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U.K.
REALITY BITES THE IDEALISTS
By Jan Dalley
Financial Times (London)
February 14, 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ea618f62-fa38-11dd-9daa-000077b07658.html
Things seem to be going backwards. As "1980s-style" industrial unrest spreads and the public apology is back in fashion (so '80s, that), along with the fashions and even, oh no, the hairstyles of that decade, the world of culture too is riding a wave of a sort of anti-nostalgia. "Attempts at a brave new world and how they fell flat" could be the subtitle of the day, attachable to a whole range of media. The film "Revolutionary Road" has been endlessly discussed as a snapshot of the postwar suburban idyll as found floating belly-up in a martini glass, but there was an underlying point -- while she was eagerly dreaming of going to Paris, he was getting interested in selling those new-fangled computer machines. The old world versus the new. And then the irony underlying the underlying point -- that by 1955 the art-world action had moved away from Paris to Manhattan, and if it was hot culture she was after, then it was to be found at the end of a quick train ride.
Whether the Iranian revolution counts as an attempt at a brave new world depends on your point of view, but anyway its 30th anniversary -- as well as new moves in Tehran's direction from the White House -- focus us even more on the Iranian artists who comment on their fascinating homeland and its contradictory dreams. Marjane Satrapi's animated autobiopic "Persepolis" will soon be back on at the British Museum as part of the program accompanying the Shah Abbas exhibition, which is a bit like running "Trainspotting" to accompany a show about Elizabeth I, and the more interesting for that. It reveals more about modern Iranian life than a score of long articles, as do the incisive and haunting photographs by Mitra Tabrizian currently on show at the Albion gallery in London.
Brave new worlds, and how they bit the dust, also feature at Tate Modern's constructivist show (see Jackie Wullschlager's review opposite this). These extraordinary Russian artists were fuelled by a belief in the future, and in the power of their art to sculpt a better world, that was so powerful it carried them through war, hunger, cold, and disease, right up to disgrace or death. Agitprop art was sometimes so simplistic that it wouldn't cut it in a class of modern five-year-olds, but sophisticated artists turned their hand to it and so created yet another durable form.
Since then agitprop has never really gone away, and it's back in full force at London's Royal Court, where a new 10-minute play by Caryl Churchill, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, has plenty of prop and a good deal of agit, too. On to a stage bare of everything but a table and some chairs comes a group of actors of various shapes and sizes (it can be any number, the script tells us) who are choreographed into a series of short, anonymous, and unexplained scenes. "Tell her . . ." is the refrain of the clipped, chant-like text -- "Tell her her uncles died. Tell her they were killed. Don't tell her they were killed. Don't frighten her" -- in seven dialogues between small groups of Israeli parents or relatives, bitter new immigrants or old wise ones, angry fathers or pacifying mothers, discussing what to tell the child in question.
Agit(ation) there certainly is, as the urgent, anxious speakers over and again make little runs at the high bar of truth, or the solid wall of prejudice, only to fall back each time, unable to hurdle it. The incantatory lines have the characters wrestling with reason and self-protection, aggression and desire for peace, incomprehension and certainty. "Tell her they're good people and they work for us. Don't tell her she can't play with the children. Don't tell her she can have them in the house."
And prop(aganda) there certainly is, too: "Don't tell her the trouble about the swimming pool. Tell her it's our water, we have the right. Tell her it's not the water for their fields. Don't tell her anything about water."
The company makes each scene urgently real, and delineates perceptible characters and scenarios where there are none: it's brilliant theater in bare essence. There is more balance than I expected, and more humanity -- if the Zionist dream of a brave new world is terribly tarnished, that can surely please no sane person. A strength of the piece is also its weakness, though, and that is the way in which it reflects the situation it's talking about. A babble of confused voices, half-baked sound-bites, half-certain statements delivered to the air and immediately contradicted -- what does all that remind you of?
Tell her. Don't tell her. The "her" is me, or you, or anyone, and I wanted to say "Oh, listen actually, please do tell her, please, because she and I both want to know." How did we get here and how are we going to get out of it? Tell her that. Things seem to be going backwards.
Seven Jewish Children is at the Royal Court, London. Details and free text download from www.royalcourttheatre.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Peter Aspden is away
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