Not really news, because there's very little to report, but the casting information available so far about this new movie of Coriolanus is pretty tantalising.....
Peter Kirwan
13 Nov 2009 23:13
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Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whatson/8209.aspx
Here's an interesting question. If one is updating the setting of a Shakespeare play, but needs to incorporate a vast amount of explanatory material in the production's programme and on its website, are the resonances of the updated setting not then too obscure to hold any meaning for its audience?
Gregory Doran's new Twelfth Night for the RSC was such a production. As attentive to history and reference as always, Doran chose to play with the geographical Illyria (modern day Albania) as visited by Lord Byron, identified in the programme notes as a key reference for Orsino. The world of this Twelfth Night, therefore, was remade as the final stopping point on the Romantic 'Grand Tour', a place of East-meets-West, European sensibilities and manners thrown into relief by local colour. The idea was coherent and interesting, but (in the eyes of this reviewer, at least) rendered effectively meaningless to the uninitiated as the references were so specific and distant. The colonial politics were not interrogated, and the core action of the play (duels, breeches, big houses, servants, what you will) didn't differ in its essentials from any of the other dozens of Georgian/Victorian-set productions of the play.
Perhaps it's ungenerous to demand insight, though, when the setting allowed for such a lovely aesthetic. Paul Englishby's music drew heavily on Eastern influences, with both on- and off-stage bands creating an ambient atmosphere (helped by strong incense) that evoked perfectly the luxuriousness of Orsino's lifestyle, the bazaars of the streets that linked the two houses and the Orthodox Catholicism, represented by the bearded priest who followed Olivia with an icon of Mary. The setting did also allow for some nice distinctions between "the lighter people"; Toby and Andrew were both Englishmen abroad, while Maria and Fabian were locally-recruited servants, and Feste a Mediterranean musician and purveyor of folk tales, who was shocked and appalled to be addressed by Sebastian as a "Greek": the only time any tension was drawn between the different ethnic groups living in otherwise apparently perfect harmony.
This harmony was key to a production that embraced Twelfth Night as a generally jolly and often hysterical romp pierced with moments and hints of sadness, but never allowing its good spirits to be damagingly compromised. Nancy Carroll's Viola summed up the play's general tone, reminiscent of no-one so much as Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, in voice, look and attitude. Far from being a criticism, Carroll's Cesario was jaunty without attempts at laddishness, and relentlessly positive, but with a dignity and poise that set her above and apart from the people of Illyria. When being confronted with either Olivia's adoration or Orsino's praise for her rival, Viola's gentle frown and upheld chin spoke simultaneously of her wistfulness and defiance; enduring without much hope, but resilient. While a traditional Viola, Carroll succeeded in making her situation affecting and drawing a melancholy from the character that allowed her plight to matter. This resulted, too, in a rivetting reunion with Sam Alexander's Sebastian, with the intensity of her shock and happiness all the more compelling for the sadness of her earlier performance. As with all good reunion scenes, for the duration of this scene everyone else on stage seemed to disappear, with nothing else existing for Viola and Sebastian (or the audience) than each other.
Viola's sadness both echoed and threw into relief the rather more superficial melancholy of Jo Stone-Fewing's Orsino. This self-consciously poetical figure made show of calling for more music from his young male minions, moving slowly through them attending to every strain. Later, he entered in floods of tears before seeing his courtiers, turning to compose himself, then returning with a wide smile on his face. While there was some sympathy for him at first, it quickly became apparent that this man was in love with the idea of his own melancholy, rather than with Olivia. As he and Cesario spoke of love, he became rapt in the conversation and only Viola's mention of Olivia drew her back to mind; for Orsino, it was love itself that held his fascination. His attitude was particularly mocked by Feste in II.iv, who stood clicking impatiently as Orsino told Viola what to "mark" in the song, and made fun of his "melancholy god" when he was done. In the final scene, moreover, Orsino's extremes of passion were further criticised as he drew his sword first on Olivia then on Viola, threatening both in a parodic portrayal of desperate violence that illustrated all too clearly the dangers of his narcissistic performances.
Miltos Yerolemou's Feste was one of the production's highlights, the dark conscience of the play. A consummate performer, in one scene he would be rolling through Fabian's legs and across his back to avoid giving over Olivia's letter, and in the next banging a washing tub to accompany his drinking songs. His performance of "Come away, come away death" was a tour de force solo piece: unveiling a skull in a deliberate parody of Hamlet, he sang to the dead face, acting out its burial and strewing with flowers. Upon being paid by Orsino, however, he immediately cast off his sober air and began using the skull as a ventriloquist's dummy, mocking Orsino with its mouth. Yerolemou demonstrated the same skill he showed in his recent performance in Othello of being able to simultaneously act while providing meta-commentary on his own performance. Thus, in his weak attempts to entertain Olivia in his first scene, he delivered the flat jokes which failed to raise a laugh from the on-stage audience, before shrugging to the off-stage audience as if apologising for doing the best with the script he was given.
There was a darker side to this clown, however. On Malvolio's condemnation of him as a "barren rascal", he dropped the flowers he was carrying in genuine hurt at the insult, before taking cold delight in reminding the defeated Malvolio of his earlier words in the final scene. His railing tone often came close to anger in scenes such as the tormenting of Malvolio as Sir Topaz, and his constant wheedling of money from people was increasingly treated as pestering by Orsino, among others. Single-handedly, in fact, Yerolemou created most of the tension that drove his scenes, pushing the Fool's role to its limits by challenging the bourgeoise and making fun of his peers, allowing no-one to comfortably inhabit the role they had created for themselves. This was echoed in a neatly-arranged final song, used to allow Feste to comment on the play's various loose ends: Antonio marched across the stage as Feste sang "Gaint knaves and thieves men shut their gate"; Andrew left with packed bag to the sounds of "By swaggering could I never thrive"; an already-warring Maria and Toby passed by on "With tosspots still had drunken heads" as Maria threw her ring back at her new husband; and Malvolio himself entered and stopped next to Feste as the latter admitted "Our play is done", the laughter forgotten as the tension between the two threatened to spill into an unknown future.
Simeon Moore played an intense, stammering and piratical Antonio, hand always ready on his sword even as he proclaimed a deeply-felt love for Sebastian. He displayed an unusual amount of anger at Cesario, seeming to feel a deep personal betrayal of affection in Cesario's non-recognition of him. Pamela Nomvete made for a fiery and strong Maria, who had no qualms about threatening Sir Toby and Feste physically when they irritated her. Her story felt oddly unfinished, though perhaps only in relation to a consistently scene-stealing Richard McCabe and James Fleet as Toby and Andrew. McCabe's farting, swearing, slurring Sir Toby swaggered (or staggered) through his scenes, dominant and confident while in full control at all times; whether making strangling gestures behind Andrew's back or lowering his tone severely as he plotted Malvolio's imprisonment, he remained a powerful force that was only ultimately matched by Nomvete's equally strong Maria.
