Victory
Arcola Theatre, London
EVERY theatre buff has a list of great plays they want to see, but haven’t caught up with yet. Sometimes, the expectation of seeing the revival of a classic, even if it is a relatively modern classic, is enough to spoil the whole experience. The way that the game of fantasy theatre works is that expectations are so much better than actuality. Sometimes – but not always.
Last week, I finally saw Howard Barker’s 1983 play, Victory, and thus crossed this legendary work off my list. This revival lived up to my expectations. In fact. it more than lived up to them. Set during the Restoration of Charles II, the Merry Monarch, it paints a vivid picture of England as a land ravaged and stinking in the wake of the civil war and Oliver Cromwell’s puritan dictatorship.
Like an echo of Brechtian epic drama, the story follows Bradshaw, the widow of the regicide who signed Charles I’s death warrant, as she goes to London in search of her husband’s body, which has been exhumed and hung up as the corpse of a traitor. During this road trip, she meets colourful characters, especially the swaggering cavalier, Ball, and the monarch’s mistress, the Duchess of Devonshire.
England emerges as a country barely catching its breath, as it tries to recover from religious warfare and cultural conflict. But while the puritans remain prim and intolerably pious, the cavaliers burst onto the scene as pox-ridden and predatory pleasure-seekers – loud, vulgar and diseased. The scenes which show Charles II’s court are perfectly lurid in their monstrous excess.
Barker doesn’t do simple slices of history, but prefers a poetic and complex meditation on desire, tragedy and defeat. And, topically enough, stirring beneath the petticoats of power is a new class of entrepreneur: the banker. Symbolised by Hambro, who meets a satisfyingly sticky end, the bankers herald a new age of capitalism, which looks set to achieve victory over both the religious fanatics and royalist layabouts.
Barker focuses the keen fire of his imagination on how human beings think and feel during great moments of historical change, and his gloriously verbose style captures both the inner sense of self and the wild fantasies of experience in adversity. Like a jewel encrusted with fantastical gems and then dipped into the shit of a cow-field, the result is mesmerising and appalling in equal measure.
While this epic vision makes most current political theatre seem anaemic, it is also an immensely sobering experience. From the smoke and roar of politics, there emerge no heroes or villains, but simply a gallery of men and women all fighting to overcome the obstacles to survival in a world turned upside down. As hunger stalks the land, the rich stuff themselves to no avail. In the end, they are as subject to the same chance misfortune as the beggars who roam the highways.
Barker also writes with remarkable empathy about women, and this solid production, neatly directed by Amelia Nicholson, stars Geraldine James as Bradshaw and Matthew Kelly as Ball. Nicholas Rowe gives an intriguing insight into the dirty mind of Charles II and Evie Dawnay is beautifully bitter as his discarded mistress. Although at times you wish the production was a touch more flamboyant, this is undoubtedly the best piece of political theatre in town. It’s definitely one to put on your list of must-sees.
Aleks Sierz
