The Times

Wednesday February 20, 2002

Resistible charm of old-school radical

Theatre: Life after George
Duchess Theatre, WC2
3 stars out of 5

by Benedict Nightingale

PETER GEORGE, Professor of History at Melbourne University, is quite a chap: “His vitality and his folly, his appetite for love and his propensity for neglect, his hedonism and his moral courage make him an irresistible personality.” At any rate, that’s what Hannie Rayson says in the programme, and she should know, since she wrote the play bearing his name. Wouldn’t we believe Shakespeare if he called Falstaff a loveable rogue or Hamlet a likeable mess?

But maybe authors, even ones as intelligent as Rayson, shouldn’t review their own work. Another view of George is that he’s an insufferable pain in the arse — or, since Stephen Dillane brings all his wily charm to the role, as sufferable a pain as a blithely unself-questioning, old-school Marxist can be.

Rayson’s play did well in her native Australia, and not just because it attacks the triumph of “corporate values” in that country’s universities. It starts and ends with George’s funeral — he’s just crashed a tiny plane — and skips adroitly to and fro in time, at one point going back to 1968. That’s when the British-born academic was in Paris, haranguing crowds and telling his first wife, Cheryl Campbell’s Bea, that “the more I make revolution, the more I want to make love”.

The play is strongest when, true to its title, it shows how the professor’s women are coping with his death. The youngest and most despised of his three wives, Anna Wilson-Jones’s Poppy, is distraught, especially when it emerges that George died in the company of another woman. Campbell’s Bea earnestly comforts his and her daughter, Susannah Wise’s Ana, who felt rejected by her father.

As for his second wife, Joanne Pearce’s Lindsay, she’s a control freak for whom his death is a chance to organise and dominate.

Malign energy is always fun to watch, and Pearce provides lots of that. We see her moving from a peppy student to an aggressive feminist to the much-hated dean of the arts faculty and George’s foe.

It says much for Pearce’s acting, and for Michael Blakemore’s direction, that Lindsay can treat her younger “sisters” with contempt, try to change the university into a training ground for the rich, yet still suggest a certain vulnerability.

But why is Rayson so much harder on her than on George? True, you’re supposed to find his youthful view that sex is “the engine-room of the revolution” self-indulgent, his offhandedness to his children regrettable. But it’s increasingly clear that he’s basically to be admired: for his dislike of “wimpy liberal humanists” and “ruling-class twats” and for an “idealistic” belief in change that’s never quite defined, let alone questioned.

Yes, it’s good to see a sophisticated political play in the West End, But, no, not even Dillane’s relaxed, rumpled charisma convinced me that I could live in a utopia defined by this oddly dogmatic maverick, this over-opinionated anti-authoritarian.

And, having admired Hannie Rayson's Hotel Sorrento in Melbourne a decade ago, I'm delighted to see her latest play breaking the cultural tariff barrier even if it is slightly bursting at the seams.

Rayson's theme is the loss of idealism in Australian life over the last 30 years. To illustrate this she offers a fictional retrospective of a charismatic academic: a radical historian called Peter George who, though born a Geordie, emigrates to Melbourne, inspires generations of students and fiercely resists the transformation of the university into a market-oriented shopping mall.

But Rayson also surveys George through the critical eyes of his three wives: the bourgeois Beatrix, the Marxist-turned-Thatcherite Lindsay and the young post-modernist Poppy.

It is easy to see Rayson's reasoning: that intellectual life is the poorer for the loss of questioning libertarians like George and that we vandalise higher education when we turn it into something purely vocational.

But, fast-moving and entertaining as her play is, it runs into two problems. One is that we have to take the brilliance of George, who corresponds with everyone from EP Thompson to Susan Sontag, on trust: there are times when he sounds more like Howard Kirk in The History Man than a genuine revolutionary.

And, precisely because the play is in part a shagging don story, George's role as a shining idealist in a corrupted academic world is a bit hard to take. Rayson's real interest lies in her female characters who have an instinctive dramatic life.

And much the best of them is Lindsay who moves, entirely plausibly from postgrad radical feminist to Churchillian Top Girl and competitive campus capitalist.

The role is superbly played by Joanne Pearce who, because of the play's time-bending structure, has to turn on a sixpence from youth to maturity and back again: Pearce makes Lindsay as much the play's focus as George in that the character embodies the intellectual betrayal at the heart of Australian, and indeed western, life.