Fleet was the real star of the show though, in a piece of pitch-perfect casting. Bumbling and unusually self-effacing for an Aguecheek, Fleet managed the trick of making his character both ridiculous and lovable at the same time. Whether pitiful in his attempts to give Olivia flowers, comical as he became stuck in a tree, pathetic as he flailed a sword at Viola or completely lost as he forlornly admitted "I was adored. Once.", Andrew was never less than amusing but always with a sadness that made one feel mean for laughing at him. His gormless smiles were inviting even as they emphasised his basic stupidity, and his delight in recognising Malvolio's reference to him as a "foolish knight" even constituted a small victory in his own mind. He contrasted wonderfully well with Tony Jayawardena's excellent, self-aware Fabian. Often an overlooked role, Jayawardena achieved great effect with small gestures, sharing glances and shrugs with Toby that placed him on an intellectual level above Andrew that allowed him to take the lead in manipulating the knight. Blunt and to the point, Fabian provided an earthiness that countered the shenanigans of the drunks, sharing a servant's care with Maria and, ultimately, being burdened with the responsibility for the joke: Feste, as the licensed fool, received a short tongue-lashing, but Olivia's anger focussed on Fabian as the supposedly rational, responsible servant who should have known better than the drunks and fools.
This Olivia was unusual in the range - and extremes - of her emotions. Alexandra Gilbreath's performance was summed up perfectly as she dismissed Toby, alternating screaming herself blue in the face at her departing uncle with simpering apologetically to Sebastian. Even in her dignified melancholy in the opening scenes, there was an undercurrent of playfulness; Feste's jokes quickly had her rolling in her seat, and she adopted a deliberately provocative and mocking attitude with Cesario both as she sat among her other veiled gentlewomen and in their later discussions. Cesario's "Excellently done... if God did all" was greeted, not with anger, but as a challenge in a war of wits that echoed Beatrice and Benedick at their best. Other highlights included her jumping up and down in glee as Sebastian agreed to be ruled by her, and a breathy, sexually-charged "Most wonderful!" as the possibilities for two husbands occurred to her.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the star-casting and his obvious appropriateness for the role, Richard Wilson gave a straight and traditional performance as Malvolio, impressive for a first-time Shakespearean but a little disappointing in light of the innovative performances elsewhere. He wasn't helped by cliches of staging, such as his appearance bound in a cage poking through the trapdoor for the 'Sir Topaz' scene, which left him little space to do much with. However, this older Malvolio made for an extremely creepy 'cross-gartered' scene, with him tucking his long black cloak into enormous white briefs and running his hands down his legs "sexily" to Olivia's utter horror. His ecstatic cries of "To bed?!", followed by a chase around the stage, reduced the auditorium to hysterics. However, the comic set-piece remained, as ever, the garden scene. A box tree on a high trunk was lowered onto the stage (to Andrew's shock, in a metatheatrical moment reminiscent of Judi Dench and the small house in Doran's Merry Wives), into which the three over-hearers crammed themselves, peering over the bench on which Malvolio sat and reaching down in anger as their names were mentioned. The tree shook in anger and laughter, Malvolio stood on the envelope which stuck to his foot, the plotters pleaded dramatically with God that Malvolio be inspired to read aloud. It's perhaps the best image to end with, that of a production which aimed first and foremost to please and entertain. Uncomplicated but not trivial, and the best thing I've seen at the RSC for some time.
Peter Kirwan
11 Nov 2009 15:04
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Writing about web page http://www.daysofsignificance.co.uk/page/1/home
Roy Williams' play debuted as part of the RSC's Complete Works Festival back in early 2007, and it's a pleasure to have the chance to revisit a production I enjoyed so much the first time round. The play has gone from strength to strength since its initial short run, and it is testament to the perceived importance of the subject matter (the effect of the Iraq conflict on ordinary Brits) that Williams has been given the opportunity to extensively rewrite the play, ensuring that it remains up-to-the-minute and in tune with the concerns in the news.
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The plot remained straightforward, and is worth recapping in some detail. On a Friday night, two lairy groups of lads and lasses caused havoc on a night out on the tiles. This was the part of the play that was loosely inspired by Much Ado about Nothing: Ben and Jamie (Benedick and Claudio) were soldiers enjoying a final night of fun before shipping out to Iraq. Dan (Don John), their friend, was against the war and bitter at them for going, while Steve and Tony (loosely Borachio and Conrade) just wanted to get plastered. Among the girls, Trish (Beatrice) was the sex-mad ringleader who once had a fling with Ben, while Hannah (Hero) was starting university and under a great deal of pressure to be the "good" girl. Jamie and Hannah fell in love over the course of the night, and Trish and Ben hooked up again. However, a jealous Dan used the careless gossip of Clare (Margaret) and Steve against "Hannah the slapper", resulting in Jamie insulting her in front of the group. Although everyone was eventually reconciled, Jamie and Ben were still due to ship out in a couple of days.
The play's second act moved to Iraq, framed by two video messages from Ben to Trish; the first newly-arrived and excited, the second jaded and haunted by ominous hints at a revenge mission against the killers of a friend. In between a scene saw Ben, Jamie (an addition to this scene since the play's original production) and two other soldiers, wounded and scared, hiding after an ambush to wait for back-up. As they sheltered, it transpired that Ben had shot a child in cold blood on suspicion of helping the enemy. The scene confronted in a realistic way the atrocities that happen in the heat of combat, and the various strategies used to justify them afterwards: Ben rewrote history to justify his actions, Jamie froze and cowered, their Sergeant threatened to tell all but died of his wounds instead.
Part Three was entirely redesigned from the original production. Originally, this was an abstract scene which saw Hannah stood in a bare square, holding simultaneous conversations with Jamie, Dan, Trish and her father-in-law Lenny. Now, the scene was far more conventional, set at Clare and Steve's wedding. Ben had died in Iraq, apparently heroically, while Jamie was home facing trial for prisoner abuse, keeping secret the fact that Ben had been the ringleader. The scene remained focussed on Hannah, as she tried to reconcile her abhorrence of Jamie's actions with her love for him and wish to support him. Reverting to the "Hannah the Slapper" tag in an attempt to escape the pressures put on her, she was sleeping with Dan - whose views on the war she now shared - while at the same time hating him for his disdain for Jamie and Ben. Meanwhile, a grieving Trish was bitter at what she perceived as Hannah's abandoning of her for her university friends. While Hannah fielded the attacks on all fronts, Jamie pitched up at the wedding, only to end up in a fist fight with Dan. The play ended with Hannah's resolve to accompany Jamie to his court hearing, prioritising love above all else.
