My thoughts on Margaret Thatcher, in 2013.

OK, so this post is a little different from my usual film/theatre criticism, but I have something to say, and I feel like this is a good place to say it.

I recently posted a status on Facebook in response to Margaret Thatcher's death, and I feel that it has been misunderstood by some - so I'd better explain myself in more depth.

This is the post: Politicians are public figures, subject to criticism and judgment by the masses - but they're also people. Regardless of your thoughts on her policies and practices, Margaret Thatcher deserves the due reverence you would accord any deceased person. Celebrating/praising the death of an elderly woman says a lot more about the workings of your moral compass than it does about hers. Just my opinion.

To begin, I'd like to state that my belief is not, as some might think, that one 'should not speak ill of the dead'. I would gladly speak ill of Hitler or Mao: political leaders who subjugated their countries to unspeakable crime, genocide, famine, corruption etc. etc. Yet, Margaret Thatcher, I believe, is in a different category:

• Firstly, she was elected, by a popular vote. She was not a despot, who seized power for herself, disregarding the wishes of the people. 
• Secondly, although she was the figurehead and popular image of the conservatives, she did not constitute the whole party. Concurrently, it is absurd to state that 'Margaret Thatcher did this/ did that', and so forth. The whole point of government in Britain is that it is made up of a variety of MP's, from all areas of the country: each body of people is equally represented by politicians they elected. They form the House of Commons, and the PM structures a cabinet from these MP's. Margaret Thatcher was a strong-minded, strong-willed woman, but she was not a self-interested, un-elected authoritarian (we need only look to North Korea for an example of the like), so please, don't label her as one. 
• I would be able to tolerate some of the vitriolic, hateful garbage spewed about Thatcher across the internet if she had truly, recognisably, achieved nothing good for the country. As it stands, Thatcher made tangible, real changes that dramatically overhauled the country's economy (some policies which still stand today, for good reason), intervened when injustice was occurring overseas, in the Falklands war (dispute the justness and morality of that war as you may, but be aware that a recent referendum is likely to see the majority of Falkland Islanders uphold that they are, and their country is British, before blasting the war), amongst innumerable other achievements. She may have got things wrong, badly wrong - but it is ignorant to claim that all her political movements were failures. [NB: I vehemently disagree with a lot of Thatcher's actions, particularly her support of the Khmer Rouge, amongst other things, and fully appreciate the full spectrum of her ministership, positive and negative]. Meanwhile, take for example, Hitler. What can we say that Hitler did for Germany? One need not go into the full details of the atrocities, as they are well known. Amidst the murder, the victimisation, prosecution, starvation, and militarisation, it is insurmountably difficult to pick something out. On the other hand, Mao - like Thatcher - achieved apparent 'goods' for his country: increasing healthcare, improving education, providing social housing and promoting the status of women. Yet, unlike Thatcher, his counteractive crimes are off the human scale; he suppressed human rights, enacted multitudinous political executions, and as a direct result of his 'Great Leap Forward' China suffered widespread famine. The (preventable) deaths of citizens during his reign total 40-70 million - the largest democide in recorded history. You may, naively, argue that Thatcher did nothing for Britain, damaged it even; yet, one need only look at other political figures of the 20th century to see that her policies - even the ones which left some parts of society disgruntled - were humane. Was Thatcher a 'monster' who 'only did bad' for our country? No. To say such a thing is to violate the memory of citizens who truly did suffer the atrocities of a monster-esque, despotic reign, and who reaped little from their 'leader' but a legacy of shame and destruction. 