This is the play's great strength. It is excellently directed by Michael Blakemore and ingeniously designed by Peter Davison.

And there are good performances from Stephen Dillane as the permanently tousled, idealistic George, Cheryl Campbell as his amiably conservative first wife and Susannah Wise as their bewildered, underachieving daughter.

Rayson may have tried to cram too much in; but her play bursts with the vitality that is a hallmark of Australian drama.

Whatsonstage

Wednesday February 20, 2002

Life After George

WOS Rating 3 stars

by Terri Paddock

Academics in this age of educational commercialisation will sympathise with Peter George, the radical professor in this new Australian import by Hannie Rayson. Too bad then that Rayson's overly clever construction is apt to leave the rest of the population low on that or any other emotion for the characters inhabiting the Duchess stage.

With the thrice-married George is dead, the women in his life - two ex-wives, the half-his-age final spouse and grown-up daughter - have gathered, along with best mate Duffy (Richard Hope), to sift through the ashes of a dead husband/father/friend and his deader-still philosophies. The piece begins and ends with George's funeral, and in between, journeys back and forth over the three preceding decades since 1969.

Along the way, there are some interesting 'thinky' asides about social nostalgia, the value of higher education and the perceived failures of feminism, radicalism, Marxism and a bunch of other -isms. George himself sets his political stall out early with perhaps the play's most compelling scene - an excerpt from one of his 1970s university lectures in which he implores his students to question and fornicate in equal measure ("your sexuality is the engine room for a revolution").

But while such intellectual brainteasers are fine, dramatic questions are thinner on the ground. Did George commit suicide? Was he having an affair? Who was with him in the plane? Who did he really love? These come too slowly and too late to compensate for a slow start. Many are also left frustratingly unanswered, while revelations about others are unsatisfactory, arriving without any foreshadowing.

Then there are those constant to-ings and fro-ings. Peter J Davison's greyed-out university office set - with windows and screens opening up a more colourful past of Parisian rooftops and sunny beaches - helps reduce confusion in following the action. And director Michael Blakemore somehow manages to avoid any smack of farce despite the prevalence of slamming doors and swift entrances and exits. But the constant inter-splicing of time periods, characters, monologues and duologues means all the scenes are too brief and superficial to allow any proper emotional engagement.

Which isn't to say that the cast fail to turn in compelling performances. As always, Stephen Dillane is consummately natural and watchable. Elsewhere, Joanna Pearce as second wife Lindsay is a bundle of ideologically bankrupt, Aussie steel; Cheryl Campbell does frumpy discard number one well; Anna Wilson-Jones is much more than a bit of fluff despite having to play a wifelet named Poppy; and Susannah Wise nails daughter Ana's agitation while also tickling the ivories.

But the amassed talent is under-utilised, with none of the aforementioned getting enough opportunity to stretch out into their characters and show us what they're really made of. In the end, this play of free love, free thinking and free education is simply too freewheeling to take dramatic root.

The London Theatre Guide - Online

February 2002

Life After George 

by Amanda Hodges

Hannie Rayson's confusing new play is a perfect example of great idea, shame about the script. Opening at the funeral of one Professor George (an excellently cast Stephen Dillane) the play traces the way academia has changed from promoting the values of a classical education to market led, commercially orientated institutions of the present day, acutely aware of economic uncertainty.

Prof. George is a charismatic English professor teaching at Melbourne University whose chaotic private life mirrors the liberal sweep of his ideas. His three wives - and daughter- look back at the defining moments of George's life and in doing so we're clearly meant to see how academia itself has fundamentally changed since the Seventies.

On the plus side, it's great to see a play bravely tackling big issues and many of the points championed during the course of this play make sound sense.

Having someone of Dillane's calibre is a godsend for the role of George as he has the capacity to persuade, even in a vehicle as generally unconvincing as this. The inherent problem here lies in the fact that it always feels like a dramatic soapbox rather than an engrossing play and this is a fundamental flaw, alienating much potential sympathy from the audience.

This is London

Tuesday February 19, 2002

Hot Tickets

Life After George: The thinking woman's bit of crumpet Stephen Dillane returns to the West End to play a radical university lecturer in Hannie Rayson's sharp-witted play of failed marriages and social shift. Directed by the man with the Midas touch, Michael Blakemore, Rayson's decade-spanning drama moves from the dawn of the baby boomer to the rise of Generation X. 