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While Williams protests in the programme that the connections with Much Ado are very loose, the play actually provided a committed and fascinating reading of the play in its first act. The bickering of Beatrice and Benedick translated perfectly to the politics of city nightlife, with Ben and Trish balancing their lust for each other with the need to not lose face in front of their gangs. Insults, as Trish said, were just part of the foreplay. The setting also allowed for an interesting inversion of the slandering plot: here, in a flurry of text messages, overheard toilet conversations and petty jealousy, it became spontaneous rather than coldly-calculated, and Dan's decision to go ahead with the plot was motivated as much by love for his mates, leading to anger at their choice to go to war, as by jealousy and spite.
Most potently, though, this was a deeply pessimistic view of Much Ado, in which love was fleeting, flawed and conditional, and where "happy endings" were only pauses in a longer action which led ultimately to death and disgrace. It showed a Hero-figure breaking under the stress of accusations, parental expectations and romantic disillusionment and embracing the identity constructed for her by her detractors. It showed a Benedick whose fiery temperament and casual approach to life resulted in him committing unspeakable atrocities, and a Claudio whose weakness of character and susceptibility to suggestion found him following his friend in those actions. Perhaps most distressingly, it gave us a Beatrice who only let her guard down for Benedick and was hurt badly by it, and who consoled herself by sloping of with other girls' partners at the wedding feast. Pervading all was an emotional desperation and isolation that displayed, with a disheartening impression of truth, the ability of the war to destroy the lives of the people it touched.
Running through this was an underlying concern about education. All characters in the play were working-class, with Hannah's posh university friends pointedly absent from the stage. The arrogant, obnoxious and violently-disposed Dan was also the only character who understood the politics and motivations behind the war, who went on peace demonstrations and openly criticised his friends for not thinking about their actions. It's the liberal viewpoint that we are perhaps normally most encouraged to sympathise with; and yet here his words - and the reported words of Hannah's friends - felt removed and ignorant, theoretical without an understanding of the realities of war. This was contrasted with Ben and Jamie's confused rhetoric about going "for their country" and proving themselves to be men, without a real understanding of what they were fighting for. In this kind of argument, no-one could be right; Williams' point seemed rather to be that those who talk most about the war are those who it least affects, while those who are deliberately targetted to be directly involved in fighting are the ones disadvantaged by education or an understanding of the concerns. People in this world either think, or do; not both.
With an excellent young cast and a good-humoured (and gruesomely fluid!) recreation of a night on the town, Days of Significance proved it could entertain, and the play provided a surprising amount of comedy throughout, from Clare's hideous karaoke at her wedding to Sean the soldier's claims that a photo of Victoria Beckham was actually his girlfriend. The comedy, though, came from seeing ourselves in situations that felt all too familiar, making the intrusions of death and horror all the more powerful. Humour was, for the people of this play, far more a defence mechanism than an expression of any real joy.
The rewritten third act largely improved the play, turning what had been a rather preachy, abstract scene into something more dramatically compelling. A few crucial changes also served to make things more interesting: in the original version, Hannah's stepfather Lenny had admitted to being in love with her; here, she came onto him as he tried to tell her she was worth something, deliberately trying to degrade hersel in an attempt to hide from being the good, responsible girl he wanted her to be. Jamie's attempts to reintegrate himself into 'normal' society by attending the wedding also broke up the attention to Hannah in the final act, making the alienation of the returned soldier apparent and visually showing the conflict that Hannah faced in choosing between the different worlds that fought for her attention.
The most sobering realisation is that Days of Significance is still as relevant today as the troops are pulled out of Afghanistan as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war. As an appropriation of Shakespeare, it took the essential themes of Much Ado, intelligently transposed them and followed them through to seemingly inevitable and shocking conclusions. As an RSC production, it showed the company engaging conscientiously with a section of society who perhaps wouldn't normally be in attendance at the Courtyard. As a performance in its own right, it was skilfully played and engaging. As a piece of work, though, its importance transcended theatre, as all good political theatre should. By engaging with war from a defiantly street-level perspective, evaluating the human cost in terms other than body counts, it reminded us that this is an issue which affects Britain's streets as well as Basra's, and gave stark warnings for those of us who intellectually engage with the war that, without this perspective, our theorising is simply irrelevant.
A version of this review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.
Peter Kirwan
04 Nov 2009 10:37
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There's a bit of a gap in Shakespearean performance criticism. Despite the quality and inventiveness of theatre for children all around the country, it falls beneath the notice of most reviewers, with the implication that it is considered not to be of substantial intellectual or creative merit. This is an enormous shame, as a viewing of Krazy Kat Theatre's A Tempest emphatically proved.
Caroline Parker's production, in collaboration with Nottingam Playhouse's education department, was specifically designed for 8-11 year olds and particularly for those children who are deaf or hard of hearing. With a tagline of "Such signs as dreams are made on...", A Tempest incorporated sign language into the action, resulting in a production which was strikingly visually stylised as performers simultaneously spoke and signed to one another in a mesmerising symphony of movement and words.
Nick Wood's adaptation streamlined the play, focussing on the fundamentals of plot rather than character development. Thus, the scenes of the courtiers were stripped down to Antonio and Sebastian's agreement to kill Alonso, followed immediately by the appearance of the banquet and Ariel. The masque and mariners were cut, and the remainder of the scenes trimmed down to their essentials, except in the case of the Caliban/Trinculo/Stephano scenes, where much of the physical comedy was retained. The result was to create a Tempest that found coherence in a series of almost dreamlike fragments, where action and images blended seamlessly into each other.
I'm not sure how easily a young audience would have followed, say, Prospero's back-story or the political motivations of the plotters, but the highly visual and magically evocative approach rendered the words largely superfluous. Antonio and Sebastian were created through the donning of commedia dell'arte evil masks; Trinculo and Stephano lurched comically about the stage; and Alonso wore a crowned mask that set him apart as king. The stories were linked by Ariel, a blue-skinned and pointy-eared puppet in Eastern robes who was maneuvered by the actors, moving freely around the small circular stage to establish that the same magic bound the disparate groups of characters. This sober, and slightly scary-looking, puppet emphasised the severity of the magic; this was no carefree paradise, but a place of serious works, seriously undertaken by an agent of real magic.