So, this is part of the reason why I struggle with the Thatcher riots. Here is another aspect, and forgive me for using an analogy to illustrate my point:

A wall is decrepit and crumbling, with great holes and several missing stones. People have been easily traversing this wall for several years: merely stepping over the broken sections, without any inconvenience or injury to their party. Now, if someone comes along, and finally kicks over the paltry remnants of this dilapidated wall, is this something to praise him for? Does the wall's destruction, actually, make any tangible difference in the lives of the people who cross that way every day - who, before now, happily went about their business, not minding that the sad feature was still clinging to existence. When it was first erected, the wall caused contention between the villagers and the landowner whom erected it: that grievance was of policy (the landowners desire to privatise previously public fields). However, when people became frustrated with this segregation, they pushed parts of the wall down, damaged it. The landowner eventually conceded, and reverted his judgement, re-inscribing the land's original, public function: his policy - not the wall - fell. Since that time the wall has been functionless, and suffered the physical harangues of weather, time, and the once vitriolic, but now imperceptible scorn of the people.

Now upscale a bit, take another wall: the Berlin wall. In 1989 the Berlin wall is irrefutably strong, impenetrable, uncrossable, severing western and eastern Germany in two, dividing families, separating friends. The wall is also fatally dangerous for anyone whom attempts to cross it. The Berlin wall is a direct, physical, active, acting functional tool of a rotten regime: it is the policy. When this seemingly inscrutable wall is destroyed this is victory, this is success, this is a thing worth celebrating.

My fundamental point is: If you hated Margaret Thatcher's policies, hate what she 'did to the nation', then the time to celebrate is when she goes out of power, when she is no longer the Prime Minister (when, with the people of my analogy, the landowner redeclares the land as public). You may argue that people still spit on the remnants of the Berlin wall, so we can spit on the remnants of Margaret Thatcher: they both represent 'bad' regimes. My response would be that these two things are discreet; Thatcher introduced policies, had practices, but she did not constitute those policies and practices - she may have held them, believed them, but does a policy equate a person? I am a vegetarian, but that's not all I am, I am a feminist, but that's not all I am: there are parts of my life completely distinct from my practices and beliefs. Meanwhile, the Berlin wall, that was an inanimate object, entirely representative of the regime it stood for, active, working, killing, indistinct from the GDR, with no life outside its function: without the roles of mother, wife, human being.

Now, I return back to that repugnant article I read which stated that public figures are unlike normal people in that they are not exempt from criticism after death. Yes, go on then, I agree - say she's a Milk Snatcher, hate the Falklands war, hate the closure of the mines: criticise these things forever, its your right. Every single person in Britain is entitled to their personal opinion (a right that we often take for granted, and therefore abuse). Yet, dignity in death, and respect for the sanctity of life are also rights, human rights, and criticism must contend and coexist with this right. My mind at least, would not make the illogical jump from hating a policy of Margaret Thatcher's to singing 'ding dong the witch is dead', saying I'd like to 'dance on her grave', or throw a party to 'celebrate' her demise. If I wanted to criticise her, I'd write/vocalise it in a way that did not seem so utterly disrespectful, that did not attack her as a person, and did not pull at the very fabric of society. This is why I say vitriol reflects on the 'moral compass' of the person speaking, rather than the person they attack. In saying things you would - quite rightly - be outraged at someone for saying about a member of your family (from the safety of a keyboard), all sentiment, all logic, all true criticism of lost. All real, true, accurate judgement on Thatcher is swathed in layers of crudeness, maliciousness, unthinking abuse, which infects and mars it. I read the words 'yay lets celebrate, the bitch is dead', and think not 'oh, what an educated individual this person is, her tax reforms truly were despicable, they're right', but that they have no sense of the need for justification of ones beliefs, no appreciation of rhetorical eloquence, and no respect for human life.

My last point [respect for human life] may sound sentimental, but it isn't. After going out of power, Thatcher may have acquired the title 'Baroness', but, like the rest of us will do, she became an elderly person. I do not believe that old age negates the 'crimes' of youth, but I am a strong believer in the thought that we are not one, consistent entity, but several distinct 'selves': the person I am today, is different from that I was yesterday. By 2013, the public has become detached from Thatcher. Do we know if she still holds all the same beliefs she did when she was in power? No. Do we know if she would go back and do the same all over again? No. Do we know if she is proud of herself? No. Therefore, how can we judge? How can we say she is an inherently and consistently 'evil' person? (which I don't, personally, believe she was). In April 2013, Margaret Thatcher was an extremely lonely, decrepit, aged woman, suffering the inexplicably life-altering, harrowing disease Dementia. Dementia is one of the most terrible afflictions man can suffer (I have watched it do its work on one of my own close relatives). It detaches you from yourself, leaves you constantly confused, and scared. Arguably, if you hated Thatcher so much, this would be your victory, this horrible, horrible illness. When she died, Thatcher was a shell - barely a woman, and certainly not 'herself'. Still believe that political figures aren't human, that they're not susceptible to the same eventualities to which all of us may succumb, that they can't feel pain, and confusion, and terror?