Duchess Theatre, WC2, 7pm tonight, then 7.30pm, £31-£37.50, 0870 890 1103.

The Times

Saturday February 16, 2002

Benedict Nightingale's choice 

Life After George
Duchess, WC2, from Feb 19 (020-7494 5075)

STEPHEN DILLANE is not a household name in the usual sense of the word, but if you were to mention him in a regular theatregoer’s home you could be confident of instant recognition. We last saw him two years ago, winning a major award for his performance as the lovelorn writer in Tom Stoppard’s Real Thing — and I can still see that wryly humorous face, feel that dry, droll charm and sense the darkness within.

I do not doubt that he will bring the same qualities to Hannie Rayson’s Life After George. He plays a senior academic who helped man the barricades in the Sixties, had little compunction about using his personal charisma and political clout to attract women, but finds himself and his old-Marxist beliefs increasingly embattled with the rise of feminism, the triumph of the market and other such seismic shifts. Whether you hate George, admire him, or both, you cannot deny that he is a highly topical figure — and one that Dillane is likely to bring exhilaratingly to life.

So Rayson is working in the tradition of David Hare, Trevor Griffiths and other left-leaning British dramatists? No, not really.

Though George’s origins are British, he is relocated in Australia, his author’s country. And after the play’s premiere in Melbourne two years ago, it not only won several awards but went on to impress the Australian-born director, Michael Blakemore, enough to earn itself this West End production. And with supporting performances from Joanne Pearce and Cheryl Campbell, the play’s prospects look good.

The Age

Friday February 15, 2002

Life after Melbourne ...  (an excerpt)

by Peter Fray

In just a few days, Hannie Rayson will become the first Australian playwright in five years to experience the full force of one of the toughest theatrical markets on the planet when her play, Life After George, opens in London's West End...

Its British producer, Michael Codron, whose considerable West End reputation is built on backing new plays by the likes of Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard, will expect bums on seats - or George will be off for an early shower.

However, if George fails, Codron will only have himself to blame. After receiving a copy of Rayson's play from her Australian agent, he decided to bring it to London, virtually before finishing reading it.

The play has been booked in for six months (dependent on ticket sales) at the 500-seat Duchess Theatre - and its creator couldn't be happier or more resigned to her fate. Other Australian plays have been "savaged and patronised'', she says, matter of factly. "Critics here (London) like to think they are the final arbiters of taste.''

The play does have a few factors in its favour, chief among them its director, the Australian-born West End veteran Michael Blakemore, who is very much the man of the moment, with recent successes including Frayn's Copenhagen (which he'll soon direct in Sydney) and the musical Kiss me Kate.

Both play and musical won Blakemore Tony awards in 2000 for their Broadway productions. Rayson describes him as a "marvellous director. He's incredibly gentle and precise''.

The cast is not shoddy either. George is played by the hugely successful stage actor, Stephen Dillane, who won a swag of awards in 1999 and 2000 for his lead role in the revival of Stoppard's The Real Thing.

The four women in George's life are Cheryl Campbell ( from Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven), Anna Wilson-Jones, Joanne Pearce and Susannah Wise. Rayson is impressed by their knowledge, especially Dillane's. "There's a very fierce intelligence at work,'' she says.

When we meet, Rayson, whose skill as a playwright is to make the personal political and vice versa, has been watching the play in Guildford, its two- week out-of-town run. As for critics, it's a case of so far, so good, so small. In what must rate as one of the world's shortest positive reviews (six paragraphs), the local paper called the play a "jewel''.

Whatsonstage

Tuesday February 12, 2002

Life After George

User review - 4 stars

Seen at the Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford, prior to the West End. A startling and ambitious play, written by Australian, Hannie Rayson. It first opened at the Melbourne Theatre Company in January 2000, achieving critical acclaim and winning countless awards. The story describes the life and times, across a thirty year span, of the charming, but radical, university professor Peter George, and his relationships with his three wives. Their stories make compelling viewing, and are both witty and funny, as well as sad and touching. Stephen Dillane, as George, gives a magnificent and charismatic performance, and is ably supported by the rest of the strong cast. An interesting feature is the completely grey set, which, by its nature, allows the colourfulness of the characters to shine through. Coupled with some striking lighting effects, the whole design relays quite an impact. The evening was a delightful and rewarding experience, and went to emphasise the powerful inspiration that new and contemporary theatre can offer. Well worth a visit.