A succession of simply-created but very effective images introduced the action; first Kinny Gardner's Prospero was robed and given his staff and book, then the book was opened to reveal a blue cloth that expanded out to cover the stage, rippling and billowing as the noises of a storm built up. Darren Cheek's Miranda appeared amid the ocean, holding a small paper boat which she desperately tried to keep afloat, before it was snatched from her by the other actors, thrown from hand to hand as she pleaded with Prospero for their safe-keeping. In response he grabbed the boat, then dunked it in a bucket of water, presenting the soggy mess to his dismayed daughter.
The play's main focus stayed with Miranda and Jim Fish's Ferdinand, as the two met and courted under Prospero's watchful eye. There was plenty of humour to be found in these scenes: Ferdinand's attempt to draw his sword resulted in him producing a bunch of flowers, and his amazement turned to pleasure as he presented them to Miranda. His arduous lugging of logs, too, was rendered comic as Miranda picked up several under a single arm. However, the humour gave way to surprising moments of tenderness as the two young lovers were finally allowed to touch. Their subsequent appearance playing chess behind a picture frame saw the two already good-naturedly laughing as they played and cheated at the game.
The final scene introduced an interesting reading of the text, bringing on stage Prospero, Miranda, Ferdinand and Tinca Leahy's Alonso, with the other nobles represented by their masks laid on the stage floor. This staging greatly increased Alonso's presence and status in the final scenes, emphasised by Prospero kneeling before the King as he asked - here, asked - for his dukedom, to be graciously granted the honour. Prospero's revelation of the king's lost son therefore became the subject's favour to his sovereign. More than anyone else, I was reminded of Rosalind, with the ending engineered by a character of slightly lower rank for the benefit of his superior. This re-establishment of the monarch's superiority, and Prospero's deliberate choice to reconcile himself to the hierachy of Naples and Milan, was effective and fitted well with Prospero's expressed desire to abjure his magic and return home.
Ariel shrunk as the production went on, from a child-sized puppet to a hand-sized puppet, and finally to a bundle of shiny ribbons, which Prospero caressed fondly as he said his goodbyes. In a rather startling moment, he then threw the ribbons to the floor, only for them to bounce high and off the stage as Ariel returned to the ether. The puppet was nicely countered by Fish's Caliban, who emerged from a chest with clawed hands and fanged teeth, which Prospero tuttingly told him to remove before continuing with the scene. Fish's growling island-monster was understandably and tactfully simplified, allowing him to act as the comic villain before Prospero's thwarting of the mission, at which he underwent a change of heart and sought for grace. He was thus raised above the bumbling Stephano and Trinculo by his ability to recognise true authority and plead for pardon, achieving a state of grace denied the two servants.
At an hour long, with only four actors and a simple approach designed to appeal to children, it is perhaps understandable that this kind of children's theatre slips beneath the notice of performance critics. This is, after all, 'A' Tempest rather than 'The' Tempest. However, it is a shame; Krazy Kat produced an interesting and entertainingly-performed reading of the play that appealed to its target audience and displayed far more wit and invention than a good many 'adult' productions. I would have loved to have seen a full house of schoolchildren enjoying this, as it seemed to me to be the ideal introduction to Shakespeare: accessible without compromise, and entertaining without condescension.
This review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.
Peter Kirwan
02 Nov 2009 15:34
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Writing about web page http://www.arcolatheatre.com/?action=showtemplate&sid=366
I'd completely missed this: a production of The Spanish Tragedy at the Arcola in London. Rather desperate to see this, but don't think there's any chance of me getting down to London before November 14th. If you've never seen or read this play, book now - essential viewing, particularly if you're a fan of Hamlet.
If anyone reading this sees it, do post a comment and let me know how it was!
Peter Kirwan
21 Oct 2009 21:10
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Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/press/420_8861.aspx
The RSC's plans for 2010 have been announced in a little more detail now, and it's looking to be an interesting year! On the Shakespeare front, David Farr's Lear should be interesting, particularly as it's the first play this ensemble are performing that is usually a star vehicle. Rupert Goold's Romeo appeals, not because I'm particularly a fan of Goold's work (Lear - poor, Macbeth - decent, Tempest - flashes of brilliance, but dull), but because there are apparently going to be a couple of decent, experienced actors playing the star-crossed lovers, Sam Troughton and Mariah Gale (if my informants are correct...), which is all I've been wanting from a Romeo for years. Michael Boyd's Antony, meanwhile, is another one I see no reason not to look forward for, particularly when Kathryn Hunter's casting as Cleopatra goes so against the usual image of that role. Looking forward to them!
The announcement that Tarrell Alvin McCraney is directing a young person's version of Hamlet is pretty mouth-watering too. I've met McCraney a couple of times, as he's the CAPITAL Centre's playwright-in-residence, and he's enormously inspiring, and his play The Brothers Size was a remarkably powerful piece of work. I love the RSC's young person's Shakespeare, and the fact that they're reviving Paul Hunter's excellent Comedy of Errors alongside it should make for a very interestig double-bill.
The fact that I'm teaching medieval literature this year makes an adaptation of Morte d'Arthur hugely appealing, especially when adapted by Mike Poulton, who did such a top-notch job with The Canterbury Tales (an abbreviated version of which, incidentally, Northern Broadsides are producing next year).
The thing I'm so far devastated by, though, is the implication that Ben Power'sA Tender Thing is only going to be playing for a week, and in Newcastle. I would LOVE to see this, but there is no way I can get to Newcastle while it's on. I love my Shakespearean adaptations, as regulars will know well, and the idea of a version of Romeo and Juliet reimagined for characters in their seventies, with those characters played by Kathryn Hunter and Forbes Masson, sounds like exactly the kind of thing I love. I can only hope and plead with any RSC suits that might be reading this that they PLEASE revive the play in Stratford - seeing as both actors are going to be here as part of the ensemble, surely it can't be that difficult?!
Finally, a musical version of Roald Dahl's Matilda as the Christmas show. Lovely.
Peter Kirwan
12 Oct 2009 17:17
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Writing about web page http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=52899
Nicholas Hytner, in an interview with Alex Jennings that preceded the National Theatre's second NT Live broadcast, qualified the expectations for this experimental programme in a way which chimed more with my own expectations. The broadcast of Phedre back in June was preceded by rather hyperbolic and over-ambitious suggestions that the event would recreate a theatrical experience; that the cameras would not interfere with the audience's experience; and that the 'product' received around the world would be of a comparable quality to that experienced in London.
This time around, Hytner expressed himself rather better. The initial experiment, he suggested, had seen them create something that was not quite theatre, not quite cinema, but a new generic form altogether, and it was this that they wished to explore further. It's a commendable admission. The live broadcast is always going to be technically inferior to a studio-shot production that can take full advantages of a screen medium; while in terms of a live event, one can never hope to give the spectators the control over their own viewing experience that the theatre audience enjoys, or re-create the atmosphere of a live show. However, by deliberately aiming for something different, the experiment is (in my eyes, at least) validated somewhat. The question becomes not whether the screened All's Well was as good as the live All's Well, but what this unique format offered on its own terms.
