Theatre - A hammy thespian acts out a bloody revenge on his critics by Michael Portillo
Theatre of Blood
National Theatre, London SE1
''The editor cut my best bloody line." How I feel for George Maxwell, the fictional Daily Telegraph theatre critic played by Paul Bentall. Oozing self-importance and paranoia in equal measure, he has arrived at an abandoned London theatre, summoned by a mysterious invitation. As he obsesses about the gem excised from his prose by a typically philistine editor, he has no way of knowing that he is moments away from meeting a horrific death. Edward Lionheart (Jim Broadbent) is the old-style thespian - OK, full-blown ham - who, after bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous reviews, leaps into the Thames from a post-performance luvvies' party. But as Maxwell pays with his life for all those sneering notices, he sees the impossible: Lionheart hale and hearty. Through the blood that chokes him, he gasps that he thought him dead. "No. I am well. It is you who are dead. Another critical miscalculation!"
Lee Simpson's script for this produc- tion of Theatre of Blood, a collaboration between the Improbable company and the National Theatre, draws heavily on the best-loved lines of the MGM film made in 1973 (with Vincent Price as Lionheart). The play's action is confined to the decaying theatre, to which the despised tragedian has invited his detractors so that each of them may shuffle off this mortal coil in a suitably Shakespearean manner.
Maxwell finds himself playing a real-death Caesar to Lionheart's Brutus. The prissy and pretentious Sally Patterson from the Guardian (Hayley Carmichael) will make an improbable Hector falling victim to the Myrmidons, and the dipsomaniac critic from the Daily Mail meets Clarence's demise face down in a barrel of malmsey. And so on.
The play has great comic moments. What would happen if the Jew of Venice decided to risk losing his lands and life for the joy of removing a pound of Christian flesh from Antonio's breast? The horror is excellent, too. Blood spurts by the pint. Bodies are torn apart in graphic detail, and with spine-chilling sound effects. The illusionist Paul Kieve produces magical tricks under the overall direction of Phelim McDermott.
The problem with the play is the problem with the genre. There is only one gag as, Agatha Christie-like, the green bottles on the wall fall one by one until they are all gone. (Well, maybe not, but that would be telling.) Each murder is brilliantly brought off. Yet the play is by its nature repetitive and, in view of that, too long.
Still, it makes for a good evening of comedy and horror. Broadbent captures the elongated vowels of Paul Scofield or Laurence Olivier and draws them out to the limits of parody. None the less, his Shylock and Richard III leave us in no doubt that Lionheart was not entirely a bad actor, but rather one who became stereotypical in every role. As Lionheart's daughter Miranda (Rachael Stirling) complains, he cannot escape being Shakespearean even in real life. As his plot reaches its tragic denouement, he proves unable to distinguish the world from the stage.
The play is set in 1973, and as an amusing sub-plot the characters deride the National Theatre's much-delayed construction. They lament the brutalist gravestone being erected on the South Bank, where "nice boys" from Oxford and Cambridge will laud it over real actors. During this dialogue, the lights illuminate the Stalag concrete walls of the Lyttelton.
Certainly, trying to hack through the overcrowded bar in that temple of bad design was for me the most horrifying part of the evening. Yet the 1970s brought us not just Stalinist theatre architecture, but also a purge of the Lionheart school of actors, so it wasn't all bad (as a critic might bitchily write).
The critics are well observed. Lionheart's description of the hurt he has suffered from cruel reviews pricked my conscience for several seconds. "Can you honestly tell me that you didn't enjoy it?" he asks. Well, of course we did. You don't imagine we do this for the pay?
Bette Bourne is superb as the queeny Michael Merridew clutching Cecily and Gwendolyn, two highly coiffured white poodles. Guess what happens to them? Sally Dex- ter is the immaculately tailor- ed critic from the Observer, whose reviews praise the actor she is bedding. Steve Steen is the lecherous London Evening Standard critic Trevor Dickens (decorously changed from Dickman in the movie). Tim McMullan affects a red nose that you could see from the gods to portray the alcoholic from the Mail.
At the interval on press night, the theatre offered the critics a drink in a small corral where we could get free plonk and avoid contact with the public. I swear every one of the characters from the play was present, and they didn't need make-up.
Luckily, it's only in make-believe that critics get murdered for writing nasty reviews. But what Maxwell says about the best bloody line getting cut is not fiction. If in my first paragraph there is no reference to a philistine editor, you will know exactly what happened to mine.
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