The Royal Hunt for an Opinion

It's a terrible thing, I know, but I'm the sort of person who is easily swayed by reviews. In the past, I'd swoop into London for a week or so and take in plays like a junkie on a binge, evenings and matinees all; and the bible by which I swore would be the capsule review I found in that particular week's issue of Time Out. I admit that this has led to some particularly horrifying disasters, such as Jerry Springer: The Opera, to which I dragged my friends, kicking and screaming, on the basis of a positive review (it's even more horrible than the title might suggest). But in general Time Out reviews are reliable, which can actually turn into a problem: because they're usually so trustworthy, there's the danger of falling into lazy complacency and allowing them to form your opnions for you.

These days, now that I have the luxury of watching plays at my leisure, I actually miss out on more plays than when I would parachute sporadically into the country. Even worse, I now have the time to buy the paper every morning (okay, every afternoon), and sift through the contents at length with my breakfast cup of tea. This is what living out in the country does to you. One of these days I might actually take to ironing the paper before reading it. And it is thus that the authority of Time Out has been replaced by that of the Guardian, which I thought highly of but never really warmed to as a website, but is wonderful in its paper form: the nifty size! Those pert little sidebars! That neat modern typeface!

Alas, on more than one occasion I have not been able to stop myself from reading the review of a play before watching it, which was what happened with The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Actually, I can technically claim that I saw it before reading the review, but this was ten years ago and might even have been in translation. I couldn't even remember what the play was about; I do remember though that it was one of the plays that made me fall in love with the medium of theatre. The present production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun at the National Theatre is a resurrection of a 1964 play (yes, I cribbed that date from the Guardian review), with Trevor Nunn directing. Like an adulterer who decides he might as well get in a few extra boinks before telling his wife, I decided that I might as well go for broke, and read all the reviews. Then I went and saw the play.

I'm not going to trot out a statement about the play retaining its relevance and vsince 1964, since I wasn't around to see it in 1964; and relevant to what, anyhow? What I will say is that I probably have changed less than I might have thought in the span of ten years, and that what I loved about the play then is what I loved about it the other night: the almost operatic spectacle and pageantry that is theater in its oldest form, yet none of it gratuitous. I loved how a group of men can climb onto a bare wooden stage and with the aid of two swathes of cloth, hey presto, they are climbing the Andes. Most of all I loved how Peter Schaffer tightened the drama of civilizations and cultures in a complex relationship between two men.

So yes, I'm a weak person, and easily swayed by authoritative reviews, peer pressure, friends with strong opinions, etc. But once in a while I come across a piece that engages me so directly that I like or dislike it in the face of authoritative approval or disapproval. I'm not saying it's a perfect evening: yes, Peter Schaffer can be excessively talky; and I felt Trevor Nunn was gilding the lily with the strobe lighting at the end of the first act ("bet you didn't have this in 1964!"). I'd watched it with a friend that I had hijacked, who had in turn hijacked one of her friends, and because I'd flown back into the UK just the night before neither of them had any idea what we were all watching. Perhaps one of the best compliments that can be paid to Schaffer's writing is that it is the sort that polarizes people, or at least one tends to feel strongly about; one thing you will not leave the theatre wanting for is an opinion. I was watching the play with eyes as fresh as those of my friends sitting beside me, as though I hadn't seen it ten years ago, as though I hadn't gone and cheated and read those reviews.

But as for my little cultural quandary, I have the perfect solution: rather than desisting from my new daily ritual of disassembling the Guardian with my breakfast (I manage to do this despite not having a subscription by buying the newspaper in the evening and reading everything one day late), I'll try and see everything in previews. Then again, I could learn how to have an opinion of my own despite having read the reviews.