By Ruth Leon
09 Aug 2010

Theatricality is everywhere if you know where to look and not necessarily inside theatres. On my way into the National Theatre yesterday evening I stopped to look at the sun setting on the Thames before incarcerating myself in a dark auditorium, when I became aware of what looked at first to be a class in progress. A gaggle of casually dressed teenagers were sprawling on the artificial turf between the theatre lobby and the riverbank, listening attentively to a young woman with a clipboard. Then I noticed that a few of them were upside down, several others were bent into funny shapes and still others were banging hammers into odd-shaped pieces of equipment. Intrigued, I stopped to watch. I wasn't the only one.

In line with the National Theatre's commitment to use every inch of their space for theatrical purposes, here was a circus, just in the process of setting up. Acrobats pretzeled (is that a word?) into impossible positions; aerialists built their frames and then flew; clowns, still wearing their jeans and t-shirts, carefully emplaced their props. As yet, there were no costumes or make-up, so what they were doing was, in a way, even more remarkable than it would be when distanced by spangles and latex and false eyelashes. In common with everyone else who happened to be passing the National Theatre on this particular evening, I got myself an ice-cream and settled down with the end of the working-day, going-home crowd to be enchanted. I nearly missed my play.

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I fancy that The Bridge Project is one of those ideas dreamed up late at night by friends over a bottle of wine but, unlike most of these blue-sky schemes, it is one of the few that has survived the light of morning. "What if," somebody must have said (probably the director Sam Mendes or maybe his partner in crime, Kevin Spacey), "we could form a company composed of both American and British actors and keep them together, playing a repertoire of the classics, for a year or more? Let's base it in London at the Old Vic (where Spacey is artistic director) and in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Oh, and while we're about it, let's tour them around to Singapore, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Even Mendes says the idea is "unhinged."

But, against all the odds, The Bridge Project is now in its second year and has just opened at the Old Vic with this year's offerings, both Shakespeares, one a comedy, the other a drama — As You Like It and The Tempest (through Aug. 21). It's an amazing achievement; even the numbers bear this out: 40 actors, container-loads of scenery and three gigantic sets.

Not that there aren't problems with the productions themselves. Stephen Dillane is a laid-back jokey Jacques in As You Like It, where he even manages a very funny Bob Dylan imitation, but an almost inaudible Prospero in The Tempest. It wasn't until I talked with colleagues at intermission that I stopped worrying that my hearing might be defective; nobody else could hear him either.

I feel rather mean criticizing the results when the impulse is so brave. As Mendes himself says, the journey is the point. The Bridge Project is a worthy enterprise, an opportunity for us to see what happens when artificial barriers are removed and the Anglo-American theatrical instincts are allowed to flourish.

(Ruth Leon is a London and New York City arts writer and critic whose work has been seen in Playbill magazine and other publications.)

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