There was no lack of drama in Rome last weekend at the award of the 16th Europe Theatre prize. Jeremy Irons, who shared the main prize with Isabelle Huppert, hoped that he wouldn’t be the last Brit to be so honoured as we became increasingly “marooned on our island” in a post-Brexit world. Irons said it with irony but, given that Peter Brook and Harold Pinter are past winners and the New Realities prize has over the years gone to Complicite, the Royal Court, Katie Mitchell and the National Theatre of Scotland, it is clear that British theatre has been seen as a vital part of the European project. One just hopes that will continue.
On Sunday night, Irons and Huppert – after accepting their award – agreed to read newly published letters between Albert Camus and his lover, María Casares, and to perform Pinter’s Ashes to Ashes. But everything did not go quite as planned. When Irons appeared on stage for the reading of the letters, there was no sign of Huppert. It later transpired that she had mislaid her text. Irons was left alone on stage and filled the void with light, perfectly inoffensive banter. When Huppert appeared, she did not look best pleased and the supposedly passionate love letters acquired a certain froideur.
Both Irons and Huppert are supreme professionals and their performance of Ashes to Ashes was excellent. The play takes the form of a psychological cat-and-mouse game in which a man, Devlin, obsessively inquires about the past lover of a woman we take to be his wife, called Rebecca. But what is extraordinary is the way the play moves from a world of domestic power to one of global suffering and forges a link between sexual and political fascism. Irons caught exactly the insecurity of the bullying Devlin, while Huppert brought her special brand of mystery and capacity to exist in several dimensions at once as Rebecca. The play seemed more timely than ever.
Even if their appearance together may prove to be something of a collectors’ item, the two actors were rightly celebrated in Rome. I both interviewed Irons and chaired a panel about him where Fanny Ardant talked of his capacity for concentration that meant, when you were doing a scene with him on film, he made you forget the camera. I was also part of a panel discussing Isabelle Huppert where the poet and singer Patti Smith said that she possessed the limitless curiosity of a scientist. She cited one particular scene in Madame Bovary where Huppert, energised by passion, seems to experience the joy of nature as if for the first time.
There were many other events in Rome as part of the festivities. I caught the first part of a Peter Stein production of Richard II where Maddalena Crippa as the king gave a remarkable display of slowly disintegrating tyranny. Robert Wilson’s production of Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine was also performed by students of Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts with a discipline that prevented the play seeming an avant-garde museum piece. But the abiding impression of the prize-giving, aside from the tensions within the ceremony, was of people coming together to celebrate the centrality of theatre to Europe’s identity.
