All 137 entries tagged Review

'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Cheek by Jowl) @ Warwick Arts Centre

Writing about web page http://www.cheekbyjowl.com/tis_pity_shes_a_whore.php

Cheek by Jowl have revolutionised my understanding of early modern dramatists time and again - Shakespeare with its Twelfth Night, Middleton with its The Changeling, and now John Ford with a stunning new 'Tis Pity. This was my third production of the play following an excellent student version at Warwick and a stripped-back domestic version at Liverpool, and the play has never ceased to amaze me. Yet Cheek by Jowl's unique physical environment and ongoing interrogation of theatrical space once more turned the play on its head for me, creating a powerfully contemporary piece that nonetheless spoke seriously to the play's dark heart.

Following Macbeth, the company has rediscovered sets. Building on devices used successfully in its Russian version of The Tempest, this production cleverly integrated a fixed stage image with the use of implied and partially glimpsed offstage sets to create clear stage loci that provided a focus for the fluid space. Ostensibly, the entire play took place in Annabella's bedroom. The walls were festooned with posters for vampire television series, classic movies and glam bands, and the large stage was dominated by a red double bed, with a couple of other pieces of furniture gesturing towards the shape of a bedroom. Through doors upstage could be glimpsed her en-suite bathroom and another space that became a reception room, hallway or other space as needed. Yet the space was a set, not a location. Fusing locus and platea in a daring inversion of theatrical space, the play played out in imagined, presented locations which nonetheless all somehow contained Annabella's bed, which became the uncontested focus of every man's gaze. The impression was clear, and in many ways both antithetical to and supportive of Sonia Masai's recent reclamation of the state and city participation in the play: here, whatever else was going on and wherever it was happening, everyone was simultaneously in Annabella's bedroom, attempting to possess or manage her sexuality, to colonise her bed in order to consolidate their own standing. The dynamics of state were exposed in relation to their ongoing possession of a teenage girl's private space.

Thus, the entire cast gathered on her bed to watch Vasques and Grimaldi duel over her; Hippolita stood atop it while she slept while simultaneously taking Soranzo to task over his abandonment of her; Florio sat on it while telling her who she must marry; Vasques wooed Putana on top of it while attempting to discover who had impregnated Annabella; and, finally, the bloodied Giovanni sat on it while carrying Annabella's heart. Ultimately, there was no space for her on it, except in a dismembered sense. From the start it was figured as the centre of attention - the play began with her watching DVDs on her laptop, then putting on music and dancing in the sexualised manner of MTV videos, while the rest of the company entered and danced in formation with her, following her lead as if puppeted by her. This tour de force opening also established the terms by which the play would take place - an overpowering sexuality which Annabella owned and the men wished to take from her.

The entire cast were frequently on stage, meaning that Annabella's every movement was watched and judged. This was not a critique of her actions, but of the watchers who allowed Giovanni free rein but attempted to keep the young girl imprisoned - after all, she was in many ways never able to leave her own bedroom. It also allowed for everyone to be present when referred to, linking the society of the play together in a single claustrophobic space that blurred the boundaries between public and private. Hippolita imaginarily but physically suffocating Annabella was a high point of these crossovers, but more significantly it served to yoke brother and sister throughout the play. Whether lying beside her bed, venerating her while speaking to the friar or filming her during the wedding celebrations, Giovanni was entirely obsessed with the image of his sister, pouring over into excess at every opportunity and, finally, locking her into her room in order that he could murder her.

The two young leads did a fine job. Lydia Wilson gave a physical and supple performance, performing for the men who treated her as a ballerina, a marionette or an icon (including in one spectacular comic moment as Soranzo's hyperbole manifested visually as she stood atop the bed and was crowned as an icon of Mary while the male cast members stripped to their waist and created a tableau of adoration). Jack Gordon's Giovanni, meanwhile, was socially awkward, stilted in speech and focused on one thing. The space between them was kept deliberately obvious at first, and as they admitted their feelings they knelt on either side of the bed, holding hands across to each other before jumping under the sheets. The same pose was replicated at the play's end as she pleaded for her life, the bed now becoming a barrier between them. Fittingly, he brought her up onto the bed and, while they stood, snapped her neck in a moment of shocking brutality.

The visceral nature of the action was made explicit by the fantastic use made of the bathroom. It was in here that Putana and Annabella had their heart-to-heart conversations, while silent male listeners stood outside the door. It was here that Annabella fled to when first throwing up after realising her pregnancy, and where Putana kept the supplies that allowed her to put scent in the room and cover up all traces of sexual activity. Shockingly, it was into the bathroom that a furious Soranzo later forced Annabella, returning only to grab a coathanger from the bedroom with which to perform an amateur abortion, prevented only by Vasques. And it was in here that Giovanni deposited a toolbox before killing Annabella. He took her body into the room and sounds of sawing were heard as the partygoers returned to the stage. The final image was of the cast walking one by one to the door of the bathroom and reacting to what they saw there (we could only see a streak of blood across the wall), closing the play on the final gaze of the spectators who had ultimately all contributed to her death.

The production's clear sympathy with Annabella gave the production a singular attention that extended to the cutting of all subplots - as in the Liverpool production, Bergetto and Poggio, Richardetto (though an anonymous doctor was retained) and Philotis were all cut. Grimaldi and Donado were reduced to single scenes, and even Vasques was heavily cut, losing his part in the final scene. Significantly, the play closed on the gaze at Annabella's body and the distant sound of sirens; but Giovanni remained alive, even as his father keeled over onto the bed beside him. This was not Giovanni's story, other than as the ultimate persecutor of Annabella - he was denied his own tragic conclusion.

However, the Hippolita plot was played out in full length (bar the cutting of Richardetto), offering a contrast to the main story. Suzanne Burden played an aging widow, striving to keep herself young with heavy make-up and attempting to play the vamp to the younger men, including Vasques, who knelt before her in show of obsession with her, playing to her fantasy. Her story was deeply affecting, her attempt to maintain dignity drawing attention to her entire lack of power. For her 'masque', she entered as a masked singer, serenading the wedding party in a back room while Vasques, alone onstage, fixed the drinks. The production played her final joining of the lovers as a convivial joke, and the company continued to laugh as she slowly died, only gradually realising that her cries were real. Yet she was denied a formal mourning, the production instead merging seamlessly into the wedding night, Soranzo beginning to woo Annabella even as the bodies were cleared from the stage. Interestingly, the rant was played initially as bedroom banter; it was only as Annabella (apparently willing to have sex) cried out as Soranzo kissed her bare stomach that he realised she was pregnant. Jack Hawkins was magnificent in this scene, bringing a menace and violence to the character that stemmed from a place of deep-rooted shock. Again, he survived in the play's conclusion, not as a vindication of his violent and controlling actions, but rather in a statement of defiant irrelevance - ultimately, we were not expected to care what happens to any of these men.

