it's great that they have real conversations about this in London newspapers

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The School for Scandal - review

Barbican, London

oo Michael Billington

o guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 May 2011 16.50 BST

I fear that the great tradition of English artificial comedy, written mainly by Irishmen and running from the Restoration to Oscar Wilde, is in danger. Either we neglect it or we revive it badly – and the latest victim is Sheridan's 1777 comic masterpiece, given an uncharacteristically duff production by Deborah Warner that strains to point out the parallels between then and now.

Warner prefaces the evening with a punkish, Alexander McQueen-style fashion parade, uses Brechtian captions and mixes 18th-century costume with Gucci shopping bags. But, although there are obvious connections between Sheridan's world of hypocritical scandal-mongering and our own, the fusion of periods misfires. For a start, Sheridan was not writing a savage satire but a free-spirited comedy in which virtue, in the shape of the amiably profligate Charles Surface, triumphs over vice in the form of his sanctimonious sibling, Joseph. But the real failing of Warner's approach is that the striving for contemporary relevance wildly distorts character and denatures Sheridan's comedy.

Leo Bill is, for instance, encouraged to play Charles Surface as a manic druggie presiding over a commune: the result is to make Charles's benevolently forgiving uncle, played by John Shrapnel in robust 18th-century style, seem positively delusional in his obliviousness to his nephew's lifestyle. Even the famous screen scene, in which the aged Sir Peter Teazle discovers his wife hiding in Joseph Surface's library, is not immune to Warner's heavy-handedness. Sheridan's Lady Teazle may be a tease, but, in place of the coy flirtatiousness with which she resists Joseph's advances, Warner has her ready to engage in consensual sex with him. This turns Lady Teazle into an even more flagrant hypocrite than Joseph since she later tells her husband she was not prepared to "sacrifice your honour to his baseness".

A few performances transcend the stylistic mish-mash of Warner's production. Alan Howard brings to Sir Peter vocal precision, a peppery temperament and a delicate pathos, and Matilda Ziegler catches exactly the silky corruption of Lady Sneerwell. The evening, in fact, begins with a nice touch in which Ziegler is stripped of her workaday modern clothes and gradually arrayed in the hooped artifice of 18th-century costume.

If only Warner had been content to leave the juxtaposition of periods there rather than banging us over the head with the play's contemporary relevance, the production might have worked. As it was I found myself nostalgically crying, like William Hazlitt when confronted in mid-life by a similarly vulgar revival: "Why can we not always be young and seeing The School for Scandal?"

The School for Scandal: storm in an 18th-century teacup

A modern version of The School for Scandal has outraged some critics. Deborah Warner, who directed it, can't believe their short-sightedness

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· Deborah Warner

· guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 June 2011 22.00 BST

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I've just opened my production of The School for Scandal at the Barbican, and it seems the critics are up in arms. Five-star reviews or one star. "Highly theatrical, provocative and intelligent, the show is unmissable," reads one, while another says, "Watching this School for Scandal is like witnessing a group of louts spray-painting an elegant old building with graffiti. It's time Deborah Warner was served with the theatrical equivalent of an Asbo."

How can Sheridan's comic morality play so polarise opinion? Traditionally, it's hardly been a play to frighten babies and old ladies, but now it seems it has. I'm no stranger to strong critical response, though. In 1994, I found a picture of my Glyndebourne Don Giovanni on the front of the Times, with the line: "Boos and catcalls greet Glyndebourne opening." Indeed, there was some controversy on opening night, but I certainly hadn't expected it to be world news by the next morning.

The year before, I read the reviews of Beckett's Footfalls, only to find myself again on the front in a column headed: "Director banned for life from directing Beckett." I've since directed Happy Days with the full approval of the Beckett estate and am represented by the very agent who placed the ban – thus making life seem, in this regard, sweet and long. Still, neither myself nor the School for Scandal company were prepared for this current furore. A storm in an 18th-century teacup?