That wall, the one already defeated, no longer serving any functional purpose, one that - for years - had not been hurting anyone or anything: are you going to build it back up, to knock it down again? Hate 50 year old Thatcher, with her poll tax and war. You need not love 87 year old Thatcher, alone and dying - but, for the sake of yourself, and our nation, do not abuse and insult her: past all defence, past all use, past sentience.

I never thought myself conservative, but if the alternative to conservatism is turning up to a funeral angrily waving moth-eaten, mildewed banners of musty hate, then perhaps I am. If freedom of speech gives us these foul emissions, perhaps we do not deserve it. If public power results in personal attack, and if a life in politics means you lose your human life and the respect that accords, maybe the system is overrated.

I have a horrible, irrepressible feeling that tomorrow, a few people will expose the rot of Britain.

JEM.

The RSC's Hamlet 2013, a review: suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

On Saturday night I went to see the RSC's (Royal Shakespeare Company's) performance of Hamlet in Stratford. As we live fairly close to Stratford, I have been to the old and new, refurbished theatre on a number of occasions. Last year I saw Romeo and Juliet - a rather lack-lustre performance - and the year before enjoyed The Winter's Tale, which was excellent. In light of these variable recent experiences, I didn't quite know what to expect from Hamlet - but I was not pleasantly surprised.

Before I say anything about the performance, I think it is important to establish that - as it is well-known - Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's longest, weightiest and more complex plays, and poses a daunting task for even the most skilled and experienced of directors: including David Farr. Yet, the RSC is itself a formidable company - the defining establishment of British theatre - and Hamlet's cast includes some stellar theatre stalwarts. Despite the magnitude of the venture, the RSC had the tools and talent to produce a fantastic show.

Firstly, I must begin with our Hamlet - Jonathan Slinger. My criticisms of Slinger are multitudinous, and my praises (sadly) lacking.

• My primary problem with Slinger is his age. At the expense of appearing ageist, at 40 years old Slinger is simply too old to convincingly perform Hamlet. With a balding pate and distinctly middle-aged mannerisms Slinger is void of the youthful charm and spirited fervency one would expect a scholar recently returned from Wittenburg to posses; also - and I'll probably sound shallow as well as ageist now - he lacks any sense of Hamlet's animated attractiveness. These may sound like very superficial, pernickty points, yet, arguably our sense of Hamlet's youth and attractiveness are essential to our appreciation of his character; in the RSC's performance, there is ultimately no viable reason why Ophelia, and more importantly the audience, would be drawn to Hamlet. This inappropriate casting marrs every aspect of the play. When Hamlet is 'mad' (or feigning madness), his witty speeches and silly phrases lose effect; delivered, as they are from the vessel of a middle-aged man, they seem more like a joke your dad (or specifically my dad) would make, than brilliant flourishes of a quick, resourceful wit [in conjunction with this, Slinger's tedious - and ofttimes cringeworthy - tendency to hyperbolically elongate words or repeat them in a silly, childlike manner is unduly incongrous with his 'grumpy old man' facade, and very Jack Dee-esque, but I shall say more on his poor delivery later]. Perhaps more blasphemously, due to Slinger's maturity Hamlet's philosophical speeches on the nature of time, death and life concurrently emerge more as the embittered, dulled, disillusioned mumblings of one J. Alfred Prufrock than the fired-up, ebullient, exhaustive interrogations of a youthful Hamlet, struggling to comprehend the world's inherent complexities as he experiences the thrilling epoch of newly-burgeoning philosophical and worldly consciousness; the essential expansion of the mind (from considerations merely of the self, to musings on mankind as a whole), that occurs primarily when one makes the tentative, perplexed, perplexing transition from boyhood to manhood. [For a portrayal of Hamlet fat and oozing all his intended youthful, spirited brilliance, rhetorical skill, playful wit and philosophical aptness, see - the ineffable, unparalleled - master that is Laurence Olivier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0xYbpYgdPQ]

