Liberty: the old, the new...and what the public wants

BY JULIAN GYLL-MURRAY


I knew by the end of the first scene that there was something in the language of Glyn Maxwell's adaptation of Anatole France's Les Dieux Ont Soif that was different from most of what I see at the Arts Centre. It seemed that, despite the exploration of a post 9/11 attitude and the odd swear word, the language was...well, old-fashioned.

It's only a little while later that my stupidity finally dawned on me: the play was, of course, written in verse. And in many ways that makes sense: Glyn Maxwell is a poet, and Liberty was first premiered at the Globe, home of the Shakespeare plays. But should I really be linking it to another time? Glyn Maxwell claimed in an interview to Globelink that "verse on stage is nothing to do with lyrical uplift, or the past, or mystery. It’s right here right now." But to be honest, what is enjoyable about the play is that it does seem to genuinely immerse itself in another type of theatre, while never shying away from modern dillemas.

Terrorism and US foreign policy seems to have been explored on stage in every way possible in the past few years: namely, through the medium of interpretative dance (as the saying goes)in Hungry Ghosts. It is refreshing to see a piece that doesn't think it's clever just because it finds parallels between the Terror of late 18th century France and the modern world of surveillance and the Patriot Act: it's intelligence is rather in its decision to not force those parallels down the audience's throat. It is perhaps this quality, however, that cost the play its widespread appeal: at the showing I attended, the theatre was curiously far from full.

The promotion of Liberty never hinted at the story's relevance to today. I would have perhaps made the same move: after all, the Bush-baiting in modern culture is verging on tiresome. It sneaks into the most unlikely forms of entertainment with, more often than not, a heavy hand. Take Frank Darabont's The Mist, a low-budget horror that had characters stop and say we're-talking-about-Bush dialogue with slow, meaningful looks at each other. Take The Dark Knight, examining how much of a "monster" Batman has to become to deal with the Joker, referred to as a "terrorist". I, for one, am no longer sold alone by the idea that a play or film will deal with the post 9/11 world, beacause, frankly, so many plays, books and films already do.

Perhaps I am alone in this. The fact that I didn't read about the play's contemporary relevance on the pamphlet and that those themes were dealt with intelligently and subtly perhaps made for a case of fantastic theatre played to a less-than-fantastic turnout. With Oliver Stone's clumsy Bush biopic W. coming out this week and the looming end of the republican era in the USA, there is a possibility that most of us want to keep seeing the political climate of the past 6 or 7 years criticised again and again. Which would mean that plays like Liberty could be criminially underseen, even though it supplies exactly our Bush-blood lust; it's just too French, too flowery, too...well, old-fashioned.

Don't be fooled: however much it seems like it has come from another time, Liberty is using that very period to talk about now in a way that W. fails to do completely. Despite the verse, despite the historical nature of the story, the play is about, as Glyn Maxwell said, "right here right now". And that's also when you should go see it.

Liberty is on at the Warwick Arts Centre until Friday 7th November.