The framing materials were well chosen. I have an issue with the director and actor interviews that precede the screening, explaining their creative decisions and interpretations. It rather implies that the provincial and international audiences need a level of mediation that the live audiences in London do not, and I find it both patronising and reductive to be instructed how to interpret a production before I am allowed to see it. The opposing argument would be that the materials are similar to those that are in a programme, but the point is that one can choose whether or not to read a programme, while one cannot choose to absent oneself from the screened interviews.
That said, it was pleasing to see the National experiment with the medium to present items that are not available in any other format. Some archive footage showing the historical connections between Shakespeare and the National was genuinely informative and gave some interesting context to the occasion, but the best part was an 'in-the-wings' conversation between director Marianne Elliott and actor Elliot Levey, in costume as Lord Dumaine. Instead of explaining the production, this short, sweet interview gave a palpable sense of excitement to the occasion, with Levey explaining the excitement that the cast felt at their final performance and the screening. Paradoxically, the cameras allowed a greater sense of intimacy in this moment than the live experience.
However, the good work of the framing material was distressingly undone by the criminally unwise idea of a mid-show talk. Returning after a 20 minute interval, Jennings was now on the Olivier stage, this time with designer Rae Smith, who he interviewed for ten minutes about the production's design. This interruption to the evening's proceedings was extremely unwelcome, killing the momentum of the production far more damagingly than an interval does and asking too much of the audience in adjusting their mindset. This was made worse by the fact that Smith deliberately tried to avoid saying anything that would give away the events of the second half, and was thus prevented from giving an interestingly complete picture of her work - which begged the question, why attempt to do an interview halfway through at all, if the timing means that a decent interview can't be achieved?
The screening itself went extremely well. The scale of the Olivier stage and auditorium allowed for the cameras to be extremely mobile and wide-ranging, creating a sense of space and three-dimensional activity that the rather more static Phedre had not been able to convey. While there were still frustrations in the choice of camera angles, particularly when a character in close-up reacted to something that was out of view, the cameras were extremely effective in picking out details that had certainly not registered as strongly when I saw the production in person.
Chief among the beneficiaries was Conleth Hill, whose larger than life Parolles was born for the big screen. In close-up, Parolles came dangerously close to stealing the entire show. Hill filled the screen with extravagent gestures and the continual ruffling up of his plumes and sleeves. In his first conversation with Michelle Terry's Helena, the camera gave us privileged access to his face; turning away at one point, his eyes lit up as he interpreted her "How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?" as a come-on, and he quickly swept back his hair and checked his breath before turning back to her to lounge seductively (as he thought) across the bench they shared.
More importantly, however, the pathos of Hill's performance came across extremely effectively. Left alone in soliloquy after his 'discovery' by Lafew and his public humiliation, on both occasions his body slumped, crestfallen, and his eyes and mouth remained low even as, with his words, he tried to pick up his own spirits. There was something desperately sad about this man, whose entire personality was constructed around a performance of his own worth. With that performance stripped away, Hill allowed us to glimpse the vulnerability and insecurity that had driven him to become a braggart.
The testing by the Countess (Clare Higgins) of Helena also benefitted from the camera's close eye. Here, her play-acting was made wonderfully comic, as the camera cut to her hidden reactions of joy to the revelation of Helena's love for Bertram before turning back with a severe frown. All through the production, in fact, we gained in perceived insight into the character's 'true' faces. Bertram and Helena's first taking of hands, under the King's command, was tentative and terrified, Bertram's eyes widening with fear and discomfort as he felt the eyes of the court on him. Perhaps surprisingly, the wonderful performances of the two Counts Dumaine (Levey and Tony Jayawardena) were pushed even further into prominence, and a highlight was their simple conversation about the end of the war and Bertram's disgrace, intercut with Helena and Diana preparing their plot. This chat became an intimate and almost choric commentary on the morality of the play, delivered in an inocuous form that privileged the spectator as voyeur, rather than audience - as if we were accidentally privy to the unspoken concerns of Bertram's companions.
The medium failed to serve the production in creating the atmosphere of the live show. Back projections showing silhouettes of owls, wolves, withered trees and other fairytale markers were invisible during the main action, and instead were cut to quickly at the start of scenes in an effort to show the atmosphere rather than create it. In practice, this meant that the screen occasionally cut to what looked like a cartoon of woodland animals, which invariably just drew a laugh and then failed to impact on the subsequent scene. However, the cameras did effectively convey the size of the space, and their mobility was particularly well-utilised in establishing shots of the whole stage and slow pans across still scenes: the parade of the victorious soldiers, for example, lingered on each of the soldiers as they moved in slow-motion, finally resting on Bertram as he raised his plumes and celebrated his new honour.
The NT Live experiment worked as an excellent companion to a live viewing of All's Well that Ends Well. Where the live production drew the spectator to the spectacle and massed action, the broadcast picked out subtleties in the performances which allowed certain moments to become more moving, while also drawing out jokes that may have been lost on stage - in particular, Lafew's straight-to-camera asides worked far better on screen than at the edge of the Olivier stage where the direct address was rather overwhelmed by everything else. It shows the NT Live project moving in an encouraging direction, and hopefully future live Shakespeare broadcasts will learn from this screening's mistakes and build on its strengths.
Peter Kirwan
02 Oct 2009 11:53
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It's been a quiet summer, but as October approaches there are a range of Shakespeare shows coming up which I'm hoping to attend. Here's the current wishlist:
I'm probably not going to catch the Globe's revival of Love's Labour's Lost. It's a short run, and as it's the same space, the same director and a substantial number of the same cast as the original production, I don't think I can justify the time and expense (and they cancelled press night, so I lost my free ticket). I may also check out the local am-dram in my new locale of Kenilworth, who are putting on a version of Much Ado round the corner from me.
In a non-Shakespeare (and therefore non-review) line, I'm looking forward to the National's Mother Courage, the Belgrade's Beggar's Opera and the West End transfer of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Anything screamingly obvious I've missed? Or any hot tips?
Peter Kirwan
17 Sep 2009 15:03
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I normally discuss academic conferences over on my PhD blog, but the unique theme of this particular conference – and its implications for my work – means it merits inclusion within the Bardathon’s remit. Seeing as it’s been very quiet here on the reviewing front (very few new openings in my area, and I’ve been moving house which has limited the free time in which I have to travel), it also seems an appropriate time to use the conference for a bit of self-reflection.