The atrocities mounted up elsewhere. Lizzie Hopley's Putana provided comic relief for much of the play, bantering in a naturalistic way that contrasted with the outward-facing delivery of much of the play's dialogue, and concentrating on controlling the represented environment. Yet the character was central to the female-centred reading of the play. Following the wedding, Putana entered to clean her charge's old bedroom, and her quiet actions as she walked around the room - trying on the girl's Audrey Hepburn sunglasses, taking out some old clothes, stealing a chocolate from their usual hiding place - was heartbreaking, she dealing with the loss of her companion. Vasques's subsequent manipulation of her was horrific. He flirted with her on the bed, feeding her chocolates and a glass of wine and flattering her. Then, he arranged for a stripper to enter, who danced for her on the bed and drew her into a gyrating threesome with Vasques. As she finally admitted Annabella's lover, the stripper left the bed while Vasques sat in thought, and she attempted to keep the sexual energy going. On a nod, the stripper came to the bed, pinned her down and began kissing her roughly on the mouth, finally pulling out her tongue with his teeth. She was taken off-stage, screaming wordlessly.

The juxtaposition of the horrific and the hysteric(al) worked powerfully throughout, particularly in a self-consciously bizarre ending as the Cardinal entered and the entire company danced in unison while the bloodied Giovanni walked among them. The images that remained, though, were those of the violence done to women, and Annabella's posters served to remind us of how these images are reinforced at every level of society. The play's title, usually spoken as the final line, was here pointedly removed; there was no whore here, only society's insistence on treating her as one. Beneath the loud music, the dancing, the contemporary references and the tongue in cheek humour, this was one of the most desperate and heartfelt cries against the cultural repression of women that I've yet seen, and to my mind pointed up Ford's own treatment of Annabella, not as a whore, but as a heroine wronged by the society that traps and shapes her.

Peter Kirwan : 05 Feb 2012 18:30 |  Tags: Ford Productions Review |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Winter's Tale (Propeller) @ Sheffield Lyceum

Writing about web page http://propeller.org.uk/current-productions/henry-v-and-the-winters-tale

Edward Hall's company Propeller has always been playful. Whether entertaining audiences in foyers, offering grand guignol torture scenes or turning Portia into a drag queen, the company has delighted in its own performativity. In doing so, their shows tread a fine line between the parodic and the emotive. While elements of the farcicial and ridiculous occasionally threatened to tip the play over into music-hall, at the heart of Propeller's philosophy is a devotion to text and to the human heart of Shakespeare's plays. As such, while the music, nudity and belly-laughs may have got the biggest reactions from the Sheffield audience, this was in many ways the quietest and chillest Winter's Tale I've ever seen.

The key innovation here was the foregrounding of Mamillius. From the start, Leontes' palace was established as his son's playground. Ben Allen, in pyjamas and shuffling and shrugging with all the self-consciousness of the overgrown child, played with a set of modelling dolls scattered around the stage as sand fell from the ceiling and filled a small wheelbarrow. Three of the dolls - dressed as Hermione, Polixenes and Leontes - gave the child the opportunity to indicate his awareness of the growing tensions, as he pushed them together in positions of love and aggression. The ominous nature of this opening was heightened by the appearance of men in the shadows, holding brandy glasses which they rubbed to create an eerie tone that quickly became unbearable, an effect repeated at key moments throughout the play.

The scene sprang into life, and Mamillius ran about the stage, gleefully playing with the adults who laughed at his antics. Drawing, as ever, on the dynamics of male social rituals that an all-male cast brings to the fore, this was a raucous company, bandying innuendoes and sharing cigars as they celebrated their own egos. Richard Dempsey's heavily pregnant Hermione moved gracefully among the men, offering her own share of quick quips and giving the men as good as they got.

The rot set in quickly, and Mamillius remained the focus throughout. Leontes (Robert Hands) alternately held his son closely and barked at him to leave while glaring at Hermione and Polixenes, reduced to slow motion and holding hands playfully. Hands trod a fine balance between outbursts of rage and the internalisation of his jealousy, keeping the scene as rooted in psychological credibility as possible. Yet Propeller's performance style depends a great deal on direct address, thus allowing Hands to explain rather than perform his rage, while Mamillius watched on.

The aim throughout the first act was to contrast Leontes' blustering patriarchal rage (implicitly supported by the lackeys who had laughed at every joke in the earlier scenes) with the stillness and sensibility of the play's women and children. Shockingly, when interrupting the women's private scene, Leontes picked up the heavily pregnant Hermione under her stomach, and dropped her heavily back on her feet, leaving her in pain as she went into early labour. Despite this, Dempsey offered a wonderful display of pained restraint, gathering her composure as she wished him to be sorry. Mamillius' own decline began at this point as he watched his mother led away, and subsequently he appeared on a balcony overlooking the stage. A further moment of tension was added as Vince Leigh's fascinating Paulina - earrings and loose trousers differentiating her status, but giving her an odd sense of authority - brought in a tiny bundle of clothes to present to Leontes and laid it at his feet, giving the impression that he could at any moment stamp on the child's head.

The speeded-up first half cut Cleomenes and Dion's brief scene and split the opening dialogue between the entire cast, who commented on Mamillius as he played, again keeping the focus on the core family- even Nicholas Asbury's rather tempestuous Polixenes and Chris Myles's somewhat scheming Camillo were passed over quickly. The emotional payoff came in the trial scene, where Hermione - shaven-headed and still wearing her bloody birthing robe - was brought to stand before a microphone as paparazzi in the stalls snapped pictures and yelled comments. The contrast between her continuing steadfastness and Leontes' manic activity was clear, and cleverly switched as Leontes became still as he read the prophecy while Hermione and the rest of the company relaxed. The actual moment of his rejection was passed over too quickly for it to be really effective, his words immediately covered by a crash of thunder and the news of Mamillius' death, not giving opportunity for the severity of his statement to be registered. However, as children and women vanished from the scene, the effect was certainly felt.

The transition into the interval again focused around Mamillius, who re-entered as Dugald Bruce-Lockhart's Antigonus placed the baby on an empy stage. As thunder rolled and the noise of a bear was heard, Mamillius produced a doll of Antigonus and a toy bear, and he proceeded to act out the graphic savagery of the attack with the gusto of a child. The playfulness of this moment jarred effectively against the horror of the imagined scene, and played well into the leisurely introduction of John Dougall's fantastic Yorkshire farmer and Karl Davies's hyperactive Young Shepherd. Following the interval, the transition was made complete as Mamillius reappeared and delivered the Chorus in the person of Time, introducing the characters of the second half by bringing them on stage and adding some grey make-up to Camillo and Polixenes while himself taking over Perdita's role.

Bohemia rather obviously drew on a 60s aesthetic, combining a Woodstock hippy enclave with a rock n'roll band set up announcing itself as "The Bleatles". What made these scenes stand out was their sheer energy and hysterical inventiveness, forming a fantastic contrast with the rather steady scenes of the first half. The cast became a Chorus of sheep, wearing woolly leg warmers and hats, who acted as the onstage band when not in character. Tony Bell, so fantastic as Dr. Pinch in last year's Comedy of Errors, essentially reprised his role in the form of Autolycus, appearing from stage mist as if Mick Jagger and leading the sheep in a range of glammy rock songs, interspersed with crude comments to ladies in the audience. Bell, as ever, owned the stage whenever he was on, particularly in a wonderful routine with Davies which began with pinching his pockets and ended with him removing the latter's shorts as he strode confidently offstage.

