Georgia Sawyer’s Mankind is a modern adaption of a medieval morality play which, in its original context, was designed to instruct its audience in appropriate Christian behaviour. It is peopled with a wide variety of allegorical figures from the austere Mercy (Tom Bishop) who offers Mankind (Matt Monaghan) the chance for redemption while the forces of temptation including the devil Titivillus (Eva Tausig) try to bring about his damnation.

While this would seem to suggest a strait laced moral lecture the theatrical experiance is almost manic in its variety and vivacity. The whole production is charged with intense passion for the subject matter and determination to bring it to life for a modern audience. While the evil creatures Newguise, Nowadays and Nought are on the stage the action relies heavily on the simple, physical comedy of the pantomime and barely a moment passes without a bawdy double entendre, a suggestive pelvic thrust or a knowing wink. Live music is constantly woven in and out of the play and is performed with aplomb by the cast and the motion of the characters on the stage always borders on dance, in line with their allegorical natures each moves with a sense of deeper purpose: the devils low to the ground, Mankind uncertain yet sensitive, Titivillus langorous and sensual and Mercy with his hands firmly clasped in prayer.

The set and costume reflect the stark moral landscape through which the play moves, with little ostentation either with props and all the characters dressed in black and distinguished only by their shoes. All of these confusing factors taken together add up to a deliciously various but slightly chaotic product. The play is signposted as ‘high art’ through the doffing of costume in favour of black clothing yet seems to rely heavily on the ‘low art’ techniques of pantomime and burlesque. For me this juxtaposition felt interesting but I could equally see how it could infuriate someone with strict ideas of theatrical propriety. Mankind represents an authentic gesture towards a different sense of theatre, one where the lines between audience and actors are thin and often crossed- the smoke filled atmosphere of the medieval tavern perhaps or the wagon of a band of travelling performers.

A third of West End theatres are likely to go bankrupt in the next two years, an expert on London theatres has told Cherwell in an interview. Bob Blackman, the Conservative deputy leader of Brent council in London and a former member of the Greater London Assembly also predicted that many theatres could need government loans, some might become owned by charitable foundations and that empty theatres could become practice spaces for London drama schools.

Blackman wrote a report in late 2007 for the GLA which concluded that many theatres, especially playhouses which do not put on more profitable musicals, were unable to afford necessary structural modifications and needed to try to find new ways of raising funds; he now describes his report as having been written ‘when times were pretty good’ compared to now and said that one of his suggestions, a restoration levy on tickets would not work now: ‘you’ve got to fill the theatre’, and that owners had been ‘standoffish’ and unwilling to take risks.

In his interview with Cherwell, he argued that even though theatres are private companies, there is a need for government investment to protect tourism provided there is a long-term return: "You may come once. If you have a bad experience, you probably won’t come again…you can’t afford for it to fail. The knock-on effect would be that restaurants go out of business. The hotels go out of business. The other tourist attractions start to suffer." He suggested that bankrupt theatres might end up under the control of charities which, according to government policy, are able to receive more government funds than profit-making theatres.

These remarks come as London theatres declared record audiences, though many tickets are now sold at heavy discounts. Any form of bailout would also be hampered by a lack of money: apart from the credit crunch, the government is already diverting money from the arts in London to fund the Olympics, while Crossrail and any Heathrow expansion add up to billions of pounds of government spending on London.

Delfont Mackintosh and Really Useful Theatres, the two largest owners of theatres in London, declined to comment, while Nimax theatres pointed to an increase in revenues and audiences in the last year. An analysis of Blackman’s interview with Cherwell is available at http://www.cherwell.org/content/8406

Five stars
Information: 3rd-7th Feb at 19:30, Burton Taylor Studio. Price £4.

Yasmina Reza may be one of the internationally most performed living playwrights, but her fortunes are more uneven in her native France, where left-leaning critics often dismiss her as irredeemably bourgeois.
Her comedy Art is a case in point; in it, three comfortably off men are facing up to mid-life crisis and spend most of the play bickering about art and suffering at the hands of each others’ egos. The MacGuffin of the play is a completely white canvass, which one of them, Serge, buys for 20,000 francs, only to incur the contempt and ridicule of his more conservative friend Marc. Not only then does Reza commit the crime of setting her play in a completely unsubversive environment, she also dares to belittle the aesthetic worth of contemporary art.

This assessment, however, is unfair. As Reza herself pointed out once in an interview, it is the “subversive” contemporary art, which is the mainstream now, and if anything, going against the grain consists of querying its value rather than blindly lauding it.

