Welcome To Thebes (National Theatre) is a massive play. Massive in scope, in cast, in ambition. Thebes is a fictional African city, struggling to find internal stability after years of colonial rule. An Obama-esque entourage from Athens thumps in to help the new female leader with the transition, and the clashes begin: between Africa and the West, between ancient and modern, democracy and force, tradition and innovation, man and woman. The plot is big enough on its own, and then the uber-ambitious playwright heaps on another layer, updating Greek tragedy to the present and stirring the whole lot together. The characters are given names from prominent Greek plays (Antigone, Tyresius, Creon, Oedipus are all featured or mentioned), and, a little like I'd felt during Tom Stoppard's Arcadia last year, I couldn't help wondering if this was a writer who'd confused being as effective as possible with being as clever as possible.
The Olivier isn't a small theatre. I was delighted that my companion, Rob, has not yet discovered my blog, so I could happily bore him with all my gems from my recent NT tour. But so there we were, sitting in the whopping auditorium among over a thousand others, and yet I can't imagine that more than a couple of handfuls of people had the classical knowledge to understand a fraction of the Greek references that were bandied about. I'd studied Oedipus Rex, and I saw some weird play about Clytemnestra one year at the Edinburgh Festival. But my memory being what it isn't, I had no real recollection of anything. All I knew was that, in Greek tragedy, the blind man always sees the best and we're meant to come out feeling catharted. Not cathatered.
And that's me with English A Level and an MA in Literature under my belt. What about the rest of the audience? Rob didn't have a clue what was going on. The struggling modern African nation helped by allegedly benevolent but ultimately distant and selfish Western superpower stuff we get. But the classical stuff? I'm not sure it added much, to be honest. There were a couple of moments where an injoke about Oedipus being a motherfucker caused a bellow of smug laughter, but it only served to underline the fact that countless other 'hilarious' references were going unnoticed by the crowd.
There's no doubt that the playwright is a bright spark, and Welcome To Thebes is undeniably an impressive achievement. But it's also the hardest work I've had to put in at the theatre since the last time I saw Oedipus (which I reviewed at the time as "genuinely crap") and I've decided that maybe I don't like Greek tragedy. And maybe £15 to learn a life-lesson like that is money well spent. To be honest, last night won't really go down as significant in my theatre-going experience for anything except one moment, about a third of the way into the first half, when the blind man paused in the middle of one of his speeches, and the actors didn't flinch, but then it went on for a little longer than was comfortable, and then we heard a clear prompt from the desk, feeding him his next line, and I think that was the first time that I've ever seen anyone forget their words in a major play. It was startling. I never feel like I'm suspending my disbelief for a second, but then someone screws up, a strange voice comes in from beyond the stage, and immediately the spell is broken. Not to say it ruined the play. But I'll never forget it.
In other news, I have no other news. More on this story as it unfolds.
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