WHILE it is far from being a coincidence exactly, it was remarkable how swiftly the news that artistic director Emma Rice’s services were to be dispensed with at Shakespeare’s Globe followed just days after the publication of a small volume from Biteback Publishing in their Provocations series.
Wall Street Journal writer Sohrab Ahmari’s The New Philistines is a very articulate and well-argued diatribe against contemporary art’s “obsession with the politics of identity.”
His argument, at its most basic, is that beauty, mystery, skill and self-expression have been sacrificed at the altar of racial grievance, sexual plurality and radical feminism.
Exhibit A in his slim volume is Rice’s first production at the Globe when she took over from Dominic Dromgoole, a well-reviewed Midsummer Night’s Dream that opened in May of this year.
It is that show, and specifically its technical elements of a lighting rig and a neon sign, and the similar flavour of the work she has commissioned from other directors at the heritage venue since, that were cited by the board as the reason her contract was being curtailed.
Their case was that she was pursuing a direction that was incompatible with the purpose of the Globe to provide an experience of theatre as it was in the Bard’s day – which does rather beg the question why the former artistic director of Kneehigh company was employed in the first place. Most of her theatrical colleagues have leapt swiftly to her defence. Playwright and artistic director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum David Greig wrote in the New Statesman this week of his disappointment. “It feels a bit Brexity: a pained cry from the past, ‘We want our Shakespeare canon back!’”
Ahmari’s argument in The New Philistines says little about lighting, but is coming from the same place: “Trying desperately to be ‘relevant’ in 2016, aesthetically and politically, meant the production lost sight completely of Shakespeare’s timeless genius.”
With its gay partnership among the quartet of lovers, Indian music (as well as Beyonce and Bowie), cabaret artiste Meow Meow as Titania, explicit modernisation of the language and allusion to a date-rape drug, Rice’s Dream was far from conservative.
In the Financial Times Ian Shuttleworth saw “fun, but rather less focus” adding, “I’m not sure there’s a lot of underlying trust of Shakespeare’s material here”, but most regular theatre critics praised the production. Ahmari would, I suspect, suggest that is because they are part of the deal that has deprived all art, not just theatre, of its historical purpose by being in thrall to identity politics and equality for every marginalised sub-section of the human experience. On the face of it this might sound like reactionary stuff, but his conclusion is that the “identitarian” control of the arts, first in the avant garde and, then, the mainstream, is a threat to liberal democracy in that it has been responsible for the rise of the reactionary Trump and Brexit popular vote, because politically-correct criticism of popular artists like Coldplay or Beyonce, or Eddie Redmayne in the Danish Girl or Tina Fey’s Whisky Tango Foxtrot pushes people who like their work into the arms of the rising right.
Whether she likes it or not, the newly appointed artistic director of the National Theatre of Scotland, Jackie Wylie, brings much of the baggage of this argument with her from her former post at The Arches, a venue that supported work very much in Ahmari’s cross-hairs. If it means only that folk get worked up about the Arts, I’m all for it.
The New Philistines, Sohrab Ahmari, Biteback Publishing, £10
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here