PRISM AT THE ARTS THEATRE
‘ There’s no such thing as atmosphere, it’s all about lighting’ someone once remarked. It could have been Jack Cardiff, hero of Prism. His art is not well understood but he was the man who put the magic into much of Hollywood; he created the mood for love, disaster and desperation in the movies through the medium of lighting. And most of all he made the stars beautiful. Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe - there’s a photograph of them together, Marilyn lying back on a couch, her hands wrapped round his neck. Yes of course the rumours circulated he had relationships with them all, stories that the always truly gentlemanly Jack would never confirm or deny. The illusion of the movie means hard work behind the scenes, but of all the operatives in film, none is so important as – the lighting cameraman - the cinematographer.
Jack realized very early on where he wanted to be in life. The son of two Vaudeville actors, he was born in 1914 as the silent movie business was getting going. Jack described his childhood as ‘pure fantasy’. His music hall performing parents dabbled in film for some extra cash – and four year old Jack was in demand on set. One day, he was only thirteen, he stood in for an absent cameraman to ‘pull focus’ for a shot. Behind the massive camera, he realized on the spot this was the career for him. He knew the cameramen did all the travel, had reliable work and was where the artistry truly began. In that moment, a career to re-define the new art of cinematography was born.
Robert Lindsay, surely one of our greatest actors, plays the ageing Jack Cardiff with convincing brilliance – his marvellous performance alone is worth the ticket. Jack is at home at the end of his life, with his wife (a brilliant performance from Tara Fitzgerald). Alzheimer’s has set in with the pathos of someone who had once toured the world with a galaxy of glamorous stars but now reduced to confusion. Yet this play goes at such a lick, there is scarcely time for an audience to wallow in sadness. It is so funny – all the time. Even Jack’s confusion over what words he wants to use ‘you know, large, watery blue all round ‘ -‘ the world’ supplies the new helper Lucy (the brilliantly versatile Victoria Blunt, who morphs from dozy carer to Lauren Bacall in the jungle and then - wonderfully, Marylyn Monroe).
The set is intriguing. Tim Shortall, a man with a string of awards for this kind of thing, gives us a wall full of heart-meltingly lovely stars all photographed by Jack Cardiff. Then they begin to animate. The dreary garage Jack’s well-meaning son has rigged up for him to write his memoir in (a hopeless venture as Jack thinks he’s in the pub, up the Orinoco or talking to his adored Katherine Hepburn). By the interval, you do wonder where the play will go. An unpromising youthful carer with a hugely irritating Leeds accent (as a Yorkshire woman I do always resent it when this voice is produced to imply idiocy in characters, even in Surrey) Lucy already (after her ‘two and a half day training)’ has the right idea of how to deal with the mercurial, imaginative Jack and it has been a wonderful first half
But how, you wonder, will the rest of the play evolve.?
Worry not. This is all about pure illusion. The writer and director , Terry Johnson, already a titanic figure in theatre has his hand on the tiller and a combination of a creative crew including the disappointingly named lighting director (what happened to cinematographer?) Ben Ormerod takes care of all that. Enough to say that ,by the end of the play, Robert Lindsay has transported Jack back to his glory days around the camp fire for the shoot of African Queen and the crackling 1940s dialogue between him and a gorgeous Tara Fitzgerald as Katherine Hepburn, along with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, shows that lighting, dialogue and acting truly are the keys to the imagination behind every theatre experience everywhere.
