All 16 entries tagged Rsc

The Merchant of Venice (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/merchant/

Rupert Goold's new production of The Merchant of Venice for the RSC has already caused something of a stir in the press, dividing critics and audiences alike. Despite the presence of a star name in Patrick Stewart in the cast, this was not the traditional Merchant that many may have hoped for, but rather a full-scale reinvention of the play that offered an ugly, frank, hysterical and provocative presentation of alternative issues thrown up by this problematic play.

The production was set in Las Vegas, with the audience arriving to find a casino evening already in full swing, presided over by an icon of a busty table girl splayed out as if a crucifix. Money was this production's church, and an ensemble of American tourists were already hard at the craps table. A live big band kept up a rollicking underscore, building in volume and speed until Jamie Beamish rose from the masses, a Launcelot Gobbo as Elvis impersonator, who launched into "Viva Las Vegas" accompanied by a bevy of scantily clad dancers. The tone was set for the evening - noisy, brash, colourful and irreverent. Beamish's Launcelot burst into song throughout the production with covers of old standards, keeping the crowd entertained and the atmosphere light; yet as a more sombre mood began to permeate the performance, so did the songs begin tending towards ballads and a darker sensibility.

The company made a huge effort to make the concept coherent. All the cast put on American accents, some with more success than others - Howard Charles and Aidan Kelly were wonderful Brooklynites as Gratiano and Solanio, while Portia and Nerissa were note perfect as Southern belles. Others were horrendous, and Scott Handy in particular, as Antonio, kept slipping between his native and adopted dialects. The frustration is that English accents wouldn't have been a stretch for an audience willing to buy into the conceit. Shakespeare sounds wonderful in natural American accents, but to watch English actors concentrating so hard and internalising their performance in order to get a voice right was deeply irritating, and meant that less effort went into the performances themselves. It wasn't a fatal flaw, but one wished that the actors had just used their natural accents.

Locations were intelligently re-set. Shylock, Solanio and Salerio met in an cafe where hookers were taking their morning coffee; the masquers rode to meet Jessica in a mimed car with blaring rap music; deals were struck in the lavish offices of casino managers; one beautiful sequence saw the Sallies discussing Antonio's fall in an elevator with other characters coming and going; Antonio was arrested by Shylock at the Cirque du Soleil, where the merchant was hiding in the front row of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre while a trapeze artist twirled above; and Launcelot battled his conscience while sitting on a slot machine stool, while two PVC-clad women in white and red acted out Conscience and the Fiend. There was an issue of too much time going into ingenious settings and not enough into the dynamics of the scenes themselves - when the stage finally quietened to allow dialogue scenes of two or three characters talking, the play felt comparatively flat and under-rehearsed. As the play went on, though, the nuances of the performances began to manifest themselves.

The most fascinating aspect of the conceit was the recasting of Belmont as a TV reality show called "Destiny", which aimed to marry off Portia live on air. Susannah Fielding was the blonde star, Emily Plumtree the programme's host, and the two were surrounded by video screens, cameras and backstage flunkies. The two women sat on a sofa and spoke in deliberately affected tones, pausing for canned laughter and groans as they reported the characters of the suitors. Each "episode" ended with the two speaking a catchphrase direct to camera. The deliberate superficiality of the format gave a satiric slant to the sequences, but darker elements could gradually be viewed beneath. As Chris Jarman's Morocco, a boxer, jogged on stage, hecklers threw bananas at him in an ugly moment of racism; but far more troubling were Portia and Nerissa's own fixed grins as they stared pointedly ahead towards the camera. As soon as Morocco left and the studio lights clicked off, Portia's face collapsed and she shuddered as she wished that none of his complexion might ever win. The latent racism in the character extended to the extremely patronising treatment of Caroline Martin's Jessica, to whom Portia spoke as if a little child. Nerissa and Portia aimed to give Jessica a makeover, but this particular session ended with Jessica storming out eating the cucumber which had previously been resting on her eyes. Jason Morell's Arragon, meanwhile, was a Mexican cleaner who was beckoned by a stage hand onto the set, dressed up and forced to perform and wave gormlessly at the cameras.

Fielding's performance was the standout of the evening, creating a complex and deeply scarred persona whose gradual decline was fascinating to watch. In early scenes there were clues, as she scrabbled at her head and shook convulsively after the cameras had moved away. This was a Portia broken by the enforced performance that defined her, which culminated in her song of "Tell me where is fancy bred" to Bassanio as he chose between the caskets. The caskets themselves - made up like gameshow boxes - had previously yielded a diamond-encrusted skull and a shrivelled jester's head; but the lead casket delivered a remote control to Bassanio, with which he turned on a screen that revealed Portia speaking the victory verse. As the screen Portia did this, the stage Portia removed her blonde wig (to gasps from the audience) and stepped off her enormous high heels, baring herself before her new husband. At the same time, all the paraphenalia of the reality show disappeared, including her entourage. A confused Bassanio greeted her with a kiss but continued to look around in confusion; while she looked pleadingly at him, asking him to see the true her beneath the performance. Upon the re-entrance of Gratiano and Nerissa, she hastily threw on her wig and shoes again, appearing slightly more dishevelled but unable to confront the world without her disguise.

The vulnerability displayed by Fielding in this moment informed the remainder of her character. Her performance in the court scene was unpersuasive - we had seen too little of the character's intelligence and spontaneity to believe "Bellario's" quick-thinking reactions during the trial, even if Fielding and Plumtree both effectively conveyed the panic of the two women outside of their carefully-controlled setting. More powerful, however, was the look on her face as Richard Riddell's Bassanio embraced Antonio, and then after his release held him tightly in a downstage corner. One could see her heart breaking as she sized up the connection between the two men, a connection which entirely excluded her. Upon the return of the two men to Belmont, Portia's face again fell, and she continued to watch the two men casually touch one another and speak of their love. She sat between them on a couch, and as Antonio offered to pawn his body for his friend, the two men took hands behind her. Trembling, Portia got up, took up her wig again and slipped on one of her heels. Summoning up a fractured remembrance of her gameshow character, she excitedly distributed prize envelopes to Lorenzo, Jessica and Antonio, her voice rising in unhinged excitement. Then, following Gratiano's final lines, she slid off her wig in despair and, as Launcelot began trilling "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" she began dancing slowly with her fake hair, stepping on and off her one remaining shoe. It might not have been subtle, but it was a heartwrenching depiction of rejection and failed trust. Portia's risk in exposing the girl beneath to a man she loved had been too great, and there was nothing left for her to cling to but the remnants of the disguise that had always defined her.

While Portia provided the most powerful emotional through line, the other performances were largely also strong. Patrick Stewart was fine as Shylock, bringing a quiet dignity and occasional oddities to the role. The issue of anti-semitism was largely subordinated to wider concerns of racism and superficiality, but Stewart (first revealed playing golf in his office) became more identifiably Jewish as the play progressed, appearing at home in a yarmulka and whispering a Yiddish goodbye to Jessica; then later appearing in robes for the trial scene. An anger manifested itself at times, including in a passionate dance before the interval hit and in his shrugging off of his robes and callous laugh after his "conversion". Considering that Stewart is an obvious star name, however, Shylock felt rather incidental to this production, operating as a driving force for the plot rather than as the central attraction.

The trial scene was imagined as a mob execution, carried out in a cold room beneath one of the casinos, where police officers in the pay of a local gangster (Des McAleer's Duke) put Antonio on a box and tied his wrists far above his head. This was the scene that struggled most in the modern setting, but still had some wonderful moments, not least Shylock pulling forward the silent Arragon, now back in his cleaner's garb, as an example of the abuse of other peoples by the "Venetians". The build-up towards Shylock cutting into Antonio's flesh was painful, with Portia's intervention being left until the last possible second.

This production will be talked about for years, and represented a triumph for director-led concept theatre at the RSC. While it will no doubt offend many, and while Goold still needs to give the same attention to actors that he accords to design and concept, this was a truly revolutionary Merchant that found new life in the play beyond Shylock's tragedy and made the powerful case that, ultimately, it's impossible to find any redemption in a society so concerned with surface. All that glisters really isn't gold.

This review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.

