Meryl Richardson

Review ‘On the Waterfront’ Haymarket Theatre, London 

Before going to see On The Waterfront, I had three questions in mind. Does a staged productionof the film work? Does it add anything to the experience? Does the piece ‘work’ on the stage inits own right? Terry Malloy, an ex prize-fighter turned longshoreman, works for local waterfront mobster Johnny Friendly. Having witnessed the murder of a man Terry ‘marked’ for Johnny, he subsequently falls in love with the murdered man’s sister Edie, and now must decide between loyalty to his brother Charlie, the powerful Johnny friendly, or to his new found love, when he is asked to testifying before the Waterfront Crime Commission.

It is a tricky thing to transfer a highly acclaimed film into another medium, and perhaps in this case, a failed experiment. The structure of the play is very close to the original film, with only a little dialogue added in the early stages between Edie and Terry for exposition. To this, Berkoff, as both director and actor, adds his usual seamless transitions and choreographic instinct, but not surprisingly, the most successful scenes in the play depart from the realism of the film, giving reign to Berkoff’s theatrical genius.

Jason Southgate’s simple set consists of a steeply raked stage with chairs moved around by the actors when required, and a backdrop of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty placed on her side. She no longer holds the torch of the enlightened world in her hand, but instead, wields a baling hook.

Elia Kazan’s original 1954 film, winner of eight Academy Awards, must surely have been resonating in the background for the audience by way of comparison. There is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the film through the music, but what is missing is the grime, the grain, the shabbiness, the cold and the sheer beauty of Boris Kaufman’s cinematography, and ultimately, Leonard Bernstein’s score. The dialogue is strong, but Budd Schulberg’s script is not enough.

One of the major problems with the production is that you cannot help but compare the performances to the original. Simon Merrells Terry was muscular, but clearly he had seen the film and found it impossible to depart from, not only from the timbre and pitch of Brando’s voice, but also his physicality. Perhaps this is a testament to Brando’s extraordinarily strong performance in the original film. What’s in a voice? Well, a surprising amount. Coral Beeds’ Edie’s shrill whine gave us very little reason to sympathise with her predicament, and in general, the whole cast could have taken the decibels down a few notches.

It was the death of Charlie, Terry’s brother, towards the end of act two, that resonated most powerfully within the piece. But again, was this an emotional flashback to the same powerful moment in the film, rather than a genuine reaction to what was happening on stage? Berkoff has a loyal following, and some of my best and earliest experiences of theatre have been under his guidance. His visceral, exciting presence on a stage, his risk taking, his rhythm, his explosive personality, his subtlety, his humour, his ensemble work, his use of language, his physicality are all excellent reasons for booking to see this play. They were there, somewhere. I overheard one of the audience members say, “He’s famous isn’t he, really famous”. Even Berkoff has been reduced to celebrity status.

And yet despite Berkoff’s fleeting appearances as Johnny Friendly, my mind kept wandering. Would I be able to pick up that very nice chard salad at Sainsburys on the way home? And what else did I need? Oh yes, that’s right, toilet roll. My concentration drifted in and out of the performance, punctuated by the sound of sweet wrappers rattling, coffee cups creaking and the conversations of the watching public, most of whom seemed to think they were on the sofa at home watching the TV.

How is this play relevant to Britain today? The end of the British Trade Unions started with Thatcher and ended with Brown, in what will be known as the great recession of 2009. Perhaps the real story now, is how does the common man fight to be heard, to have a voice in the nanny state as it is absorbed into the corporate Eurozone? Would a contemporary Terry Malloy be bothered to get up out of his double glazed armchair and tear himself away from Eastenders or Sky Sports long enough to voice an opinion? Would Edie’s shrill voice rail at the bankers who have so deftly crippled the economy and crept away to their yachts in Monte Carlo, taking with them the jobs, saving’s, and hopes of millions of people? I doubt it. It’s not fear of Johnny Friendly that silences voices anymore, it’s apathy. We are all guilty of it. The Johnny Friendlys’ of this world are now unreachable. They have become part of the establishment, laughing themselves to an early retirement.

On my way home I notice that ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’ is about to open at the Cambridge Theatre, yet another staged version of a film, along with Rain Man, The Graduate etc. Another musical montage of ‘Hits from the bands you have loved’. ‘The best ever, ever show you have ever seen, really!’. Utterly depressing to think that very soon, half of the West End will be filled with ‘shows of the film’ with not an original thought in sight, just a cynical, lazy, money making exercise designed to cash in on the next ‘celebrity face’ from Come Dancing with the Stars. It may get ‘bums on seats’, but at what cost?

In Berkoff’s case, I think he has a genuine love for the original film, and wanted to have a go at producing it on stage, which he did originally at Nottingham rep; and I was entirely happy that Berkoff’s was the only face I recognised on that stage. ‘On the Waterfront’, is a worthy experiment, which doesn’t quite work, and without Berkoff’s name attached to it, I doubt it would ever have been brought into the West End.