The sheep-shearing feast, so often interminable, was here joyous. Heavily cut, but featuring some wonderful dance routines led by Dempsey's Dorcas and Gunnar Cauthery as Mopsa, the scene captured the carnival atmosphere with a series of comic highlights, such as the appearance of Polixenes and Camillo disguised as a scoutmaster and a (moustachioed) girl guide and a full-on scrap between Mopsa and Dorcas. Colourful and vibrant, the pleasure of this scene made the eventual revelation of Polixenes, and the trauma of the country folk (Dougall simply sat down, a sublime moment that fully captured the Old Shepherd's shock with the simplest of gestures) all the more powerful. The working out of the plot was little more than a working out, although Bell's impersonation of a courtier and the tremulous fear of the two Shepherds was genuinely funny, but the whole served to set up a fine denouement.

Leontes reappeared in a wheelchair, pushed gently by Paulina. He took Florizel and Perdita to his arms, giving the non-verbal promise of support even as he criticised their dishonesty, and threw away his walking stick as he followed them off-stage to meet his old friend. The power of the scene was in the joy shown by a character who had thus far shown none, leading us into an expectation of warmth. The reunion scene was played out in a series of tableaux while members of the cast narrated the meeting; and then all gathered for the conclusion. Through a clever piece of stage misdirection, Hermione was 'revealed' downstage, facing away from the audience and still enough to create the illusion of non-movement. As she came to life, the company played out the awe and reverence of the moment to the soft notes of a piano, all taking hands and underplaying emotion, building beautifully to Leontes' expected happiness. Yet as he reunited Polixenes and Hermione, he found himself excluded. Holding a candle as the rest of the stage lights dimmed, he moved towards each of his family members, who retreated away into the shadows. As he grew more isolated in the light of his candle, Mamillius suddenly reappeared (Allen having made a quick costume change). Leontes opened his mouth in hope and stepped towards his lost son. Mamillius shook his head quietly and, in a gesture that chillingly ended the production on a reminder of the consequences of jealousy, blew out the candle.

Peter Kirwan : 02 Feb 2012 21:22 |  Tags: Productions Review Winter |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Coriolanus @ The Broadway Cinema, Nottingham

The best thing about the poster for Ralph Fiennes's new film of Coriolanus (and his directorial debut) is the contrast between the streams of red blood and those ice-cold eyes. In a single image we see the entire film - a steady, chilling gaze framed by horrific images and the messy reality of war.

For those of us who saw it, it's impossible to avoid comparisons with Toneelgroep Amsterdam's Roman Tragedies, which similarly updated Coriolanus to the boardrooms and corridors of power, and turned the play into a critique of media involvement in politics and the machinations of state. Fiennes's movie takes the concept but integrates it deeply into a setting that evokes the Yugoslav wars and Arab Spring (fortuitously, as filming had been mostly completed by the middle of last year). The blurring between the fictional world of "A Place Calling Itself Rome" and the real world was most apparent in the appearance of Jon Snow, reporting from the comfortable sofas of the Fidelius News network and grilling guests about the political ambitions of Caius Martius.

Televisions featured throughout, from the opening speeches of Menenius listened to by a fuming protest cell to the carefully staged presentation of Martius to the consulate. In the marketplace, surrounded by Eastern European stallkeepers, Martius blinked in the glare of a dozen cameraphones; and a microphone damningly picked up his hissed complaints to Brian Cox's Menenius in the senate room. For his final aborted apology, senators James Nesbitt and Paul Jesson convened a tacky TV studio set-up, and riled up the crowds to call for his banishment with chants of "It shall be so!" More movingly, Virgilia (an excellent Jessica Chastain) twitched uncomfortably in front of lagging news reports of the fighting in Corioles while her son heedlessly shot cans with an airgun outside.

Fiennes's Martius was ill at ease in this constantly recorded world. In the opening sequence, a mob waving protest banners advanced on Rome's central grain store, and he faced down protesters while snarling at the watching cameras, which kept rolling as the riot police advanced. The messiness of adhoc recording translated to the excellent camerawork, particularly as Martius lashed out at the tribunes, pushing one to the floor while police attempted to keep a roaring mob at bay. In the chaos, the camera came detached, focusing on details - an eye, a phone, a hand, a slogan - as Menenius finally lost control of the situation.

The gritty feel showcased a stunning environment. As a grizzled Martius left Rome for banishment, he marched through wartorn ruins and bleak countryside, a world of roads that stretched to nowhere and roaming wild dogs. Yet emerging at Antium, a Mediterranean coastal town, we saw the peaceful beauty of the country desolated elsewhere by fighting. The soldiers of both armies were rowdy skinheads, tattooing each other and drinking to their respective iconic leaders. As unthinking as the masses incited by the tribunes, the soldiers were fiercely loyal to whoever commanded them, transferring as easily to Coriolanus as they did back to Lartius in the final moments.

The war scenes were expertly shot, making good sense of the text as Martius ran off alone after an explosion to wreak havoc. A shocking sequence saw him touring a burnt out apartment block, kicking down doors (a nod was made here to the old man who gave Shakespeare's hero assistance, as one elderly man offered a bottle of water from his sofa) and shooting civilians, whose bodies we were reminded of throughout. Aufidius (Gerard Butler) himself found the bodies of his wife and children left bleeding in a car following the fall of Corioles. Yet while this was a war conducted primarily with bombs and guns, the cultish followings of both leaders allowed them to strip themselves of their heavy weaponry when finally meeting and engage in a knife fight, the two holding each other in a death embrace that found more intimacy than anything else in this cold environment.

Crucially, Fiennes only laughed in the company of his soldiers. With his mother, the excellent Vanessa Redgrave, he could only humble himself, occasionally crying out in frustration at the constricting nature of their relationship. Yet Virgilia and Volumnia made an impressive team, whether tussling with the tribunes after Martius's banishment or kneeling together before Martius's army. In an extended and fantastically played scene, Virgilia's steady gaze and Volumnia's no-nonsense appeals finally reduced the soldier to tears, helped by a genuinely surprising intervention from his otherwise silent son. Yet even more moving was Cox's Menenius, tasked with the impossible. Facing Martius at night, he was stunned to be cut off by his former friend, and looked around the rest of the Volscian army before leaving, silently. In a short sequence following, he sat by a canal and took of his watch. Quietly, he slit his wrist and bled to death, another neglected body lying alone at the side of the road.

