How English art shames the Scots
Later this year, Scots will have an opportunity to give their verdict on the first term of their new Scottish parliament. Devolution critics are relishing the prospect that the elections in May will be marred by a combination of apathy and disaffection. But to expect a mature political culture to emerge overnight is silly. Those critics would do much better if they directed their fire at areas where the parliament could have made a bigger, immediate impact, but has failed to do so; most notably on the cultural scene.
Artists, actors, writers and composers have rightly been complaining about the Scottish executive's lack of support for the arts-in embarrassing contrast to the English scene. Funding in Scotland has been at a standstill, lottery income is falling fast, and a bare 0.16 per cent of the national budget is now invested in the Scottish Arts Council's programme. A much-trumpeted plan for a National Theatre of Scotland has been put on hold and, as a result, one prominent theatre director, Hamish Glenn of the Dundee Rep, has already announced plans to decamp to England where, by contrast, an additional ?115m is being ploughed into the arts for the years up to 2006. The latest segment of this funding (an extra ?75m by 2005-2006) represents a 16 per cent increase in real terms over two years.
The disappointment for arts-loving Scots is all the more intense because, early on in the life of the parliament, a "national cultural strategy" was announced which promised that devolution would spark a cultural as well as a political renaissance. That promise now looks distinctly limp.
So far First Minister Jack McConnell has stayed out of the row-but possibly not for much longer. His feisty wife, Bridget, who is director of culture and leisure in Glasgow (and therefore one of the most powerful figures on the arts scene in Scotland), has weighed in with her own complaints about cultural underfunding in her city. A combination of Glasgow and Bridget might just prove irresistible. It would be nice to see Mrs Arts showing Mr Politics where to go.
Art on the dole
Still, the rise in English funding isn't good enough for Tom Morris, artistic director of the Battersea Arts Centre and the fringe's most ebullient evangelist. He recently noted in the Guardian that by 2005 the national arts budget will have doubled since 1997. Eating his cake and then ordering seconds, Morris complained that a good source of funding, by which artists once made their first steps to stardom, has dried up. He lamented the passing of the old dole system, which sponsored the early careers of, amongst many others, Stephen Daldry, Emily Watson, Mark Rylance and Deborah Warner. That ghastly new "jobseekers' allowance"-Morris moans-simply won't leave artists alone to dream in peace. Yes sir, those "mad years of early Thatcherism," sure were fine. This 1982 chart hit by Wham! should be Morris's anthem:
Hey everybody, take a look at me/ I've got street credibility/ I may not have a job/ but I have a good time/ with the boys that I meet "down on the line."
Hey jerk, you work!/ This guy's got better things to do.
If you're a pub man or a club man/ maybe a jet black guy with a hip hi-fi/ don't let the hard times stand in your way/ give a wham, give a bam, but don't give a damn/ 'cos the benefit gang are gonna pay!
Think what might have been lost if a young George Michael had been forced to work.
Bad back at the opera
Bryn Terfel, only 37 but, since this New Year's honours list, already armed with the CBE (which means he'll almost certainly be a fat knight before he's 50) is taking three months off for the birth of his third child-once he's finished his coming stint as Falstaff at Covent Garden. Unlike the insatiable Sir John, though, Bryn Jones (as he was born in Pantglas, north Wales) is very much a homebody. He'd far rather be indoors in Caernarfon than spinning round the world on duty as the most famous and successful bass baritone of our time. The further he gets from Wales, the more he suffers from the back trouble that led him to cancel his performances as Nick Shadow in Munich last summer-though December's Sweeney Todd in Chicago went without a hitch. When he next sings in Tokyo they'd better engage a Welsh physio to go all that way with him.
Critic watch
Prize for the most pretentious theatre critic of 2002 goes to the Sunday Times's John Peter, whose flashes of insight are interspersed by such banalities as: "One way or another, all of Arthur Miller's major plays are tragedies." Judges of this unofficial award loved Peter's best platitude: "One difference between the theatre and life is that life tends to go on, but plays come to an end." And he's not afraid to sum up 2,500 years of theatre with a blithe flourish: "I don't know if there will ever be a definitive account of this great, terrible, harrowing play," wrote Peter of the Bacchai. Yet you feel that Peter is familiar with enough historic theatre for him to celebrate "one of the best productions of any Moli?re play I've seen in a life crowded with incident." Despite having seen so much and lived so long, his love of the superlative is undimmed. Vincent in Brixton was "one of the best new plays ever presented by the National Theatre." The RSC's Prisoner's Dilemma was "one of the most urgent and intellectually committed political plays of the last two decades." As he wrote of the NT's Streetcar, "This is a time for superlatives." Peter knows how to post his name on theatre walls. As he has said: "Theatre can be a ruthless teacher." Not ruthless enough.
UNDER THE RADAR
Low frequency listings
Anna Best has organised a convention of ice cream van owners; Adam Chodzko is throwing a party for people who own the same Vivienne Westwood top. It's all part of art for networks at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, from 15th February.?
Various characters go in search of historical truth in Luigi Pirandello's rarely performed postmodernist curio, Henry IV, at the Etcetera Theatre, London, from 4th February.
Kirby Dick's follow-up documentary to his gruesome Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist is a little more cerebral; in Derrida, at the ICA, London, from 31st January, the philosopher muses about narcissism.
Omar Rajeh makes his UK choreographic debut at The Place, London, on 11th February. Beyrouth Jaune is based on his experience of life in his native Lebanon.
Sarah Staton literally gilds the lily, creating a golden apple for her revamp of the English sculpture garden in Green-Or How We Missed Modernism at Milton Keynes Gallery, from 25th January.
Josephine Barstow sings the Countess from The Queen of Spades at an all-star celebration of the life of designer Maria Bjornson at Her Majesty's Theatre, London, on 16th February.
BALLET PREVIEW
Boris Eifman
Russian ballet, to the western mind, means snowy tutus, tapering arabesques and the kind of artistic excellence that comes from supreme self-belief. The Soviets valued their ballet, both for prestige abroad and delectation at home. But it also mirrored rigid Soviet conservatism. The most timid experiments were confronted by the difficulties of communist isolation and state censorship.
Boris Eifman, whose company comes to Sadler's Wells this month, recalls those days well. He founded his first company, the Leningrad Ballet Ensemble in 1977, blowing fresh air through ballet; not destroying Russian traditions, but developing them. He extended ballet's language, gave it expressionist freedom, and challenged the canons of Soviet ballet. He used music by Pink Floyd, appealed to young people and filled the 4,000-seat theatre in Moscow's Rossiya Hotel.
He also ran up against the cultural watchdogs of Soviet bureaucracy. "Whatever was unusual was not tolerated in the Soviet Union," he explains. "They would say 'it's not choreography but pornography.'" His company was too successful to close down. They tried to get him out of the country, promising foreign touring, but only if he accepted a one-way passport. To cope, he developed low cunning. "I would promise to be a good boy and correct things. So, after a month, I would show them the same work, with the so-called corrections. And they would say, 'oh, yes, it's quite different.' But, in fact, I hadn't changed anything." Perhaps even they realised this. "Everybody was playing this game. The truth didn't exist."
Despite having to dodge the censors, and overcoming the handicap of being Jewish, Eifman managed to keep his company going without state subsidy. At the time, this was simply a burden. But it did mean that he was well-equipped for the harsh free market of the new Russia. In 1988 he began touring abroad, visiting London in 1991. His company returns with a new name, Eifman Ballet Theatre, which he claims is a synthesis of his theatrical and choreographic ambitions. Ironically, he does now receive a modest subsidy.
Tchaikovsky, a phantasmagoric evocation of the composer's inner demons, was the first piece in his new phase and is one of the two shows at Sadler's Wells. The other, Red Giselle, equates the tragic life of legendary ballerina Olga Spessivtseva with her best-known role. The stagings wouldn't have pleased the crusty Soviets. Still relatively unknown here, Russian attempts at experimentation can be surprising. After decades of restrictions, cut off from the rest of ballet's avant-garde, some of Eifman's experiments look creakily old-fashioned; but some reveal an evolution which has a refreshing Russian specificity. There's the focus on psychological and historical themes, and his sense of soul (there's no other way to put it) could only be Russian.
Nadine Meisner
Sadler's Wells Theatre, 10th-15th February
