All 55 entries tagged Thoughts

Hamlet at Elsinore

There's so much early modern drama going on in the next few months that I'm having to be pretty ruthless with myself about what I'm allowing myself to go to. I'll be focussing on personal favourites, locals and rare plays: so, plenty of room for the National's Women Beware Women, the RSC's Lear, the Globe's Henry VIII and the Tiny Ninja Romeo and Juliet. I'm less sure at the moment which plays will be the casualties, though it's particularly unlikely that I'll make it to Bristol for either of the Tobacco Factory's shows, or the Bristol Old Vic's take on Romeo. Even big productions like the Peter Hall Dream may have to take a back seat, unless I start renting in London as well as Kenilworth.

The biggest omission, however, is undoubtedly Hamlet at Elsinore, a performance-cum-conference at Elsinore Castle in Denmark. With players from Cambridge University performing the play on the battlements and in the castle's core rooms during the nights, it sounds like it'll be a spectacular and memorable event. It's currently only open for priority booking by members of the British Shakespeare Association, but I'll try to post a link up here once public public has opened. I'll be fascinated to hear thoughts from anyone who makes it!

Peter Kirwan : 01 Feb 2010 09:34 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Review of the Year

Rather than do a 'Top Ten' this year, I thought I'd be less reductive and do a month-by-month breakdown of my year's early modern theatre-going. It's been an interesting year, with some real ups and downs and productions which I still feel conflicted about. Still, here goes!

January

Propeller's The Merchant of Venice at Liverpool Playhouse started the year on a fantastic note. Elaborate re-settings can be either curse or blessing on a production, but here the relocation to an all-male prison which turned the play into a story of masculine power struggles, illicit bribes and sexual cruelty worked wonderfully well.

February

Production of the month was the Tobacco Factory's Julius Caesar, which used its intimate space to turn the play into one of subterfuge, shadow-games and boardroom politics. The Donmar's Twelfth Night was a classic production in the worst sense: entirely obvious and with no real creative spark or interest for me, despite solid performances. Less dull was the Baxter Theatre/RSC The Tempest, a lively and colourful piece of theatre though still surprisingly conventional. More interesting were Propeller's A Midsummer Night's Dream, an utterly magical evening, and the RSC's touring Othello. With the focus too solidly on one (okay) central performance, the production remained unbalanced but with occasional flashes of imaginative brilliance.

March

My personal highlight in March was the chance to see the boys of King Edward VI School in Stratford perform two rarely-played pieces: Lyly's Endymion and Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, both entertaining, hugely enlightening and a real pleasure. It was a good month for non-Shakespeare, with Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage getting a long-overdue airing at the National. Solid, if a little dull, but strong central performances justified the production. WUDS took Much Ado about Nothingto the Belgrade, while the first As You Like It I've ever enjoyed allowed me to see Leicester's new Curve. With an immigration agenda, Dash Arts found beauty and intelligence in the play that created a thoroughly fascinating production. Finally, the Royal Exchange's no-holds-barred Macbeth forced its audience to confront a barrage of brutal imagery, to great effect.

April

Back to the Tobacco Factory for Antony and Cleopatra, a fine and well-performed reading of the play. When considered in conjunction with February's Julius Caesar, though, the two productions became parts one and two of a larger-scale piece that dramatically altered the focus of the story around Octavius and Antony. Northern Broadsides toured a high-profile Othello which was, in places, extremely good, and the CAPITAL Centre indulged in a bit of grave-robbing by resurrecting an early 20th century version of Hamlet.

May

Television brought us Compulsion, a reworking of The Changeling which was an interesting watch, and it was a good month for student theatre with an academic re-imagining of themes surrounding The Tempest and an enthralling 'Tis Pity She's a Whore at Warwick Arts Centre. The RSC's new season kicked off with a good Winter's Tale, design-heavy and with several strong performances,and a less good As You Like It which I found smug, artificial and not particularly funny, despite a stunning Oliver Martext. Both featuring the new long-term ensemble, giving some sense of what to expect over the next three years. Shakespeare's Globe started their year with a surprisingly decent Romeo and Juliet: I didn't like the Juliet, but a strong Mercutio and some good fight scenes left me entertained.

June

WUDS continued an early-modern-heavy year with A Midsummer Night's Dream, a heavily-directed and physical piece, full of energy. The best production of the year was at the National, with All's Well that Ends Well re-imagined as a fairy tale. With stellar performances, intelligence chopping and, among other things, a Parolles that allowed the character sympathy as well as mockery, this was one I would have happily revisited several times. Shakespeare's Globe produced the best As You Like It I've ever seen: genuinely funny, moving and engaging. The Bridge Project's The Winter's Tale completed my London excursions with a play of two halves: a wonderful Leontes and compelling Sicily scenes matched by a pretty silly and not very lively second half, though still a great production overall. In Stratford, Julius Caesar didn't turn out as well, with an over-fussy design and too many ideas- though several of those were great.

July

Hamlet in the West End was the celebrity performance of the year, with Jude Law excelling in the title role, though weakly supported by a production that just didn't push itself, and featured the horrendous sight of understudies trooping on stage and standing in lines when court scenes needed extras. The RSC's Comedy of Errors, meanwhile, was their best of the year: I've never seen a cast appear to have such a good time, and I hope the kids on the school tour loved it.

August

Just one, in a quiet summer. Troilus and Cressida at Shakespeare's Globe was an overall triumph, with a couple of reservations. A strong ensemble company brought the play to life, and Laura Pyper's Cressida was, to my mind, one of the most important performances of the year.

September

was my month off!

October

I'm not quite sure how I managed to have such a quiet Autumn, but a chance to see All's Well that Ends Well on screen via the National's NT Live Project was welcome. It's still nowhere near as good as seeing it in the flesh, but this screening persuaded me that there is some merit to seeing the play up-close: subtleties, particularly in the character of Parolles, came across very well.

November

A children's version of The Tempest, designed with the hard-of-hearing in mind, made sign language a beautiful part of a physical performance. It's a difficult one to judge, but I found it entertaining enough. At the complete opposite end of the spectrum was Toneelgroep Amsterdam's marathon Roman Tragedies, grouping together Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra into a six-hour promenade performance in Dutch. A near-indescribable event, with invigorating performances, incisive commentary on the mediation of news and history, and a set-up that allowed me to eat, drink and check my e-mails while watching theatre, which is an approach I would heartily encourage as many theatres as possible to embrace. The RSC's Twelfth Night featured a ludicrously obscure setting (Byronic Albania?!) but was a hugely enjoyable night out, with good comic performances. It was slight, though, compared to the improved Days of Significance which toured the country. Still with plenty of intelligent things to say about both Much Ado about Nothing AND UK foreign policy, it remained as powerful a piece of theatre as when I first saw it two years ago.