• Another unignorable aspect of Slinger's portrayal of Hamlet, is his in excruciating tendency to over-act. Indeed, Hamlet is an intense, tragic, dramatic play; however, Hamlet's passionate speeches or mad ramblings are more poignant when considered in isolation. In Slinger's performance there is no respite, no relief from the relentless harangues of his constant crying/laughing etc.. A truly great dramatic performance climaxes, crescendos, deftly works up to moments of intense emotion or compelling action. Slinger's decision to play Hamlet all on one (ebulliently dramatic) level erases the subtle nuances of Shakespeare's original text: in his interaction with his father's ghost the audience's pathos is negated and the sublime cadences of the actual verse are lost, as we are unrelentingly subjected to Slinger's cringe-inducing, childish, repulsive cries. Where is the delicacy? Where is the simplicity? Why is a revered, well-known RSC actor performing like a naively exuberant, unexperienced teenager straight out of acting-school (and don't tell me that's what Shakespeare's Hamlet is - he is anything but). Unfortunately, it seems that the word 'subtle' is not in Slinger's vocabulary. 

OK, so enough about Slinger (although I could say more), and onto Hamlet's other problems.

• The staging was confused, and quite frankly, ridiculous. Although I appreciate that the RSC is always striving to do new, exciting things with their sets, here they have massively overreached. The stage is a confusing conglomeration of high-school gymnasium, old-fashioned Scottish country-pile (see James Bond's family home, in Skyfall), littered with incipient fencing paraphernalia. There are simply too many 'themes' in conflict here, and, whats worse, none of them are remotely interesting/engaging/titillating. If anything, the play would be better suited to a simple, blank stage: at least then it would avoid the criticism of being confused/amateur in design.  (A couple of extra notes on staging. The stage was littered with skulls - I assume to foreshadow Hamlet's famous 'Yorick' speech, but which actually debase it. In addition, the 'movers' took far too long to clear away the stage in preparation for the graveyard scene, totally distracting the audience from Hamlet and Horatio's conversation). 
• Hand-in-hand with staging, naturally, goes costume. Again, there seems to be no consistent theme (or even thought) behind the costumes: Hamlet appears wearing a suit (circa 1950's), then time-travels back to a doublet and hose, before donning an absurd 'modern-day' hooded parka and jeans in the closing scene. Horatio and Ophelia suffer with the trials of dodgy knit-wear, meanwhile Claudius, the Queen, and their court are attired in a similarly inexplicable/clashing array of old-world fashion, 'modern' attire and fencing vizors. Yes, Hamlet is a play that thrives on the inherent inconsistencies and inconstancies of life, human psychology and physiology - but the RSC's costume choices seem more like an un-planned, accidental menagerie than a carefully-coordinated, intentional, thematic jumbling. 
• A flaw I have touched upon, but find too ridiculous to merit discussion is the 'fencing' dimension of this production. It is unnecessary, un-textual, unriveting and - and this is perhaps the most offensive aspect of the whole sodding conundrum - isn't even executed well. Hamlet may have been a skilled swordsman - but these actors are not. The average theatre-goer in 2013 is sophisticated enough to appreciate this aspect of Hamlet's character without having it literally (and poorly) rammed in front of his eyes. 
• I found Ophelia ill-cast and ill-concieved. I can see that Farr was attempting to make more out of her character, but really, in Shakespeare's text and in almost every other production of Hamlet, she is on the periphery. Hamlet has dimensions of 'love', yes, but it is not a 'love story'. Our focus  is meant to be on Hamlet alone, which is why his relationship with Ophelia is largely left unwritten/open to the imagination. Forgive me for sounding anti-feminist, but Ophelia is an unimportant antecedent. If any female character is interesting in Hamlet, it is Gertrude: the character whose decision to marry her husband's brother tears the rug from under Hamlet, and corrupts the very fabric of the play's moral universe (On that point, Charlotte Cornwell's Gertude was bland, unmemorable, and dire: when, in the play, she is actually a rather interesting, ambiguous paradox of a woman. I do concede, however, that her performance was not exactly helped by having Mr. Over-actor - Slinger - as her counterpart, who prevented her from getting a word in edgeways, anyway). On a different note, Ophelia's eventual 'madness' was as unconvincing as Slinger's, and her smearing blood on Claudius and Gertude etc. a trivial, predictable motif - which crowned my dislike for Pippa Nixon's performance. *also, extremely superficially, I did not like her hair. Where are the famous locks intwined with flowers and weeds that drag her to her watery-grave - WHERE?!

