Supertramp, Sickert and Jack the Ripper

*** Edinburgh Guide to the Fringe

*** The Scotsman

'Witty and Deft New Writing' www.theatre-wales.co.uk

In this two-hander, in which Welsh poet WH Davies sits for a portrait in the studio of Walter Sickert... Lewis Davies's text frames the historic encounter as a play within a play, in which resting actors Chris (Chris Morgan) and Lewis (Richard Tunley) improvise the script they will both bring to Edinburgh. They execute the challenges of this, and the necessary shifts in and out of character, with dexterity and humour. www.edinburgh-festivals.com

The Supertramp is Newport-born, one-legged hobo and literary celebrity W H Davies. Actor Chris, in a play within a play, wants him for a dramatic subject. “Any money in it?” asks writer Lewis (Richard Tunley) in a rich Cwmbran accent. “Nothing” is the inevitable reply.

 Lewis is down on his luck, suffering relationship angst and sexual starvation. As for his writing career “the Court is going to get back to him” and he is in contact with “Alison from the BBC.” Chris meanwhile wants a play about “life and art, a fractal comment on contemporary society.” It does not matter too much how or even whether Davies and Walter Sickert met. As Chris says, Alan Bennett has shoved W H Auden and Benjamin Britten together for the sake of a play and they barely met.

 The acting in Lewis Davies’ two-hander sparkles from line one. Edinburgh is a try-out for all talents and the acting can be variable. Chris Morgan speaks a line of eighteen syllables on one effortless single breath and it is a reminder of the craft of the accomplished actor. When Richard Tunley makes his first entry as a stiff-legged Davies he takes on the accent of a comic Oscar Wilde.

 A plot like this runs the danger of collapsing inward on its own references. But Lewis Davies has achieved in his writing a light musicality in which motifs and riffs occur and re-occur. Sickert claims he wants an art dealing with “gross material facts” yet he has a distaste for “close up wetness and the sharing of fluids.”

 He amends the title of his famous canvas from “What we shall we do about the rent?” to “the Camden Town Murder.” The work itself does not change but the words chosen to describe it change the interpretation completely. The image in paint, pure material substance, is subordinate to language, which is pure concept.

 Out in the “real” world Chris views Davies less as a Romantic Georgian than as a forerunner of the Beat Generation. It is the writer who provides the bracing offset of reality. Davies has similes to hand like “cold as a well-digger's arse” and describes a hideous lynching in Louisiana.

 He is suspicious of artistic individuality over-riding tradition. Will it be “a proper portrait?” he asks. On being assured it will he presses the point “But will it look like me?” But unlike Sickert, who in youth was bewitched by theatre, Davies early on saw through the false claims of authority in a youthful episode involving a tipped-over gravestone.

 Sickert’s Mornington Crescent Studio is simply but effectively rendered in Cordelia Ashwell's design. The opening scene necessarily involves some exposition. The timing and cross-rhythms of the lines are beautifully modulated. Rebecca Gould is that model of directors, totally present while completely invisible.

 “What about the ending?” asks Chris of his writer. “I shall write it when I get to it” is the reply. Lewis Davies provides a fine last line but it does arrive as a jolt. How true it is to Sickert's aesthetic I am not so sure, questionable when applied to a wonderful image like his Minnie Cunningham.

There are some truly heavy-going items on at the Fringe. Lewis Davies’ play is a sharp corrective, a zesty, refreshing sorbet of a show. Paul Theroux once signed off a travel piece with the line “It raised my heart.” “Supertramp, Sickert and Jack the Ripper” did the same for mine.

 

Review by Adam Somerset

About the Play

Based on the meetings between W.H.Davies (author of Autobiography of a Super-Tramp) and the Camden Town painter Walter Sickert, the play is directed by Rebecca Gould and stars Chris Morgan and Richard Tunley.

What is this life if, full of care
We have no time to stand and stare?

1908. Camden Town. Dissolute Welsh poet W. H. Davies, new star of the arts world thanks to his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, comes to Walter Sickert’s studio to have his portrait painted. A century later, Lewis Davies is writing a play based on these meetings. But despite the impatient entreaties of his actor friend Chris, life keeps getting in the way…

This new play from Lewis Davies, writer of Football (seen at Edinburgh in 2004), Sex and Power at the Beau Rivage, and Spinning the Round Table, is a compelling exploration of poetry, murder, sex, adventure, and getting barred from pubs.

Venue 13, Lochend Close, Canongate, Edinburgh
Fri 6th – Fri 13th August@ 17.00 (1 hr)
Sat 14th – Sat 21st August @ 13.30 (1 hr) Not Sun 15th or Mon 16th
Tickets £8/£5 available here

http://www.venue13.com/supertramp.html

Congratulations to Tyler Keevil for his excellent short story that picked up second prize at the Terry Heatherington awards at the Dylan Thomas Centre Wednesday 7 July

Making an appearance is Parthian's long term friend and winner of last year's award Rose Widlake.

Tyler is a prolific writer in different genres and media. His debut novel, Fireball, will be

published in September 2010 along with three other books in our Bright Young Things series.

To read the fascinating and entertaining blog entries from Tyler and the other authors in the series, click here.

Stevie Davies’s Into Suez tour is now underway. The book was introduced at the excellent Calder Bookshop in Southwark, London, to a packed audience. Set in the years immediately after the end of WW2, it’s a love story, and a tale of class, nation, and the expectations and constraints of marriage. It has already received some fine reviews. Stevie then spoke about her work in Church Stretton on May 10th. She will also be appearing at Oystermouth Library on July 27.

The summer had an international flavour with two events featuring Glen Peters, author of Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta, who took part in a panel on Crime Fiction as part of the 2010 London Festival of Asian Literature. He also travelled to Kolkata as part of a British Council-funded project to adapt the novel for the stage, in partnership with Tin Can performance/visual arts company, and producer Rebecca Gould. Glen and other members of the creative team appeared at Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre in May to discuss the process of adapting the novel for the stage.

More globetrotting in August, when we publish Cloud Road by John Harrison, an account of his journey along the Inca road in the High Andes. John’s previous book Where the Earth Ends was much admired for the depth of his research and his enthusiasm for travelling in Patagonia. Cloud Road offers new insights into the historical and contemporary lives of the people of what was once the Inca nation.

Back home, there’s a murder and mayhem theme to the Library of Wales with Arthur Machen’s classics The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams  which were launched at the Hay Festival. Project editor Penny Thomas was joined by poet and novelist Catherine Fisher, Gwilym Games and Tomos Owen to discuss Arthur Machen’s influence and the enduring power of his writing.

On the same day at the festival, a very busy Penny Thomas was talking about Merthyr writing and the Jones Boys (Jack and Gwyn in the Library of Wales series) with Mario Basini and Rachel Trezise who have both recently published books which feature the town (Real Merthyr and Dial M for Merthyr).

Derek Webb has written about Isambard Kingdom Brunel and how it inspired the writing of his first children’s book Is, which has just been published under our new Troll Carnival imprint. 

Finally, The Songbird is Singing by Alun Trevor is being serialised by the Western Mail. Alun is 92 and this is his memoir of growing up in the 1920s in north-east Wales. He brings this time and place vividly to life through the voices of two brothers growing up on Pen-y-Wern farm with their mother while their father tours the United States and Canada with the Welsh Imperial Singers. It will doubtless bring a lot of joy to many readers who recognise this world which has long since disappeared.