December

Aside from Warwick's Shakespeare Society giving a low-key All's Well that Ends Well, there was only one production this month, but a good 'un. Two Gents Productions gave a township-influenced The Two Gentlemen of Verona; or, Vakomana Vaviri ve Zimbabwe which remade the play in its own image. Very, very funny, but ending on a dark note of pain and humiliation that resounded far more powerfully than any other image I've seen in the theatre this year. It's a great way to end 2009, and I can only hope that the coming months bring more moments like it.

Peter Kirwan : 20 Dec 2009 19:13 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Autumn shows

It's been a quiet summer, but as October approaches there are a range of Shakespeare shows coming up which I'm hoping to attend. Here's the current wishlist:

• The NT Live broadcast of the National's All's Well that Ends Well, which I'll be seeing at Warwick Arts Centre.
  
• Also at Warwick, Krazy Kat Theatre's children's show A Tempest. I've got a fondness for adaptations for kids, so looking forward to this one.
  
• Coming to Coventry's Belgrade, the RSC's Days of Significance, which I haven't seen since its 2007 debut in the Swan.
  
• The RSC's far more high-profile production of Twelfth Night at the Courtyard.
  
• As promoted by Sonia Massai at this year's BSA conference, Two Gents Productions tour their Zimbabwean Two Gentlemen of Verona, which I'll probably catch in Oxford.
  
• At the Barbican, the intimidating-sounding Roman Tragedies- Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra rolled into one, six hour production. In Dutch.
  
• The Donmar's Life is a Dream, a play I've studied but never seen. Looks like availability may scupper me here though.
  
• Then, thinking ahead to next year, there's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Rose Theatre Kingston, and Measure for Measure at the Almeida, both opening in February. There's also a couple of bits of RSC new writing based on Shakespeare plays which I'd potentially like to see.

I'm probably not going to catch the Globe's revival of Love's Labour's Lost. It's a short run, and as it's the same space, the same director and a substantial number of the same cast as the original production, I don't think I can justify the time and expense (and they cancelled press night, so I lost my free ticket). I may also check out the local am-dram in my new locale of Kenilworth, who are putting on a version of Much Ado round the corner from me.

In a non-Shakespeare (and therefore non-review) line, I'm looking forward to the National's Mother Courage, the Belgrade's Beggar's Opera and the West End transfer of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Anything screamingly obvious I've missed? Or any hot tips?

Peter Kirwan : 17 Sep 2009 15:03 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Reviewing Shakespearian Theatre conference @ The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

I normally discuss academic conferences over on my PhD blog, but the unique theme of this particular conference – and its implications for my work – means it merits inclusion within the Bardathon’s remit. Seeing as it’s been very quiet here on the reviewing front (very few new openings in my area, and I’ve been moving house which has limited the free time in which I have to travel), it also seems an appropriate time to use the conference for a bit of self-reflection.

I was only able to attend the first day of this conference at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, so I missed the second day’s discussion of the RSC’s As You Like It. The first day, however, was of extreme use and interest. Keynote addresses from Michael Billington and Peter Holland bookended the event neatly with perspectives on reviewing from top journalistic and academic performance critics. In between, a panel discussion brought together a range of perspectives on reviewing: critic Michael Coveney, academic Carol Rutter, Guardian arts editor Andrew Dickson, director Tim Supple and actor Janet Suzman, with Stanley Wells chairing. Finally, a seminar session discussed the papers of twelve delegates, including my own.

Billington’s keynote was as interesting as on the other occasions I’ve heard him speak, giving an illuminating and acutely-observed history of changes in British theatre-making over the last few decades. As productions have moved from actor/actor-manager-led to a director’s theatre, reviewing has changed in response. While this is undoubtedly true, it leaves reviewing in a rather passive state, able only to respond rather than develop in its own directions. For this reason, I was a little disappointed, as I’d hoped the theme of the conference might provoke Billington to be a bit more self-reflective about his own craft. My sense of disappointment, though, was only a result of my own prior hopes for the content of his lecture; as it was, it provided an insightful contextual opening for the rest of the day’s discussion, while also opening up questions that would continue to concern participants for the rest of the day: how does the critic define what qualifies as “Shakespeare”? How is the role of the critic evolving in response to developments in blogging and online criticism? And what, ultimately, is the reviewer’s purpose?

While occasionally meandering a little into discussions of performance (as opposed to performance criticism), the panel session touched on extremely pertinent questions, some of which I’ll try to briefly summarise. Firstly, the question of who reviews are for. Suzman admitted that she wasn’t sure what she could usefully add to the discussion, as she herself never reads reviews. She seemed to believe this is the case with the majority of actors (though I am very aware that several actors do read reviews, including occasionally on this blog – perhaps it’s simply a matter of personal choice); however, this led to questions of the impact of reviews. How far can a bad notice affect a practitioner? And should practitioners ever read reviews? A key debate seems to be the matter of how far critics and practitioners may learn from each other, or whether the two should operate in relative independence. Reviews are, after all, surely aimed primarily at audiences, potential or past. This fed into Peter Holland’s later, insightful discussion of the operations of the blogosphere, which saw reviews interacting and circulating within a network of informed and interested parties: opinions are articulated for the benefit of others with their own opinions. He articulated the danger of this sphere becoming too self-contained, but then this is also a danger with the ‘traditional’ reviewing field. Ultimately, it is spectators who we should be writing for.

The blogosphere came in for a kicking in the panel discussion, which several other delegates were interested in my thoughts on. One panel member (I forget who) compared it to the “Britain’s Got Talent” mentality, in which everyone feels they can – and have a right to – express an opinion, regardless of any measure of quality. Concerns were raised over the threat that free opinion offers to the authority of established reviewers, and a challenge was raised. Where are the new reviewers going to come from? Tim Supple asked Michael Billington to name a promising young reviewer under the age of thirty, and remained unanswered.

The problem here is that experience is assumed as the prerequisite for good reviewing, which seemed to negate the possibility of there ever being a ‘good’ young reviewer. Good writing can be learned, experience can only be got over time. This is a completely fair argument, and it is through experience that professional reviewers will always be able to locate and articulate their authority. However, my riposte would be that there is room for a plurality of opinions, and that there are different kinds of experience. You don’t need to have seen fifty-seven Hamlets in order to experience and write about the power of a given production, and Holland provided some interesting examples of vox pop reviewing, praising the instinctive responses of the young respondents for their immediacy and freshness. If young people can learn the discipline of writing well and communicate their own responses in a form that means something to others, then surely the necessary experience will come in time. To be unable to name the promising young reviewers at this time is, I believe, no cause for concern.

Andy Dickson, fighting valiantly on the panel for the positives of e-reviewing, was in any case able to name some promising young reviewers and blogs. His inclusion on the panel was a blessing, as it prevented the discussion from becoming too bogged down in negativity towards new forms of reviewing. As I remarked when asked for my opinion at various times during the day, the truth is that blogging, amateur criticism and e-reviewing is the future. It’s how people of my generation and younger find value in their interests, by being able to communicate them to international audiences of like-minded people, and all fields of criticism are moving that way. To try to resist this is futile; we need to be discussing how these forms can be usefully integrated with more traditional forms, not if. Dickson, and people like him, are going to be the most important people in this change because they are thinking positively about how these forms of criticism are to be integrated into the existing formats; how mixed media and traditional criticism can work together rather than in opposition. The ‘threat’ is mostly one of perception; the internet presents all voices as more or less equal, because they can all be read easily and for free. If a way can be found to emphasise the strengths and experience of different kinds of review and reviewer, then there is no reason why these various forms cannot productively co-exist – and professional reviewers keep their jobs.

One last comment from the panel section, which I found extremely bizarre, was Tim Supple’s assertion that the good reviewer should completely ignore ‘atmosphere’ (as, for example, on press nights), focussing instead entirely on the performance as object. Billington articulated something similar in his complaint that he finds the Globe a “distracting” venue. I entirely disagree with these comments. Atmosphere cannot be ignored, and theatre cannot be reviewed from within an imaginary, hermetically-sealed bubble. Atmosphere is part of the reviewer’s experience: if one is sitting at a comedy, and the audience are sitting stonily-faced throughout every attempted joke, that is inevitably going to affect the reviewer’s perception, consciously or subconsciously. Theatre is not necessarily a contained event on the stage, but a dialogue between performance and audience, most visibly at venues like the Globe but to some extent wherever theatre happens. I strongly believe that good reviewers should be discussing their experience of the theatrical event. I don’t mean, of course, that the reviewer should be reporting gossip or irrelevancies, and of course these should be ignored; but if something is happening in the theatre, or between the audience and the play, that is affecting the performance, then I don’t see a problem with bringing it into the discussion.

The seminar session was interesting for me; as one of the participants, I had of course seen all the papers in advance. I’d be interested to know how useful it was for the auditors, of whom there were pleasingly quite a few, who only had brief synopses to go on. I won’t go through all twelve papers, but just mention a few of the useful points that came up.

Ellie Collins added to the pro-blogging lobby with a timely and pragmatic look at the pros and cons of e-reviewing, praising the plurality of approaches that the medium allows in what she defined as a “post-consensus society”. The problems are in the lack of navigability and closure; but this last can be interpreted as a strength if we allow for responses to productions to continue developing indefinitely. Reviews are what shape a production’s afterlife, and the idea that that afterlife ends with the “official” review is restrictive. The paper tied in extremely neatly with Holland’s subsequent address, leaving the conference’s attitude towards blogging on a more positive note.

Two papers argued for closer attention in reviewing to specific aspects of practice. Jami Rogers gave an exciting paper that pointed out the deficiencies in the ways reviewers discuss acting, attacking lazy epithets and evaluative comments that fail to address what an actor actually did in order to give the general impression that the reviewer remarks upon. This is something that will have a direct impact on my own reviewing; while I do try to give description of action rather than brush off performances in general terms, it’s not something I’ve given a great deal of conscious thought to, which I hope to now remedy. Kate Burnett, meanwhile, discussed theatre design, demanding recognition for the work of designers rather than ceding all credit to directorial vision.

Steve Purcell wrote the paper closest to my own heart, attacking reviewers for policing the boundaries of what is considered to be “Shakespeare”. Particularly picking up on Billington’s earlier criticism of Kneehigh’s Cymbeline (which he considered to be unShakespearean), he discussed the inappropriateness of accusations of infidelity when applied to plays that are a) inherently unstable even in textual form and b) do not accept textual fidelity as an artistic concern. It’s a paper that will hopefully have use for my own PhD, which of course discusses historical conceptions of what Shakespeare actually is.

Alison Stewart’s paper persuasively argued for subjectivity in the review (hear hear), pointing out that no reviewer can meet the needs of all potential future researchers. This contrasted nicely with Kevin Quarmby’s calls for objectivity, demanding that the reviewer act as a conduit for their readers. I think the two can work well together; a cool, descriptive eye that remains the reviewer’s own, individual approach appears to meet the criteria of the reviews I prefer to read.

Finally, the question of comparative criticism, which Caroline Latta argued for the importance of. This, of course, is where the experience of professional critics is particularly important and invaluable. It is also the standard mode of academic reviewers, positioning the play within its performance context and comparing performers and productions to their lineage. I agree with the importance of this, while at the same time noting that it’s not something I do myself very much. I suppose I feel to an extent that there’s a danger of getting too bound up in the past and the history of a production, thereby losing something of the immediacy of the present – for of course, for many of the audience, they will be unaware of or at least unfamiliar with much of the performance history being contrasted with the present event. I’m also conscious that there are many forms of comparative criticism. Hamlet does not exist in an isolated history of Hamlets, but in a history of other theatre productions, in the context of its own season, in the director’s own repertory, in the current political and cultural climate and so on. These are just thoughts, but don’t invalidate the importance and usefulness of comparisons. The issue was raised repeatedly over the course of the day, and is to my mind the grounds upon which paid, professional critics should be articulating their own authority and justifying their paycheques.

I haven’t mentioned my own paper, but I was pleased with its reception and Caroline’s extremely generous questions on it. The paper was entitled “”What’s Past is Prologue”: Negotiating the Authority of Tense in Reviewing Shakespeare”, and made the argument that reviews should always be written in the present tense, in order to better express the liveness of the moment of performance and the position of the reviewer; my contention is that the moment of truth in a review is the moment of writing, as opposed to the moment of viewing. The tense question was secondary, though, to the issues I wanted to raise about what we consider the object of review actually is; I argued for reviewing single performances rather than entire productions runs, essentially supporting Alison’s arguments for embracing subjectivity by locating the reviewer’s experience of a particular moment in time.

I’ll wrap up there, but I was extremely pleased with and excited by this conference. It’s given me a great deal of food for thought, which I’m going to try and build into my own reviewing practice. It’s also, hopefully, raised similar questions for other critics and academics which will have wider implications; and the publication of the conference proceedings will no doubt speed things along. On a more personal note, it’s one of the first conferences at which I’ve felt completely confident in my own ability to express opinions and argue issues, which is a good boost coming into the new academic year.

Peter Kirwan : 14 Sep 2009 11:45 |  Tags: Events Thoughts |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Curtain calls or credits? Phedre (NT Live) @ Warwick Arts Centre

Writing about web page http://www.warwickartscentre.co.uk/events/id/4118

I caught the National's Phedre last night - or, at least, an aspect of it. For this was the launch of the National's NT Live Project, which saw a live performance screened simultaneously on over 200 screens around the world. I caught it at Warwick Arts Centre, which added a further level of interest as it was being screened in their main theatre rather than their cinema, further confusing the sense of what we were watching - live show or film, or both?

I'm not going to talk about the production, in keeping with my English-Renaissance-dramatists-only policy, but I want to talk about the event, the framing within which this performance took place.

Phedre publicity art

Firstly, it was rather more successful technically than I had expected. A couple of sound glitches, the occasional quick re-focus of the camera and some awkward screen compositions aside, the live recording team did an extremely good job of catching the production. Zooms, close-ups and intelligent cutting kept the action of the frame moving quickly and created some interesting moments unavailable to the theatre-goer: for example, Aricia and Hippolytus failed to see Theseus enter as they kissed, and the close-up on them meant we shared their surprise as they suddenly broke away to see him standing there.

However, is this what we actually want from theatre? For a broadcast, there has to be creative use of camera angles, for a fixed-camera perspective is near-unwatchable (ask anyone who's used the archives). Some argue that that replicates the experience of watching from a fixed seat in the auditorium, but this isn't the case. The live space has a depth of field and focus that allows the audience member to move their head, look on different aspects of the space; translating that to two dimensions on a screen narrows and flattens the perspective, fixing the viewer in an unnatural and unhelpful way.

By removing the viewer's ability to choose what they watch, and to have the overarching view of the whole stage, the experience is necessarily narrowed. We are put in the hands of the camera operator and editor; our experience is channelled through an intermediary. We see what they want us to see. This is true of film; but, this being a live broadcast, the production was necessarily limited in its ability to present us with exactly what they wanted to see: mistakes, errors and unexpected movements meant that the editorial team were able to present us not with exactly what they wanted us to see, but with the best that they were able to.

This was shown quite clearly in a troubling interview with Nicholas Hytner screened before the broadcast. In the same breath he told us that the cameras would merely be observers, therefore allowing the experience for cinema viewers to be the same as for the live audience. At the same time, he told us that the cameras would be aiming to pick out those aspects which they expected an audience would be focussing on at any given point. This shows a breathtaking arrogance in the director, assuming that he is far enough aware of the audience's interest that the experience can be accordingly mediated for them. At its most basic, this ignores the fact that the audience watch multiple aspects of the production at the same time; and to narrow that field of view obscures much of what makes up the live audience member's experience. More problematically, it assumes that we want to watch the speaker rather than the on-stage reaction to the speaker's words. Too often during the performance, we were bound to watch whoever was speaking when what may have been more interesting would have been to track the reaction of the person being spoken to. Nicholas Hytner may not think that that's of interest; and perhaps it wasn't, but as an audience member I need to be able to make that choice for myself.

In this sense, then, the production was too narrowly focussed to be any reflection of the theatrical experience; but not controlled enough to take advantage of the directorial control that film allows. What we were left with was something in between, which gave a sense of the production but nothing more.

There were other issues, most problematically one of social divide and mediation. The screening was prefaced with over half an hour of introductory material from Nicholas Hytner and Jeremy Irons (who, incidentally, apparently seemed to wish he was anywhere else). Firstly, this was an aspect of the cinema experience which we could have quite happily done without: the 'trailers' were longer than at the Odeon!

Secondly, I was troubled at the content of what we were given. The discussion about the nature of the NT Live experiment was welcome and useful. However, we were then subjected to several minutes of interviews with cast and creatives, discussion of directorial and design decisions and snippets of rehearsal photography and audio footage. This was, of course, only for the screen audience's benefit, and I felt it was patronising and ill-advised. The imputation appeared to be that the provincial and international audience required elements of the production (including the back-story of the play) to be explained for them before they were allowed to see the performance itself, directing the viewer's thoughts before the curtain rose. Some people justify this as being similar to reading a programme beforehand, but this is emphatically not the case. The programme allows the viewer choice: they can read about the production beforehand, or they can put it to one side. The cinema screening forced contextual information onto the viewer as a requirement of and prelude to viewing. Intentionally or no, it was implied that the live London audience didn't need this, while we viewing elsewhere did. It also did the production a disservice, directing audiences towards a shared understanding of the production's intentions that negated the need for the audience to stretch themselves in the same way as a live audience.

Thirdly, we were required to watch for half an hour as the suited London audience seated themselves in the auditorium. The presence of a live audience offered nothing for the cinema audiences: they were invisible and inaudible for the entire production, an absent presence. To watch them at the start, therefore, seemed only to work to position exactly where the cinema audience weren't: we were present yet excluded; unacknowledged by the sharers in the live experience at all times. The on-screen crowd were the privileged spectators; as Hytner pointed out at the start, the actors would be performing entirely for their benefit in order to preserve the live experience. In essence, then, the international audience were immediately excluded from the 'real' experience: live audience were unaware of us, actors were actively ignoring us. We were voyeurs, not participants, and the fact that the live audience were given prominence at the start (we were watching them) reinforced the respective statuses of the various groups in this enterprise.

This became more troublesome in terms of the actual acting; for live performances do not all translate well to screen. In particular, Stanley Townsend's Theseus looked stilted and uncomfortable in extreme close-up, his movements stiff and awkward in a way that may well have looked quite commanding from the stalls, but from a foot away seemed oddly artificial. More upsettingly, John Shrapnel's excellently performed description of Hippolytus' death, with every nuance of the speech acted with frenzied gusto, actually turned out quite funny in close-up, and I was torn between deep feeling at the character's despair and laughter at the ridiculousness of the mediated image. By contrast, Dominic Cooper seemed to be playing far more for the cameras than the other actors, playing much of his response to other speakers through subtleties of expression and eye movement, which the camera picked up gloriously: yet I have no idea if the live audience would have noticed this.

Lastly for now (though I particularly hope this debate continues) was the matter of the ending, for which I turned my attention to specifically look at what the audience at Warwick did. The London audience began clapping long before our audience did, and the response was distinctly divided. Most people seemed to want to applaud, but a substantial portion simply got up and left. However, it became far more interesting as the curtain calls continued: for, it being a live performance, the curtain calls were long and conducted in multiple parts: individual bows, curtains rising and falling, etc. The applause at Warwick died down extremely quickly, while the London applause simply got ever greater. Some brave souls in our auditorium continued clapping extremely hard, and I had to wonder exactly why: were they genuinely carried away by enthusiasm for the production, or were they simply doing it because they thought they were meant to?

The problem was one of dissociation from the performance. What, exactly, is the nature of applause? It acts as a release of tension, as a means of congratulation and as a reaffirming of the shared experience of performance. The camera and cinema screen, however, acted as a divide which confused the issue enormously. The actors had not been acting for us- they had, explicitly, been acting for the crowd in the Lyttleton. Equally, our responses had been invisible to the cast, and continued to be: we had not in any way contributed to the live experience of the performance. Applause thus lost much of its significance, which I believe is why the Warwick audience's applause was overall united, but extremely brief. Applause served, in the end, mostly as a form of self-affirmation of the experience: we were applauding because that's what we would do in the course of a live event; we were attempting to justify our experience as truly theatrical.

This was immediately undercut, as the safety curtain went down for the last time, by the appearance of scrolling credits, listing cast, crew and technical support for the broadcast. Applause or credits - can you have both? For this event you apparently can, but neither seemed to properly fit the moment. These final moments of confusion over how to respond were entirely dictated by anxiety over how we were supposed to respond, and it was clear that the audience at Warwick were very much divided on this: some felt it was a film, some a show, some something undefined inbetween that had no rules. What was lacking was the feeling of a gut, unified audience response: the swell of an ovation, the shared intakes of breath, the movement and buzz of a live audience. The audience watching Phedre in the Warwick Arts Centre Theatre last night were like no theatre audience I've ever been a part of. The appearance of the cinema screen immediately asks people to sit back and be entertained, to be passive, and for Phedre this simply felt wrong.

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

So, a lot of problems. I actually thoroughly enjoyed the production itself, even if I'm suspicious of the medium through which I experienced it. My final big worry, however, is that the inevitable success of this experiment will result in a shift towards this as the norm for the provinces, as opposed to large-scale touring shows. It's been a while since the National brought a large show around (the Arts Centre has had History Boys, Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Pillowman and plenty of other big productions in the last few years), and the live screening is a far cheaper and wider-reaching means of fulfilling the touring remit. I think this is a wonderful, wonderful thing for those areas to which the National would never go: for theatre-lovers in Australia or the US, for example, the chance to see a production that there would be no other way of seeing is obviously a great thing.

As a way of reaching larger audiences, too, it's a laudable enterprise - though, a far more democratic and academically sound way of doing this is to follow the RSC model: take the company into a studio, film a proper, made-for-camera version of the production and then screen it on TV and sell DVDs, which allows it to reach a much wider audience than the NT Live project and remakes the theatrical product in a manner which works with the screen medium. My issues with this project are the claims that it in any way replicates the theatrical experience: from an academic and theoretical point of view, this is deeply problematic, and even in realisation it lacked much of what makes a theatrical experience truly theatrical.

The next NT Live production is All's Well That Ends Well on October 1st, which will give me the chance to see the live screening applied to a production I've already seen in person, which I hope will allow me to compare the experiences usefully. For now, I found Phedre itself successful, but the medium will, to my mind, only be acceptable if it continues to be an optional extra, rather than a perceived replacement for the live experience.

Peter Kirwan : 25 Jun 2009 22:19 |  Tags: Film Productions Thoughts |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Comparisons

We're nearing the halfway point of 2009, and by my reckoning I've seen about 18 Shakespeare productions so far this year. Interestingly, though, among those eighteen there has been quite a lot of repetition: three As You Like Its, two Othellos, two Caesars and two Winter's Tales, for example. I've been trying to review the productions largely independently, but I thought it might be fun to register a few comparative thoughts on what I've seen.

Othello

Two interesting if flawed productions, from the RSC and Northern Broadsides. The two were fascinatingly different, but on the whole I preferred the more straightforward Broadsides production. Lenny Henry's Othello and Conrad Nelson's Iago had a wonderful dynamic which powered the play, while the RSC's production was unbalanced by Patrice Naiambana in the title role. However, the RSC's production was far more innovative, and in many ways is the one that has stuck with me in terms of academic interest: it may have failed in many places, but it failed interestingly.

RSC defining moment: a beautiful, atmospheric dream sequence between Desdemona and her dead father.

Broadsides defining moment: a raucous, hysterical and expertly choreographed drinking scene.

As You Like It

No contest here. The Globe's production redefined the play for me: warm, funny and touching. It had the sincerity that the RSC's production entirely lacked, making the larger-scale production a rather cold, aloof affair that failed to engage me at all. However, Tim Supple's appropriation of the play to comment on immigration and concerns over national identity was timely and extremely interesting, providing the most thought-provoking production of my year so far.

Globe defining moment: Silvius' disarmingly moving discourse on what it means to be in love.

RSC defining moment: The brilliantly psychotic preacher, Oliver Martext.

Dash Arts defining moment: the multicultural four-way wedding ceremony that closed the play.

Julius Caesar

Two more very different productions, from the RSC and the Tobacco Factory. Again, unfortunately, it's the RSC who lose out. Lucy Bailey's production had a lot to recommend it, but ultimately felt like something of a mess. Where it succeeded was in distinguishing the vast army of characters and creating fascinating readings, particularly in Sam Troughton's obsessive Brutus. However, the Tobacco Factory's intimate production used the closeness of its environment to spectacular effect, turning the play into a tale of Jacobean intrigue, with conspirators huddled in dark rooms and wars plotted from a boardroom. By prioritising Octavius and Antony in the mix, too, Andrew Hilton's production crucially kept momentum during the second half, forging an increasingly fascinating story out of the two emergent victors.

RSC defining moment: Cassius and Brutus' first meeting with a wonderful, sneering Casca.

Tobacco Factory defining moment: Antony, left alone for the first time after Caesar's death, screaming vengeance.

The Winter's Tale

This is the toughest comparison as both productions were, in their own way, excellent. The Old Vic boasted the best Leontes I've ever seen in Simon Russell Beale, sacrificing sympathy for Hermione in order to create a believably human portrayal of a man's descent into jealousy. However, the slow pace and a lacklustre Bohemia section (rescued by Ethan Hawke's Autolycus) meant that I preferred the combined efforts of the RSC ensemble. The conflicting worlds of civilised court and anarchic countryside were a fantastic design hook around which to hinge the play's central concerns, and solid performances across the board made for a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Plus, no-one does a good phallic fertility ritual like the RSC.

RSC defining moment: An awe-inspiring bear made up of loose pages devouring Autolycus, the folk culture of Bohemia unleashed after the collapse of Sicily.

Old Vic defining moment: Leontes cradling the newborn baby Perdita, torn between love and hatred for the child.

Peter Kirwan : 17 Jun 2009 18:23 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Coming up

I've had a couple of quiet theatregoing weeks, but it all kicks off again tonight. First, to Warwick Arts Centre for WUDS' new production of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. I've read the play, but never seen any Ford live, so very much looking forward to this.

Tomorrow it's a double bill - an academic student project first, with The Tempest set on an oil-rig, and then the RSC's new Winter's Tale in the evening.

Coming up in the next few weeks: Cheek by Jowl's Andromaque at WAC, the Globe's Romeo, the RSC As You Like It, a student Dream, and then a particularly busy single week into which I'm squeezing the Globe's As You Like It, the National's All's Well, the RSC's Caesar and the Old Vic's Winter's Tale. Finally, I'll be wrapping up the academic year with the broadcast version of the National's Phedre, with the RSC Errors and Donmar Hamlet to look forward to before my summer hols.

There's still more to book, too. In particular, I don't know where or when I'm going to catch the Globe's two touring productions, though I hope to see both. There's the Globe's Troilus to book for (something tells me there'll be no urgency on advance bookings for that one), and I haven't decided yet if I'll return to Love's Labour's. The Regent's Park Open Air Theatre is only doing one 'adult' Shakespeare this year, Much Ado, with a kiddy Tempest also in rep. There are a few small-scale things as well, but hopefully that'll be mostly it for the summer, which will allow me to catch up on all the journal reviews I've agreed to write. Oh, and write my thesis.

Peter Kirwan : 30 Apr 2009 16:55 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Bardathon as Experiment

I've been prompted recently to think in a little more detail about what The Bardathon actually IS. Why do I write? Who is it for? What is it ultimately trying to do? And so on. The blog is now three years old (my first review, of Nancy Meckler's Romeo and Juliet, dates back to April 11th 2006), and during discussion at the 3rd International Shakespeare and Performance Colloquium the question was yet again brought up of the future of theatre reviewing, and how academic criticism can continue to survive and be meaningful.

There are a great many theatre blogs out there. This one is, however, in many ways different, in intention if not always in practice. So, I'm going to use this post to remind myself of some of the key principles and points of this blog, and hopefully make some conclusions about its future.

1. This is an academic experiment

The original intention of this blog was to support my MA in English Literature at the University of Warwick, by chronicling my experience of the Complete Works Festival. In doing so, I would be thinking academically about the plays, but in a format more associated with journalistic reviewing and web community.

Since then, I have tried to pitch the blog as, effectively, a bridge between two forms of reviewing often considered diametrically opposed - the academic review (months after production, concerned with history, interpretation, critical engagement etc.) and the journalistic review (immediate, impressionistic, evaluative, commercial). Its my belief that academic reviewing too often loses the thrill of the theatrical moment, the instant emotional and gut impact of a performance. My hope is that, by responding instantly and publicly to a performance, but at the same time considering those aspects which are historically and academically important, I can create a useful hybrid of the two.

2. The 'goodness' of a production is not what is important.

While it is impossible to completely avoid value judgments, and inevitably I end up giving a general impression of whether a production was worth seeing or not, it's something I want to try to avoid. I'm not interested in the 'goodness' of a production, I'm concerned with what is interesting, or fresh, or illuminating in it. The most obvious example is in acting. By and large, I'm not concerned with whether Patrick Stewart spoke his lines clearly, commanded the auditorium or failed to convince me of his feelings. I'm concerned with what he did that expanded my understanding of the character and play, that suggested a new interpretation of a line or inverted the usual expectations of how a part is played. It's a fine, fine line, and one that I myself need to tread far more carefully.

I try to remind myself that, when I read reviews of old productions in the archive, I get extremely frustrated by journalistic reviewers giving a simply evaluative criticism of whether an actor was 'good' or not. That's not of interest to the academic reading a production retrospectively. The most important thing is what they did, not what the reviewer thought of it. In many ways, a bad new reading is far more useful to the academic than a good traditional one.

3. Blogging is a developmental and pedagogic activity.

The act of writing itself is important. For me, it's a form of personal development. Through writing reviews, I've spent the last three years developing my own sense of what a review can be, expanding my range and developing my style. The increased awareness of my own writing processes has in turn impacted positively on my writing for conference papers, academic journal reviews and my thesis. Writing has become my way of thinking, and The Bardathon, being my own 'publication', is the place where I can experiment with this.

This experience suggests to me that blog-keeping can be a particularly useful pedagogic exercise, and I've been pleased to see more and more academic groups using blogs individually and communally to chronicle activity and develop group material.

4. It's an open forum...

The ability to allow comments on a blog is a particularly useful one, and the aspect which most sets it apart from the academic community's current reviewing media. This blog has drawn comments from academics, directors, actors, experienced and occasional theatregoers, students, teachers, schoolchildren and even the occasional crazy. A blog has a wide reach, and the breadth of comments has been probably the best thing about this as an experiment. It's my belief that every theatregoer's experience, and their opinion on their experience, is a valid one. It's particularly rewarding to hear from first time Shakespeare viewers, a constituency largely alien to Shakespeare academics. As well as providing a range of insights into a given production, it also allows me an external viewpoint on my own writing, as I see how it provokes people to react.

5. ... but not completely open!

I've only very rarely deleted comments, and then on the grounds of utter irrelevancy (e.g. spam advertising) or because of offensive or aggressive behaviour. Otherwise, I allow most comments to be published openly. However, I also reserve the right to join in the comment stream myself, and normally do.

With completely open online blogs or review archives, comments are largely unmediated and debates can go off in whatever direction they please. This basically allows people an open platform to say whatever they want. However, this is a personal blog, and is moderated by me. While I am happy for views I don't agree with to be expressed, the blog allows me the opportunity to positively challenge these views. To illustrate, I have a particular beef with the words often heard in the reviews of certain broadsheet reviewers, "This is not what Shakespeare would have wanted". If this crops up in my comments, I will usually post a reply to argue that that isn't (and shouldn't be) the remit of most modern theatre directors.

The aim in doing this is to stimulate rather than shut down debate (hence open argument rather than deletion). I don't want the blog to become a stagnant platform for outdated ideas and lazy thinking; I want to challenge the ways in which we "watch ourselves watching Shakespeare" (to borrow a title from an article by Carol Rutter).

6. This is an archive.

I mentioned this earlier, but it deserves its own bullet point. The point of this blog was originally to provide information about productions in the Complete Works Festival which many academics wouldn't get an opportunity to see. There is a lot of (critical) description in my reviews; my opinions will date, but hard information about what was in the production won't. Considering that academics still, usually, have to travel to specific libraries or archives to find out what happened in a particular moment, the idea is that the blog will provide some bits of information that will make discussion of productions that little bit easier. It's also a hope of mine that, if someone is reading the blog to find a piece of information that ISN'T in the review, that they will comment or e-mail to ask for the blanks to be filled in. In a sense, the liveness of the blog format allows for a combination of personal memory and written review which can transcend the boundaries of the actual post.

In a more mundane sense, the blog posts fill the place of notes for me; I stopped keeping notebooks with detailed information a long time ago (hence the sudden jump to longer reviews on the blog). One of the factors in deciding what to write is a consideration of what I myself will want to remember. It's a personal, as well as a public, archive.

7. It's about Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

After the Complete Works Festival, I started to post reviews of all my theatregoing experience; new plays, classics, devised work, even ballet and opera. However, I've more recently realised that this isn't what the blog is useful for. I have a wide interest in all kinds of performance art, but my experience does not allow me to provide anything like the same insight into, say, Beckett or Chekov, that I can into Shakespeare and other early modern dramatists.

'The Bardathon' is the name I chose for this blog, and so I'm going to return to a more focussed approach. Productions of early modern plays, or newer writing based on plays of this period.

8. It goes places where other theatre reviewers don't go.

A particularly enjoyable part of my work is reviewing small-scale performance and, particularly, academic experimentation. My last piece on Tom Cornford's work on reimaginations of Hamlet is a case in point - it's not professional theatre activity, but it is still of extreme interest to this blog as an academic exercise, as an insight into process, as a reinterpretation and production of a Shakespearean play and as a moment that interacts with history. This activity also, hopefully, will continue to feed into my PhD blog.

9. Quality isn't everything

This is true of productions, but also true of my reviews. I have been very proud of some of my reviews, and extremely disappointed in others. The quality of my writing varies enormously, depending on inspiration, time of day, my mood and the speed at which I require myself to write. I've stopped worrying about this. Ultimately, the blog is a part-time endeavour; I'm not a professional journalist, and my core writing time goes into my PhD and my publications. The blog is designed to be a more informal approach - as good as possible, but I would rather have something written than nothing at all. Even if a piece is patchy, misses important bits or offers clunky analysis, I know it will remain useful to me as a prompt for future thinking about a production. In the academic environment, the pressure is to write wonderfully at all times. However, we all have off days. The very fact that academics will travel miles to watch a scratchy, fixed-camera VHS recording of a play from the back of the gods demonstrates that archive-users will always rather work with something bad than with nothing at all.

It's my hope that my writing continues to improve and develop. However, functionality and accessibility are also key, and within that the blog will always have the best I can offer.

Conclusions: The Future

Where do I go from here? One of the points of this (long!) post is to make myself reconsider my own motives and aims in keeping this blog. The renewed focus on early modern drama is one key aspect. I'd also like to experiment more with the form; it's very easy to keep slipping back into a 'standard' review model, which I would very much like to avoid.

Finally, I will be starting to engage more with experiments such as the Internet Shakespeare Editions, edited by my mentor Paul Prescott. I'm not quite sure what this will mean for the future of this blog in the long term; but then, this blog can only survive for as long as I'm at Warwick anyway (assuming I don't rejoin the Graduate Association). In the short term, I'm hoping the continued engagement with the theory of academic reviewing can only benefit the blog, and keep it in line with the larger questions of the future of reviewing in general.

Peter Kirwan : 25 Apr 2009 12:34 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Lost Interpretations of Hamlet @ The CAPITAL Centre

Writing about web page go.warwick.ac.uk/capital/teaching_and_learning/projects/thehamletproject

It's a shame that my PhD doesn't (at the moment, anyway) include any performative elements; I can imagine it being uniquely exciting to have your thesis shaped by theatrical experimentation and events. Last night saw PhD researcher and CAPITAL artist-in-residence Tom Cornford's first public presentation of the Hamlet Project's rehearsal experiments, which I'd just like to make a few notes on.

The production was based on four early European Hamlet projects:  Stanislavsky/Gordon Craig’s 1912 production and Michael Chekhov’s 1924 Moscow Art Theatre Studio production, and Meyerhold and Tarkovsky’s planned versions, neither of which was produced. The hour long performance incorporated elements planned by all four productions, combining them into a single, coherent aesthetic.

Only key scenes were included, mapping the play rather than telling the entire story (Ghost and Hamlet, To be or not to be, Nunnery, Advice to players, Mousetrap, Closet, Ophelia's death, Yorick and funeral). Cast were seperated from audience by a translucent white screen, containing the action safely away - except when Hamlet forced his way under the screen to directly speak to the audience, as in soliloquy. Back projections, meanwhile, displayed images (the King and Queen in masks, for example) or tracking shots that lent depth to the stage action, most notably as a camera lingered over Ophelia's corpse in a woodland, or as the bodies of the final scene were shown in stillness, the discarded swords and goblets being individually picked out.

Key to the presentation were twinning and doubling. Two Hamlets, one male and one female, interacted throughout, whether bouncing thoughts off one another in soliloquy (rendering "To be..." particularly fascinating, as the two acted out the progression of thoughts) or joining to create a cumulative effect of speed and energy (such as the lightning fast instructions to the players, with Hamlet seemingly talking to everyone at once). "To be" additionally engaged the audience as the female Hamlet moved to a position behind and to the side of the audience seating, directly addressing the male Hamlet who stood directly in front of the screen. The Hamlets also interacted in the personas of other characters; for example, the male Hamlet doubled as the Ghost, suggesting that the Ghost is simply an aspect of Hamlet, prompting all kinds of Freudian explosions.

Doubling was used importantly elsewhere. The Freudian aspects of the play were again highlighted in The Mousetrap, which saw the female Hamlet doubling as Lucianus while Claudius played Gonzago and Gertrude his queen. This idea deserves further attention; the multiple significances of Hamlet taking on his uncle's role in the dumbshow, while the uncle becomes the father, were hugely arresting and complex, the Oedipus parallels being made visual and physical (though stopping short of showing Hamlet-Lucianus and Gertrude together - the fantasy aborted by Claudius' call for "Light!"). Among the minor characters, similar links were made. Polonius and Ophelia, both having recently died, reappeared as the Gravediggers, while Horatio became Laertes, complicating his relationship with the Hamlets.

The acting was heavily stylised in places, and I regret missing the discussion afterwards as this is the aspect I know least about in relation to the performances being quoted. However, the adoption of stylised techniques for "The Mousetrap" worked especially well in the case of Claudius and Gertrude as they became the players - the restricted movements and stock gestures employed in their acting-out of their crimes lent a sense of entrapment and crudity to what they had done, their decisions chaining them. Lucianus, meanwhile, dressed in black while speaking the prologue and performing in the dumb-show, moved through a series of pre-defined gestures that separated her eerily from the others on stage; in this player, the female Hamlet was reincarnated, and she maintained an otherness, a detachment from the rest of the characters, that showed her deliberate intent in performing and introducing the play. It was moments like this that strengthened the connection between the two Hamlets, creating a partnership that bound the plot directly in with the workings of their mind.

The sudden appearance of the Ghost provided one of the production's most enduing images, leaping suddenly up onto a raised platform and holding out an arm towards Hamlet, face obscured by a black cloak that rendered his body shapeless, blending in with the darkness of the stage. In response, the guards moved through the motions of loading and firing longbows, almost in slow motion, turning the instinctive reflexes into a choreographed and predestined ballet with the ghost; their actions were impotent, ineffectual. Hamlet's anxiety and emotion on seeing his father were conveyed through a further, bizarre set of movements as he fought to get to him, culminating in the female actor leaping to a kneeling position on Horatio's shoulders, an unnatural position which demonstrated the extremes of his emotional response.

The nunnery scene raced past in a heartrending encounter between Ophelia and Hamlet, while Polonius and Claudius could be glimpsed standing behind a second translucent screen. Ophelia took a static position at one side of the stage, weeping and pleading with Hamlet, while he paced back and forth across the width of the stage. His restricted movement was at odds with his seemingly limitless energy, his frustration and anger being channelled into his attack on Ophelia, culminating in his brutally shoving her to the floor. This sense of a captive energy finally found a release at the end of Ophelia's madness, when she ran off-stage. Another actor took over seamlessly behind the second screen, shuttle-running across the stage, until finally emerging as the furious Laertes. This transition not only served to link the change in focus between the siblings, but also allowed the wild energy to finally be released; culminating, of course, in Ophelia's offstage death, announced shortly after (here, the siblings never met). At its heart, the production was concerned with repression and constraint, chronicling the effects of release after entrapment that destroy all they come into contact with.

A relatively kindly Polonius was the victim in the closet scene, but not a victim we were encouraged to identify with; he was simply collateral damage. More powerful was Hamlet's confrontation with his mother, during which both Claudius and Old Hamlet were brought physically back on stage, standing either side of Gertrude and forcing her to confront her choices. Polonius reappeared in the Graveyard, standing behind a raised platform on which Hamlet stood, looking down into the grave. This platform provided a focal point for the final scene, including the locked grapple into which Hamlet and Laertes entered.

Finally - it was only an hour long! I have to say, I do enjoy a Hamlet of this length much more. An extremely interesting performance, with some cracking student actors. I only hope Tom can find a way to write it all up!

Peter Kirwan : 22 Apr 2009 09:58 |  Tags: Events Hamlet Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Marriage of Figaro (Welsh National Opera) @ Birmingham Hippodrome

Writing about web page http://www.wno.org.uk/figaro

In something of a first since I started keeping this blog, Friday saw me take a seat in the stalls for a large-scale opera, WNO's new The Marriage of Figaro. I haven't seen a great deal of opera, though I enjoy the music, and it was a pleasure to begin with an extremely decent production.

The main highlight was the wonderful Elizabeth Watts as Susanna, essentially the lead role in this production. Her vocal performance was excellent, but where Watts really shone was in her comic gestures and expressions, permanently acting up to the audience as our link with the action. However, there weren't any poor performances among the cast: Jacques Imbrailo made for an amusing villain as Count Almaviva, while Rebecca Evans sang beautifully as his wife. David Soar held the action together as Figaro, and Cora Burggraaf was game in the breeches role as Cherubino.

Lluis Pasqual's staging was increasingly inventive, moving from the large indoor sets to a garden of constantly moving reflective flats in the final act, behind which the various characters in hiding darted. More private scenes were clear and uncluttered, while when the stage became more crowded it was the characters themselves who framed the action, creating visually arresting images on stage such as the confrontational beginnings of the legal case and the beautifully composed group photograph that closed the third act.

The opera experience in itself is an unusual one for me but, I have to say, one I very much enjoyed. An excellent production, and I look forward to catching WNO again in the future.

Peter Kirwan : 29 Mar 2009 14:47 |  Tags: Productions Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem