Snow falling faintly through the universe

 

In late 2013, I was treated to a tour of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, then yet to see its opening production of The Duchess of Malfi – just over a year on, isn’t it safe to call this new-old theatre, a twenty-first-century take on a seventeenth-century design, one of the best things to happen to London in 2014?

I was there again on Monday night for one of the last in the Globe's series of readings, Winter's Tales: Aiden Gillen’s magnificent rendition of “The Dead” by James Joyce, that great story of stories, published a century ago in Dubliners. In evening dress, that familiar glint in his eye, Gillen sat at a desk beneath the candles. A pianist upstage interceded with the occasional musical comment on proceedings, seeming to observe how the bonhomie is becoming stranger as the Christmas party Joyce describes goes on into the night. Gillen gave that pinched word “English” just enough emphasis, when it so impertinently butts in, to add to the disquiet; other awkward moments (“Is it because he’s only a black?”) and the absurd silence-filling remarks people make at such gatherings (“They are very good men, the monks, very pious men”) were unsurprisingly effective, too.

Gillen exited at the interval with imaginary fork held high (Freddy Malins exultant as the party’s hostesses, those “Three Graces”, are toasted and acclaimed as “jolly gay fellows”), and came back sombrely to narrate with aplomb the final journey from Gretta listening in the hallway to Gabriel’s lust for her to that final, lyrical vision of the living, dying, snow-covered world.

I feel very lucky to have witnessed this, and to have seen out the old year with "The Dead". That said: theatregoers in 2015 should try to remember that switching a mobile phone to “silent” mode doesn’t necessarily silence it (the sound of a phone vibrating in a handbag or pocket easily carries around a small auditorium); and I discovered at the interval that the two Graces sitting next to me had been gently bemused by the story so far. They’d been hoping for some kind of Jacobean scenes of comedy or tragedy rather than a recital, it turned out. I told them to come back in a month . . .

Unlike them, I can be fairly sure that “The Dead” won’t be the last “live” story reading I hear in the near future. That’s thanks to my peripheral involvement with the Liars League, which organizes evenings of short story readings in London, New York and occasionally elsewhere. Every month, writers are invited to submit stories on a given theme (Blood & Guts in October, say, or Love & Kisses in February), and actors read/recite/perform the winning entries. We’ve had shocking months when everything submitted seems to have been written by Bulwer-Lytton on a bad day (Yes, it was another dark and stormy night . . . and he woke up and it all turned out to have been a terrible dream again), and others when it’s been nothing but a pleasure. I failed to make it to many of the performances in the past twelve months, however, so there’s one obvious resolution for next twelve.

I doubt the Liars League will be able to persuade their venues to use candle light any time soon – unless the Globe is willing to loan the London branch the Sam Wanamaker – and on the whole LL sticks to prose rather than medieval verse. But what these events ask of the audience is essentially the same, I think – not to expect spectacle in the conventional sense, but to listen closely and hear what words (almost) alone can do in performance.

Thanks to everybody who's read and commented on this blog in 2014 – may 2015 bring you harmless pleasure, candle-lit, owl-lit or otherwise . . . .