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begin this gorgeous event, the audience realises not only that it is needed, but that it will be well used. The voice is riveting. Well now, ladies and gentlemen, when a man’s in the park the first thing he’s gotta do is get an audience . .. and to get an audience in Hyde Park, you gotta use psychology. And when you use psychology, you gotta apologise to the people in front of you because you don’t want to give them a scare ~. Just come up a bit ladies and gentlemen. Don’t be afraid. I ain’t Oscar Wilde .. . The audience moves closer. Van Dyne is holding his clipping book with a headline announcing his claim to fame: HE TOOK NINE LIVES FOR AL CAPONE. Van Dyne shouts: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... AAAAAAAAAAAH! The scream shocks the audience. It rarely gets this close to actors or feels their terror and rage and sexuality. Actors or feels their terror and rage and sexuality. Actors are speakers. And Van Dyne wants to shock, to elevate his ugliness into legend. His scream is horrible and outrageous and authentic. Paul Freeman inhabits Van Dyne with an every, irresistible brilliance. He makes a fist of his face, shoving it out at the audience, his eyes shrinking to pink callouses as he yells: ’THREE YEARS IN THE DEATH HOUSE OF SING SING waiting to die like a mad dog.. .’ During Van Dyne’s harangue, the Speakers begin broadcasting their stories, verbing themselves into action. Sad, manic, schizoid —the Speakers are now finally visible and in their glory. A sense of suffering and strange wisdom comes out of their competition for an audience. Harry is shouting he’ll stand on his head... When the audience succeeds to catch a glimpse of Harry he’s balancing a whisky bottle on his head, humming i Hey Jude’. At is best, theatre is contest. The Speakers creates the boundaries, and the audience quickly discovers the rules and enjoys the game. The high quality of the performances and the writing coakes the audience out of its habitual timidity. People stand as far or as close as they want to the actors, gathering information to piece this theatrical puzzle together. The greater their initiative, the greater their insight. Sometimes spectators find themselves inches from Lomas, the Park ’historian’, regaling Caffterty with the lore of the Park and the low-down on the speakers. Toby Salaman plays. Lomas cunningly as a pensive, shy guide. His eyes flutter as he talks. His voice is tremulous. His fingers are stained with nicotine. ~. The park is a plaything now, a showpiece...’ Like Cafferty, the audience listens with curiosity and compassion to his judgements. NYBODY WANT TO WHIP ME FOR TWO POUNDSI ANYBODY WANT TO WHIP ME FOR TWO POUNDS! Harry again. But this time another Speaker steps up, takes off his leather belt and slaps Harry around the ankles. He jumps off the podium while Mac Guinness ascends. He is, by his own admission, the last of the freelance orators’. Mac Guinness is a fabulous sight. One gold earring. Black and white winged-tip shoes no laces. Wrinkled tweed trouser cuffs rolled up. Tony Rohr brings Mac Guinness beautifully to life —his eyes rolling in an ecstasy of his gab,

his tongue occasionally lapping at the air. It’s a performance so intimate and precise that it’s almost embarrassing—as embarrassing as Mac Guinness was. The audience watches spellbound as if observing someone having a breakdown in public. MacGuiness gets high on sex. Mac Guinness gets high on hunger. Mac Guinness gets high on rich food. Mac Guinness gets high on purple hearts. Mac Guinness gets high on aspros and coca cola. Mac Guinness gets high on coal gas and milk. .. Mac Guinness gets high when he passes through Soho and smells the wet fish . . . Every girl in Soho smells of wet fish. In Mac Guinness’s demented poetry, in his renegade energy, there is a purity and beauty that only such an exquisitely mischievous and exceptional talent as Heathcote Williams could capture. The Speakers’ riffs —so beautifully shaped and polished—-sweep over the audience with all the power, pain, and outragedus mystery of their confused consciousnesses. Words are immediate and scurrilous and thrilling. They have jazz. Mac Guinness knows the truth about the sinuous language he speaks: Ther’s sexuality in thieving; there’s sexuality in speaking. These speakers are not merely exposing their small psychoses; they want to rape the auditor’s mind. Attention gets them hot. Their orgasm is the rush of language which spurts out and sticks to the spectator’s cerebellum. ’We follow Mac Guinness as he drinks Meths, goes to Brixton, goes, to an asylum, then on the dole. Filling out a form at the National Assistance Board, the clerk asks him what kind of work he does.’ ’Put down giving interviews, Mac Guinness explains: ’l’m too heavy for light work, too light for heavy work and too sexy for night work.' There is also the stateless Axel and his political diatribes, ’The man who shot Kennedy did this because Kennedy was ultimately UNAPPROACHABLE!’ Axel played with heroic swagger by Oliver Cotton, bellows: ’They ARE ultimately unapproachable, these people who speak in terms of DEATH and VIOLENCE!.’. While Axel talks, Van Dyne is stripping off his shirt in a corner, the tattoed crucifix on his back has ECCE HOMO underneath. He moves his shoulder blades and Christ wiggles on the cross for us. Each character that appears in this crazy quilt has a vivid, exact portrait. The play like the Speakers themselves holds an unfathomable mystery. William Gaskill and Max Stafford-Clark, the co-directors who have also adapted the play from Williams’ novel, skilfully thread the Lomas-Cafferty relationship therough the tapestry of action. This varies the pace. The production shrewdly divests the English of their self-consciousness about mainataining boundaries of decorum as well as space. The directors falter only in the plays last beat where they should push the artifice harder. The police coax the Speakers out of the park in order to close it. The police should also press the audience through the ’gate’ instead of lounging in the back while the crowd socialises. For the audience and the speakers have been playing the same exuberant game. When it’s over, he audience should feel the same sudden flatness that the Speakers must feel at the