Peter Kirwan : 27 May 2011 00:55 |  Tags: Merchant Productions Review Rsc |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cardenio (RSC) @ The Swan – Revisited

Follow-up to Cardenio (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford–upon–Avon from The Bardathon

I’m just back from my second viewing of the RSC’s Cardenio, and it’s still great. This time, familiar with the new material and the reshaping of Double Falsehood, I had more leisure to enjoy the sparky relationship established between Oliver Rix's Cardenio and Lucy Briggs-Owen's Luscinda in the opening scenes; the formality of Simeon Moore's Pedro as he persuades Cardenio to inform on Fernando; the good-natured decision of the shepherds to escort Cardenio into town to be cured; and the role of Matti Houghton's Duenna in chaperoning Luscinda during all her meetings with Cardenio. The music, too, is utterly wonderful, and I didn’t do it justice in my last review. The Spanish-inflected band, with an amazing singer and fantastic flamenco guitar work, brought the house down during the final dance, and made all the difference in terms of atmosphere.

I also think Greg Doran has done stirling work in adding a great amount of new material that fits almost seamlessly with Theobald's text. Yes, there are a few inconsistencies (I particularly dislike Cardenio's resigned soliloquy after the wedding, which doesn't fit well with the character's subsequent madness), but by and large I would defy anyone without a prior knowledge of Double Falsehood to distinguish the new material. I'm writing at the moment about the difficulty of "splicing" together material in order to create an effective theatrical adaptation, and Doran's Cardenio is a masterclass in how to succeed.

I’m still deeply troubled, though, by the play’s treatment of Fernando’s seduction of Dorotea. I discussed this in my last review; but, in light of today’s outcry against Ken Clarke’s discussion of rape, and his implicit distinction between “serious” rape and (presumably) less serious forms of rape, I remain frustrated by the production’s fudging of this key issue. It's this that I'd like to focus on here.

In Double Falsehood, Henriquez (Fernando) woos Violante (Dorotea) at her window. She rebuffs him and leaves, and he piquantly asks why he is treated with contempt. In the next scene, he appears again in a distracted state. He reveals in soliloquy that he has forced himself on Violante. In a key speech, he promises to be hard on himself and asks if it was rape; and while he convinces himself that he didn’t, it is clear to the audience that rape is what it was. The text reads “True, she did not consent, as true she did resist, but in silence all.” We don’t need to know the exact details of how, when and where; the point is that he has raped her and that she did not consent, even in his own self-justification. Violante’s pursuit of Henriquez for the remainder of the play is an attempt to make the best of the situation by making good on his promise to marry her (a promise which he gave during the rape, with the implication that it offered him some comfort). While this is obviously an early modern solution to a social problem, it poses interesting possibilities for a modern production – as indeed it did for MokitaGrit – in exploring the problematic relationship between love and abuse.

In Doran’s production, the heaviest section of new writing comes in between these two scenes. First, we see Alex Hassell's Fernando at court with Cardenio, showing that he did not instantly act on his impulse to pursue her into her room. The heat is taken off his lust. Then, Doran provides a lengthy seduction scene. Early in this scene, Fernando attempts to force himself on Pippa Nixon's Dorotea. She resists, and he desists.

However, she then throws him a lifeline, by telling him that she would be happy to yield her virginity to the man who promised to marry her. He leaps on this, offering her marriage and promising to be hers forever. She consents – slowly, but decisively – to this, and the scene closes on the two of them sharing a mutual kiss, before fireworks explode and a fiesta with phallic manikins takes over the stage. The only more threatening note is as Fernando points out that, if they don’t do the act, he will shame her by making clear his departure from her flat, pressuring her into consenting.

The pressure applied on Dorotea in this scene is enough to still demonstrate Fernando’s basic caddishness, and I would argue it’s still enough to qualify as rape. However, the emphasis on her consent is too strong. In the self-justification scene that follows, there is an important textual change, as Fernando says “True, she DID consent; as true, she did resist.” While this could still be explained away as his own self-delusion, this is the soliloquy which dictates how an audience is expected to respond to the act, and it corroborates what we have already seen – that Dorotea willingly had sex with Fernando, albeit under conditions that Fernando is showing us he has no intention of keeping. What is crucial here is that Fernando is convincing in his assertion that it was not rape, strongly emphasised by the actor in a voice designed to break apart from the character’s comic weakness and determine a truth. For this production, the act is not rape. Fernando’s crime is reduced to that of faithlessness, even treachery, but he is spared the tarnish of a rapist.

The aim is to make Cardenio a family-friendly production. Rape is difficult to discuss with nuance on the stage, and even more difficult to govern audience response to without depicting shocking scenes of violence. By reducing the problem to one of, essentially, fidelity – as stressed in Dorotea’s (new) closing speech where she stresses that, according to their contract, they are already married – Doran allows for a comic resolution, as Dorotea appeals to Fernando’s heart and he grows penitent, the two embracing in love.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. However, what is shown and spoken of in this production – even with the textual changes – is too serious for so light a treatment. His abuse of trust in order to satiate his own lust regardless of her own wishes is shocking, and needs to be interrogated on the modern stage, not glossed over and relegated to what, given today’s news stories, ends up coming across as a “less serious” form of rape.

Now, I'm aware that, because of my research, I'm unusually attuned to the textual changes and the interpretive decisions that have gone into this production as compared with Double Falsehood, and I wouldn't expect others to necessarily pick up on the things I'm talking about. I'm not voicing this as an all-encompassing condemnation of the production, nor suggesting that it somehow (intentionally or not) legitimises a form of rape. But in tonight's performance, Dorotea’s agency in the sexual act was visible enough to allow a substantial portion of the audience to laugh in relief as the rapist absolved himself of his own crime. And however much I want to apologise for the production, that sickened me.

Peter Kirwan : 19 May 2011 00:10 |  Tags: Cardenio Falsehood Productions Rsc Thoughts |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Macbeth (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

The first new production in the re-opened and redesigned RST is also the opening salvo of the RSC's fiftieth birthday celebration season. Artistic Director Michael Boyd christens the new space with a production very much in keeping with his principles - no celebrity names but a lead actor, Jonathan Slinger, who made his name coming up through the RSC ensemble; and a major tragedy pitched at the widest possible audience, schools-friendly without being sanitised or simplified.

Tom Piper's set was stunning. This Macbeth was set in a desecrated church, and costume placed us squarely within the English Reformation. Shattered stained-glass windows stretched towards the eaves; piles of rubble and holes in stone walls spoke of violent destruction; and wooden panelling was painted with Catholic icons whose heads had been scratched out. The symbolic significance of this scene of destroyed religion was emphasised by the changes in the second set to a more puritanical church - the windows were shuttered over, the panelling was bare, the statues removed. As the world turned, so too were the representations of religion destroyed and then covered over, subject to implied external forces rather than governing actions. Yet the church continued to exert a powerful force over the players, drawing them into its rituals and symbols in an inescapable way.

The living representative of these changes was Scott Handy's unusually prominent Ross, priest to the regime. The play omitted the opening heath scene, instead beginning with three female cellists entering to a gallery and playing a low drone deliberately reminiscent of bagpipes. Then Howard Charles's Malcolm entered, taking the role of the bloody soldier, and stood mute and aghast. From a balcony, the black-robed Ross spoke "Doubtful it stood." Malcolm stood silent, and Ross repeated himself twice, then made as if to continue with the lines; at which point Malcolm jerked to life and delivered his war report to the assembled nobles. The message was obscure at this point, but the scene was repeated for Malcolm's concluding speech, as the embittered and weary Ross, again on a balcony, repeated three times "We shall not spend..." before Malcolm finally pulled himself together to speak.

The significance was in Ross's transformation throughout the play. Handy's elegant and conscientous minister was present for all the key action, and increasingly dissociated from the living characters to become an almost choric link between this world and the next. The Old Man was removed from their two scenes, allowing Ross to address the audience in soliloquy over his fears. Macbeth's coronation was staged spectacularly, with Ross singing Pie Jesu and presiding as baptismal water poured from the ceiling and the Macbeths washed themselves ceremonially. On entering the home of the Macduffs, it was made clear that Ross knew the family well, and his closeness to the family was tinged with terror for their safety. In another soliloquy scene he cast his Catholic vestments against a wall, abjuring religion as his country fell apart, and his report to Malcolm and Macduff was grief-stricken. Later, he appeared marching with the ghosts of Banquo and Macduff's family, stony-faced and resolute. In the person of Ross, religion was breaking down in the face of grief and onslaught, and had lost faith in itself - by this time, Ross was in military garb. As Macbeth and Macduff fought, Ross passed silently through along with Lady Macduff, aligning him closely with the dead and transcendent as much as with the living. It was in this key that he fed Malcolm his closing lines, falling into a liminal spiritual space where the dead ventiloquised the living, casting Malcolm as the puppet of higher orders.