There was great support from John Kani as Cominius and a fine group of morally ambivalent rebels, but this was ultimately Fiennes and Butler's show. As Aufidius shaved Martius's head, his hand lingered on his skull, reminding us of his deeply conflicted relationship with his new ally. Fittingly, the final scene played out not in the Volscian camp, but at a roadside checkpoint. Surrounded by Aufidius's men, Martius killed two before finally falling into Aufidius's arms. As the latter's dagger slipped into Martius, the two men embraced more tightly than ever before, lowering themselves together to the ground. There was no final eulogy or second thought from Aufidius - just the final image of Coriolanus's body, thrown onto a bare platform. This was raw, gripping Shakespeare for the twenty-first century, and an impressive turn from Fiennes both in front of and behind the camera.

Peter Kirwan : 22 Jan 2012 23:05 |  Tags: Coriolanus Film Review |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Changeling (Shakespeare Institute Players) @ The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford–upon–Avon

Writing about web page http://www.shakespeareinstituteplayers.co.uk/

The poster for the new production by the Shakespeare Institute Players advertised “The Changeling by Thomas Middleton”. Beneath, in much smaller letters, came the almost apologetic “and William Rowley”. It’s an interesting reminder of the hierarchies that persist in the presentation of collaborative work, even when Shakespeare isn’t involved. It also pointed to a severe editing of the text – this production, two hours including interval, reduced the subplot to its barest bones, leaving nothing more than the vague impression of two disguised servants wooing the bewildered Isabella (Yolana Wassersug).

Joy Leslie Gibson’s production focused instead on the primary story, particularly the intractable bond that developed between Deflores (Matt Kubus) and Beatrice-Joanna (Jamie Sowers). The entire cast remained onstage for most of the performance, sitting in a horseshoe that heightened the claustrophobia of the piece and the sense of always being watched. As characters edged around the back of their seated counterparts, little references (tongues poked out by extra madmen, Beatrice-Joanna handing Deflores a dagger) kept an exchange going between the seated and performing figures, moving the play towards its relentless conclusion.

It’s not my policy to focus overly on particular performances when reviewing the Players (seeing as I’m friends with several of the cast), but I'll just pick out two that particularly stood out as important interpretations. Kubus’s Deflores was stunningly good, and remarkably sympathetic. With welts on his face and a hobbled leg, he edged around the stage leaning heavily on a stick, appealing in soliloquy to the audience and cowing himself before his onstage peers. His demeanour throughout was of the wronged victim, pointed up in the early cruel act of Beatrice-Joanna as she pushed the cripple hard to the floor while giving him her glove. His obsessive love for Beatrice-Joanna was disquieting in its calmness, she succumbing to his firm and still demands without need for crude seduction or unnecessarily perverted language. He simply felt that this was a recompense that the world owed him, and his busy industry kept him engaging throughout, particularly in the amusing scene as he marched through with a gun upraised to “clear the chimney”. His double-act with Sowers worked well throughout, drawing her closer to him and bringing them into a collusion based on earned trust and a reckless resignation to their fates. As he crawled across the stage towards her body, dying, one felt the tragedy as he fell just short of being able to reach her hand.

The other standout performance was Helen Osborne’s Diaphanta. This sly maid drew a steady stream of subtlety and innuendo from her lines and kept up a steady background rapport with Jasperino (Charlie Morton) during the early scenes, adding colour to a relatively linear story. Her eager offering of herself to take Beatrice-Joanna’s place in Alsemero’s bed and her entertaining acting out of the stages of laughter and melancholy following her taking of the chastity test were amusing, but nothing to her appearance in nightwear and amazing bed hair, panting joyfully of her exertions to her quietly fuming mistress.

Beyond these performances, an able cast kept the story fast-paced and clear, conjuring an atmosphere of double-crossing and mistrust that situated the Deflores/Beatrice-Joanna plot within a wider context of duality and betrayal. While the subplot was too perfunctorily handled to draw out the important thematic connections between it and the main plot, the cast did a solid job (particularly Emma Johnson’s rather intimidating Lollio), and the chamber atmosphere of the setting suited the play well. While the run was all-too-brief (five performances in three days), it offered an efficient and often interesting take on a true masterpiece of the Jacobean stage.

Peter Kirwan : 27 Nov 2011 20:51 |  Tags: Middleton Productions Review |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cardenio (Read Not Dead) @ Shakespeare's Globe

We've been spoiled for productions and readings of versions of Cardenio/Double Falsehood over the last two years. We've had the RSC's version, two at the Union Theatre, a full production in New York and readings at Nottingham and Warwick. Older but also younger than all of these is Gary Taylor's "reconstruction" (as opposed to the RSC's "reimagining"). Taylor has been working on a version combining Theobald's text with reconstructed sections of Cervantes's Don Quixote for nigh-on two decades, and this weekend it came to the Globe in its latest iteration as part of the "Read Not Dead" series of rehearsed readings.

Read Not Dead is rough and ready, but I'm also impressed at how full and dynamic the stagings are. Under the direction of Wilson Milam, the large company gave a lively rendition that, while obviously unable to capture the finer effects of disguise and action, gave Taylor's text a fair hearing.

It was, overall, quite brilliant. By far the masterstroke was the incorporation of a subplot tracing the early fortunes of the old man Quesada, who runs made and renames himself Don Quixote. Taylor's text tracked his early exploits with Sancho, his encounters with the mad Cardenio and his final gulling by the Barber and Curate that causes him to return, beaten, to his home town. Tim McInnerny led the cast with a gloriously funny rendition of Quesada that imagined him as exaggerated mock hero, conjuring up his imagined surroundings with a confidence in his resonant voice that made sense of the willingness of those he encounters to indulge him. McInnerny was ably supported by Laura Dewey's tiny, wry Sancho, who struggled to drag an enormous broadsword around the stage and muttered mutinously, undercutting Quesada's bluster.

In some ways, the success of these scenes (particularly a passionate bowling scene that introduced the ludicrous knight) had a negative impact on the "main" story, that of Cardenio, which was calmer and less captivating as a result. However, there was much to be liked here. Taylor's text beefed up the role of Cardenio substantially, giving him a stronger connection to Fernando than exists in Double Falsehood and emphasising the importance of Fernando's betrayal of Cardenio. He also had several more mad scenes, including a rather cruel instance of beating Quesada and Sancho that sat slightly uneasily (despite it being faithful to Cervantes). However, these scenes kept a clear through line for the character that allowed us to invest more in his final reunion with Lucinda.

The other key character given a much increased role was Violenta. In the hands of Linsey Davies, she was imagined as a particularly feisty girl, very much sexually attracted to Fernando and keen to solemnise marriage with him. Here, even more so than in the Doran production, the attention was not on rape but on the betrayal of a promised oath, allowing the audience to invest in the idea of a romantic comedy rather than something more severe. I preferred the commitment of this production to the ambivalence of the RSC version, which raised but fudged the issue of rape in a way I found particularly disquieting. Violenta was also recruited by the Curate and Barber for the "curing" of Quesada, posing as a foreign princess and uniting the two plot strands. Davies was excellent throughout, creating a rounded and engaging character who arguably became more central than Cardenio.

