Alma Tavern
If you go to smallish art house theatres, you've probably seen a play or two in which a single actor impersonates a well known historical figure and tells a story about their life. I saw a very decent one a year or two back in which Oscar Wilde was having a soliloquy in the Cadogan Hotel (just before his arrest). English show-business figures seem to be popular. I wonder if it would have occurred to anyone to do a one-woman show about the co-star of George and Mildred if they hadn't noticed that they could call it Testament of Yootha. (There was also one about the death of the star of Up Pompei. I'll leave you to think up a title for that one.)
You may also be familiar with a genre of often-confessional enacted story-telling which straddles the line between stand-up comedy and single-actor theatre. I am thinking of Douglas Walker's show about murdering Father Christmas; and Joe Sellman-Leava's wonderful near-the-knuckle account of growing up as a Star Wars fan.
At first glance, David Shopland's Raising Kane would seem to be a clear contribution to the genre (right down to the punning title.) It's performed, as it were, in black and white: the director's chair with Orson Welles' name on it is grey; the bookshelf is grey; the side table with the stylish feathers is grey; and when Mr Shopland comes on stage embodying Mr Welles, he is wearing a monochrome suit; monochrome face paint; and monochrome gloves. (I assume that there is nothing un-PC about "greying up"?) The first thing he does is pluck a grey rose from the grey vase. "Rosebud....I couldn't resist it." He doesn't attempt to sound like a Carlsberg advert or, indeed, Unicorn, but he is entirely convincing and very engaging as a
successful, slightly disappointed, actor/director. He talks about his Bohemian upbringing, his years appearing in amateur plays in community theatre; the move to Dublin; the return to Broadway; the Mercury theatre; radio; and finally Kane. There are some good anecdotes along the way; and Shopland can call up characters apart from Welles himself. Jean-Paul Sartre hated Kane because it was told in flashback and the point of cinema is that it happens in the present tense. Says Orson: "He spent his time trying to be a German philosopher, which he did very well, considering he was French." He talks about the burden of reviews which say that Kane isn't merely the best picture ever made, but the best picture that will ever be made. He admits that cinema, compared with theatre, is an artificial art form.
Although he assures us that everything in the play is true; there are clearly some inaccuracies. He tells us about the War of the Worlds hoax -- New Yorkers fleeing the city in the belief that Martians are really invading; the police trying to work out how they can arrest a whole radio station. I think by now everyone knows this is a myth. And there are some incongruous anachronisms: talking about his precocious childhood, Welles admits that he was reading Plato when his friends were still being taken to see....er....the Wizarding World.
I wouldn't say that the show started to flag after Hurst has more or less scuppered Kane as a commercial success (which Welles says came about because of a feud between two critics) but I did begin to wonder if we had heard everything there was to hear about Citizen Kane. But then....
There is nothing more annoying than someone who gives away punch lines of jokes or twist endings of plays, so if there is any chance that you will see this show -- and if it is coming to a theatre anywhere near you I would strongly urge you to go and see it -- please, do not read the rest of this review.
About twenty minutes before the end of the show, Welles admits that he has not been entirely honest with us: some of the anecdotes have not been true. And then he suddenly breaks character, laughs, and announces "And of course, I am not actually Orson Welles". He starts to remove his silly grey make up, weirdly, showing his natural flesh tones underneath, and starts to speak in his own accent -- that of the actor/producer -- about his life long obsession with Welles. Some of the time, when he was talking about Orson Welles, he was really talking about himself. Some of the anecdotes happened to him, nog Orson. (Including the stories about Plato and the stories about his school theatre productions.) Carrying this off -- telling his own stories in Welles's voice -- is a pretty clever stunt in itself.
It's a piece of pure theatre: the "black and white" staging suddenly physically changing to colour is visually arresting. I can't recall having seen anything similar before. It's a clever commentary on the falseness of the celebrity-historical one-man-show. Like all good satire it is both a good example of the thing being satirised, and a clever showing-up of its shortcomings. Once you've convinced us that we're in the room with Welles, or Wilde, or Kenneth Williams or Stan Laurel you can present us with as much fake news as you like and we're inclined to believe it. It is -- I assume -- a sincere and genuine piece of confessional theatre. The actor is frank and self-effacing as he tells us about seeing parallels between his own life and that of the greatest director of all time, and being quite aware how that is going to sound. It also made me think, in a way, of an Alan Moore "path working", where the theatrical performance is also a ceremony, or a ritual. The act of taking off the Welles costume as part of the performance seems to be a means of moving on from hero worship in real life.
And it is also -- I literally just realised this as I typed it -- a meta-meta joke at the expense of us critics. I can't review Raising Kane without ruining it for you. The exact thing which makes it cleverer than ninety per cent of shows of this kind is the exact thing I shouldn't be telling you. Once you know that "this is the play in which the actor playing Orson Welles breaks character at the end" a very large amount of the play's energy dissipates.
Can you think of another work -- a film, say, which depends on a twist ending? A twist ending which explains and sheds new light on everything which has happened up to that point in the story? A film which it is impossible to talk about without talking about the ending, but where the ending is the one part of the film which definitely should not be talked about?
Rosebud....
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