The presence of the dead, as is typical for Boyd, pervaded the production. On a comic note, Jamie Beamish's Seyton (who took the Porter's part) came in as an Irish suicide bomber with a belt of dynamite sticks under his cloak. I say comic as the audience responded appreciatively; but this seemed a crass and horrifically insensitive trivialisation of this stereotype in light of recent events in Belfast. Beamish lit dynamite sticks and put them down in front of members of the audience identified as equivocators, causing the audience to squirm as the fuses burned down. To Seyton's disappointment, they fizzled out; but he picked the sticks up and threw them behind a pile of rubble, where they exploded spectacularly. To the shrieking audience, he wagged a finger and reminded us "Never return to a firework once it's lit". The historical relevance to the Gunpowder Plot was, of course, not missed. Clad in red, in an intertextual reference to the Keeper of Boyd's Henry VI trilogy, this Porter became the keeper of Hell's gate, opening a door upstage to admit the reanimated corpses of Banquo and the Macduffs after their slaughters, and Macbeth at the play's conclusion.

The Witches were three children (two boys, one girl), who first appeared dangling from meathooks high above the stage. Tattered and with crosses daubed on their heads, they were clearly living corpses, alternately giggling and delivering cold prophecies. Later, it was revealed that the witches were in fact Macduff's children, who appeared hale and healthy with their mother playing with the same dolls that had recently acted as the embodied demons of Macbeth's second consultation (which concluded with the hideous image of hundreds of toy mannekins of Banquo descending from the ceiling). Macbeth's black-cloaked murderers entered and broke the neck of one boy, slit the throat of the other and suffocated the mother; then, even more creepily, led the young girl offstage in silence. She only reappeared as the Porter summoned the bodies of the dead, entering by herself and quietly following the Porter into the gates of hell. Where other productions have done something similar by showing the witches as victims of war in interpolated prologues, it was cleverly anti-linear to have the corpse-like children prefigure Macbeth's crime against them. The mother and children proceeded to stalk the stage, following Macduff during the final battles and accompanying Ross in cutting down branches of Birnam Forest.

Banquo (Steve Toussaint) was another strong visual presence, if not one of the better verse-speakers. Dread-locked and towering over the rest of the cast, he posed a significant threat to Macbeth and was ambitious in his own right, at one point giving Fleance a sword and mace and stepping back to see what his son would look like as a monarch. During the coronation a beautiful visual image was set up in the descrated church, with High Church ceremony and white robes on the ground level presided over by Ross while Banquo, the weird children, the Porter and the cellists gathered around the smashed stained glass windows on the upper level; Banquo already with one foot in the demonic world. His murder was effectively staged, with the murderers (Seyton was the third, though merely stood with a lamp) greeting Banquo as if a welcoming committee. They shook his hand and stabbed him; but he retained life long enough to hold them back as he screamed to Fleance to flee. Banquo's body was left on the stage and revived by Seyton. Later, during the banquet scene (played without a table as a drinks reception), the Ghost smashed through a door, a piece of which Macbeth picked up and wielded as a weapon against his persecutor; then, in his second appearance, he entered with a knife and bloodily murdered Macbeth, stabbing him in the back and slashing his throat. The interval fell on this gruesome and frankly unnecessary scene; which was then replayed at the start of the second half without the Ghost, allowing us to see what the assembled courtiers saw and appreciate his apparent madness. This device, famously used in Rupert Goold's recent production with Patrick Stewart, was here effective and allowed Slinger the chance to play up the comedy of the moment as he sat nonchalantly on the floor once his fit was passed and gazed up at his servants.

While the creative decisions made thus had some interest, the production was let down by generally weak or unmemorable performances. There were a few key exceptions - Scott Handy and Caroline Martin brought emotional edges to Ross and Lady Macduff in life, and a terrifying intensity to their roles in the final vengeance, that allowed us to invest in these relatively minor characters; and Nikesh Patel (an old Warwick student incidentally, great to see him on the main stage!) was a genuinely interesting Donalbain, tenderly seeing to his older brother in the opening scene, providing loud support for his father and offering a dynamic counterpoint to the more passive Malcolm, realised in a final battle against Macbeth that saw him dispatched hideously for his proactive stance. Howard Charles excelled as Malcolm during the England scene, bringing a melodrama to his performance of evil that rendered him truly fearsome in the face of Macduff; and the children worked hard in substantial roles.

It was in the lead roles that the production suffered. Slinger, one of my favourite actors, was a decent but uninteresting Macbeth, who most came alive in scenes of humour such as the banquet or his address to the cream-faced loon. He was strongest when standing atop a ladder that emerged from under the stage, calling for his armour as the English troops gathered below him. His habit of changing the pitch of his voice (high and colloquial for conversation, switching suddenly to deep for ominous moments or serious pronouncements) felt too self-consciously artificial, and the focus throughout on the visual rather subordinated the role amid the ghosts and spectacle, which Slinger was unable to rise above. A general through-line was discernable, however, with Macbeth beginning with barely-concealed ambition (his awkward bows to Malcolm and Duncan were particularly telling) and gradually distancing himself from his wife. In a production with so much pre-determination, however, Macbeth ultimately felt incidental.

More disappointing was Aislin McGuckin's Lady Macbeth, a controlled and intellectually ambitious woman who brooked no weakness from Macbeth and was increasingly left in the cold by him. While there was nothing wrong with this reading, it felt out of keeping with the rest of the production, and her delivery of lines was rote and flat. She was most interesting during the banquet, attempting to play the formal hostess and desperately laughing away Macbeth's actions. The sleepwalking scene passed almost unremarked as she scrubbed her hands in a bowl, shrieked a little and eventually saw herself offstage. Crucially, in a production haunted by the dead, she did not reappear after her death. Aidan Kelly's Macduff and Des McAleer's Duncan, meanwhile, were nothing more than functional.

This wasn't a poor production, then, but an oddly flat one that took far more interest in clever links and visual style than in text or character. The good work in the minor characters was offset by run-of-the-mill leads, and the play itself became a vehicle for directorial style. There were moments of great work - I had never before, for example, felt the power of the description of Edward the Confessor during the England scene, which resounded wonderfully with the religious setting - but these were too few and far between. What will remain are the images, including the glorious picture at the end as Lady Macduff and her children ascended to the gallery and opened the shutters, revealing the sun shining through perfectly restored stained glass windows, a moment of hope at the end of a bleak play.

A version of this review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.

Peter Kirwan : 29 Apr 2011 12:01 |  Tags: Macbeth Productions Review Rsc |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cardenio (RSC) @ The Swan Theatre, Stratford–upon–Avon

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/cardenio/

"Shakespeare's 'Lost Play' Re-Imagined" runs the tag-line to this, the first full-scale new production in the Swan Theatre since its re-opening. The absence of John Fletcher (let alone Lewis Theobald) from this tag is perhaps inevitable given the RSC's priorities, although both are fully credited within the wider publicity material. This is the RSC's first (only?) big crack at Cardenio, and the company has been keen to emphasise the scholarly rationale behind the staging, with blogs and articles detailing the production's sources in Cervantes, Shelton and Theobald. While I've seen and reviewed several productions of Double Falsehood over the last few months, however, it should be noted that this was emphatically NOT a production of Theobald's play. While Double Falsehood provided the majority of the text, this was an attempt at a conjectural reconstruction of Cardenio, versifying and interpolating material from Don Quixote along with new text and fleshing out the play. This review will inevitably be comparing Cardenio with Double Falsehood, but the two turned out to be interestingly different plays.

The production began with a coffin, positioned before iron gates that divided the stage in two and stood primarily for the gates of Don Bernardo's house, physically stressing the family divide that relates the play to Romeo and Juliet. Candles burned and Catholic choristers led a group of courtiers in chants behind the gate. Into this sacred environment stepped Alex Hassell as Fernando (the Henriquez character; most were renamed after the Don Quixote source characters), who slowly got into the coffin and lay down, arms crossed. As the funereal party moved to unlock the gates, Fernando quickly left up and exited. Already, he was established as the transgressive figure to watch, with a hint of his tendencies towards self-destruction. As the rest of the cast entered, it became clear that the coffin was being prepared well in advance of the Duke's death, much to the dismay of elder son Pedro (Simeon Moore, the Roderigo character).

