The Covid Diaries 20: Bridge Theatre, Beat the Devil

A review of Beat The Devil at the Bridge Theatre. In which it’s good to be back at a live theatre performance, and one which couldn’t be more topical!

Hello Again Bridge Theatre!

Beat the Devil is the first of a series of monologues that the Bridge Theatre is staging in repertory between late August and October. The season was announced slightly before the government formally started to relax restrictions on theatres; so I suspect that the Bridge had chosen monologues as a way to be able to go ahead with some kind of live performances in the short term. Presumably this is because it allows for social distancing even on stage. Some of the season is made up of works that have been staged elsewhere, eg. Quarter Life Crisis by Yolanda Murphy, and some, like Beat the Devil, are brand new.

Beat the Devil is by English playwright and screenwriter Sir David Hare. It turns out he contracted coronavirus right back at the beginning of its spread in the UK, in March. The monologue, performed by Ralph Fiennes, runs for about 50 minutes. It is equal parts description of the trajectory of the disease as it affected Hare, and searing indictment of the Conservative government’s handling of the crisis. It deserves to be seen by a very wide audience. Both funny and human, it leaves you feeling angry that we have all been put into this position by people being incompetent, dishonest and slow to act. In fact, I think the entire Cabinet should be made to watch it, and listen to the audience’s reaction. And maybe if enough people see it, we can get angry enough collectively to do hold the government to account.

Getting Angry About Covid-19

As someone who made a conscious decision to disengage from the news cycle in early March for the good of my mental health, it was also very informative. The structure of the monologue is a more or less day by day account of the symptoms of Covid-19 and Hare’s reaction to it. Plus comment on the day’s events in government: press conferences, U-turns and the like. Most of it I was aware of – not necessarily the symptoms of Covid-19 outside of respiratory distress, but certainly the broad strokes of government [mis]handling. I didn’t have many of these angry conversations at the time though. So I found myself nodding along in agreement to a lot of what Fiennes/Hare was saying. “What the fuck?” is a particularly good line that summarises 2020 nicely, in my opinion.

Obviously Hare wrote the play so lived to tell the tale. But the profound impact his coronavirus experience had on him is startling enough even without worrying as an audience member about how it’s going to turn out.

Staging and Performance

As for the production and so on, the staging is very simple. It’s Fiennes and a writing desk, with simple lighting changes to move between scenes. The play is written as first hand, immediate experience. Fiennes handles subtly the atemporality of describing the moment of illness while recounting Hare’s story from a later vantage point. In fact, I though Fiennes did a very nice job overall, given I’ve hardly ever seen a work where the actor is to such an extent the playwright’s mouthpiece. Given he is often performing twice a day during the play’s run, it may be a challenge to keep up the energy and anger that’s necessary to connect with the audience through this work. But I guess that’s why you get the big hitters in to headline your re-opening season!

The Bridge’s Covid Measures

In terms of the coronavirus measures at the Bridge itself, I found it a little mixed. They have managed socially distanced seating by physically removing a lot of seats which makes it easy (and makes for great leg room for tall people like myself); send tickets and allow pre-ordering of drinks by phone; and give different 15 minute arrival windows to sections of the audience. I wasn’t quite sure what the point was though, as we all then milled about in the lobby as usual. I had expected that we would be shown straight to our seats to avoid unnecessary contact and bottlenecks.

The other flaw in their plan was having the exit route lead directly to the outside of the building. This created a tricky or circuitous route for those who need to use the facilities before leaving. But all in all, I don’t think I was at too much risk of catching Covid while watching this Covid-themed monologue, phew!*

[*Edit: it’s been more than two weeks between seeing the play and publishing this write up, so all is well, no Covid here.]

On its own merits: 4/5
Implementing Covid rules: 3.5/5

Beat the Devil until 31 October 2020