Displaced in order to build up these two characters was Fernando, played by Jack Parker. Parker's interpretation and Taylor's script cast Fernando as a weaker and less manipulative character than in any of the other interpretations I've seen - a rather inept wooer and almost helpless in the face of Violenta's fiery demeanour. One felt almost sorry for this Fernando, for whom nothing ever seemed to go quite right. His scenes were also reduced in the second half, which from my point of view was this adaptation's biggest weakness, as by his appearance in the final scene we had almost forgotten quite what he had done - the encounter between Fernando and Lucinda when she is released from her coffin seems to me to be an essential part of the dramatic movement in those final scenes, giving a real edge to her fear as she is confronted once more with her persecutor and adding ambivalence to Ricardo's promises of help.

Coffins were key throughout. The play began with the Duke ruminating on his own, and they reappeared for the abduction from the nunnery and for Quesada's final entrance into the reunited party. This scene had a Shakespearean sadness to it, reminiscent of the gulling of Malvolio but without any self-awareness on the part of the gull. The final scene was, overall, a little weak, but I'm inclined to put this down primarily to the lack of resources - the stage directions called for a full masque of dancing nymphs, one of whom would turn out to be Cardenio, as well as the disguises and coffins. A little less of Theobald's sentiment may also have helped, as the reunion of Fernando and Violenta in particular felt too neat. However, it resolved the plots satisfactorily and brought the play to a neat conclusion in Quesada's appeal to the audience for applause.

There were other interesting decisions. I was particularly struck by the transposition of the Duke's pivotal "Fathers are as gods" speech to the Curate in the wedding scene - it worked well in the new setting, but I felt its lack in the final scene. Following Taylor's theories about subplots, the Fabian/Lopez dialogue was removed to Act 4, where it became the words of Sancho and Quesada on encountering the mad Cardenio. With the act recast as a love betrayal rather than a rape, there was no room for the "Henriquez" speech of Double Falsehood, my favourite bit of that play but here unfitting. The introduction of a more substantive female servant for Lucinda was a good choice that added much-needed banter to the early scenes, and Camillo and Bernardo benefitted from inclusion in the bowling scene, where their reactions to each other and to Quesada helped shape their characters for the rest of the play.

The overwhelming impression was of a coherent and entertaining play that deserves full production (and will receive it in Indianapolis in April). It's inevitable that any reconstruction of a lost play won't tick everything on everybody's wishlist, but Taylor's version offers a great piece of theatre that does justice to the extant sources and creates something with its own distinct character. It'll be supported, too, by essays in the forthcoming collection The Quest for Cardenio edited by Taylor and David Carnegie, due out in 2012. A fascinating experiment that made for a very enjoyable afternoon.

Peter Kirwan : 22 Nov 2011 21:48 |  Tags: Cardenio Productions Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Much Ado About Nothing (Mappa Mundi/Theatr Mwldan) @ Lakeside Arts Centre

Writing about web page http://www.mappa-mundi.org.uk/current-shows

Expectations were set high by Welsh company Mappa Mundi's self-description of its work: "gloriously irreverent, populist and accessible." A fun-loving Much Ado is always to be welcomed, and the setting - Britain between the wars, a culture where women have been taking on traditional men's roles - offered an interesting take on the traditional war between the sexes.

In the event, the production offered little in the way of irreverence, although populist and accessible it certainly was. This was a straight and surprisingly sober Much Ado that presented the play clearly and amusingly, but too often was just a little dull.

The small company (nine actors) made for some odd casting decisions, particularly as John Cording's Leonato ended up trying to marry Hero and Claudio himself, and interrupting his own questions. Conrade, Ursula, Antonio, Balthasar and the Watch (apart from Dogberry and Verges) were all cut, and as a result lead characters ended up making some uncharacteristic decisions: Claudio sang for the prince, and Benedick was the one who came up with the plan to conceal Hero.

In the latter case, this was particularly indicative of the rather serious portrayal of Benedick - and, indeed, Beatrice - in this production. For the first time I've ever seen, no-one laughed at the line "Kill Claudio", which came naturally out of a much weightier connection between the two. Liam Tobin and Lynne Seymour were rarely laugh-out-loud funny, and the overhearing scenes were particularly tortured, as the two crawled about the stage holding chairs above their heads and similar. The banter was reasonably snappy, but what instead emerged was a maturer, quieter relationship.

The wartime setting ultimately translated to little more than Beatrice wearing trousers and the recasting of Dogberry and Verges as women, who cackled comically over handbags and "naughty" villains as they played at being police. However, it lent a weariness to proceedings that saw men and women alike looking for companionship. For Beatrice and Benedick, conflict was a slow delay to their getting together; for Gwawr Loader's Hero and Robin Waters's Claudio, it was a more serious betrayal of trust at a time when people needed nothing more than someone to trust.

As such, the better parts of the production were those that touched on the edgier aspects of the play. Claudio's hatred for a distraught Hero was topped only by Leonato's shocking rage at his fallen daughter, although the culpability of Don Pedro and Claudio was mitigated by Borachio's wooing of Margaret being staged, with Margaret carefully positioned so the onlookers could not get a clear sight, and a gratuitous "You are my Hero" was added. More interesting was Don Pedro's proposal to Beatrice, which was played as a genuine spontaneous decision, and was met with Beatrice's hysterical laughter, to Pedro's embarrassment.

The production was nothing more than occasionally interesting, though. It rarely sparked, its gentle humour not making up for a lack of bite in the barbs. Yet its aims for lightness meant that it was never able to capitalise on its more interesting edges. As an accessible, clear touring Much Ado, this was ideal, but it never transcended those very modest aims.

Peter Kirwan : 10 Nov 2011 00:12 |  Tags: Muchado Productions Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Anonymous

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/culture/anonymous/

This is a reprint of my article "Much Ado about Anonymous", written for the University of Warwick Knowledge Centre and published here.

Shakespeare scholars have been outraged about Roland Emmerich’s new film since filming first began. Anonymous tells the story of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), who the film contends was the true author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. This highly vocal fringe theory has been the bane of Shakespeareans for decades, and the fear was that the film would bring the “Question” into the mainstream. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust co-ordinated a concerted counter-campaign, and the media lapped up the controversy as public debates were staged over Shakespeare’s true identity. Stephen Marche warns in his New York Times article that “Professors of Shakespeare . . . are blissfully unaware of the impending disaster that this film means for their professional lives”. Now that the film itself has arrived, however, it seems that academic fears may have been extremely premature.

Most importantly, the film theatricalises its own story. Derek Jacobi (a prominent “anti-Stratfordian”) arrives at a theatre by taxi, marches through the wings and stands before a curtain, which opens to reveal a hushed audience. As Jacobi explains that he is to tell them a new story, a story that undoes the myth of Shakespeare, the scene dissolves into a (finely-realised) period depiction of Elizabethan London, with Ben Jonson clutching an armful of manuscripts and running into the empty Globe theatre to escape a troupe of pursuing soldiers.