The changes to Double Falsehood made by director Greg Doran and Spanish dramaturg Antonio Alamo were wide-reaching, particularly in the play's first half. New scenes including an opening spar between the bickering Cardenio (Julio) and Luscinda (Leonora); scenes between Pedro, Cardenio and Fernando at court which were particularly important in establishing the friendship of the latter two men; a scene of further wooing between Fernando and Dorotea (Violante) framed by a Spanish fiesta and, in the second half, a scene set in the nunnery featuring Luscinda's abduction. There was extensive rewriting throughout the rest of the play, including major changes to both the wedding and the conclusion, which I'll discuss in their turn. By the same token, Fabian and Lopez were cut (along with any vestiges of a sub- or parallel plot) and, more bizarrely, the scene in which Dorotea employs a servant to help disguise her as a boy was also omitted.

The relationship between Oliver Rix and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Cardenio and Luscinda was established effectively. With the imposing, auditorium-high gates often between them, the nervous Cardenio was often reduced to staring through the bars as Luscinda glided past, invariably accompanied by a Duenna and Maid. Out of his social sphere, and intimidated by Nicholas Day's blustering Don Bernardo, Cardenio became a Romeo-esque lover, comically floundering about for lines of poetry and making grand promises, while quailing beneath Luscinda's steely gaze. Initially, I deeply disliked Briggs-Owen's very modern Luscinda, who stood with hands on hips, scornful derision and a general "talk to the hand" confidence that ill suited the formal period setting. While these mannerisms and expressions felt crass, it did help establish the difference in their demeanours, and as the play went on Briggs-Owen settled into a far calmer and more appropriately emotional vein. She was a dynamic figure who both challenged Cardenio and gave him confidence in her proactive approach; and she clashed dramatically with her obstinate father while Cardenio looked meekly on. This conflict became the production's early focal point, as the wilful Luscinda refused to yield to parental control yet struggled to find ways out.

This culminated in the wedding scene, which aimed to turn the Cardenio/Luscinda relationship into the focal point. Cardenio arrived, disguised in the Citizen's cloak, and Luscinda showed him her dagger and pushed him protesting into a corner, ordering him to hide. This suited the relationship already established, with Cardenio allowing Luscinda to take the lead. As the wedding party entered and Luscinda was led to her new husband, however, she grabbed for the dagger but was unable to find it. The priest began the vows and a distraught Luscinda, not knowing what to do with her plans thwarted, ended up stuttering a "Yea", then fainted as Fernando placed a ring on her finger. She was carried out, and the wedding broke up. Left alone, Cardenio soliloquised about his own passivity and Luscinda's cruelty, before leaving quietly to run mad in the forest. I found this unconvincing and dramatically inert; in Double Falsehood, events come to a head in a moment of extreme violence during which Julio is ejected from the church, and madness becomes a passion borne out of rejection and the betrayal of a friend. This far more considered "madness" didn't chime with his subsequent ravings, which dwelled primarily on the Fernando treachery; the introduction of a complication between the two lovers was unnecessary and was not addressed in their reunion in the final scene.

The least adapted roles were those of the two fathers, who retained their comic function (particularly Christopher Godwin's Camillo) but with a great deal of pathos, particularly as they bewailed their losses to Pedro. The scene of Bernardo's flouting of Camillo was a particular joy, with Day relishing every word in a slow, sarcastic delivery that brought on an apopleptic fit in Godwin. The two eventually resorted to pushing each other pompously, before Bernardo distracted Camillo by pointing behind him, then running to the gates which he locked in Camillo's face. Pedro later discovered Camillo still standing before the gates, rattling his stick against them in fury. The compact between the three, little adapted from Theobald's text, was a high point of dignity that set up the "quest" element of the second half neatly.

A new scene between Cardenio and Fernando saw the two of them, following a riding session, telling each other about their respective loves. Hassell's wonderful Fernando channelled Lord Flashheart (of Blackadder), making of the Duke's son an unpredictable, tempestuous, loud cad. Jumping onto a vaulting horse, he boasted of Dorotea and showed unashamed interest in Cardenio's description of Luscinda. This spoiled lord showed his colours when Cardenio advised him against pursuing Dorotea, jumping down from the horse and advancing on his friend in a spirit of anger, before laughing and embracing him. Everyone, Pedro included, was cautious around Fernando, wary of his temper and flammable humour.

Particularly interesting was how funny Fernando was. His charismatic excesses brought the audience onside, and excused to some extent his brash behaviour. This became hugely complicated as the wooing of Dorotea commenced. At first it was purely comic, including overwrought instructions to confused musicians and a pleading tone to Dorotea (appearing at a balcony) that rendered him somewhat pathetic. The humour of the character, however, did mean that the audience continued laughing even as he asserted his right to her body and announced he would bribe her maid, keeping it firmly within a comic vein. The new seduction scene (which followed his conversation with Cardenio at court, and was thus separated in time) was framed by a fiesta featuring masked revellers carrying large sexual puppets that were tossed together on a blanket and left in a mess of limbs on the ground, making explicit the tone of Fernando's mission. Yet the scene itself made the nature of their interaction extremely ambiguous. He sneaked into her room and, initially, attempted to force himself on her, despite her anger and pleading. As they talked in the heat of fear and passion, promises were exchanged on both sides, and she handed him marriage as a solution, which he accepted. The scene closed as he began to kiss her and she (difficult to see) appeared to stop resisting. The overall impression was one of consensual sex under false pretences, rather than enforced rape. This was emphasised in a small but significant textual change as Fernando left. Where in Double Falsehood he says "True, she did not consent; as true she did resist, but still in silence all," here he said "True, she did consent..." While the intent was clearly to attempt to make Dorotea's pursuit of Fernando palatable to a modern audience, it had the effect of reducing the extent of Fernando's crime; as did the delay of his pursuit of Luscinda until after another interpolated scene where Cardenio showed him Luscinda's house and the maid herself, at only which point did Fernando decide to woo her for himself.

While I happen to think the stronger rape narrative implied by Double Falsehood offers a more challenging and important set of issues, this extremely significant change did bring the play more into line with the Cardenio story and Jacobean sensibilities. Further, it allowed Fernando to gradually increase in maliciousness rather than peak in his first appearances. His overpowering presence and sycophantic deferrence to Bernardo were loathed by Luscinda, and the nunnery scene was especially effective. An oddly comic nun offered some pedantic banter with Luscinda, which offset the arrival of the coffin. Luscinda (the report of whose flight was passed over quickly at the end of the first half) then sat before the coffin, assuming it was Cardenio but afraid to look. Suddenly, the coffin lid flew off (to screams from the audience) and Fernando emerged, clasping his hand over her mouth and forcing her into the coffin, inside which she continued to shout while the nuns were trapped behind locked gates and Pedro looked on aghast. This most significant instance of Fernando's violence built nicely towards the play's concluding action.

Simeon Moore's Pedro offered a powerful contrast to his brother throughout. While his portentous tone sometimes grated, he offered a tremulous and conscientous noble, bewildered by the acts of treachery he saw about him and with a fury that caused him to shake as he addressed Fernando in the final scene. Moore found tremendous personality and complexity in this man, who initially attempted to ignore Violante in her page outfit and struggled with his own conscience regarding Luscinda.

The second half began with autumn leaves spread about the stage, the gates removed and a reflective backdrop giving the impression of wide open spaces. The shepherds, dressed in winter clothes and sitting in a work attitude, gossipped and joked together without becoming openly comic. The gentle pastoral atmosphere came from a director who understands Fletcher, and provided an elegiac tone for Cardenio's mad scenes. Dishevelled and sore, his distractedness oscillated between moments of direct action (such as his recognition of "Fernando" in the face of the Second Shepherd") and wandering speeches which drew him aimlessly among the locals, who watched him with caution bred from familiarity. The comic action of these scenes included an attempt to leap at a "Fernando" in the audience, which saw Cardenio caught in mid-air by two of the shepherds; and the picking up of the Second Shepherd by the nose, a battle which resulted in all of the cast being knocked to the stage. Timothy Speyer's Master was a short and lecherous villain, who couldn't keep his hands off his boy and came very close to raping Dorotea before Roderick's interruption.

The two shepherds who stayed with Cardenio were fleshed out nicely with conversation and ideas of taking him to the nearest town to be cured. They faded into the background as he listened to the song of Pippa Nixon's Dorotea. Nixon made for a strait-laced Dorotea, pleading and self-sufficient but continually scared by the advances of men. Following her song and descent to the stage, she took out a dagger and prepared to kill herself, but was prevented by Cardenio. The character's earnestness was well-played by Nixon, and her earlier interactions with Fernando displayed her quick thinking and fast talking.