• Hamlet is long, yes, but at four hours (including interval) the RSC's production was looong (with extra 'o's'). Given, Farr may have felt that he wanted to give the play its full-run, and allow all of Shakespeare's verse to be included - but there were scenes which were tedious and un-engaging, and could have benefited from being shortened. Although I largely believe in the 'sanctity' of the written text, it is natural and necessary that a literary piece should be formally (as opposed to thematically) modified and altered to fit its new, dramatic context. I read recently that Renaissance theatre goers were extremely adept listeners, and would sit through a four-hour performance of Hamlet with no qualms/discomfort. It is a lamentable, but real fact that modern audiences do not posses this astonishing faculty. In order to keep engaging audiences with albeit, the same material of the Renaissance, contemporary directors must at least attempt to make that material palatable and enjoyable for them. I am sad to say that if this was my first experience of professional theatre (as I suspect it was for some of the 14/15 y/o's sat in front of me) I would be unlikely to return. * NB I am not suggesting a dulling-down/de-elevation/modernisation of the text (these sorts of productions are repugnant) - my suggestions are merely in a formal sense. 
• The final scene was inexplicably poorly acted.
• As the play ends, a fire alarm goes off and sprinklers flood the stage. Why was this necessary? The audience were not surprised, taken-aback, or even momentarily affected by this (shoddy, half-hearted) 'spectacle': in my mind, the only thing it achieved was making Ophelia's white dress extremely dirty - the RSC's dry-cleaning bill is going to be extortionate by the end of the play's run. 

Despite my criticism there are a few - sparse - parts/factors of the RSC's Hamlet that I genuinely enjoyed. 

•  I thought Robin Soans was an excellent Polonious. He exquisitely portrayed all of Polonious' comic idisyncracies: from his inclination for proverbs (many of which have now entered common speech), his pompous verboseness, his sycophantic manouvers, and his insuppressible dislike for Hamlet. Soans pulled-off the character perfectly, and shone as, arguably, the most experienced and well-suited to his role. 
• The dumb-play was extremely engaging, combining humour and dark-tragedy. The use of costumes/setting that would have furnished an actual dumb-show in the Renaissance conveyed the same sense of jeopardy and titillation Hamlet's first audiences would have undoubtedly felt: as they watched Claudius, watching the play of himself. There was menace, there was sexual-innuendo, there was unease and enjoyment: in this brief dumb-show Farr manages to engage and amuse the audience wholly, when in the actual theatrical performance - of which the dumb-show is a mere part - he only half-captivates them, and merely sporadically amuses them. 

Evidently, as I warned you at before beginning, my criticisms vastly outnumber my praises. Overall, I feel extremely let down by the RSC: I expected an excellent performance of one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, what I got was a paltry 'show' of amateur dramatics, shoddy staging and sore-eyes from watching such a dull play for so long. I have booked tickets for a dramatic production of Venus and Adonis at Shakespeare's Globe theatre in May - I can only hope that it will outshine Hamlet, although that should not be too difficult. 

JEM.