Journalist John Simpson won few new admirers for the profession of war correspondent in 2001 when he entered the Afghan capital and told viewers it was "extraordinarily exhilarating to be liberating a city". It turned out that Simpson was not even the first BBC man to enter Kabul, to say nothing of his vast exaggeration of the role of a mere reporter in the conflict. One thing that he and his many colleagues do seem to agree upon is that when they first "go into combat" the gunfire does not sound real. What this extraordinary statement means is that actual gunfire does not sound like the correspondents think it will after years of watching TV shootouts.
The power of the screen over our collective imagination was in evidence at The White Devil by John Webster at the Menier Chocolate Factory last week. Simply staged on an elegant traverse stage, the play’s high body count and vicious skulduggery failed to impress a party of sixth formers because “you could totally tell they were using blood capsules and the colour’s all wrong – waaay too red.” It seems reasonable to assume that the gaggle of floppy-haired Toms, Tristans, Katies, and Camillas thronging the foyer have no prima facie experience of poisoning and stabbing their nearest and dearest in order to observe their death throes with academic detachment. However, notwithstanding homework, French exchanges, skiing holidays and Facebook, these students have probably seen so many hours of televised violence that even the terrifying convulsions, so convincingly contrived by Claire Cox as the ill-fated Duchess who starts off the slaughter, failed to impress them.
Jonathan Munby’s production of Webster’s revenge tragedy is ambitious and effective. Strong characterisations and the relatively small playing area make the auditorium seethe and teem with menace and corruption for nearly three hours. The focus and intensity are electrifying, while elaborate, detailed costumes more than make up for the absence of set. The play was written in 1612 and chunks of it are in blank verse, but you would never know it from the clarity of diction of the entire cast. It is hard to see how more meaning could be extracted from the text.
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