The final scene pulled together the stories to mixed effect. Set in what appeared to be a Spanish bar, with servants setting up tables and women beating blankets, it made for an odd environment for the Duke and fathers to set up court in. For the most part, the action played out as in Double Falsehood, with Pedro reintroducing Luscinda to her father (realised in a simple but touching embrace) and Fernando to his father. Fernando humbled himself appropriately and apologised for his faults, while the Duke castigated him and instructed Luscinda on obedience. Dorotea was brought in as Florio and told her story, to the belief of all except the outraged Fernando, then left to effect her change. At this point began the extensive rewriting.

Cardenio was brought in, still dishevelled, and stood before the group. Fernando stepped forward, and began his denial before recognising him. He drew slowly closer and knelt before his wronged friend... and then lashed out, beating and attempting to kill him. The two fought, and Cardenio eventually threw Fernando against some chairs at the back of the room. Cardenio was then reunited with his father and THEN Luscinda, reversing the order. As the lovers kissed, Fernando reappeared, felled Cardenio and grabbed Luscinda. At this point Dorotea re-entered and dissuaded Fernando from further disgrace with a long speech. This ending was undeniably more interesting than the straightforward and carefully stage-managed reunions of Double Falsehood, but jarred; following Fernando's apology to his father, the attempt to kill Cardenio in the presence of the Duke made no sense (unless Fernando was far madder than he was played) and felt like an unnecessary attempt to spice up the climax and give Dorotea more to do. What this effectively did was change the cause of Fernando's repentance from a series of small humiliations (the return of Luscinda, his humbling before the joke, the revelation of Dorotea, the reunion with Cardenio) to a single speech by Dorotea, which was unconvincing and overly simplistic. However, it introduced a welcome note of ambiguity into the reunions, as the joy of the fathers was marred by the quiet and troubled faces of Luscinda and Cardenio, both abused by Fernando, and the tentative attempts of Fernando himself to apologise to Dorotea.

A final Spanish dance closed the production on a strong and musical note (and mention should be made of Paul Englishby's gorgeous Spanish-inflected live score, whose effect on the overall production cannot be adequately articulated nor understated by me). My discussion of the textual adaptation should not detract from the fact that this was a joyous, well-performed and confident production. While some of the changes were welcome and some were unnecessary, very few actually diminished the play, and as a putative reconstruction of Cardenio it was intelligent, accessible and designed to appeal to the widest possible crowd, without reducing the action to mere Shakespearean parallels. What is most important is that the combination of Theobald's play and Cervantes's story worked extremely well on the Swan stage and made the strongest case yet for the value of Double Falsehood to the modern repertory, in being the primary source for a thoroughly enjoyable entertainment.

Peter Kirwan : 24 Apr 2011 15:46 |  Tags: Cardenio Falsehood Productions Review Rsc |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

The Tempest (Little Angel Theatre/RSC) @ The Swan Theatre

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/tempest/

What a treat to be back in the Swan. I haven't been inside my favourite Stratford theatre since The Penelopiad back in 2007, and it's wonderful to see it looking (on the inside, at any rate) exactly as it did before the closure, albeit with more comfortable seats. The first full production in there will be Cardenio, but the space has been warming up with some smaller shows including this, a new collaboration between the RSC and the Little Angel Theatre on The Tempest.

This production had a much more substantial human element than the last Little Angel take on Shakespeare, the excellent Venus and Adonis. Here, all of the human characters were played by costumed humans (although Miranda did carry a small doll version of herself) in a relatively straight, though highly edited, version aimed at children. Against a backdrop of curved rocks (arranged as if the inverted skeleton of some enormous sea beast), the cast wore traditional period dress evoking received images of the characters: David Fielder's Prospero wore flowing robes and a full beard; the courtiers rich, red robes and headwear; the clowns doublet and hose.

The text was heavily cut for its young audience, with sections of new verse and songs added to explicate plot elements more clearly. This had the additional effect of shifting the emphasis of the play towards simpler and more conservative elements, such as the Miranda/Ferdinand romance. In a lovely scene, the two carried logs jointly, danced and flirted innocently, while the rest of the cast sat at the back of the stage and sang a gently mocking love song ("Is it love?" "Could be" "Possibly" "Might well be" "It isn't entirely unlikely" etc.). This sweet sequence exaggerated the centrality of the love plot in relation to the other subplots, which were both heavily cut, and provided the main source of investment. Fielder's Prospero wept openly as he finally gifted Ferdinand his daughter.

The appeal towards traditional settings and conservative priorities is, unfortunately, endemic of children's theatre. In striving for accessibility, inevitably and understandably, productions reach back towards received images of a play, banking on a universal base level of recognisability. While the appeal is obvious, making use of stock types and childrens' burgeoning awareness, it can have the unfortunate consequence of retaining outmoded values. I'm thinking in particular of this production's Caliban, a man-sized puppet voiced by Jonathan Dixon who was a cross between an ape and a turtle, and spoke slowly and simply. The image of Caliban as the mentally-deficient man-monkey throwback, in my view, hits too closely towards the old racial stereotyping that used to inform Calibans, and it was a disappointment to see this on the RSC stage. Ariel, meanwhile, was a green pixie, a couple of feet high, who was carried around the stage in the act of flight, aiming for the ephemerality and lightness of the spirit.

The puppet performers carried their characters about the stage, pushing the bodies forward to act the words which were spoken openly by the handler. This was especially effective in the case of Caliban, whose sheer size and physicality allowed him to interact fully with the other characters, particularly as he and Stephano sat down next to each other and Caliban put his arms conspiratorially around his new king. Caliban was primarily comic, with a puppyish eagerness to please and a habit of growling deeply when resentful. While he was prodigiously strong (repeatedly flattening Stephano with thumps to his back), this monster was ultimately fearful and pathetic, and easily cowed.

The remainder of the puppet content was used for magical spectacle, aside from the seagulls that gently flew round the stage at the play's beginning and end. An unfurling cloth banner allowed for two instances of shadow play - one with wire models of Ferdinand and Miranda in place of the masque scene, and one to reveal them in silhouette playing chess in the cave. The former of these was particularly effective, beginning with Prospero opening a book with reflective pages, which he directed to throw patterns against the cloth behind which the silhouettes slowly appeared. Ferdinand and Miranda approached their doppelgangers in awe and slowly began performing the same dance, coming closer to kiss. Prospero's interruption of this gentle sequence was especially jarring.

The puppets were also used horrifically. Three large covered platters were placed in corners of the stage for the "men of sin", which they cautiously raised. From beneath emerged three monstrously coloured and huge fish, which writhed and threatened as Ariel's voice boomed across the stage, in a genuinely scary sequence accompanied by thunder and lightning. Less scary, but amusingly effective, were the two dresses lowered from the ceiling for Trinculo and Stephano to marvel at. The two danced with their new "women" until the dresses took on lives of their own, hovering above Stephano and knocking him to his back in what he took to be a sexual game. Suddenly, the performers inverted the dresses, and the enormous heads of rabid dogs emerged, barking and snapping at the terrified clowns.

Brett Brown's Stephano was the highlight among the performers, a heavy-drinking, swaggering figure who peed into buckets, vomitted into audience laps and wandered through the audience winking and snatching programmes. He was accompanied by the hard-working Ruth Calkin who took on the bulk of the singing as well as playing Trinculo and Gonzalo, and the joking relationship with the foolish Caliban acted to break up the more serious action. The lords were more conventional, acting largely to keep the plot ticking along but making little greater impact, even though Christopher Staines did some nice work as a smug Antonio.

It was the relationship between Prospero and Anneika Rose's Miranda that was most effective. Rose played Miranda as a wide-eyed innocent, again in line with traditional readings, but treated her father with a mixture of reverence and hurt confusion. Fielder, meanwhile, played Prospero with surprising range, including an avuncular jocularity towards Ferdinand and tender affection for Ariel. which saw him jokingly shake his head at the question "Do you love me, master?" before smiling and replying "Dearly". Yet there was an edge to the character too. The "We are such things as dreams are made on" speech was delivered in a tone of deep sarcasm and anger, to the confusion of his daughter and son-in-law; and at other times a bitterness emerged from the character. Upon breaking his staff across his knee, a visible weight was lifted from him, and he straightened up, smiling, before running in joy from the island. Ariel grew wings and began flying among the seagulls, while the abashed Caliban returned to the stage and grunted in pleasure as one of the gulls nestled on his head. The lights faded on a simple, conventional and lovely version of the play that showcased the beautiful art of the Little Angel Theatre. It may have been behind its time as a reading, but played to purpose effectively.