This production, directed by Guy Levin, promises to give Art an enjoyable staging, thanks particularly to the strong performances of the three-strong cast. Matt Osman is especially convincing as the traditionalist Marc, bitterly resentful that his friend Serge (Jonathan Rhodes) has taken a liking to pretentious art and the unqualified use of fashionable intellecutalist terms, like “deconstruction”. Serge, on the other hand, can’t stand Marc’s oppressive, patronising attitude. Caught in the middle is Yvan (Frankie Parham), the bubbling, but spineless clown of the group.

Much of the humour derives from the snide asides that the increasingly infuriated friends make about each other and the comedy of their imperfect characters. Parham’s Yvan is quite hilarious in his hyper-active, affected manner, while Serge’s high-minded artistic ideals are exposed as narcissism when he muses that the Pompidou has three paintings by the same artist (incidentally, I’ve been to the Pompidou recently and there actually are three completely white canvasses there, by Robert Ryman).

It might not be in-yer-face theatre or body-art, but Art tells us a good deal about the confusions and frustrations of contemporary society, even if mostly of the segment that is middle-aged and middle-class. It might even provide its audience here with a taste of things to come. But, whatever it may be, it is far from being reactionary: Art is a clever, watchable and witty piece and deserves to be seen.

During the 1980s the Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe were crippled and finally brought down in a wave of national disappointment, demonstrations and a loss of Soviet support. The governments of these countries had aggressively funded the arts to create jobs and boost their prestige, but funding did not buy support. Theatres across Eastern Europe remained full of dissidents, among them Vaclav Havel, a prominent playwright who, after being released in 1989 from imprisonment for his work as a human rights activist, became the president of Czechoslovakia. Theatres had been used as a cover for anti-government messages before: the final spark for rioting in Poland in 1968 was the government’s halting performance of a classic 1816 play by one of the country’s most popular poets, as audiences and the performers gloried in its anti-Russian message.

Given this background, demonstrations against the government in Poland understandably paid close attention to the design and symbolism of their protests. A series of ‘events’ organised by a student group based in Western Poland in the late 80s, Orange Alternative, mercilessly parodied Marxist seriousness, responding to being exhorted to help the police every year on Police and Secret Service Day by helping to direct the traffic in Warsaw while wearing blue face-paint and carrying gongs and cymbals, which were beaten every time the lights changed: the result was chaos. In a parody of films singing the praises of honest toil, ‘a spontaneous action’ was organised in which a square was cleaned by students with toothbrushes dressed in 1950s clothes, followed later that year by a restaging of the October Revolution as carnival, with cardboard ships moving through the streets and a department store chosen to represent the Winter Palace peacefully ‘stormed’.

These demonstrations were more pranks than an indictment of the government (and often parodied real protests as well), but more serious demonstrations were often equally planned. In Gdansk in 1981, one of the country’s most famous film directors was asked to advise on a ceremony commemorating rioters murdered a decade earlier by police; it featured carefully controlled lighting effects, a specially commissioned piece of music and a reading by a famous actor, while later protestors used equipment supplied by the CIA to break into TV transmissions with calls for resistance at the exact moment when half-time began in the national cup final; a priest involved later said that this was intentional so as not to annoy viewers.

Four stars

Information: 27th-31st January at 21:30, Burton Taylor Studio. Duration 40 mins, price £4.

Meet Angie. Angie is a young and attractive secretary from Bromley. She is sitting in Charing Cross station waiting to meet her date, who doesn’t appear to be there yet. Meet Brian. Brian is a fumbling middle-aged businessman with a fabulously British awkwardness we know well from living and studying in Oxford. He is also waiting to meet his date, sitting on the same bench as Angie. As it turns out, Angie and Brian are meant to be meeting each other, having been set up on the blind date of the play’s title. The twist, however, is that they do not recognise each other until the date has effectively expired.

Frank Marcus’ “Blind Date” explores the differing aspects of human interaction through the struggle to find love, and the disappointment that comes when the ideal of love fails to match the reality. A simple setting and a fundamentally simple premise, but what we see is a vivid insight into the complexities of
human relationships, and the expression of hopefulness for what may come in a comic situation with deeply ironic undertones.

Rafaella Marcus directs this dynamite script with explosive force, capturing the subtlety of the scenario expertly. The staging compliments the simplicity of the setting and the plot wonderfully, with the changes from internal monologue to conversational dialogue exhibiting excellent timing, both comic and sharp. Sarah Clark realises the character of Angie with a refreshing wit, coming together to give at once the impression of cynicism and insecurity. Jaroslav Fowkes’ spin on Brian is a perfect complement, a performance which epitomises the awkward and gawky businessman, arousing several out-loud laughs in the process.

The verdict: this play is not to be missed. Opening in 2nd Week, it caters to everything you want out of a night at the theatre. And what’s more, it’s only 40 minutes long. Not a bad deal by my standards.