I was only able to attend the first day of this conference at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, so I missed the second day’s discussion of the RSC’s As You Like It. The first day, however, was of extreme use and interest. Keynote addresses from Michael Billington and Peter Holland bookended the event neatly with perspectives on reviewing from top journalistic and academic performance critics. In between, a panel discussion brought together a range of perspectives on reviewing: critic Michael Coveney, academic Carol Rutter, Guardian arts editor Andrew Dickson, director Tim Supple and actor Janet Suzman, with Stanley Wells chairing. Finally, a seminar session discussed the papers of twelve delegates, including my own.
Billington’s keynote was as interesting as on the other occasions I’ve heard him speak, giving an illuminating and acutely-observed history of changes in British theatre-making over the last few decades. As productions have moved from actor/actor-manager-led to a director’s theatre, reviewing has changed in response. While this is undoubtedly true, it leaves reviewing in a rather passive state, able only to respond rather than develop in its own directions. For this reason, I was a little disappointed, as I’d hoped the theme of the conference might provoke Billington to be a bit more self-reflective about his own craft. My sense of disappointment, though, was only a result of my own prior hopes for the content of his lecture; as it was, it provided an insightful contextual opening for the rest of the day’s discussion, while also opening up questions that would continue to concern participants for the rest of the day: how does the critic define what qualifies as “Shakespeare”? How is the role of the critic evolving in response to developments in blogging and online criticism? And what, ultimately, is the reviewer’s purpose?
While occasionally meandering a little into discussions of performance (as opposed to performance criticism), the panel session touched on extremely pertinent questions, some of which I’ll try to briefly summarise. Firstly, the question of who reviews are for. Suzman admitted that she wasn’t sure what she could usefully add to the discussion, as she herself never reads reviews. She seemed to believe this is the case with the majority of actors (though I am very aware that several actors do read reviews, including occasionally on this blog – perhaps it’s simply a matter of personal choice); however, this led to questions of the impact of reviews. How far can a bad notice affect a practitioner? And should practitioners ever read reviews? A key debate seems to be the matter of how far critics and practitioners may learn from each other, or whether the two should operate in relative independence. Reviews are, after all, surely aimed primarily at audiences, potential or past. This fed into Peter Holland’s later, insightful discussion of the operations of the blogosphere, which saw reviews interacting and circulating within a network of informed and interested parties: opinions are articulated for the benefit of others with their own opinions. He articulated the danger of this sphere becoming too self-contained, but then this is also a danger with the ‘traditional’ reviewing field. Ultimately, it is spectators who we should be writing for.
The blogosphere came in for a kicking in the panel discussion, which several other delegates were interested in my thoughts on. One panel member (I forget who) compared it to the “Britain’s Got Talent” mentality, in which everyone feels they can – and have a right to – express an opinion, regardless of any measure of quality. Concerns were raised over the threat that free opinion offers to the authority of established reviewers, and a challenge was raised. Where are the new reviewers going to come from? Tim Supple asked Michael Billington to name a promising young reviewer under the age of thirty, and remained unanswered.
The problem here is that experience is assumed as the prerequisite for good reviewing, which seemed to negate the possibility of there ever being a ‘good’ young reviewer. Good writing can be learned, experience can only be got over time. This is a completely fair argument, and it is through experience that professional reviewers will always be able to locate and articulate their authority. However, my riposte would be that there is room for a plurality of opinions, and that there are different kinds of experience. You don’t need to have seen fifty-seven Hamlets in order to experience and write about the power of a given production, and Holland provided some interesting examples of vox pop reviewing, praising the instinctive responses of the young respondents for their immediacy and freshness. If young people can learn the discipline of writing well and communicate their own responses in a form that means something to others, then surely the necessary experience will come in time. To be unable to name the promising young reviewers at this time is, I believe, no cause for concern.
Andy Dickson, fighting valiantly on the panel for the positives of e-reviewing, was in any case able to name some promising young reviewers and blogs. His inclusion on the panel was a blessing, as it prevented the discussion from becoming too bogged down in negativity towards new forms of reviewing. As I remarked when asked for my opinion at various times during the day, the truth is that blogging, amateur criticism and e-reviewing is the future. It’s how people of my generation and younger find value in their interests, by being able to communicate them to international audiences of like-minded people, and all fields of criticism are moving that way. To try to resist this is futile; we need to be discussing how these forms can be usefully integrated with more traditional forms, not if. Dickson, and people like him, are going to be the most important people in this change because they are thinking positively about how these forms of criticism are to be integrated into the existing formats; how mixed media and traditional criticism can work together rather than in opposition. The ‘threat’ is mostly one of perception; the internet presents all voices as more or less equal, because they can all be read easily and for free. If a way can be found to emphasise the strengths and experience of different kinds of review and reviewer, then there is no reason why these various forms cannot productively co-exist – and professional reviewers keep their jobs.
One last comment from the panel section, which I found extremely bizarre, was Tim Supple’s assertion that the good reviewer should completely ignore ‘atmosphere’ (as, for example, on press nights), focussing instead entirely on the performance as object. Billington articulated something similar in his complaint that he finds the Globe a “distracting” venue. I entirely disagree with these comments. Atmosphere cannot be ignored, and theatre cannot be reviewed from within an imaginary, hermetically-sealed bubble. Atmosphere is part of the reviewer’s experience: if one is sitting at a comedy, and the audience are sitting stonily-faced throughout every attempted joke, that is inevitably going to affect the reviewer’s perception, consciously or subconsciously. Theatre is not necessarily a contained event on the stage, but a dialogue between performance and audience, most visibly at venues like the Globe but to some extent wherever theatre happens. I strongly believe that good reviewers should be discussing their experience of the theatrical event. I don’t mean, of course, that the reviewer should be reporting gossip or irrelevancies, and of course these should be ignored; but if something is happening in the theatre, or between the audience and the play, that is affecting the performance, then I don’t see a problem with bringing it into the discussion.
The seminar session was interesting for me; as one of the participants, I had of course seen all the papers in advance. I’d be interested to know how useful it was for the auditors, of whom there were pleasingly quite a few, who only had brief synopses to go on. I won’t go through all twelve papers, but just mention a few of the useful points that came up.
Ellie Collins added to the pro-blogging lobby with a timely and pragmatic look at the pros and cons of e-reviewing, praising the plurality of approaches that the medium allows in what she defined as a “post-consensus society”. The problems are in the lack of navigability and closure; but this last can be interpreted as a strength if we allow for responses to productions to continue developing indefinitely. Reviews are what shape a production’s afterlife, and the idea that that afterlife ends with the “official” review is restrictive. The paper tied in extremely neatly with Holland’s subsequent address, leaving the conference’s attitude towards blogging on a more positive note.
