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Pravda
| Article
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11097 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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3 / 1986 |
605 Words |
| Author
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Chris Ross
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It is not always the pure, innocent child that points out the lie of the "Emperor's New Clothes." The central character in Pravda, the winner of the London Standard Theater Award for the best play of 1985, who shows things as they "really are," does not himself exhibit that childlike purity (although he may represent some element of youth, as he is obviously still bound by his unresolved conflicts of infantile sexuality and aggression). Coauthors Howard Brenton, who caused an uproar in 1980 with the blood and gore and male full-frontal nudity of his The Romans in Britain, and David Hare, whose play, and later film, Plenty, depicted the moral decay of post-World War II Britain, continue in Pravda their practice of stimulating--and if necessary shocking--their audiences to consider the state of society, and themselves.
Ostensibly this "Fleet Street Comedy" examines the purchase of a number of British papers by a Rupert Murdoch-style philistine from South Africa. The stage is brought blazingly alive by the outrageous audacity of the dialogue of this character, Lambert Le Roux, and by the sheer exhilaration and vigor of his portrayal of this personality by Anthony Hopkins--his stiffened body contorted in tight muscle knots that would frustrate and defeat the most dedicated psychotherapist. With a voice that had in breaking in adolescence, acquired a permanent coarse, harsh, hoarseness, he demolishes the moral niceties of the English advantaged and extols the lusts of the masses.
Le Roux's main protagonists are a young journalist and his wife, who meet in an idyllic English summer setting reminiscent of a Julian Slade musical. The relentless working of tragedy does not seem present in the awkward innocence of their initial discourse, but seeds of their future conflicts can be seen in their attitudes. The wife holds out his one chance of salvation, since her disinterest in ambitious achievement and her humanitarian concern give a certain clear-sightedness to her feminine intuition. She upbraids her husband and his colleagues for the "dusty, shallow, half-attention that you give to everything," but he is as helpless as Faust to resist the seduction of this twentieth century Mephistopheles.
Le Roux can win because he is clear about what he wants, although he has not the slightest idea of the forces that are driving him. At one point, he takes up an oriental martial art and it is quite obvious that he is completely oblivious to its spiritual dimensions. It is for him, just a different way of hitting and humiliating someone.
His games are his life and he accepts that. In his estimation, the sad losers are those whose still predominant selfishness is inhibited by vague stirrings of the conscience and half-memories of the idealisms of youth. Le Roux pronounces them "confused." He says, "You are all weak because you do not know what you believe."
He declares, "I am on a moral mission. I want people to see life as it is. I want them to see their real situation." In his perverted way, Le Roux, aided and abetted by a grotesquely vulgar business manager enthusiastically caricatured by Bill Nighy, succeeds. "No one tells the truth…Everyone can tells lies except newspapers. They're the universal scapegoat for everybody else's evasions and inadequacies."
Anthony Hopkins unrelentingly gives himself to the authors'
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