Peter Kirwan : 18 Mar 2011 15:11 |  Tags: Productions Review Rsc Tempest |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Romeo and Juliet (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whatson/8956.aspx

From its very opening, Rupert Goold's new Romeo and Juliet was intent on forcing its audience to view a familiar play afresh. Sam Troughton's Romeo, in jeans and hoodie, wandered onto the stage with a camera, taking photographs as if a tourist (though this amateur stalker had a different kind of attraction in mind) while listening to an Italian-language tape that repeated the Prologue in both Italian and English. As Romeo saw his Verona anew, so too were we asked to throw aside our usual attitudes to Romeo and Juliet and rediscover the play.

The opening statement of intent pulled few punches. The brawl between Capulets and Montagues quickly accelerated against a background of Catholic candles and projected flames. Capulet and Montague themselves engaged in a protracted broadsword battle while their wives scratched at each other's faces; servants tussled with a variety of improvised weapons, sending up jets of smoke from the stage as they struck each other; and finally, in a wonderfully powerful moment, the stuttering Benvolio turned to see Joseph Arkley's Tybalt, with heavy Scottish brogue, emerge as if from Hell itself, through the iron bars and flames. Striking a match, Tybalt threw it to the floor, provoking a firebolt to roar up in Benvolio's face. This monster proceeded to tie Benvolio to a stake and smother him with petrol, and the makeshift cremation was only prevented by the last minute arrival of Escalus and a barrage of fire extinguishers.

Heat and fire pervaded the production, from the bloody rage of Romeo's later murder of Tybalt to the passionate flames between the young lovers. It was well suited to a rare production of the play that had genuine emotional clout at every level. Goold's Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy of impetuosity, uncontrollable passion and instinctive decisions that saw its young protagonists running headlong towards destruction.

This was perhaps best realised in Jonjo O'Neill's spectacular Mercutio, in a performance one can only describe as "unleashed". Dashing in cape and peroxide blonde hair, O'Neill really was the gentleman "that loves to hear himself talk" (II.iii.138), running off his long speeches with a frenzied energy that at times became terrifying in its vehemence (Oliver Ryan's twitchy Benvolio spent much of his time looking at his friend aghast). Repeatedly lost in self-delusion and performative narcissism, O'Neill received spontaneous applause for several of his set-pieces, most notably a hysterically hideous interlude where, calling for the hidden Romeo, he began miming Romeo's copulation with Rosaline. Getting engrossed in his own thrusting action, the simulacrum became more violent and ecstatic, before Mercutio mimed actually crawling inside Rosaline and began an entirely surreal Alice in Wonderland parody which saw him taking tea with invisible strangers and squelching around in vaginal juices before, in a paroxysm of terror, rushing to escape and "rebirthing" himself into the world. Appalling to describe, it nonetheless had the audience quite literally collapsing in the aisles. His mockery of the Nurse, meanwhile, became an improvised music hall routine culminating in his screaming of "WHORE!" in her face followed by a slapstick chase around the stage. This character existed beyond the boundaries of normal social behaviour, his reckless excesses rendering him at once entertaining and extremely dangerous. These extra-textual performances did threaten to unbalance the production, which invariably struggled to recover following his grand exits, but served the larger purpose of destabilising the story and making it unpredictable once more.

O'Neill's performance was also part of a concerted effort to make the play funny once more, particularly in the first half. From the opening disarming of the Capulets and Montagues, where Capulet laid down a veritable arsenal of personal weaponry concealed about him, to Mercutio's brandishing of a bicycle pump against Tybalt and the Nurse's flirtatious treatment of Friar Laurence, there was plenty to laugh at in this world. Grown-ups were as impulsive and reckless as their children; and while this was a source of comedy, it was also a source of great pathos. A breakfast scene between the Capulets was a highlight as Mariah Gale's Juliet was berated for defying her father. In dressing gown, Richard Katz cut an initially comic figure as Capulet before bringing out a terrifying intensity and violence against his daughter: throwing water at her, screaming in her face and leaving her sobbing on the floor. These were not the stock actions of a stage tyrant, but the all-too-believable bullying of a recognisable father. Even more upsetting was the sight of Christine Entwistle's Lady Capulet in the same scene. Fabulous in her earlier appearances at the Capulet's ball, Lady Capulet was badly hit by the death of Tybalt, and Entwistle transformed into a dewigged, chain-smoking manic depressive, bitter at both family and foes and careless of her daughter's anguish. Following these, Noma Dumezweni's Nurse encouraged and comforted Juliet, giving the impression of care but then going on to tell her to take a second husband. Between the three, then, Juliet was attacked physically by her father, passively by her mother and insidiously by her Nurse, driving her to a peak of despair that finally broke forth as she stood in Friar Laurence's cell, pressing a knife against her chest and screaming for release. The potential of this string of action in the hands of good actors was fully realised here, investing the audience in Juliet's plight.

The casting of Gale and Sam Troughton as the titular lovers was perhaps the production's best decision: rather than prioritise the appearance of youth and pluck actors straight out of drama school (which has been the killing blow for so many recent productions), the RSC recognised that experienced actors can act young, while also having the far greater range earned through years of performing Shakespeare. Gale's Juliet was marvellous, a teenager beginning to become confident with her body and public image but also prone to regressing into childish habits when cornered. She danced a wild and charged dance with masked revellers for the benefit of her father's party guests and was confident enough to kiss Romeo in the centre of the throng and then leave him hanging for more; yet in only the next scene she was kicking her heels while sitting on the ledge of her balcony, a child once more. Juliet was, in the best possible sense, not an innocent child: she knew what she wanted and how to get it, but her insistence on doing things properly and not rushing positioned her as the partner thinking of the long term.

Troughton's Romeo, meanwhile, was a creature of instinct and immediate gratification. Every time he kissed Juliet he made to start taking off his clothes, and had to be restrained by her. His inconstancy in changing affections, and his overdramatising of every situation, was lightly mocked but sympathetic, treated as the inevitable state of youth. This Romeo had at least one eye constantly on the heavens; racked by internal conflict (right from the start, a physical tic had him pressing a finger hard into his temples, as if suffering constantly from a superfluity of thoughts) and external, he addressed Fate, gods and the stars as a matter of course, relating his own suffering to its universal significance. As a counterpart to Mercutio, he was similarly preoccupied with the extremes of emotion and understanding, and his speed of action and speech left him little time to think. His stillest moment was at the close of the long first half: with murder, marriage and banishment all behind him, he finally approached Juliet's balcony, climbed up and embraced her, the lights going down as they began to consummate their marriage. This moment of stillness was pivotal to Romeo. When we next met him in exile, his greeting of the news of Juliet's death was met in relative calm and his subsequent actions were desperate but considered. Sex, for this Romeo, was the moment of growing up.

Among the minor characters, some of Goold's decisions worked better than others. The decision to have Gruffudd Glyn's Balthasar deliver his news of Juliet's death in a broken falsetto song was tonally disruptive: it was presumably meant to be a ritualised moment of mourning, but instead had the audience laughing. Far better was the decision to clothe Patrick Romer's Apothecary (the second time he's played the role for the RSC in the last five years) identically to Romeo, the two hooded men mirroring each other as they exchanged their respective poisons. Dyfan Dwyfor's Peter was comic and elegantly dressed as a page, but pleasingly not made ridiculous. James Howard's Paris was dignified, and David Carr's Escalus brought a strong sense of personal emotion into his pronouncements.

Dumezweni's Nurse was a strong comic presence throughout the play, self-possessed and sassy whether helping to dress Lady Capulet or flirting in a mask at the Capulet's Ball. She even enjoyed Mercutio's initial taunting, until his excesses incited her to physically threaten him. The tenderness between her and Juliet made her final "betrayal" of her ward the more heartbreaking from Juliet's perspective. This relationship neatly mirrored that of Romeo and Mercutio, whose earlier likeness made Mercutio's condemning of the two houses the more powerful. Stabbed by a retracting blade concealed in Tybalt's glove, the humour of his dying situation never left him, but as he staggered backwards up a flight of steps (ascending towards the bright lights of the afterlife), his growing distance from Romeo at ground level physically realised their irrevocable separation.

The same flight of steps led down to the Capulet's tomb for a well-performed finale. Aside from toying with the audience by having Juliet stir behind Romeo's back before he drank the poison, the emotion of the dual deaths was effective, particularly as Juliet stirred to find Romeo's head in her lap but point-blank refused to accept what she saw. Forbes Masson's Friar Laurence (very strong throughout) stood at the top of the steps pleading with her to leave, but the blocking meant she could see nothing but the head of her beloved in her lap, at which she finally, emotionally, broke down.