Two papers argued for closer attention in reviewing to specific aspects of practice. Jami Rogers gave an exciting paper that pointed out the deficiencies in the ways reviewers discuss acting, attacking lazy epithets and evaluative comments that fail to address what an actor actually did in order to give the general impression that the reviewer remarks upon. This is something that will have a direct impact on my own reviewing; while I do try to give description of action rather than brush off performances in general terms, it’s not something I’ve given a great deal of conscious thought to, which I hope to now remedy. Kate Burnett, meanwhile, discussed theatre design, demanding recognition for the work of designers rather than ceding all credit to directorial vision.
Steve Purcell wrote the paper closest to my own heart, attacking reviewers for policing the boundaries of what is considered to be “Shakespeare”. Particularly picking up on Billington’s earlier criticism of Kneehigh’s Cymbeline (which he considered to be unShakespearean), he discussed the inappropriateness of accusations of infidelity when applied to plays that are a) inherently unstable even in textual form and b) do not accept textual fidelity as an artistic concern. It’s a paper that will hopefully have use for my own PhD, which of course discusses historical conceptions of what Shakespeare actually is.
Alison Stewart’s paper persuasively argued for subjectivity in the review (hear hear), pointing out that no reviewer can meet the needs of all potential future researchers. This contrasted nicely with Kevin Quarmby’s calls for objectivity, demanding that the reviewer act as a conduit for their readers. I think the two can work well together; a cool, descriptive eye that remains the reviewer’s own, individual approach appears to meet the criteria of the reviews I prefer to read.
Finally, the question of comparative criticism, which Caroline Latta argued for the importance of. This, of course, is where the experience of professional critics is particularly important and invaluable. It is also the standard mode of academic reviewers, positioning the play within its performance context and comparing performers and productions to their lineage. I agree with the importance of this, while at the same time noting that it’s not something I do myself very much. I suppose I feel to an extent that there’s a danger of getting too bound up in the past and the history of a production, thereby losing something of the immediacy of the present – for of course, for many of the audience, they will be unaware of or at least unfamiliar with much of the performance history being contrasted with the present event. I’m also conscious that there are many forms of comparative criticism. Hamlet does not exist in an isolated history of Hamlets, but in a history of other theatre productions, in the context of its own season, in the director’s own repertory, in the current political and cultural climate and so on. These are just thoughts, but don’t invalidate the importance and usefulness of comparisons. The issue was raised repeatedly over the course of the day, and is to my mind the grounds upon which paid, professional critics should be articulating their own authority and justifying their paycheques.
I haven’t mentioned my own paper, but I was pleased with its reception and Caroline’s extremely generous questions on it. The paper was entitled “”What’s Past is Prologue”: Negotiating the Authority of Tense in Reviewing Shakespeare”, and made the argument that reviews should always be written in the present tense, in order to better express the liveness of the moment of performance and the position of the reviewer; my contention is that the moment of truth in a review is the moment of writing, as opposed to the moment of viewing. The tense question was secondary, though, to the issues I wanted to raise about what we consider the object of review actually is; I argued for reviewing single performances rather than entire productions runs, essentially supporting Alison’s arguments for embracing subjectivity by locating the reviewer’s experience of a particular moment in time.
I’ll wrap up there, but I was extremely pleased with and excited by this conference. It’s given me a great deal of food for thought, which I’m going to try and build into my own reviewing practice. It’s also, hopefully, raised similar questions for other critics and academics which will have wider implications; and the publication of the conference proceedings will no doubt speed things along. On a more personal note, it’s one of the first conferences at which I’ve felt completely confident in my own ability to express opinions and argue issues, which is a good boost coming into the new academic year.
Peter Kirwan
14 Sep 2009 11:45
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Writing about web page http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/theatre/annualtheatreseason/troiluscressida/
For a play that, on first publication, was described as "never stal'd with the Stage, never clapper-clawd with the palmes of the vulger", Troilus and Cressida worked astonishingly well at the Globe in Matthew Dunster's new production. Funny, moving, disquieting and exciting by turns, this consistently interesting production made the most of the play's myriad tones and characters to create what can only be described as a modern tragedy; a tragedy in which the end result is not the loss of life, but the failure to attain happiness.
The key to interpreting this production was its placing with the Globe's 2009 "Young Hearts" season. Taking as its cue the youthful exploration of love-politics treated comically in Love's Labour's Lost and As You Like It, and the life-or-death passion of Romeo and Juliet, Dunster's masterstroke was in recasting Cressida as a modern heroine in the Stephanie Meyers mould. Laura Pyper's Cressida was a purple-haired teenager just discovering her sexual identity. Fully aware of the theory, she teased Pandarus and flirted on the balcony for the benefit of the returning Trojan troops, confident and forward in presenting herself. When called upon to put the theory into practice, however, she became shy, as if now required to live up to the image of sexual confidence she had hitherto projected. As she confessed and retracted her love for Troilus to his face, she showed the confusion that comes with trying to follow both the 'rules' of love and her own feelings, uncertain of how much of herself she was meant to yield up to him.
My understanding of Cressida was in no small part influenced by the large group of teenage girls standing near me in the pit, demonstrating once again the unique nature of a Globe experience. The reactions of this section of the audience showed a clearly affinity to her situation, and the seemingly genuine gasps of shock when Cressida gave Diomedes the sleeve Troilus had given her only served to underline how significant this gesture was for the character. I didn't take to Pyper's Cressida at first, but as the play progressed I understood that her performance re-enacted the play from the point of view of a typical teenage girl, exaggerating every gesture, glance and thought into a dramatic personal tragedy of which she was the centre. When truly dramatic situations then occurred, such as the news of the prisoner exchange, they only served to confirm for her the significance which she had placed upon everything else, and she thus responded with increasingly dramatic gestures such as tearing down the curtains of her room.
Seen through Pyper's performance, Troilus thus became a coming-of-age drama, chronicling the point at which childish fantasies of love and happiness are forced to give way to the scary and messy realities of adulthood. On arriving in the Grecian camp, Cressida was shaking and petrified, and the dignified kiss of Nestor was almost as creepy as the forceful kiss of Agamemnon or the pain caused by Achilles grabbing her face. The wit she had once displayed in banter with her uncle became the desperate means by which she could escape Menelaus' rough clutches, in a truly uncomfortable scene that showed the young girl having to grow up quickly in order to defend herself - yet also unconsciously drawing closer to Diomedes in a residual, childish need for protection.
