Theatre reviews: Huxley's Lab/The History Boys/The Elves And The Shoemakers

Published on Wednesday 7 April 2010 19:05

HUXLEY'S LAB **** THE INFORMATICS FORUM, EDINBURGH THE HISTORY BOYS **** KING'S THEATRE, EDINBURGH THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKERS **** DUNDEE REP

OF ALL the unattractive qualities of contemporary culture, the one known as "control-freakery" is perhaps the least appealing. It's easy to see where it comes from. Once we glimpse the possibility of using our brains and willpower to conquer killer diseases, or alleviate pain, or even just keep our kids out of danger and make sure they have an education that ticks all the boxes – well, it's easy for us to feel that because these good things can happen, they always should happen, on pain of legal action and public shame.

What we're not so good at, though, is calculating the downside cost of all this eradication of risk; and this week, there are two major shows in Edinburgh that ring alarm bells about the kind of world we are creating. Huxley's Lab is co-produced in the glamorous new Informatics Forum at Crichton Street by the Science Festival, now in full swing, along with site-specific theatre specialists Grid Iron, and Lung Ha's Theatre Company for performers with learning difficulties; and it uses the broad outline of Aldous Huxley's great 1932 novel Brave New World to repeat his bold and far-sighted warning against the pursuit of human perfection, and the authoritarian and even fascistic systems of organisation it can create.

What Huxley's Lab does not do is to carry Huxley's ideas forward in a strong, 21st-century poetic form; its script often states the obvious, sometimes at excessive length. It does, though, at least notice the shifts in our concepts of perfection since the 1930s. Then, it was all about breeding people to fulfil their allotted role in society; now, it's all about psychologically bludgeoning people to match a standardised, sub-pornographic image of physical perfection. Ben Harrison and Maria Oller's production makes inspired use of the Informatics Forum building to open up and re-emphasise these ideas, leading us from atrium to nursery to pool-like leisure-space (scene of compulsory twice-a-day recreational sex), and out to the roof-top garden where the "naturals", those not bred for perfection, still romp and dance and sing raucous songs and reproduce naturally. The use of music (by Philip Pinsky) ranges fascinatingly from atmospheric and doom-laden background noise to brisk little pep-songs for the perfect. There's some strikingly effective simple choreography by Janis Claxton; and the leading performances – from Sean Hay as the top doctor, Mark Howie as his secret son, Carmen Pieraccini and Ben Winger as two doctors whose love breaks the rules, Gail Watson as blinkered technocrat Dr Crick, and Stephan Tait as the big boss, Huxley himself – all have a piercing clarity.

There's plenty to debate about Huxley's Lab, not least the show's shameless use of Lung Ha's performers to represent the imperfect and anarchic; and its relentless romanticisation of the magic of biological parenthood, which bears as hard on the childless and infertile as the pursuit of physical perfection does on the ugly and flawed.

But as with many recent Grid Iron shows, the skill and imagination of the staging outweighs a slight sense of intellectual vagueness, and the lack of a truly inspiring script; it's not a great show, but it's a good one, and an experience that those who see it are unlikely to forget.

Alan Bennett's great 2004 hit The History Boys is famous for its protest against the forces of control-freakery in education. Set in a boys' grammar school in the north of England in the 1980s, it tells the story of Hector, an old-fashioned and eccentric English teacher who passes on to his boys a vague but powerful sense of their own cultural inheritance, from Gracie Fields songs and Hollywood movies to the poetry of Thomas Hardy and AE Housman, and is eventually destroyed by the system, not least because of his habit of indulging in a little non-invasive sexual interference with his students.

The History Boys is not a realistic drama; the class of boys, in particular, are hopelessly idealised, funny, quick-witted, infinitely gifted as singers and dancers as well as scholars. And Christopher Luscombe's simple, cut-down production – with a backing tape of lush 1980s pop – is a little slow in places, circling gingerly around Gerard Murphy's dangerous, highly emotional performance as Hector. Theatrically, dramatically, and poetically, though, The History Boys plays like a dream, and contains big truths about the wellsprings of human inspiration, and the sheer joy of learning, so easily crushed by the tick-box mentality of modern educational management; and although this is a long show, at two-and-three-quarter hours, Luscombe's company make it a thoroughly enjoyable and enriching one.

If a small dose of pure magic is what you're after, though, then Dundee Rep is the place to be this week. Backed by all the resources of the Rep ensemble, Jemima Levick's fine production of Mike Kenny's The Elves And The Shoemakers lasts just 50 minutes, and attempts nothing fancy.

An old shoemaker and his wife, beautifully played by John Buick and Irene Macdougall, are struggling in poverty; until they are visited by a pair of anarchic but helpful elves, played with equal flair by Kevin Lennon and Kirsty Malone, who make magically beautiful shoes out of their dwindling stock of leather.

All of this is conveyed with terrific grace on a small revolving stage placed in the middle of the Rep's current on-stage studio space. There are lovely songs specially written by Lennon, and an inspired and witty traditional set and costume design by Francis O'Connor. And if the story slightly lacks drama – well, at least it acknowledges the truth that sometimes, human beings need help from sources that the controlling intellect can hardly understand; and that if we never allow ourselves to dream of these magical things, we cannot even begin to make them real.

&#149 Huxley's Lab is at the Informatics Forum, Edinburgh, until tonight. The History Boys and The Elves And The Shoemakers both run until Saturday.