We revive old plays because we think they may have something to say to us now. The job of directors and actors is to pitch these plays against our moment and see what happens. Strangely, it is the very "now" of our production that seems to have caused some of the upset. One very negative review says: "If the Earl of Rochester and Bertolt Brecht got together in Shoreditch one night and decided to host a rave (inviting Handel to man the decks), the result might look a lot like Deborah Warner's new production of The School for Scandal." Hang on, though, that's exciting isn't it? That's exactly what I wanted this production to be. The School for Scandal is a play obsessed by wit, fashion, celebrity and reputation, and whose central theme is hypocrisy. Does that ring any contemporary bells? I think so.

In this paper, Michael Billington was upset that hard-living Charles Surface, a rake and libertine, could not ultimately be thought of as virtuous by an uncle who had witnessed his appetite for drink and probably drugs. Is there a generation gap here? Might there be a generational reluctance to map our own Pete Doherty on to the classics?

I want to say this to the critics: I know the version of this play you recognise and miss. That version was great for its time but – and this is important – it might not be right for now. The job of director and actor is to test these plays against now; if they lose charm in some critics' eyes, then maybe the world has changed. Theatre, like all art, can make us uncomfortable. It should make us uncomfortable – it is there to shake us up.

I respect the role of the critic in the arts, and want to hear their voices, but I am concerned by one thing. Criticise as you will, but be careful not to put off the new audience. Any emerging theatre audience needs to be led to the places where they might drink, have fun and discover that the theatre holds something for them. Don't head them off at the pass. Let the new get started. This work may be for them, not for you.

I am happy to say that there are young people in the Barbican stalls really enjoying the show. It is a loud show and that aspect, perhaps, plays to a younger taste; but there are older people loving it, too. Scripts change meaning as time passes, and as producers and audiences we must put ourselves in danger to catch that new meaning. I'm surprised by what The School for Scandal became in 2011 – but I'm more surprised by the critics' refusal to yield ground.

The School for Scandal's Deborah Warner: no mother of reinvention

Director Deborah Warner's meshing of Sheridan's 18th-century comedy of manners with modern culture proves some classics are best left as they are



Michael Billington

It's good to find Deborah Warner responding to the critics in such a cool, rational manner: a welcome contrast to the vituperative rancour one sometimes gets from anguished directors. All the same, I think her argument rests on some highly questionable assumptions.

She says of the classics that "the job of the director is to pitch these plays at our moment and see what happens". But, surely, a lot depends on the nature of the play and how you pitch it. The night before The School for Scandal opened many of us had seen, and admired, Rupert Goold's Las Vegas-based The Merchant of Venice. But Shakespeare's play has a mythical quality that makes it easily transposable to another time and place. Sheridan, in contrast, was writing a social comedy rooted in 18th-century manners and delighting in verbal precision. To place it, as Warner does, in a world that's part 18th century and part punk fashion and hard rock is simply to sow confusion.

Behind Warner's argument also lies a veiled contemporary arrogance. She says of the standard period approach to Sheridan, "that version was great for its time but might not be right for now". But how do we know? It's nearly 30 years since London saw, at the Haymarket and the National, what might be termed a traditional School for Scandal. It also strikes me as faintly patronising to assume that a young audience will only grasp the modern resonances of a play that deals with gossip and scandal if you deck it out with Alexander McQueen-style fashion parades and Gucci shopping bags. If Warner were to tackle The Importance of Being Earnest, would she feel Jack and Algy had to watch internet porn or snort coke to bring the play home to a modern audience?

There are few absolute rules in theatre. Updating sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. And I'm all for giving directors a free hand. But my objection to Warner's The School for Scandal was that it drained much of the humour from the play and was neither one thing nor another: neither a radical rewrite nor a realisation of Sheridan's world. My hunch is that Warner has spent too long seeking to reinvent the classics. If she wants to speak directly to the young, why doesn't she, just for once, stage a play by a living writer?