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Show: Winner’s Curse
Society: Park Theatre (professional)
Venue: Park 200. Park Theatre, 13 Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, London N4 3JP
Credits: By Daniel Taub, with Dan Patterson. Directed by Jez Bond
Type: Sardines
Author: John London
Performance Date: 13/02/2023
Winner’s Curse
John London | 15 Feb 2023 15:27pm
Photo: Alex Brenner
It doesn’t begin well. On comes Clive Anderson—yes, the TV and radio presenter—dressed in tails, responding to canned applause. He is the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning Hugo Leitski, about to give us a speech. But he fluffs the second line, has to improvise by scolding himself, and only fully recovers after a few minutes.
Although, in a way, Anderson never really recovers because he will maintain the same hesitant and introductory tone throughout the evening, along with a good deal of necessary and often quite hilarious off-the-cuff statements. Leitski is presenting a particularly significant episode from his youth as an example of the strategies involved in peace negotiations. He took part in the famous talks between the rival states of Karvistan and Moldonia and the play consists of snippets of the negotiations at the Black Lagoon Lodge, interpolated by the older Leitski’s commentary.
It’s a great team, skilfully directed just on the right side of caricature by Jez Bond. There’s the young Hugo Leitski, played with impeccable timing by Arthur Conti, and his witty senior colleague (Michael Maloney). They’re the Karvistanis, up against General Marek Gromski (none other than the marvellous Barrie Rutter) and his assistant (the sinister Winnie Arhin). The neologized local alcohol flows, accompanied by delicacies containing marsh frogs and the previously unconsidered parts of boars. And the jokes come forth with exuberance as well in a script fizzing with energy and pace. Some of them are a bit obvious. ‘It’s like going round in circles’, Hugo observes about stale conversations, just as he is indeed because he’s on a revolving section of the stage. The landlady of the lodge is full of her late husband’s pithy sayings which develop into a running gag: ‘It’s better to harbour a fear than fear a harbour’; ‘It’s better to load your shoot, than shoot your load.’ Meanwhile, she keeps the burnt remains of her beloved in a small urn, then shakes it so we can hear the bullets that injured him in the war. All this Nichola McAuliffe performs with po-faced insistency, unaware that the guests have been using the urn as an ashtray.
Not that the levity eliminates the possibility of more considered reflection. ‘If you always catch the train on time it probably means that you are waiting at the wrong station.’ The aphorism gives us pause to consider the title of the comedy in relation to negotations: winning can mean not winning enough. This is also the kind of (quite serious) conclusion deriving from the most entertaining of Anderson’s interruptions, when the action stops and he prompts audience participation. We are asked to write the letter P on our forehead, guess how old Mahatma Gandhi was when he died, and carve up a deal in Plotniks (the local currency). After the giggles provoked by some wonderful spectator responses (at least on press night) Anderson is suprisingly didactic: women are more concerned about others; deals depend on phrasing; different people will accept different things.
For Karvistan and Moldonia it all hinged on a ridge of land (so to speak), although Hugo’s incipient love life and Gromski’s amorous past also have a role to play (without too much of a spoiler for the final twist). Writer and accredited mediator Daniel Taub may have included his tips for our ‘day-to-day negotiations’ in the programme notes, but this peaceful outcome is more about personal lives than national desires. Anyway, after two and a half hours of a show so well crafted and comic, so generous in spirit (with even satirical US representation) who is going to quibble about such a contadiction? I predict a sell-out run.