In an intelligent final twist, the mix of Elizabethan and contemporary costume elements that had run throughout the play was exchanged in the final moments for a deliberately uniform modern mundanity of dress. Balthasar accompanied Romeo to the tomb in full Elizabethan dress, but was brought back by the police in a hoodie and trainers. Police detectives with radios descended into the tomb, accompanied by the Capulets and Montagues in everyday clothes. This simple visual shift translated the melodramatic tragedy into the kind of news story that we're all familiar with, as parents tried to make sense of something they had no way of comprehending. Romeo and Juliet lay frozen, out of time, but to their parents the paint was entirely present, and for the disillusioned and pessimistic police officers it was even routine. Our youthful excesses and romanticisation of suicide and drama may lead us to tragedy, but the results of those tragedy are neither romantic nor dramatic. Where Romeo anticipated universal significance in his death, he received only a domestic mourning from his grieving parents. It was this that seemed to be the ultimate point of Goold's reading, a downbeat end to a powerful production.

This review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.

Peter Kirwan : 26 Mar 2010 11:49 |  Tags: Productions Review Romeo Rsc |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

King Lear (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre

Writing about web page http://www.rsc.org.uk/whatson/8954.aspx

The last time the RSC produced King Lear at the Courtyard Theatre, it was one of the most high-profile theatrical events of the decade. Directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Ian McKellen, it was the climax of the Complete Works Festival as well as going on to generate an international tour, a West End run, national television broadcast and extensive DVD sales. The ongoing afterlife of this production meant that this new production on the same stage felt like a rather sudden return to the play for the company, demanding it particularly work to distinguish itself from its immediate predecessor.

The unique advantage available to Associate Director David Farr, returning to the Courtyard after last year's successful Winter's Tale, was working once again with the RSC's current three-year ensemble company, now halfway through its time performing together. This allowed Farr to explore the merits of directing Lear with a relatively democratic company, as opposed to one led by a single star actor. In the opening scene, Greg Hicks' Lear demonstrated this attitude admirably: his king took a position of central dominance for the division of the kingdom, but afterwards faded into the background as Cordelia's suitors bartered over her, yielding the focus of attention to his disowned daughter.

Hicks' unshowy Lear was a minor revelation, taking a fresh approach to the King's decline. From the start, his authority and command were uncertain. A grand procession announced his arrival, with courtiers bowing to the stage's rear entrance in expectance. After a long, embarrassing pause, a loud laugh came from the back of the auditorium, and Lear ambled in from the audience, forcing the courtiers to quickly rearrange themselves. This playful king ruled not with supernatural command or martial power, but with a combination of avuncular humour, petulant anger and impulsive unpredictability: his sudden grasp of a sword to strike down Darrell D'Silva's Kent in the first scene, for example, was created with horror by a court who, as a man, rushed to stop him. Moments like this insinuated a court dynamic of tolerance and sycophantic respect for a weak king: humoured as long as his orders were reasonable, but coddled and restrained when his orders were not approved. This extended into his relationship with his daughters, over whom he exerted a similar blend of bullying, emotional blackmail and genuine affection. A lover of performances, as evidenced by his noisily-sweeping ceremonial cloak and insistence on the daughters standing on boxes in order to address him, he frequently descended into scathing sarcasm and enactment of both his and his daughters' fantasies: most effectively, miming the mannerisms and voice of a doddering old man as he accused both Goneril and Regan of seeing him thus.

This, then, wasn't the epochal fall of a great man, but the personal, internal collapse of a sane man. Lear's self-aggrandising nature, his bullying and emotional swings, were all imagined as characteristics of a mind on the brink of collapse, pushed over by the eventual refusal of his daughters to play along to his own conceptions of reality anymore. Cordelia's refusal to bolster his ego, followed by Goneril and Regan's refusal to accommodate the trappings of his kingship, dealt him a dual blow that shattered his imagined persona and left him vulnerable. Consequently, his scenes of madness were the most affecting and poignant of the production. Appearing in Act 4 naked from the waist up, with a headdress of great leaves and plants stuffed down his trousers and socks, he cut a pitiful figure but also a free one. As he held the sobbing Gloucester, confessing that he knew his old earl, we finally saw the genuine affection that the old Lear, obsessed with maintaining his sense of power, had never allowed himself to show.

Alongside Lear's mental collapse came the physical collapse of the stage (a popular RSC staging device in recent years). This timeless world had a delapidated basement feel to it, with peeling walls gradually crumbling away and flickering neon overhead lights fading and creaking from their hangings. Light entered the stage from a set of windows far above, but otherwise this was mostly a dim and claustrophobic England. Pre-Christian armour and cloaks mingled with WW2 uniforms and medical equipment in a deliberate merging of England's pasts: this was not about an historical time of struggle, but a universal moment of mental collapse and its significance toe the world around that person.

The daughters of this production were largely very impressive. Kelly Hunter played an older Goneril with a great deal of dignity. It was implied, through the vehemence of Lear's curses and her reaction to them, that she and husband Albany (a solid John Mackay) were trying - and had failed - to produce an heir, and her sobbing reaction to Lear's repeated wishes for her sterility seemed genuine. These curses were later revisited by Lear upon himself, as he massaged his own genitalia while complaining of "hell","darkness", and the "sulphorous pit." Katy Stephens' red-dressed Regan was more confident and forward, even descending from her crate in order to emphasise her affections for her father in the opening scene. While flirtatious, this Regan was not as sexually aggressive as is sometimes played: her winning smiles were always matched with hard eyes, and she preferred to maintain her independent authority from arm's length rather than throw herself into mens' arms. The motivation of both was a typical combination of pressure forced on them by their father and self-interested ambition, and the descent of the pair to open murder (Goneril's "I'll ne'er trust medicine" was openly screamed at Regan, who realised instantly what had been done to her as she knelt on the floor gagging) was neatly realised. Unfortunately, this entire subplot was let down by Tunji Kasim's shallow and uninteresting Edmund. While Edmund performed the basic functions required of him, the glue that ties together the conspiracy, betrayal and infighting of the sisters' story was entirely lacking, leaving Hunter and Stephens struggling to tie their performances into the whole.

Samantha Young grew into the part of Cordelia after a feeble opening, in which her asides to the audience following her sisters' declarations of love (often cut, with good reason) were delivered in a spotlight from the centre of the stage, a device entirely foreign to the spirit of the rest of the production. Dressed in green robes and armour as she led the forces of France into Britain, however, she provided a commanding and strong presence. As she kneeled before Lear's wheelchair and met him at ground level, the significance of this reunification and forgiveness after what appeared to have been a lifetime of unbalanced relationships was strongly reinforced. The moment also provided a neat connection for viewers of Farr's Winter's Tale, where Hicks and Young were similarly reunited as Leontes and Perdita. The casting connections also held true for Hicks and Hunter, where his cursing of Goneril held strong echoes of his similar treatment of her earlier Hermione; while the dance of Kathryn Hunter's Fool around D'Silva's Kent nodded to the pair's upcoming collaboration as Cleopatra and Antony.

The Fool, a young boy played by a middle-aged woman, was particularly interesting in this production. Hunter's tiny stature allowed her to literally run rings around the other performers on stage, keeping up an energy that allowed her scenes to feel both fresh and funny. A face of genuine fear at the mention of Lear's whip told us that this Fool was tormented by Lear at least as brutally as his daughters were, but the Fool's purpose in speaking the truths no-one else can was thus even more important than ever. Sad and wistful, Hunter sat with Hicks, kicking her legs and gazing at him in distress as he fought with his daughters, and that gaze told us all we needed to know about Lear's prior decline from a state of greatness. After fleeing Gloucester's castle, the two sat together again, and the image of the tiny Fool sitting next to the tall Lear, with a briefcase in front of them, struck this reviewer as being reminiscent of the set-up of a ventriloquist act: whether intentional or not, the image was more than appropriate for a scene in which the Fool and the King effectively complete each other's thoughts.

The storm scene gave Hunter a chance to showcase a small element of the physical work for which she is renowned, breaking through the back wall and swinging out into the main auditorium as thunder crashed and lightning illuminated the entire stage. Hicks, stood on a raised platform centre-stage, was caught in a narrow deluge of pouring water. The image was striking, and served to reinforce the importance of the storm as internal as much as external. His appearance in this state was contrasted nicely by Charles Aitkin's excellent Edgar/Poor Tom who, with his dishevelled hair, beard and loincloth, visually evoked the suffering Christ. Self-flagellating and rambling in a near-liturgical manner, Edgar's performance as Tom invoked the sense of self-punishment that the production then allowed us to read into Lear as well.