Academic outrage has stemmed from the impression that the film will strengthen the belief that Oxford genuinely wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Theatricalised in this way, however, it never feels as if the film is supposed to be “truthful”. Critics will point to the plethora of historical inaccuracies – Christopher Marlowe died in 1593, not 1599, and the Globe burned down in 1613, not 1604. Romeo and Juliet had been performed, and Venus and Adonis published, long before the events depicted here; and the play performed at the Globe prior to the Essex rebellion was Richard II, not Richard III. These are only the most obvious of many inaccuracies.

Gleeful scholars will doubtless read the sheer volume of historical “mistakes” as a sign of the film-makers’ ignorance, but this is beside the point. Quite simply, this isn’t a film that is interested in “fact” in the sense of historical accuracy, but “truth” in the manner employed by Shakespeare himself in writing his history plays. Emmerich and his team rewrite history freely in order to advance a specific agenda: the rehabilitation of Oxford’s character and a reading of Shakespeare’s plays as political and personal analogies for a courtly life.

In this sense, the film is not a threat to mainstream scholarship, as it doesn’t attempt to compete on scholarly grounds. It is also, despite studio publicity materials, not a polemic: the authorship question is one of the film’s several strands, and at times feels trivial compared to the more sensational court story.

The film is, however, designed to offend anyone who thinks William Shakespeare should only be treated with respect. Here, Will (Rafe Spall) is a drunken comic actor who seizes an opportunity when Jonson refuses Oxford’s commission to take credit for his plays. Shakespeare’s fame and ego inflate throughout the play, and he begins demanding more money and power. His only moment of uncertainty comes when Jonson attempts to prove Shakespeare’s illiteracy, thwarted only by a fortuitous lack of ink.

This is the real issue, implicit in response articles such as James Shapiro’s “Hollywood Dishonors the Bard”. The film irreverently sends up notions of dignity and shows Shakespeare falling over, struggling for words and crowd-surfing at the Globe, while his fellow dramatists – Thomas Dekker, Thomas Nashe, Kit Marlowe and Jonson – look on in disgust. It’s an ugly and comic portrait; but it is no more of a threat to Shakespeare’s reputation than Blackadder II was to Elizabeth I’s. The performance actually evokes the Shakespeare of John Manningham’s famous anecdote, which recalls Shakespeare racing Burbage to an assignation with a female audience member. The comic treatment of the character is self-consciously parodic, rather than a serious attempt at character assassination.

However, the fact that Anonymous isn’t a threat to scholarship doesn’t make it a good film. Emmerich’s plot construction is a mess, jumping across 40 years of history with little coherence. There is too much going on: Oxford’s romance with Elizabeth, his feud with the Cecil family, his relationship to Essex and Southampton and their rebellion, and the lives of the dramatists. Most damningly, the political and theatrical stories never quite marry up, apart from in performances where Polonius and Richard III become transparent representations of the Cecils. The power and influence of the theatre is too rarely seen. Instead, the real theatre comes from the climactic revelation delivered by Cecil to Oxford, the ludicrousness of which leaves an audience in no doubt of the film’s status as fiction.

There’s much to like here, regardless. Edward Hogg makes for a troubled (and hunchbacked) Robert Cecil; Vanessa Redgrave gives her all as a doting Elizabeth; and Trystan Gravelle practically twirls his moustache as the unscrupulous and flamboyantly gay Marlowe. The real standout, however, is Sebastian Armesto as Ben Jonson, whose story frames the action. As he watches his illiterate fellow achieve the literary celebrity he desires for himself, and is taken into Oxford’s confidence, Armesto finds a human story as the eternal runner-up, bitter yet maintaining something approaching integrity.

The film is flawed, but its flaws are also its charm. It is not an anti-Stratfordian tract but an anti-Stratfordian fantasy, and should be watched and interpreted as such. As with any blockbuster take on history, there is a responsibility on the part of educators to explain the inaccuracies (see also: King Arthur, Braveheart), but those in the mood for a more literary episode of The Tudors will be well served here. The more sober lesson to draw is that knee-jerk reactions to an unorthodox story are unprofessional and unnecessary, and rather serve to legitimise the object of scorn. The film as presented is a fiction, framed within Jacobi’s theatre, and as such harms the serious anti-Stratfordian cause far more than helps it.

Peter Kirwan : 06 Nov 2011 16:19 |  Tags: Film Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Filter) @ Curve, Leicester

Writing about web page http://www.filtertheatre.com/page/Coming_Soon/

Filter’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream marks the company’s second foray into Shakespeare, following its sublime and irreverent Twelfth Night. The company specialise in a form of deconstructed theatre, treating performances as “gigs” where all the machinery of performance – instruments, sound boxes, stage management, cast – are on stage throughout, and the show responds to the energy of its audience with a rare bravery.

From the start, it became clear that the company were fortunate in the young, rowdy audience in the Studio at Curve in Leicester. Full of school parties with plenty to say for themselves, it responded instantly to the appearance of an Irish Peter Quince, who came forward to welcome everyone to the show and entered into banter with the crowd. Upon learning, in a whispered conversation with the stage manager, that “local boy: Sir Richard Attenborough was not, in fact, available to play Bottom this evening, he recruited a planted audience member to play Bottom, though not before an enthusiastic student had made his own play for the part, forcing the company to fall back on made-up insurance regulations to engineer the correct choice. From this moment, it was clear that audience interaction was to be encouraged and respected, and that the company were equal to the challenge of the unexpected.

The heavily edited script riffed on Shakespeare rather than followed, with much left out – the marriage framing was completely dropped from the final act, leaving Pyramus and Thisbe to be played purely for the sake of the Leicester audience, and Starveling and Stout were dropped altogether. Flute, Quince and Snug were the onstage band, and Bottom – played by an audience member who claimed to be a musician – became their lead vocalist, repeatedly breaking out of character to demand another screamed rock anthem. The band imagery was maintained in Ferdy Roberts’s Puck, imagined here as an aging roadie with grey t-shirt, beard, tool belt and walkie-talkie, over which Oberon communicated with him.

By casting the play as concert, the play itself was viewed as the serial mounting of shows, whether on the obvious level of the Mechanicals or in Puck and Oberon setting up Titania with Bottom or the lovers in conflict. The climactic scene, as the four lovers began warring, allowed Puck and Oberon to sit on a pair of camp seats, grab a beer and bread snacks each and watch the show, drawing laughs every time they turned their chairs for a better view.

To describe the jokes would rob them of much of their humour, but I have to note that an audience of fairly hardened teenagers showed no reservations as they literally cried with laughter. Jonathan Broadbent's Oberon in particular brought down the house. First appearing in a dressing gown, he threw it off to reveal a Superman costume underneath, which he supplemented with a manic evil laugh and childlike tantrums. This was a boy with power, playing with his walkie-talkie and thoroughly enjoying himself. To turn himself “invisible”, he made zapping noises with his hands and petulantly informed the audience he couldn’t be seen. He made his first exit by lying across a swivel chair and pretending to fly offstage, only for a loud crash to be heard. As the cast called after him to see if he was okay, he yelled back “I’m INVISIBLE!”. He wore a sling for the remainder of the play.

