Some people
go the theatre to feel sophisticated. In fact, I think that's
the rationale behind most of the whole arts-in-education shebang: that
if you send your kids to see plays, they'll grow up to be cultured
and urbane, exactly the right sort of company to meet at a cocktail
reception.
The Canterbury Tales, however, is anything but refined. Sure,
it's adapted from the verses of Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th century poet
whose works have tortured many a Junior College student foolishly expecting
English literature to be written in English. But the script is crude,
ham-fisted with its humour, and heavily dependent on slapstick and sex
for its laughs. And in this production of it, the acting is often mediocre
or uneven. It's an amateurish effort all round - and yet it doesn't
matter because, ladies and gentlemen, this show is fun.
Certainly, a lot of the fun is derived from the stark difference between
the expected dryness of the material and the rousing locker-room high
jinks which make up the meat of this play. These are present from the
opening scene. Peter Lugg plays Chaucer, reading from the barely comprehensible
original Middle English text and projecting an absolute cipher of a
personality, but then on comes the gigantic cast, carousing and joking,
headed by Barry Woolhead as host who addresses the audience directly
in rhyming couplets and urges volunteers to draw lots to see which character
should tell his story next. This is followed by the cast rushing into
corners to don baldricks and doff wimples and move sets in order to
play a multitude of odd medieval characters in a selection of the raunchiest
and most sensational of Chaucer's tales. Energy, crowds, audience participation,
wacky costumes and sets, and sex - if that's not a recipe for successful
theatre, I don't know what is.
This sense of fun is able to tide over the many flaws of the script,
including the lameness of some of the jokes, which when not directly
turned into bathos were often dated (mad cow disease???) or repetitive
(several times a couplet would be completed - at the last moment - with
the more polite "sucker" rather than "fucker", or with "chest" instead
of "breast", a gag which isn't really funny even the first time). And
while a few actors were excellent - Barry Woolhead was a great narrator,
and Candice de Rozario was hilarious as a stripteasing hag in The
Wife of Bath's Tale - many more were clearly untrained: a certain
number were able to act with their voices but not with their bodies,
and a few were utterly unconvincing in their roles. For instance, the
haughty, hypocritical Prioress just didn't have the stage presence or
the voice to carry off her role.
All this could have made me wince, and yet it didn't. There's a certain
genuineness and unpretentiousness to this production that makes you
forgive everything it tries. Was the rhyming clumsy? Who cares! Did
the director try, with painful obviousness, to emotionally manipulate
you into an "awww" by having the narrator propose to a barmaid? Let's
close one eye and get on with the play - just watching the actors miming
coitus by jumping up and down, trampoline-style behind sheets, grinning
all the while, makes you appreciate the silly innocence that makes this
drama a treat.
The original meaning of amateur is one who loves, and that is what
you get from this play - a sense of the love of theatrical production,
sophisticated or otherwise, by non-professionals onstage. In saying
this, I'm not forgetting the discipline behind this artlessness, especially
evident in the directors' management of such a large cast.
Theatre, ultimately, isn't about refining the cultural palate; it's
about making your subject come alive, whether you're talking about the
proto-existentialist
ennui of Baudelaire or the angst
of division over the Straits of Johor. What The Canterbury Tales
does is resuscitate a canonical poet whose unpopularity with students
is pulling him off the A-level syllabus. The erudition of the subject
doesn't translate; rather, what triumphs in Chaucer and in this production
is the fun of storytelling, regardless of register. |
"Energy, crowds, audience participation, wacky costumes and sets,
and sex - if that's not a recipe for successful theatre, I don't know
what is"
Credits
Co-ordinating Director: Phil McConnell
Directors: Barry Woolhead, Nick Perry, Phil McConnell,
Blair Earl
Musical Director: Peter Stead
Stage Manager: David Hickham
ASM: Jennifer Woo
Lighting Design: Hilary Richardson
Costumes: Hilary Richardson
Sound: Lily McConnell
Make-up: Bronia Birkbeck
Cast: Peter Lugg, Barry Woolhead, Angela Barolsky,
Raihan Harun, Paul Robson, Steve Armstrong, Lee Siew Cheng, Albert Simsensohn,
Gary Gan, Helen Williams, Claire Curran, Cecile Taymans, Adelynn Tan,
Peter Davey, Elizabeth Tan, Warren Bullock, Navneet Jagannathan, Sally
Anderson, Steve Clark, Deborah Berger-Borth, Siti Maryam and Candice
de Rozario
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