The central storyline climaxed with a brilliantly-staged overhearing scene that fully embraced the idea of an unlocalised stage. Ulysses' "Stand where the torch may not discover us" established that the three onlookers were hidden (here, Thersites openly accompanied Ulysses and Troilus), but this then allowed them to move freely around and even between Diomedes and Cressida. Rather than attempt to literally show their concealment, Dunster took the opportunity to express the love triangle through blocking; so, for example. Troilus stood close behind Cressida as she defied Diomedes, physically positioning the true lovers against the interloper. Paul Stocker's anxious and angst-ridden Troilus was particularly good here, extending his hand to touch her but aware that she was already beyond his reach.
In contrast to the childish dramatics of Cressida, Troilus communicated the depth of his feelings in heartfelt ways with little artifice. His primary concern was with emulating his older brothers in attempting to be warlike and manly, yet Cressida overpowered his thoughts. His reaction to the news of the prisoner exchange saw him tremble on "How my achievements mock me", before screaming in a deafening and unsettlingly primal roar, collapsing to his knees. After a long, still silence, he got up and formally said "I will go meet them". The scream and silence internalised his sorrow, making it more powerful than any sustained display of emotion could have done, and the speed and force with which the two young lovers ran together before being parted was heartbreaking. In torment, Troilus' dressing for war was one of the play's more moving scenes, copying Hector with an angry defiance.
The political plot was expertly executed, juggling the large number of characters and giving every individual moments to shine, while at the same time not losing sight of the bigger satirical picture. Dunster's primary target was the hypocritical and dangerous culture of machismo that tainted most of the soldiers. The Trojans lived in a homoerotically-charged environment where young male retainers walked around topless and lounged in Helen's boudoir. Ben Bishop's Paris was, against type, a hairy and portly older man, who indulged in playful violence with Ania Sowinski's tempestuous Helen and laughed off accusations of disregard for his country. One sympathised more with Jay Taylor's pathetic and miserable Helenus, comically dismissed in the parade of soldiers by Pandarus, who showed a sincere fear in the testosterone-fuelled Trojan court. It was the treatment of Cassandra (Sowinski again) by her brothers, however, that came in for most criticism, with Troilus in particular speaking scornfully of "our mad sister". Mad she may have been, but Cassandra and Andromaque were moving in their unheeded lamentations, particularly as the former lay out Hector's armour in the shape of a dead body. Concerned as they were with glory, strength and vaunting (as particularly embodied by Fraser James's Aeneas, mounting a plinth to deliver Hector's challenge), they drove themselves to disaster.
The Greek camp was similarly unsympathetically portrayed, though very differently. Each of the commanders was flawed: Agamemnon cantankerous, Menelaus bitter and pathetic, even Ulysses (the always-reliable Jamie Ballard) displayed a deep-rooted rage against what he saw as Cressida's 'threat' to the camp. Diomedes (doubled by Jay Taylor) kept himself in the background during the earlier scenes, before moving in to throw everything else into turmoil. Subtly played - a raised eyebrow as he noted Troilus' affection for Cressida, an unmoved expression as Troilus later faced up to him - , Taylor made Diomedes a genuinely threatening rival for Troilus, confident and open in his actions. The comic highlight, though, was Chinna Wodu's Ajax. Big, slow and the very epitome of vainglorious, Wodu nailed the humour of the character, and his clumsy ignoring of Achilles, one of his very few expressions of wit, was a triumph for the dull man over his rival. However, Ajax was still a dangerous presence in his own way, it taking two men to stop him continuing to fight Hector after the tilt had been ended.
Trystan Gravelle wore a dressing gown throughout as Achilles, accompanied always by the bare-chested Beru Tessema as his openly gay partner. The disdain of Patroclus for the other commanders, and for war in general, made him a fascinating presence throughout, setting himself above everyone else. His death was passed over quickly, however, emphasising rather Achilles' sense of wounded pride as his reason for rejoining battle. Facing off against Hector during the truce, both men were unambiguously antagonised by the other, and their duel on the battle-field, in which Achilles was easily bested, was brutal. In general, I was surprised at how exciting the cumulative effect of the battles was - individually, most of the fights were unspectacular (although Hector's kick to Achiless' midriff was very impressive), but as they grew more desperate, a genuine sense of voyeuristic excitement seemed to fill the Globe. The murder of Hector therefore felt even more distasteful as a result. The Myrmidons, more unsoldierly young men in Patroclus' vein, were summoned, and stood in a line opposing Hector as he, unarmed, drank water. As he looked at Achilles in confusion at this breach of the chivalric code, another Myrmidon creeped up behind him and cut his throat. Achilles' lack of scruples was further shown as he cut the arm of one of his followers, bloodying his knife in order to claim the victory for himself. The falling of black drapes around the theatre marked the significance of Hector's death.
Two more characters to give detailed attention to. Paul Hunter made for a wonderful Thersites, effectively narrating the action (including the Prologue) throughout. Thersites was misshapen, with eye-glass, hunchback and extended rump, allowing him to be pummeled by Ajax. Moving among the wars, immune to harm, he provided satiric commentary as well as adlibbing with the crowd ("Trojan war memorabilia! Hector's war diaries!"), establishing the necessary tone by which the rest of the play might be understood. In this sense, Thersites actually became the most important character in the play, the eyes through which we saw everybody else, his judgments informing ours. He was also hysterically funny throughout, providing much of the simple pleasure of the performance. In a slightly insane scene, he was introduced to us amid a collective of other Eastern street vendors, including a snake charmer with a rubber snake on a string, who demanded money from we groundlings.
Matthew Kelly was also funny as Pandarus, but in a far more creepy way. Played as an unabashed voyeur, Kelly's Pandarus was disgusting in his explicit mode of address to his niece, prompting shudders from the audience. Frolicking about the stage, manouvering the young lovers to his satisfaction, he provided a good deal of comedy, particularly during "Nothing but Love", which consisted of those three words sung over and over with surreal backing vocals from the rest of the cast and a chorus line formed by Paris, Helen and their boys. As the play progressed, however, the old man became increasingly irrelevant, pushed away by both Troilus and Cressida. As he staggered in, ailing, with Cressida's letter to Troilus, Troilus made it clear in no uncertain terms that his storyline, his time, was over, and that there was no need for him anymore. This resulted in a wondeful end for the play. As Troilus finally dismissed Pandarus with his "Live aye with thy name", Pandarus was left alone on stage. Instead of delivering the text's Epilogue, however, he began repeating, almost at random, his lines from earlier in the play. Marching up and down the stage, insane in his sickness and grief, broken phrases such as "Nothing but love", "Is this the generation of love?" and "Is love a generation of vipers?" became prominent, as the rest of the company entered and stood together and drumming drew to a climax. This troubled but entirely fitting end to the production ended it on the requisite pessimistic note, emphasising that the troubles we bring down on our heads are of our own making.
Peter Kirwan
21 Aug 2009 09:22
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