The Pride by Clare Tye
Het Paradijs, Koningklijke Schouwberg, 25/01/12
The opening night of The Pride by English-Greek play write Alexi Kaye Campbell was stunning.
Tickets for this excellent co-production by the Munich-based BeMe Theatre and STET, The English Theatre have sold so well that an extra performance is scheduled for Saturday 28/01/12.
The audience remained under the strong impression of this powerful and thought-provoking play. The quality and flexibility of the acting was exceptional; the audience is taken though many leaps in time from 1958 to 2008 without the slightest problem or confusion.
Tom Daley’s directing is exacting and brilliant. The actors remain on stage for almost the entire production and keep the same names, but live very different lives in the two time periods. As they dress and undress on stage and step in and out of their new roles, they are partly changed, partly unchanged. If one steps into a river twice, is it still the same river? The play makes us ask ourselves how much of who we are essentially comes from our own character and how much is the trappings of the time we live in.
The live accompaniment by the pianist and the occasional background noise of trains both contribute to bring the audience right into the tensions of the characters’ situations. The original set design is very convincing with only simple props to suggest a 1950’s living room and a modern flat. The costumes, hanging on black headless mannequins in metal frames at each side of the stage, look slightly like outfits for rent in some kind of homoerotic shop, reflecting the different roles gay man have been forced to play over the years.
Philip in 1958 is incredibly proper, up tight and in denial of his homosexuality and yet he admits to a kind of inner loneliness and a longing for a more creative career. The shock throughout the audience after the homosexual scene was palpable, for a moment people almost could not move for the interval. In 2008 the actor Aled Pedrick transforms the character of Philip in to a more fulfilled man who has not only accepted his sexuality, but who also may be able to help his former partner to overcome his addiction to promiscuous anonymous sex and perhaps even form a real relationship. Together they drink champagne and watch old couples at the Gay Pride Parade and pay unspoken homage to those who have brought about the vast change in gay rights over the last fifty years.
In the beginning the 1950’s Sylvia, played superbly by Dutch-born, Marene Miller, may appear slightly stupid, but slowly we realise she is very intelligent and is coping with huge unspoken tensions in her marriage. In fact, through her need for honesty, she is bringing about the very thing she dreads most, the end of her marriage, by introducing her husband to Oliver. She transforms herself brilliantly into a genuine friend in 2008 who is aware of how much things have improved for gay men in the modern day and yet how difficult they remain.
Tom McDonald plays three small roles and is quite brilliant at each, particularly a rather course editor of a lads magazine, who suddenly and unexpectedly gives a very moving description of his uncle’s death from Aids in the early 80’s.
Early in the play Oliver is slightly more accepting of his homosexuality than Philip and he has found creative work for himself. In the modern day Graham Dickson develops Oliver into a tortured soul, whose sex-addiction and his inability to complete his work successfully are causing his life to start to fall apart. The married Sylvia forces an odd, slightly mysterious confession out of Oliver that while in Delphi he heard a voice, like the Oracle, telling him it was all going to be alright. This is the first reference to his own homosexuality, but also echoes Greek times when things were easier for gay men and an awareness that in the future they will be again. The play ends with Sylvia remembering this Oracle and using it to help her find the strength to leave Philip in an act of love to set him free.
This is a wonderful production of an extremely well-written play about repression and freedom. It is painful and yet ultimately hopeful; I cannot recommend it highly enough.
