Neil Bartlett: What Can You Do?

Well indeed what can you do? Bartlett has for 25 years been combining his work as a maker of exciting theatre with a a strong thread of political campaigning and lobbying to raise awareness of AIDS and HIV. He’s done it brilliantly too and in more recent years done it whilst building his profile as a director of theatre and in fact running and revitalizing The Lyric Hammersmith. A Bartlett event is not to missed, last year a new work about Wilde with Bette Bourne, but this year something old – a look at pieces that first brought him to the world of theatre’s attention. Powerful stuff too, thought-provoking, distressing at times, perhaps not as shocking now as then, but brilliantly delivered. Bartlett has clearly embraced this event full on and his delivery and staging were immaculate. Save for one thing. Whilst for some pieces he used a microphone, for others he did not, and these were swallowed by the room, his power to project not meeting the demands of the Theatre Royal. Fortunately the audience, all there because they wanted to be, were rapt and so by straining one could manage to hear – just.

The evening was not without moments of humour too. Against the bleak ravages of the AIDS crisis he also gave us Vince, a theatre barman in all his camp glory. I for one think that a voice as powerful as Bartlett’s could be a part of the change needed to turn Pride in Brighton back from a booze-fueled carnival to the political protest and celebration it once was and still needs to be. Things may be better but this is no time for complacency, there is still much to be done not just in our own country, but globally.

Theatre Royal Brighton, May 26 2012
[Rating 4/5 stars]
Andrew Kay