Absolute Hell
Intense exploration of male identity Dir: John Trengove 1hr 28mins (15)
Playwright: Rodney Ackland Director: Joe Hill-gibbins Lyttelton, National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1 (020-7452 3000). Until 16 June Running time: 3hrs (including interval)
When first produced in 1952, under the title The Pink Room, Rodney Ackland’s play – about the denizens of an anything-goes Soho drinking club in the summer of 1945 – received such a critical mauling it more or less killed his career dead, said Ian Shuttleworth in the FT. (“A libel on the British people” was one verdict.) So Ackland all but quit writing until the late 1980s, when he rewrote the play as Absolute Hell and – just before he died – saw it greeted with acclaim. Now revived in a lavish production, the piece remains rather shocking – not so much for its (at the time) bold depictions of bi- and homosexuality, “casual libertinage and a kind of determined alcoholism, but for the unjudgemental yet unyielding gaze with which it regards them”.
This “fascinating and provocative” play is a kind of “living Hogarth portrait of a Blitzravaged London living hard on treble whiskies and rationed eggs, and desperately trying to blot out the world and the War”, said Natasha Tripney in The Stage. It has so many characters and plot strands it feels like a “live-action Robert Altman film”. The focal points, though, are Hugh Marriner, a washed-up writer (played by Charles Edwards with his usual delicacy and empathy) and the club’s lonely proprietor, Christine (an “incredibly poignant” Kate Fleetwood). They, and many others in the large cast, give splendid, nuanced performances.
The play might not be a “stone-cold classic”, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. But it does have something “transcendent to say about the allure of nightlife, the strange bedfellows it breeds”, and the way in which it exists to “alleviate loneliness as much as to facilitate joy”. The trouble, though, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph, is that the rather “monumental” set design and production it has been given do nothing to help create the necessary sense of cosiness and claustrophobia. As a result, this rather fragile play feels “overexposed, over-protracted and overplayed” – and “sprawling to the point of self-indulgent”. It is by no means a failure, but nor – perhaps surprisingly – is it an “absolute must”.
This has been quite a 12 months or so for “complex gay tales shot in striking rural locations”, said Jimi Famurewa in Empire. In the wake of Call Me by Your Name and God’s Own Country comes this “lyrical, bold” South African art-house film. Its action takes place during an initiation retreat attended by young males of the Xhosa tribe who submit to unanaesthetised circumcision and are obliged to yell, “I’m a man!” as the blade cuts the skin.
Many will find the circumcision scenes “difficult”, said Kevin Maher in The Times. But those who get through them will be rewarded by a “flawless exploration of male identity”. The central drama revolves around the secret relationship between two retreat guides, the closeted Xolani (Nakhane Touré) and the bisexual, married Vija (Bongile Mantsai). Their affair is complicated by a young initiate (Niza Jay Ncoyini) who occasionally flips the power balance with the older men – with results that are devastating for all concerned.
Some of the plot twists of this “absorbing and visually strong” drama are rather bluntly arranged, said Edward Porter in The Sunday Times. Yet director John Trengove, a white South African, handles his sensitive subject matter with a delicate touch, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. And even putting aside the “fraught sexual politics”, The Wound provides fascinating insights into Xhosa culture.