Londoners have the benefit of the National Theatre, with many stagees in the same complex and seemingly unending access to wonderful playwrights, directors, actors, and state-provided big budgets. While big budgets in the United States often seem to go with an over reliance on expensive scenery and sloppy directing, I'd seen a few things at the National Theatre in the past and all were excellent. This included a production of Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tatto" that was incredibly well-acted and directed with impressive intergrity. This was a few years after seeing a silly production at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in which all of its eggs were put in a visual basket, taking the motif of the rose tattoo too far and attention to the direction not far enough.
"Fram" is about a real life explorer who once held the record for having travelled the farthest north and eventually turned in his adventuring ways for humanitarian, paying particular attention to raising money to battle a famine in Russia in the early 1920's. Written by Tony Harrison, a highly-respected British poet and playwright, the poem opens in the cemetary at Westminster Abby with an embittered dead poet/translator bitching about his bad reviews from T.S. Elliot, who happens to be lain fairly close to him in the cemetary. He decided to write a play about the explorer and he conjurs up a famous actress, the Fram (the explorer's boat), and a production. In the production, the poet and the actress interact with the explorer throughout the production.
The play deals with the issue of how one goes about doing good in a turbulent world. As the play-within-a-play opens, the explorer and his companion are stuck in the ice near the north pole. Tired of dealing with each others' scents and bad habits, they decide to divide their blanket and sleep separately. They realize that sleeping together under the same blanket they produce more heat and thus sleep more comfortably. Thus, depsite the farting and other disgusting habits, they snuggle together to survive.
The difficulties of life get more dire as the play goes on, including the famine in Russia, torture in the Middle East, and violence in parts of Africa. There is an argument in the play about the role art can play in producing empathy and thus a solution. The Americans, who claim to be playing the biggest part in alleviating starvation in Russia, fight with the actress and the explorer about how to raise support. When they suggest that poetry and theater are ineffective in representing the pain of the hungry, the acress gives a very compelling performance to the contrary. At the end of the performance, however, she walks away, more concerned with proving her skill than actually making a difference. The explorer's method is a slide show that show the bodies of children who have starved to death and the Americans have made films that one of the characters points out are fabricated.
Unfortunately, in the end the argument isn't expolored in a very compelling way, I don't think. The strength of the piece comes with the visuals (with the Fram coming up out of the bottom of the stage) and when the argument is made personal, as it was with the characters on the Fram. There's also a nice moment when a Middle Eastern poet arrives on the scene, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The poet and actress believe he's purposely sewn them shut and see it as an intentional opposition to the mask of Tragedy, with it's eyes and mouth constantly open (but perhaps ineffective). As the Middle Eastern poet tries to speak and sing, however, we hear nothing but garbled sounds. The truth, of course, is that his eyes and mouth have been forced shut and he's lost his voice. He's not capable of representing himself. The explorer warns throughout the play that the entire world will eventually freeze over. Right before the end of the play, after seeing a series of more contemporary atrocities, we are reminded of the explorers' sharing a blanket. And then we see an image of London freezing over, perhaps a reminder that when the world does freeze over, as it certainly will in some way or another, than it's the individual's relationship to another that keeps us warm.
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