Financial Times, 6 December 1985, by Michael Coveney
Yonadab/Olivier
-----------------------------------------------------------

Yonadab was a nephew of King David who, in the Book of 
Samuel (Chapter 2, verse 13), arranged for his cousing Amnon 
to sleep with his (Amnon's) sister Tamar. This act of 
incestuous rape, sponsored by a craftily anonymous Pandar, 
was revenged two years later by Amnon's brother, Absalom, 
who had Amnon killed. 

Peter Shaffer's first play since *Amadeus* relies heavily on 
the 1970 novel of Dan Jacobson, itself a richly imaginative 
meditation upon the Old Testament story that promotes 
Yonadab to the role of stage manager of phantoms, a spook 
spokesman mediating between the modern reader and David's 
brutalist court. "Princes do what we dream . . . they are 
not our masters but our salves. We commoners, fantasists, 
voyeurs, movers of furniture, carriers of messages, extras -
- we are free men." 

Thus Jacobson's Yonadab. Shaffer's more banal Yonadab says 
"Princes make our dreams happen, or what is their use?" That 
gives an idea of the quality of adaptation. Shaffer's main 
departure then centres in a second act shadow play to the 
rape in which the precedent of Isis and Osiris is conjured 
to fulfil Yonadab's dream of reconciliatory marriage between 
Tamar and Absalom. 

But theatrical creation keeps bumping into theatrical 
reality as Tamar, scarred beyond redemption by the rape, 
bursts through the Egyptian charade to lead the destruction 
of Amnon at the sheep-shearing festival and claim war 
goddess status, stained in blood and defiantly feminist. 
Absalom is suspended from his fatal gnarled bough and 
Yonadab is left to ponder the riots engendered by creed and 
his own sorry "unattached" state. 

This is crudely and inefficiently laid out, to put it 
mildly. Alan Bates's Yonadab, a slinky eavesdropper with a 
grudge against the exalted section of the family, does not 
switch allegiances (as in Jacobson) out of expediency but 
out of self-delusion. The switch, in fact, is underplayed. 
So is his capacity for friendship and appreciation of 
others' qualities. Nor is this even a Salieri-like creation 
of envy and frustrated mediocrity. He is a bland MC, a sore 
thumb, a creep and a bore. In Jacobson, Yonadab is the 
refining historian and prophet, the setter of tone, the 
texture, the work itself. In Shaffer he is some clapped-out 
relation of Robert Bolt's Common Man, a theatrical 
anachronism. 

The National Theatre production under Peter Hall's direction 
does its best to disguise the dramatic tenuousness of the 
proceedings by dressing them in Japanese trimmings and 
drummings (music by Dominic Muldowney) and enclosing the 
action in a John Bury curtain store where Sir and Madam will 
be delighted to see that the vast acreage of Semitic 
inscriptions can be discreetly lit and drawn apart to 
suggest the historic old walls of Jerusalem or the sun-
drenched agricultural funspot of Baal Hazor. 

The doomed sons of David, Amnon and Absalom, are given 
readings of simpering energy by Leigh Lawson and Anthony 
Head. With the rest of their long-haired brothers, they look 
like members of the Living Theatre limbering up for *The 
Mikado*. Patrick Stewart's David is a sad falling off from 
Jacobson's feckless, furtive monarch and resorts shamelessly 
to bad RSC sing-song inflections. 

At least we are spared the usual Shaffer coffee table ding-
dong between two leading characters, although by the end of 
the very long evening I might have settled for that. In fact 
I did, with the abandoned Yonadab mouthing his reflections 
on the roots of political evil while Tamar breathes the 
righteous fire of the avenging goddess. 

Yonadab's moment of triumph is his announcement at court 
that not all the sons have been wiped out down on the farm, 
only Amnon. Bates's ascent of the cane and Wicker throne 
(that's right, Sir, comes with the curtains) does not 
succeed as a theatrical climax ("I stand before my father 
wearing a king for a pendant") as the ritual and 
bloodletting at court has been an uninteresting sham thus 
far. 

The savagery of the rape is let down because no dramatic 
language is invented to articulate the gnawing desperation 
and obsessiveness behind it. Instead we have a nude 
copulation scene with much tasteful back projection and 
buttock flexing -- from Leigh Lawson, at least. Miss Morgan, 
the evening's saving grace, drives on to complete a powerful 
transformation from girlish acquiescence to bloodcurdling 
anger. 



-----------------------------------------------------------
                     Bentley's Bedlam
            http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html

This website is for information and entertainment purposes only 
and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.