Revival of the fittest? ... Mark Field and Lynda Bellingham. Photograph: Alastair Muir/Rex Features
Was I seeing the same play? That was just one thought that flashed through my mind during the 85 riveting minutes of Vincent River at the Trafalgar Studios, a Philip Ridley play I had all but dismissed after seeing an infinitely inferior production at the Hampstead Theatre in 2000. This time, I found myself being gripped by material that had originally left me stifling a yawn. And this in turn set me wondering about the mutability of an individual's response to a work of art, whether they are a critic or a member of the public at large.
It certainly helped with Vincent River that since its premiere I have seen two productions of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, a one-act drama of similar length and intensity that also revolves around an account of the horrific death of an unseen young man. William's aesthete, Sebastian, is mirrored by Ridley's Vincent, and just as Williams' play builds to a spare-no-prisoners retelling of Sebastian's evisceration, so Ridley's story culminates in an account of Vincent's death. In this case, the speaker is the teenager, Davey (expertly acted by Mark Field), and the listener is Vincent's mother (a career-best performance from Lynda Bellingham). Ridley himself is aware of the influence of the earlier play, and cited it in a recent interview.
This cast, and Rebecca McCutcheon's direction, leave the earlier Vincent River in the dust, but despite the obvious discrepancies between the two productions the thought remains that it isn't always easy to identify why one's thoughts shift toward a work of art. I remember as a teenager in New York being utterly blown away by Richard Burton and Keith McDermott in the Broadway incarnation of Peter Shaffer's Equus, only to think that the play itself was overripe tosh when I saw the recent West End revival starring Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe. To be sure, Griffiths was badly miscast in the role of a questing psychiatrist, but the play itself seemed long ago to have passed its sell-by date, not least because attitudes toward psychiatry and the psychiatric process have moved on.
Sometimes, one loves a production so much the first time round that one is almost hesitant to see it again. I thought at the time that nothing could beat the Sunday In the Park With George Broadway premiere from 1984. But Sam Buntrock's recent London revival of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical managed precisely that, moving me utterly on each of the three occasions that I saw it. Conversely, the National Theatre debut of Amy's View with Judi Dench struck me as an exalted theatrical experience, not least because of the near-transcendent finish supplied by its original director, Richard Eyre. The recent West End revival from Peter Hall took a more prosaic approach, laying bare what was pedestrian and not always plausible about the author David Hare's narrative.
Critics are also expected to deliver pronouncements that are valid for all time, which makes a nonsense of the complex relationship any of us has to the art in our midst. Michael Billington is just one of several critics who speaks candidly, and commendably, of having seriously underestimated Harold Pinter's Betrayal at the time of its National Theatre premiere nearly 30 years ago, whereas the recent touring revival of Angels In America left some commentators wondering whether they had overestimated Tony Kushner's era-defining epic during its National Theatre bow in 1992. For myself, I stand by my opinions, even as I stand by the right for them to change, as our lives do. In the meantime, give Vincent River a go; acting this good may just change you.