Childish references were put in everywhere. Lysander and Demetrius, after exiting for their duel, were reintroduced in the manner of arcade beat-em-up heroes, before proceeding to mime a game of Pong. Quince ordered Flute to play Thisbe as Vivian Leigh, and Hermia erected an instant tent for her luxurious night’s sleep. During the final quarrel, which saw the four young lovers race around the entire auditorium, Lysander and Demetrius began throwing bread at Hermia, which she threw back. As audience members began to be hit and started throwing it back, Puck and Oberon ran round passing out more bread until the entire theatre was engaged in a food fight, culminating in everyone throwing everything they had at Hermia.

I did have concern, however, about the cruelty implied in this episode. The enthusiasm with which not only the on-stage characters but also the audience were encouraged to throw bread at the wretched Hermia jarred with the generosity elsewhere. To make the most delighted and participatory moment of the play the physical abuse of the character, eventually knocked backwards into her tent, surely invited some form of internal critique or challenge to the audience, which was not forthcoming. To take the most severe stance, it seemed to condone the idea that the best way to deal with a woman asserting her own rights is to subject her to physical and verbal abuse until she shuts up and/or runs away. Despite the comic tone, this scene felt a little ugly, and drew my mind to the “Oh, not again” response of Theseus to Hippolyta storming out at the end of the first scene, and to the ease with which Helena succumbed to the altered Demetrius’ advances before changing her mind. As hysterical as the production was, a few too many of the laughs came at the expense of the women for my tastes.

The lovers were cast young and very sexual, with Helena allowing both Lysander and Demetrius to writhe with her on the floor for a while before realising that there were two men involved. There were a lot of teen ‘tudes, and the men in particular made themselves ridiculous as they gyrated to the music in their heads while wooing Helena. Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus were played straight, in contrast to what followed; but the always-excellent Gemma Saunders had relatively little to do as Titania. Bottom had more impact. As the actor reading his script for the first half of the show, he inserted comments and judgements into the action, before coming into his own as he read the rehearsal lines. Re-entering as the donkey, there was no physical change in his appearance, but the rest of the cast used coconut shells and braying noises to add imagined donkey aspects to his gait and voice. Puck dangled a carrot for him, which he bit off a huge chunk of, and the rest of the cast began corpsing as he patiently munched on his carrot with an apologetic shrug to the audience before resuming.

The delight of unexpected moments such as this was in how shared they were with the audience. The back and forth within the auditorium was such that when, for example, Quince took the audience request of “Do it as a Gothic Horror” by performing the Prologue in the style of Bela Lugosi, one could no longer tell whether it was a genuine request or a plant. Bottom’s finale as Pyramus was initially played surprisingly straight, but concluded with an eccentric death scene. He lay on the floor, and then screamed at the band when they began playing the exit music. Lying back down, the entire production stopped, allowing the audience to become increasingly hysterical. After a minute or so, members of the audience began cat-calling, including the teen from the start shouting out “I bet you wish I’d done it now”. Pyramus’s still death lasted a seeming eternity, until he finally jumped up and led the cast in a final number.

The standing ovation was testament to how expertly this production addressed its audience. Audience and cast boosted each other’s energy levels, creating a contract of mutual challenge that invested the entire auditorium in the performance. Despite my concerns about the bullying atmosphere of certain moment, this was an absolute triumph.

Peter Kirwan : 03 Nov 2011 06:26 |  Tags: Dream Productions Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hunting Folios: Eric Rasmussen's "The Shakespeare Thefts"

Title:

The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios

Author:

Eric Rasmussen

ISBN:

0230109411

Rating:

Not rated

One of the relatively unknown problems in scholarly research is - what do you do with the stories? Inevitably, as we research, we turn up anecdotes, gossip, juicy titbits which are simply inappropriate to go in the monograph or article. Some of us (and I'm very guilty of this) relegate them to footnotes. Others pop them in TLS letters or Guardian articles. Some don't publish at all, but save them for conference dinner conversation. Particularly in Shakespeare studies, there are so many eccentrics and fascinating narratives that it's a shame for them to be lost.

That, at least, is the rationale behind The Shakespeare Thefts by Eric Rasmussen, scholar and bibliophile (and one of my general editors on the Collaborative Plays project. For over a decade, Rasmussen has been leading one of the most ambitious bibliographic enterprises ever mounted, the physical cataloguing of every extant copy of the 1623 First Folio. The results came out this year in The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue, co-edited with Anthony James West. This mammoth reference resource describes the folios in painstaking detail, from watermarks and scuffs to frayed edges, to more obviously interesting idiosyncracies such as marginalia, pasted pages and pawprints (!). At £225, however, it's not for the casual reader, and while the bibliographic detail will be of lasting value to book scholars, it's not information that will attract a wide audience. Thus, The Shakespeare Thefts.

This short book, arranged as an eclectic series of anecdotes, reminiscence, stand-alone narratives and detective stories, rounds up the juicier side of the team's research in compiling the larger volume. The unique cultural value accorded to the First Folio has made it a prime target for thieves, bootleggers, eccentric collectors and forgers.In tracing the provenance and history of the books, Rasmussen's team also compiled the more interesting instances of Folio theft and reappropriation, which make up the book.

Rasmussen's style is personal and humorous, often veering into personal anecdote: Rasmussen's son refers to his personal copy of the Second Folio as his "college fund", and a whole chapter is devoted to Rasmussen's purchase of a fakr portrait of Shakespeare and the ensuing TV journalism debacle. What comes across most strikingly is the personal enthusiasm for book history and the comic self-awareness of the extremes of obsession, not least in describing one team member's jubilant reaction to the discovery of a hair in an original Folio, and the complete lack of enthusiasm for the discovery on the part of the book's librarian.

That this is a labour of love is always apparent. Rasmussen's team of Folio hunters (who all get their moment to shine, and develop their own "characters" at various points in the book) travel the Globe to barter with Japanese private collectors, take tea with English earls and fight with librarians. One gets a sense of the scale of the enterprise, and of its importance, in Rasmussen's repeated return to his frustration with one Japanese family that continues to deny him access to view its prized copies. It's become, as in the title of one chapter, "Obsession"; yet it's an obsession driven by the scrupulousness of the team's scholarship and their wish to make the information available for future generations.

Of course, one of the most important effects of this kind of detailed study is that theft and resale becomes almost impossible, as each Folio is now so individually identifiable. The cornerstones of this book are the extended stories of particularly notable incidents, including Raymond Rickett Scott's well-documented attempt to pass on the Durham University copy, the deliberate theft of a Folio by William John Kwiatkowski (eventually revealed when an accomplice panicked that the Folio would end up in Hitler's possession) and the Folio once owned by Charles I. That thefts involve extraordinary pre-planning and ingenious attempts to disguise the books through mutilation gives the stories their meat; however, Rasmussen offers an interestingly mixed response to the individualisation of Folios. He loves ephemera and hand-annotation, and is even supportive of the expert facsimile pages created by John Harris to piece out incomplete volumes. Yet on the other hand, the deliberate desecration of Folios by would-be thieves becomes the mutilation of national treasures. It's a fascinating story, and one becomes aware of the fragility of these precious artefacts, yet eager to get them into one's own hands and feel the connection to the past.