Other strong performances can only be quickly mentioned: Geoffrey Freshwater gave a tender performance as Gloucester, beurocratic and desk-bound in earlier scenes but dignified and painfully desperate after his gruesome blinding, for which Cornwall (Clarence Smith, reprising a role he played for Headlong Theatre only last year) used a red-hot poker. James Tucker was officious and extremely amusing as Oswald, while Darrell D'Silva gave a bluff and leering performance as a down-and-dirty Kent, although the attempt to revive interest in the character's fate by having him pull out a knife before his final exit felt rather peripheral: the production hadn't invested enough in Kent to allow this to feel important. Similarly, Albany's response to Edmund's death ("That's but a trifle here") was greeted with laughter, despite the character's body remaining on stage to physically counterbalance the positioning of Regan and Cordelia's bodies: the laughter of the audience bespoke a lack of interest in a plotline that felt like a distraction from the main plot. There were other disappointments: the appearance of Edgar for the final duel with two six foot broadswords promised a spectacular finale, which instead fizzled out in a single clash of blades and a swipe across Edmund's stomach.

This, then, was a production of sundry good parts that didn't quite add up to a satisfying whole. Hicks's dying moments, gasping out his final words as he fell backwards with Cordelia in his lap, came as a fitting climax to a touching and powerful reading of the main plot, but this clear and defined focus on Lear's own collapse wasn't wide enough to govern the myriad subplots and additional characters. While finding an identity distinct to itself, and featuring strong performances and visual displays, the universality of the aesthetic translated to a lack of dramatic unity for the play as a whole, and the audience was instead left to content itself with the details.

This review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.

Peter Kirwan : 05 Mar 2010 16:32 |  Tags: Lear Productions Review Rsc |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Twelfth Night (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre

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 |  Tags: Productions Review Rsc Twelfth |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Days of Significance (RSC) @ The Belgrade Theatre

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

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 |  Tags: Muchado Productions Review Rsc |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Comedy of Errors (RSC Young People's Shakespeare) @ The Courtyard Theatre

Since the launch of the "Stand Up For Shakespeare" manifesto a couple of years ago, the RSC has been remarkably tenacious in promoting its educational work alongside its core productions. While always an important part of the company's remit, the Education Department has recently stepped confidently into the limelight, with events such as the Regional Schools' Celebration sharing the main stage and being opened up to the general public.

The Comedy of Errors acted as the next logical step in raising the Education Department's profile, representing the most sustained collaboration yet between the Education and Production teams. Cross-cast with the main house production of As You Like It, Errors was designed specifically as a first-time introduction to Shakespeare, designed for children and primarily touring local schools. By granting it a few performances on the Courtyard stage as well, however, the company acknowledged the status of this production - this wasn't a fringe production, but an important part of the RSC's current work - and was rewarded with the wonderful sight of a Courtyard theatre packed out with families and children.

The involvement of Paul Hunter of Told by an Idiot served to help liberate the production from any traces of the RSC 'house style', and the cast in particular seemed to particularly relish the freedom to let their hair down. Christine Entwistle set the tone early on during Egeon's story: spraying the audience with water, adlibbing commentary on the action and joining in the dumbshow of the shipwreck as a cacklingly evil rock, Entwistle seemed intent on having as good a time as possible, and her infectious enthusiasm was shared by the rest of the cast. From Sophie Russell's tap-dancing Abbess to James Tucker playing the spoons, the right to be ridiculous was fully embraced in a chaotic mish-mash of ideas and jokes.

The small-scale set consisted of a single raised platform in the centre of the main stage, and some fairy lights draped from posts. Most of the ensemble stayed on stage throughout providing live musical accompaniment, giving the production a home-made, informal feel. Iain Johnstone's music was one of the production's main strengths; played on a variety of jazz and improvised instruments (the play opened with one of the Dromios using a toast rack as percussion), the cast provided both underscore and some big musical numbers, including the showstopping "The Man is Mad", sung by the Courtesan with a backing chorus of finger-clicking, shades-wearing crooners.

The opening scene was treated with a little more seriousness, David Carr's Egeon a suitably sober figure as he explained himself to James Traherne's Solinus. Even here, though, the prisoner was kept in a fridge and a hooded executioner asked Egeon to hold the axe while he grabbed a beer. Aware, perhaps, that the dual mistaken-identity plot is confusing enough for adults to follow, let alone a young audience, an accompanying dumbshow was played out in detail, dramatising the birth of both sets of twins and their later shipwreck. Gary Owen's edited text was notably efficient here, keeping only what was necessary in order to establish the characters and their separation, while simultaneously going all out for slapstick laughs.

The exposition out of the way, the chaos of the main action began. Owen's script was mostly Shakespearean, but with a good deal of freedom for adlibbing allowed. Thus James Tucker's Antipholus of Ephesus, entering with Balthazar and Angelo, chatted about his spoon collection and decided that the people sitting around in the Courtyard must be involved in some kind of protest, and Jonjo O'Neill's Dromio of Syracuse, when sent to Adriana for money, announced he was looking for the house with the see-through walls before turning to see Adriana and Luciana on the other side of the stage. This informal, self-aware approach was effective throughout in keeping the audience engaged as the play grew increasingly bizarre; whenever the play was in danger of becoming too weird, the cast simply referred back to the audience. The largest round of applause was reserved for a young boy drawn out of the audience as Dromio fled the hideous Nell; dressing the boy in his hat and jacket, Dromio placed him on stage to distract Nell while he made a quick getaway.

While the children in the audience laughed loudest at the physical comedy, including plenty of gratuitous water-squirting, the adults enjoyed the numerous parodies, from Nell's screams of "Dromio, Dromio, wherefore art thou Dromio?" to Traherne's moustachioed French inspector modelled on Poirot, from Luciana's obsession with Eastenders to a slow-motion gunfight (without guns!) as the Syracusan twins escaped into Emilia's abbey. At times there were almost too many jokes crammed in, with good lines being lost in the hysterical reaction to the previous incident. However, this was a committedly visual and physical production; the jokes were secondary to the slapstick comedy and inventive set pieces. One ingenious sequence, as the citizens explained the action of the previous five acts to Solinus, saw the entire play re-enacted as a puppet show with kitchen utensils; a simple argument between Antipholus and Angelo over the chain saw their increasingly exaggerated movements develop into a dance-off; and another argument between the Syracusan twins turned into a mimed tennis match, with another cast member providing voice-over umpire judgments.

The hilarity occasionally overwhelmed the narrative, though the adaptation did an effective job of keeping the play roughly on track. The trope of mistaken identity was memorably established early on: Antipholus of Ephesus revelled with the citizens, entertaining them with his magnificent spoon-playing, before leaving to their disappointment. As he left the stage, Antipholus of Syracuse entered at the other side. After a quick double-take, the citizens' frowns turned to cheers and they threw the spoons to the newcomer to continue their party. Antipholus, however, cheerfully thanked them for the present and popped them in his pocket, provoking a sulky response from his 'friends'. Vignettes like this ensured that the fundamentals of the plot were kept alive in the audience's minds, allowing the production to continue down its own chaotic path.

The venue itself wasn't always kind to the production. One scene called for the cast to chase each other around the auditorium, Keystone Cops-style, but the scale of the theatre and the barriers behind the seating meant that they actually disappeared out of view instead, leaving the stage bare instead of full of energy. Despite the fact that a production designed for school halls was being performed in a 1000-seat theatre, however, the cast did a stirling job of creating an intimate environment, directly engaging with their audience at every opportunity.

To attempt to give more of a sense of the play's humour would be to do it a disservice, for this was an intensely alive piece of theatre, richly detailed and relentlessly energetic. The performances were uniformly outstanding: generous, inventive, good-humoured and entirely shameless, in the best possible sense. If I had a complaint, it would have been that neither play nor production allowed for a great deal of depth beyond the simple entertainment value. As a family show, it was absolutely perfectly-pitched; as an education piece for taking into schools, it didn't seem to offer much of an opening for discussion or further exploration. However, as a first introduction to Shakespeare, it perfectly managed the task of demonstrating that the plays are there to be enjoyed by all ages and abilities, and in that sense this Errors was a resounding success.

This review originally appeared at Shakespeare Revue.

Peter Kirwan : 12 Jul 2009 15:46 |  Tags: Errors Productions Review Rsc |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem