putting it down. the prison governor had a group of them confined in a punishment block known as Klondike' where the heat was turned on full blast. Four of them died. Williams kept close to the events he had read about. but in Tennessee Williams's 'Not About Nightingales', an early play less than physically.

And the three. set by Roger Glossop heightens our sense of being in the department of games and novelties. The main tier is Barbara's living. room. Above, there is a voyeuristic sliver of the upstairs flat, with the lower legs of the occupants visible.

Below. we can see hunched up like a troglodyte. painting a pornographic fresco of Barbara on the basement ceiling. The one obvious flaw is that Jane Asher is much too attractive to play Barbara. But it is a price most of us will be willing to pay, and it doesn't stop her giving an exemplary perform- of sledgehammer impact but Trevor Nunn's tenure at the National has got off to a mixed start, but here he comes into his own ance.

Steven Pacey's Hamish seems rather too personable. too, but again. his actual performance couldn't be bettered. And there is fine support. Serena Evans's Nikki is giggly and oh-mygosh girlish but contrives to have the most affecting moment of the evening.

As Gilbert. Barry McCarthy is funny and pathetic. and wisely leaves it at that: he doesn't make the mistake of trying to make him seem endearing. Tennessee Williams wrote Not About Nightingales in 1938. when he was 27.

He himself thought that it was the best of his early full-length Phone thesps Philip Pickard and Simon Lenagan (centre pair) and fellow actors preparing to launch 'Saucy Jack' into Shaftesbury Avenue Don't call them, they'll call you Three out-of-work actors started a telesales company to fund plays for themselves. Which is how the West End has acquired its latest musical, as Veronica Lee reports money and we knew that our theatre work didn't make any," says Simon. "So we needed something that would pay our rent and keep us together in an environment where we could spark off our ideas against each other." Coincidentally, Simon's father, Ian, a businessman, was at the time interested in setting up a telemarketing company and Simon suggested that he use out-of-work actors, "because we were all fed up of being couriers, or barmen, or waiters." It then occurred to them that a business where all the profits went to theatre- funding might be the solution their problems. Simon's father persuaded a friend to give them an office, and in March 1995 they started with one client, for whom they set up a database. That work funded their first production, Punch Junkies, about the seamier side of boxing, written by their friend Greg Hobbs.

After that they got a much bigger client, who, in addition to the philanthropic element, loved the idea of actors selling his product. A year later the company moved into its larger, current premises, where it now employs about a dozen actors, many of whom appear in Counterpoint productions. The actors can go to auditions whenever like and on and off the actrothes ing work dictates, while the he added two themes of his own. In the play, the prison governor is pitted against the prisoners' equally domineering ringleader, Butch O' Fallon. (Both men get compared Mussolini.) And much of the focus is on a sensitive trusty called Canary Jim.

He is despised by the other prisoners and tormented by the governor; but at least he has the run of the governor's office, and there he becomes emotionally involved with a new secretary. The play has a sledgehammer impact, but then there'd be no point in trying to write about the kind of events it describes with Proustian sensibility. Occasionally it seems contrived or stereotyped, like a parody of a 1930s Warner Brothers movie. Occasionally it is mawkish. But what mostly impresses is its power, and its ability to give that power dramatic shape.

You are right there inside. There are odd touches of poetry, too. And though the play takes its title from Canary Jim's ambition to write about real life and "not about as in Keats. it is clear that the author himself is chafing. even here, at the limits of documentary art.

(There's line in the Ode to a Nightingale that sums up life in the prison pretty well. incidentally: "Here where men sit and hear each other Trevor Nunn's tenure at the National Theatre has got off to a mixed start. but in this clangorous. well-drilled. astonishingly atmospheric production (with designs by Richard Hoover) he comes into his own.

Corin Redgrave is on terrific form as the governor a brute. but a believable brute. Finbar Lynch takes you deep into the desperation of Jim, the man trapped in the middle. and elsewhere there are stunning performances from a largely American cast notably from James Black. Cagneyes(but never merely imitative) as Butch.

and from Sherri Parker Lee. perfectly in period as the secretary. KAREN DAVIES Michael Kennedy Der Hemm, was another debutant to note. The chorus sang well too. women as bridesmaids, the huntsmen.

In the week of the countryside march, how apposite for the latter to sing with such gusto: pleasure on earth can compare with the chase?" WONDER if audiences want as much Shostakovich as they are getting. The BBC Philharmonic in Manchester is in the midst of a cycle of the symphonies and the LSO, yet again, is going through them with Rostropovich. Undoubtedly he was a great symphonist, at his best. but as a composer he is not, in my opinion, the equal of So I was pleased when the BBC Philharmonic bravely propramman last weekend, engaged the doyen of champions, Sir Charles Mackerras, to conduct and was rewarded with respectably Do audiences want as much Shostakovich as they are getting? is better full and very appreciative Bridgewater Hall. Sir Charles chose music written in the last decade of the composer's life, the 1920s, beginning with the Sinfonietta (surely the only composition with a movement named The Town Hall).

It begins with two bass tubas growling a fanfare which is taken up squadron of trumpets, strung out on this occasion in a line behind the orchestra. They made a thrilling sound (and sight), their ejaculatory phrases mounting higher at each repetition and not a suspicion of a wrong note or faulty ensemble. The rest of the work is less spectacular but no less arresting musically. It celebrates pride in the foundation of the Czechoslovak state and was dedicated to the Czech armed forces, hence its military flavour. There are lyrical episodes but the work is chiefly a symphony of fanfares and march-rhythms, exhilarating and exciting.

Next came the suite from the opera The Cunning Little Vixen. This is not own work but was compiled by the conductor Talich in 1937 and further tinkered with by another conductor, in 1965. Only music from Act 1 is used, thus depriving us of the wonderful orchestral postlude to the last act. I know of few other opera suites which fill one with such compulsion to rush from the concert I hall to find a theatre where the opera is being performed. Its most successful part is the Vixen's dream of liberty after she has been chained up by the Forester, simply because this is music such liberating rapture that no stage picture ever quite matches the intensity of the composer's imagination (although the Royal Opera's last staging came close to the ideal in this passage).

It certainly drew the most expressive playing and conducting the concert. Finally, the Glagolitic Mass, performed (as I hope it always will be henceforth) in its original version, with the Intrada topping and tailing it as intended, the offclarinets and awesome drumbeats restored in the Credo and much besides. The work's rawness, its pagan view of the Christian text, is intensified by original scoring which strikes home almost physical impact. orite soloists, the Slovak soprano Livia Aghova brought the authentic note of wildness and Thomas Trotter played the manic organ solo superbly. But the glory of this occasion was the singing of Simon Halsey's City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus.

They sang the Slavonic text from memory and what a difference it made in directness and spontaneity. And what is it about Mackerras's conducting that makes his so superior? The ability to communicate his intuitive understanding, I suppose. His gestures are economical, but the punching left hand is the driving force and, no doubt, the facial expressions the audience doesn't see. There are several fine conductors around, but no other brings out so lyrically the music's abrasive originality, a paradox that is his secret. A bright, spacious I tion office busily telesales in for gather Camden databases.

workers informa- Town, Slaves of new technology, busily serving their automated masters. But these are actors and, instead of financing the director's second Porsche, the profits from their efforts fund a unique enterprise, a theatre production company. Professional Communicators is a young company making rapid inroads. In less than three years, it has funded five shows and two short films and, later this month, its big. gest gamble yet a West End musical.

The company was founded in 1995 by three young graduates Adam Meggido, Simon Lenagan (now both 27) and Philip Pickard (26) in the best tradition of "let's do the show right After studying together at Birmingham University and then Webber Douglas Drama Academy in London, the three were disappointed to find that theatre was not all it was cracked up to be was all about who had the biggest dressing-room" and were frustrated by fusty old values. "We loved Birmingham but all hated Webber with a passion because of the emphasis on tradition," says Simon. "This is how it's been done for nine million years, so therefore it must We knew there be a better way." So rather than wait for calls from their agents to do the same old things, they decided produce plays that interested them and in which they would act. "But we had no three directors still take their turn at the phones. Actors, Phil says, have an inbuilt ability to sell.

"They can take in a lot of information quickly and then express it clearly, even if it's about something they have no interest in or real knowledge of, be it computers or sales systems." Telesales is also mindnumbingly boring, but, says Simon, "If you treat it as an acting role and it's for something else in which you believe, then it gets easier." Although they pride them selves on doing a good job, the office is less a work-place than a meeting of minds. According to Phil, "We're like a forum for people to bring their ideas to." The conversation over coffee breaks is about theatre, not business. "And football, of course." ROFESSIONAL some's staff's profits pay Communicators' wages salaries, the three and the the upkeep of the business; the rest funds Counterpoint productions. A fringe show costs in the region of £20,000, a West End drama £90,000. They have never applied for a grant and never would "They would ask us what our ethos is and we would have to reply, 'To do stuff we like', and that would never do." Luck and the good wishes of more established impresarios have played their part in Counterpoint's success.

In 1996, Bill Kenwright, one of Britain's top producers, had a cancelled show at the Albery Theatre. Rather than keep the theatre dark, he asked Counterpoint to transfer their updated version of Willis Hall's The Long and the Short and the Tall. Within a year of setting Counterpoint in the West End with a shore they had intended for a tiny south London theatre. "It took us a bit by surprise and we thought, 'Hold on we'd better slow down and learn about says Phil. But having to run a business keeps their feet on the ground.

Simon, who acted in The Long and the Short and the Tall, says, "It was great coming back into the office after being in the West End. It was, 'Here's your list, pick up your Kenwright and his peers need not worry, however. As Phil says, "We're not a production company in that sense. We're actors who want to create opportunities for ourselves. We're not interested in putting on 12 shows on the West End simultaneously." Counterpoint's most ambitious project to date is Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, a modern musical set in the intergalactic future, in which they have invested £500,000.

With nods to The Rocky Horror Show and The Forbidden Planet, two West End shows that spawned cult audiences and lengthy, profitable runs, Saucy Jack is a glorious mix of outrageous costumes, slyly suggestive lyrics and campy, gothic drama. The show's own history parallels Counterpoint's. A group of friends who studied together at Kent University put together Saucy Jack, then a small cabaret show, for the 1995 Edinburgh Festival. The 14 show was a sell-out and they were invited to take it back the following year. It was then with the production getting larger and more costly that Counterpoint came on board.

Charlotte Mann, Saucy Jack's writer and now a drama teacher at Kent, explains, "We were six graduates with no money and the show would not have gone any further without Counterpoint's involvement." Because they are not in it for a quick profit, Counterpoint can afford to take the -term view. "If you uncover a writing talent you've got to nurture it because there is so little about," says Simon. "You've got to give them a chance because they have so few opportunities in the established, conventional theatre." Saucy Jack is a huge risk for Counterpoint the West End is littered with the corpses of failed musicals but they are taking it in their stride. Phil says, "'We look at how much we can afford to lose and invest that. We wouldn't go under even if no one came through the door." Highly unlikely but if so, there's always those phones.

Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens opens at Queens Theatre on March 18 'A.