The skill of Rasmussen's writing is in getting the reader excited about old books, offering colourful stories that turn paper and ink into individuals with living histories and murky pasts. It's a wonderful record of a passion project, and the ideal companion to the bibliographic volume.

Peter Kirwan : 30 Oct 2011 11:43 |  Tags: Book Review |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hamlet (Ketterer's Men) @ The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford–upon–Avon

I've recently been reading Marvin Carlson's The Haunted Stage (2001), which deals with a phenomenon in watching and making theatre that Carlson calls "ghosting". This is, effectively, the outer frame which shapes what an audience experiences in the process of attending a theatrical event, the collective resonances carried by actors, buildings, texts, scenery, everything that is reused, recycled and re-experienced. He concentrates particularly on Hamlet as the most haunted play in the Western canon, partly because of the play's own treatment of ghosts but more because of the long stage history that inevitably acts on every new production.

If Hamlet is already a haunted play, this production by the newly-formed Ketterer's Men was more haunted than most. For not only did we experience the "haunting" familiar to all productions of Hamlet: the pregnant pauses before the famous soliloquies, the pre-emptive laughter at the appearance of the already-familiar Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Osric, the collective watchfulness of Claudius's face as he himself watched "The Mousetrap"; but we also experienced the more visceral haunting of an old friend. Ketterer's Men were got up in honour of Lizz Ketterer, who died earlier this year and had always spoken of doing a production of Hamlet with her friend Will Sharpe, with the two as Ophelia and Hamlet. This production thus ghosted a version that never was but was infused with Lizz's life and spirit, and the collage of photographs dominating the programme ensured that her presence was felt by all. I've spoken briefly about Lizz before and don't need to do so again, except to admit that I can't be anything approaching impartial coming to an event that was so emotional for so many people I care about.

Happily, this was one of the best Hamlets I've ever had the fortune to attend, and certainly the fullest. Clocking in at just under four hours with two intervals, a conflated text and few really substantive cuts (the Rynaldo scene was skipped), this bare and intimate production put Shakespeare's play front and foremost, allowing this reviewer at least to really "hear" Hamlet for the first time in a long time. A mix of modern and period dress emphasised the relative formality of characters (Claudius in smoking jacket, Hamlet in hoodie, Gertrude in long gown etc.) and simple props (pikes, letters, daggers) supplemented the visual where necessary, and a low rostrum provided a level at the upstage end of the thrust, but this was an actor's production.

Sharpe's brooding Hamlet was intense and withdrawn, given to the occasional joke but mostly committed to his anger. Soliloquies were delivered slumped against walls or sitting on the stage, and he frequently turned lines in on himself, particularly his third repetition of "except my life". Softly spoken and natural in most of his dialogue, the moments where he lost control had particular impact in their relative volume: whether screaming against Laertes of his love for Ophelia or finally rejecting the nervous Guildenstern. A genuine affection for Ophelia and for his friends softened the character, but this Hamlet stood alone.

Elizabeth Sharrett's Ophelia was heartbreaking. Plainly dressed, she was tender towards her brother (even repacking his bag for him) and mildly irritated by her father. She played the nunnery scene with reluctance and thinly-veiled pain as she returned the letters, and then with tremulous shock as Hamlet began his tirade and screwed up the letters. While the force of this scene came from Sharpe, the emotional impact was in Sharrett's courage as she continued standing despite her world clearly falling apart. In her madness, she entered wearing a hoodie and thick mascara, which ran down her cheeks as the tears fell. The image of Laertes cradling her, the two weeping, as she sang "He is dead and gone" in broken lines spoke to the loss better than anything I've seen before on stage.

Beyond these two outstanding performances, the work of the entire ensemble was excellent, bringing out resonances and stories that are perhaps sometimes lost under the trappings of large-scale productions. Peter Malin (who also directed) was a sorrowful Ghost, pleading with Hamlet for his love and action, and delivered a fine showpiece speech as the Player King. The scene in Gertrude's bedchamber, with Stephanie Surrey vulnerable in pyjamas and Sharpe in particularly kinetic mode as trapped her on the stage, eventually grew into another intimate portrait as the Ghost stood over Gertrude and looked at her in love, while Hamlet sat between. The intimacy of this scene contrasted with Steve Quick's portrayal of Claudius throughout. This sickly politician clapped the entire audience for their support in his first scene and relied on a winning grin and the presentation of benign power throughout, a facade which was slowly dismantled as events got out of hand.

The play's humour was strong throughout, giving relief to the intensity of the main action. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (a game José A. Pérez Díez and Matt Kubus) wore flat caps, multi-coloured scarves and vacant grins as they toddled around the stage; and the scarves reappeared in the hands of the English Ambassador in the play's closing moments. David Waterman's Polonius rambled on relentlessly and muttered to the audience; the Player King offered protest at Hamlet's incessant demands; John Curtis's Osric was flamboyant and extravagant, and Helen Osborne's faux-gormless laughter as the Second Gravedigger brought the house down.

Even in the small space, the play never strayed too far from its roots as a fast-paced revenge tragedy. In another standout performance, Gareth Bernard posed a vivid threat as Laertes, taking command of the stage whenever he was on it and needing both Gertrude and Cecilia Kendall White's loyalist Voltemand to restrain him from the steady Claudius. The final duel, fought with large swords, was a surprisingly sophisticated piece of fight choreography and brought the play to a nailbiting conclusion (even despite the ghosting of a well-trodden plot; always a sign of a good production).

The near-full text allowed for some unexpected treats, including a highly amusing dumbshow version of "The Mousetrap" performed in high camp before the main event and a full showing of Matt Stead's imposing Fortinbras. One thing I noticed, in the context of a full production, is how far Horatio (played suitably nervous yet steady by John Conod) is overwhelmed by events. Here, behind Conod's big glasses, he was clearly a spectator rather than a participant, reminding me of Young Lucius in the BBC Titus Andronicus. Standing for the audience, seen through Horatio's eyes the production became a relentless and painfully confused series of movements and betrayals, leaving no place for innocents or bystanders.

If I do have one complaint, it's that there were a couple of occasions where dialogue was delivered at too brisk a clip, at the expense of emphasis and reflection (though considering the production's running time, one was also glad the company didn't dither). That's a small point, though, in an evening that did both Lizz and Shakespeare proud. I've not been moved by Hamlet in this way before and, even without the backstory, this set a bar for how Hamlet can still "mean" even after so many iterations. Outstanding, and hopefully we'll see far more of Ketterer's Men.

Peter Kirwan : 16 Oct 2011 18:56 |  Tags: Hamlet Productions Review |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem