All 66 entries tagged Thoughts

The Duchess of Malfi (Blood and Thunder) @ Hall's Croft, Stratford–upon–Avon (archive video)

Writing about web page http://bloodandthundertheatre.org.uk/

I'm beginning the year with a binge of EM drama film recordings, including Greenwich Theatre's Volpone, Kozintsev's Hamlet, Taymor's Tempest, Doran's Winter's Tale and Fiennes's Coriolanus, one or two of which I may review here. One pleasure of this quiet patch is the chance to finally catch up with a production I missed in the summer owing to my travels - Blood and Thunder Theatre Company's outdoor production of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.

I can't really give it a proper review, as it only survives on an archive video that, unfortunately, was recorded on a rather blustery day at the expense of audibility. However, the production exemplifies Blood and Thunder's approach - an intimate, fluid and fluent version, stripped down to some basic props and sumptuous costumes, set against the rather splendid backdrop of Hall's Croft.

The simple setting allowed the performances to come to the fore, most obviously in a fun wooing scene between Kelley Costigan's austere but playful Duchess and Jose A. Perez Diez's upstanding Antonio. What the production (directed by Maria Jeffries) clearly understood was the formalities of court and courtship, which were played up to and then dismantled for dramatic effect - the fun of this scene was in watching the two trade politenesses while coming longingly to their shared agreement, while Helen Osborne's furtive Cariola his behind an arras, pointing up the staged quality of the Duchess's scene.

I was less persuaded by the atmosphere of the piece - Malfi has always screamed dark and claustrophobic to me, and the airy setting made the plotting feel more public than I would ideally have liked (although a nice moment after the severed hand coup saw Ferdinand peeping out from the windows of the Tudor house). However, Steve Quick's Bosola made great use of the visibility of the audience, addressing his schemes to the assembled crowd and managing his unsuspecting victims. I appreciated the comic and militaristic feel of the character, as if Sir Toby or Parolles had discovered how to take over a play. This Bosola, towering over many of the other actors, was more physically imposing than might be expected, drawing attention to him from the start as the character to watch. Yet what marked this production was the evenness of its ensemble - if not drawn to Matt Kubus's almost fantastical Ferdinand, with plumed hat, we were conspiring with Antonio and Gareth Bernard's Delio or back once more with Bosola's compelling choric motions.

From the recording I found it hard to gauge tone and emphasis, so it was difficult to discern an overriding vision for the play. Anomalies in the text such as Delio's isolated encounter with Julia and the early ramblings of Castruccio were retained, keeping a reasonably full text rather than (as sometimes happens) focusing entirely on the primary plot. Yet what did begin to emerge was a sense of the very human relationships destroyed by events. This was particularly obvious in a moving parting scene between the Duchess and Antonio, which saw a tender but hopeless farewell followed immediately by the Duchess spitting defiance at the ever-swaggering Bosola.

As the play moved into the final two acts and the sun began setting, the tone shifted noticably from the domestic to the grotesque, as Ferdinand danced with the severed hand and the madmen pranced manically about the stage. An increasingly weary-looking Bosola stood in contrast to the hysterics as the deaths began mounting up, once more establishing him as the play's centre of gravity. Yet inevitably, it was in the littering of bodies at the play's bloody conclusion that the production finally satisfied, its characters convincingly bound up in events that they could rail at but ultimately not avoid.

A video is no substitute for the real thing, but it was a pleasure to finally see a version of the play and get a sense of Blood & Thunder's work. Keep an eye out for them surfacing in or near Stratford next summer, with any luck!

Peter Kirwan : 09 Jan 2012 23:44 |  Tags: Productions Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

2011 round up

It's been a transitional year for The Bardathon. In August, I submitted my PhD at the University of Warwick (our kind host here), and two weeks later I began a new job at the University of Nottingham. These two changes have impacted significantly on my ability to get to the theatre this year, which means that unfortunately I've been able to review much less than usual. Added to this, the year's major Shakespeare has been dominated by big, very expensive West End productions which were prohibitively priced for this humble student. So, apologies to regular readers that it's been a leaner year than usual. However, there was still plenty of quality on show, and this year happily took in not just the usual Shakespeare but several rarely played pieces, as well as plays by Marlowe, Middleton, Chapman, Field, Fletcher, Massinger, Rowley, Heywood and Marston, and several pieces of new writing.

January

January saw me attend Discords, a devised piece by Fail Better featuring University of Warwick students. While a little abstract for my tastes, it played fascinatingly with the sounds of key Shakespeare scenes and offered some striking images.

February

A busy month this, and rich enough for an entire year. First to London, for yet another Double Falsehood. This one was fast and entertaining, with strong directorial intervention making theatrical capital of Theobald's text. I have a review of this production coming out in a book in 2012. Twice to the cinema, for the thoroughly entertaining Gnomeo and Juliet and for a live broadcast of the Donmar's King Lear. The two couldn't have been more different, but both worked tremendously: Gnomeo was colourful, funny, and had a postmodern twist in its tale that saw a character confront Shakespeare (in statue form) directly to change his own fate. Derek Jacobi, meanwhile, did wonders as Lear, while Michael Grandage directed an intimate and heartwrenching production that even survived the temporary breakdown of the satellite transmission. In the live theatre, Propeller offered an unusual double-bill. The Comedy of Errors was the highlight, anarchic and energetic without sacrificing a syllable of the verbal wordplay. The foyer entertainment was even better than the show. Richard III, meanwhile, drew on grand guignol for a production that cast Richard as one cog in a relentless butchering machine, and in which the true terror was a gloved butler with a pocket watch. More straightforward, but no less rivetting, was the always wonderful John Heffernan as Richard II in Andrew Hilton's production. The key was the ceremony and the calm delight Richard took in his own authority. And there was the first in a double-bill of student-written two-handers at Warwick, To Will, appropriate in a year obsessed with Shakespearean biography.

March

Another rich month, this time with adaptations and student theatre. The Shakespeare Institute Players presented King John in a fluid and surprisingly funny production, and Warwick University Drama Society offered a courageous but badly flawed experiment by presenting Antony and Cleopatra as a playground skit. At King Edward VI school in Stratford-upon-Avon, meanwhile, Perry Mills's boys presented John Marston's Antonio's Revenge, an attempt to move beyond comedy that did the boys full credit, but was less entertaining than previous outings. At Warwick Arts Centre, the Company Theatre of Mumbai brought the extraordinary Hamlet, The Clown Prince, for which I can only direct you to my full review. The year's finest piece of theatre, however, was Cheek by Jowl's phenomenal return to form with the Russian ensemble performing The Tempest. Original in its reading of characters (especially Miranda), provocative in the collapse of the entire theatrical artifice and visually stunning in its various images, this was my highlight of 2011. At the RSC, the Little Angel Theatre presented a fun but very conservative alternative with its own Tempest, and I returned to Bristol to see the Richard II company assay The Comedy of Errors in a much slower version than Propeller's, but one effective in its relative restraint and gesture towards comedy of manners.

April

April saw the beginnings of a comedown after two wonderful months of theatregoing. Many of my peers loved it, but I disliked Bond, a Chinese operatic version of The Merchant of Venice. Perhaps it was the jetlag on my second night in the US, but while the performances were phenomenal, the conventions of the form left me bored. I enjoyed the other "event" piece of the month, though: Camille O'Sullivan's audacious reading/singing of The Rape of Lucrece. A cinematic disappointment was served up in Julie Taymor's The Tempest. Despite the trumpeting surrounding the casting of Helen Mirren as Prospera, this was a deeply conservative version of the play, tedious to watch on screen, and even the CGI was poorly done. At the RSC, Michael Boyd's Macbeth was another disappointment, despite a stunning set. Gimmicks couldn't mask the weak performances and a generally flat evening. However, Gregory Doran's Cardenio was a triumph. While I had some fundamental issues with the production, particularly its treatment of the rape scene, Doran and his team of actors made fine work of turning it into an enjoyable entertainment, with plenty of fireworks (literal and metaphorical) and some wonderful acting.

May

A second visit to Cardenio qualified some of my thoughts about that production, but this was a month of rarities and new experiences. In London, I caught a rare outing for 1 Henry VI, which used the whole space of the Rose Theatre to tremendous visual effect, but suffered from messy editing and a lack of attention to acting standards. An entertaining version of the first quarto of Hamlet was performed at the White Bear Theatre Pub, which would have been even better had the production fully committed to the concept rather than also trying to crowbar in the characterisation offered by the more familiar texts and stage history. I took part in a staged reading of Field and Fletcher's The Honest Man's Fortune in Canterbury, and the Institute Players presented Chapman's The Memorable Masque in Stratford. Both events offered fun insights into pieces almost never staged. An odd, cabaret-style evening of snippets was offered at the Globe, but of far more interest was a rare outing for All's Well that Ends Well. John Dove wasn't afraid to allow the play to be funny, and there was a great deal of heart even in Bertram and Helena's relationship. The month peaked, however, with two stunning productions at the RSC. Jo Stone-Fewings headed a tremendous cast in Massinger's The City Madam, combining humour with genuine malice. The cast seemed to thoroughly enjoy the Caroline camp, and the play offered a surprisingly prescient message for these troubled times. Better, though, was Rupert Goold's marmite The Merchant of Venice. This split audiences, but I wept at Susannah Fielding's fragile, conflicted, difficult reading of Portia.

June

Just two plays this month: the sequel to To Will at Warwick, With Will, imagined a conversation between Shakespeare and Middleton, continuing this year's trend for imaginative biography. At the RSC, the National Theatre of Scotland revived David Grieg's Dunsinane, a provocative piece of new writing set after Macbeth that drew uneasy parallels with the coalition presence in Iraq. How does an occupying army consolidate its position in a culture it fundamentally does not understand?

July

The best I could say about a student production in Prague of The Winter's Tale was that the cast had done extraordinarily to learn a practically full text in a second language; but as a performance, it wasn't great. The biography strand continued with Jonathan Bate's play Being Shakespeare. Simon Callow owned the stage, but I have to say that Jonathan's book Soul of the Age did the job of the play far more satisfactorily. A spectacular Doctor Faustus at the Globe offered some great images, but dragged a bit in delivery. Finally, I expressed a certain amount of anger about Aporia Theatre's presentation of Cardenio in Stratford - not just because it's not that play at all, but also because it denies Thomas Middleton public credit for his wonderful Second Maiden's Tragedy. The production did a good job, apart from a crass ending. Not the finest month.

August

The Bardathon went medieval this month, with the Globe's fantastic Mysteries and an evocative student production of Everyman in Stratford. I also got the chance to finally cross off two big items on the to-do list: my first full production of The Two Noble Kinsmen (rather dull), and my first English-language Titus Andronicus, which also happened to be my first experience of the Edinburgh Fringe (predictably "edgy"). On a larger scale, Nancy Meckler delivered the biannual Midsummer Night's Dream for the RSC in a production which I found rather uninventive, but was widely loved. I was fascinated, however, by my first Heywood play - Katie Mitchell's A Woman Killed with Kindness at the National. The split set and Ibsenite trappings were intriguing, but too much was lost in the translation to a faux 19th-century melodrama, not least the complexities of the relationship between Anne and Frankford.

September

Just two indifferent productions this month. The Tempest at Middle Temple Hall boasted a beautiful setting and a simple beauty, but no real interpretation of the play. Othello at Sheffield Crucible, meanwhile, boasted two wonderful actors in Clarke Peters and Dominic West, but the production itself was slow, unimaginative and entirely straightforward. By now in my new job, I found myself craving some Shakespeare that took on the text in a far more interesting way.

October

Just two productions again, but far better. In Stratford, a new company called Ketterer's Men put on Hamlet in tribute to their (and my) late friend Lizz Ketterer, who passed away far too young earlier this year. Cripplingly long, the players nonetheless offered an intimate and textually astute version of the play that reminded me that Hamlet can still be entertaining in and of itself, rather than in gimmicky or heavily cut versions. In Manchester, meanwhile, I was pleased to catch an intelligent updating of Edward II that borrowed the aesthetic of Elizabeth II's coronation and turned the relationship between Lightborn and Edward into something compelling and dark.

November

The year in Shakespeare Studies was unfortunately dominated by the Authorship Controversy, and in November I finally got to see Anonymous, the film which had become a rallying point for the naysayers. I actually enjoyed it, despite its many flaws - and the idea it posed any threat to serious scholarship is laughable. I finally experience Nottingham student theatre with a modern update of Macbeth, and returned to Stratford once more to see the Institute Players perform The Changeling in an unfortunately cut but still interesting version. Yet another riff on Cardenio was offered at the Globe, this time in the form of a rehearsed reading of Gary Taylor's reconstruction, which boldly created a Don Quixote mainplot which was a resounding success, even if I didn't particularly like the play's ending. My continuing exploration of theatres local to Nottingham met with disappointment at Lakeside Arts Centre with Mappa Mundi's rather lame version of Much Ado about Nothing (particularly disappointing in a year when I apparently missed two very good productions at the Globe and the Wyndham's Theatre). However, the always-reliable Filter provided a rousing climax to a mixed year with a raucous, irreverent and outstanding Dream that took audience interaction to a new level, particularly in an uncomfortable but undeniably fun foodfight.

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

That's it for 2011. I don't know yet what 2012 is going to bring, apart from looking forward to Propeller's upcoming Henry V and Winter's Tale, Cheek by Jowl's take on John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, Headlong Theatre's Romeo and Juliet and the RSC's promising versions of The Taming of the Shrew and Measure for Measure. It'll be a good year for Shakespeare on screen too, with Ralph Fiennes's Coriolanus, the BBC's new versions of the second tetralogy of history plays and a live screening of the National's Comedy of Errors.

I also don't know yet where the blog's going to go this year. As my Warwick accounts expire, I may take advantage of the opportunity to migrate to a new platform. In the meantime, thank you for reading, and I hope to see you here in the new year. Happy holidays!

Peter Kirwan : 31 Dec 2011 00:08 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Macbeth @ The New Theatre, Nottingham

Just a quick note, for completeness' sake, to say that I made it to the Nottingham New Theatre's production of Macbeth last week. I don't review shows that feature students who I do or will teach, but great to see the country's only completely student-run theatre in action, and an interesting idea to set it in an office environment. I'm only disappointed that Birnam Wood didn't turn out to be a tent city of student protesters.....

Peter Kirwan : 27 Nov 2011 20:49 |  Tags: Macbeth Productions Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

With Will (Warwick Student Arts Festival) @ Warwick Arts Centre Studio

I've only managed to catch one show at this year's Warwick Student Arts Festival - With Will, a half-hour duologue. I don't know the names of writer, director or actors, but I can only assume it comes from the same mind that created the very similar To Will, which I caught earlier this year.

The play, set around 1610, saw Thomas Middleton seeking out Shakespeare to ask if he could rewrite Macbeth to make it "better". The two chatted about life, plays, other writers etc., before "Will" finally agreed to let "Tom" rewrite the play - as long as he also had a crack at Measure for Measure.

The play had the exact same strengths and weaknesses as To Will. On the plus side, the performances were fine. The two female actors were witty and confident. Tom was presented as the younger, nervier partner, pacing the stage and nervously voicing criticisms and asking naive questions. Will, playing to the romantic genius notion of the Bard, was dramatic, rather smug but generous towards his fellow. The writing itself was also fit to purpose, mixing historical anecdote with a personal edge.

The problems were primarily structural. As with To Will, the writer had chosen to collate an extraordinary number of biographical and historical anecdotes (the unholy child of James Shapiro and Andrew Gurr, if that thought doesn't chill you) rather than create an actual narrative. The best parts of the play touched on religion, as the vehemently anti-Catholic Tom challenged Will on his own beliefs; but the play didn't have the courage to explore fiction, instead only gesturing at imaginative biography before make sharp left turns to talk about a completely different anecodote. The play covered everything from Shakespeare ranting about Kempe, to detailed analysis of Lear, to Shakespeare setting up the Globe, to why Burbage didn't play Mercutio, to the political analogies of A Game at Chess. The grab-bag of information was fascinating, but in a pedagogic, final-year-practical-dissertation kind of way, rather than as a piece of theatre: the aim seemed to be to demonstrate the writer's familiarity with as much early modern theatre history as possible, but really wanted a bit of careful selection to create a coherent throughline.

As a knowledge-display, it could have been much tighter too. If doing a biographical piece, why not pay attention to chronology? The idea of Middleton grilling Shakespeare on why his worldview was so bleak while writing Lear, for example, screams out for the play to acknowledge that the two men were also collaborating on Timon at probably almost exactly the same time; the generation gap between Middleton and Shakespeare could have opened up so many possibilities; and the range of plays discussed occasionally beggared belief - if Game at Chess was not premiered until eight years after Shakespeare's death, for example, why were we discussing it alongside Shakespeare's "recent" Coriolanus? Within the context of a dramatic fiction, of course, none of these are problems; this is just an observation that the strengths of the writing were diluted by the over-anxious need to cram in as much as possible.

However, With Will persuaded me of the potential of this kind of drama. Putting the two writers onstage to discuss their plays worked tremendously as a way into the unpacking of the themes and contexts that informed the writing. Of course it panders to author-centred ideas of writing - the idea of Middleton taking Yorkshire Tragedy to a publisher in order to earn a bit of cash not only offers to send book historians weeping to an early grave, but is also symptomatic of the biographical concern to explain all phenomena with reference to the over-arching, privileged agency of an author. It's a useful set of questions to raise ahead of seeing Being Shakespeare in a couple of weeks. On its own, this production offered a great introduction to some of the better and lesser-known aspects of early modern theatrical history, and undoubtedly served as a wonderfully apt end-of-year send off to a group of Shakespearean undergrads due to get their exam results back tomorrow. Good luck!

Peter Kirwan : 28 Jun 2011 21:10 |  Tags: Productions Thoughts |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Much Ado @ Wyndham's Theatre

I want to make clear - I have NOT seen Much Ado about Nothing at Wyndham's Theatre, starring Catherine Tate and David Tennant. Quite simply, I couldn't afford it.

I was also sceptical about what appeared to be a particularly cynical production aimed at the West End. The two most popular stars of the most popular light entertainment show on television, reunited for a one-off special? My cynicism was reduced when I heard that the ever-wonderful Josie Rourke was directing; and I do believe that Tate and Tennant genuinely wanted to work together - there does seem to be something more than pound signs in a producer's eyes behind this production.

The reason I'm posting now is that I've been fascinated by the responses, which seem to run a clear divide between academic and popular. The critiques I've heard from some of my most trusted theatregoing contacts and academics have been resoundingly negative - Tate is awful, the rest of the production is half-baked, it lacks imagination etc. The responses (primarily on Facebook) from my non-specialist friends, however, say that it's wonderful - Tate and Tennant sparkle, the production looks fantastic, it's laugh-out-loud funny.

So, my two questions: 1) What did people who've seen it think of it? and 2) what do we think about this kind of production? Is the fact that it's working for new audiences, even if there may be suspicion of people being blinded by celebrity, enough? Do we as academics need to take that into account as part of our critique? If we're the only person still sitting while everyone else gives a standing ovation, is everyone else wrong, or is there something we should be learning from them about pure enjoyment? Or does our critical objectivity matter more than a mass response?

Peter Kirwan : 19 Jun 2011 10:21 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (13) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Memorable Masque @ The Shakespeare Institute

The annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference pleasingly put performance at the centre of this year's plenary events. As well as a taster by the Institute's performance research group for their upcoming Macbeth, we were treated to a staged reading of George Chapman's The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, first performed to celebrate the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Count Frederick V in 1613, and now restaged under the direction of Jacqueline MacDonald.

A cast of Institute staff and students (including Stanley Wells as "George Chapman" reading out the authorial stage directions) walked through the elaborate masque, whose visual elements were represented by overhead projections and whose music was provided live by Cecilia Kendall-White. The aim was to give a flavour of the formality and shapes of the masque, directed towards two thrones at one end of the Shakespeare Institute Hall.

The performance included two fully-staged formal dances, one with torches and one between four couples, which were pleasingly complex and stately, the company having taken the time to give them their full prominence. More obviously entertaining, however, were Andrew Hippel, Gareth Bernard, Jason Burg and Richard Nunn who entered as baboons, picking fleas off audience members and dancing crazily in the centre of the space. As Kendall-White played, however, the baboons became entranced by her music (I couldn't help but think of 2001!) and gradually fell into co-ordinated swaying, before she led them off the stage.

The main story of the masque hinged around the eventual marriage of Plutus (Riches) and Honour, played by José Alberto Pérez Díez and Yolana Wassersug. Díez owned the stage, walking confidently about and raising his eyebrows at the audience at some of the more outlandish moments. The first half of the masque saw him bantering with Martin Wiggins as the bellows-wearing Capriccio, whose arm first emerged from a side area of the hall, pushing aside a door standing for the split rock of the text. Capriccio was a lively presence, competing with Plutus for prominence on a raised platform.

The arrival of Helen Osborne's Eunomia announced the beginning of the more formal masque, followed by Honour herself and Phemis (Kelley Costigan). The three women processed in in stately fashion, and their dialogue with Plutus was interspersed with the formal dancing. Costigan spoke the several songs, and the company finally assembled for bows before the thrones before leaving in procession.

Masques aren't particularly my favourite form of entertainment, and in some ways a rehearsed reading ill-serves a medium which is so dependent on visual display. However, it was surprisingly fascinated to see a staged version. The Memorable Masque is surprisingly simple at its core, and the company did a great job of exposing the skeleton of a piece rooted in the movement of bodies in very formal patterns. I was particularly impressed with the dancing, but it was also a pleasure simply to see in three dimensions a piece of theatre so much more co-ordinated and determined than the usual plays. I was sorry not to be able to stay for the post-show discussion, but I'm very much hoping this practice-as-research project continues to develop.

Peter Kirwan : 29 May 2011 21:16 |  Tags: Events Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  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

The Honest Man's Fortune @ Canterbury Christ Church University

I've remarked before now on a show I've been involved in behind the scenes, but never before on something in which I've acted. I use "acting" in the loosest possible sense, and the less said about my board-treading the better, but it was a pleasure this weekend to be involved in a staged reading of The Honest Man's Fortune in Canterbury as part of a Renaissance colloquium organised by Steve Orman.

The play, by Field and Fletcher (and Massinger?), is a fun citizen comedy from 1613, that begins with the ruination of the titular honest man, Montaigne, and traces his fall at the hands of creditors, his reduction to servitude in the house of a virtuous lady (Lamira) and his restoration to riches as the eventual chosen husband of the lady. Alongside this, Montaigne's persecutor - the jealous Lord Orleans - turfs out his wife over suspicion of an ongoing affair with Montaigne and falls out with his brother-in-law, Amiens. The two are eventually reconciled with each other and with their defamed wife/sister following a duel plot partially stage-managed by Montaigne's loyal supporters, Longaville and Dubois. Three comic malefactors partially responsible for Montaigne's fall (Laverdure, La Poope and Mallicorne) present themselves as suitors to Lamira and are rebuffed by Montaigne; and Montaigne's loyal page Veramour is pursued by Laverdure, convinced that the boy is actually a woman. It is only revealed at the end, amid a flurry of winking to other plays, that Veramour is in fact the boy he always appeared to be.

The play is a surprisingly tight mixture of elements familiar from texts as diverse as Philaster, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens and even The Odyssey in its greedy suitors. In performance, despite very little rehearsal, it proved to be surprisingly stageable and entertaining. While it was obviously impossible for me to watch it properly while performing in it, I'll just make a few observations here.

In Brian McMahon's hands, Montaigne was a pleasingly complex combination of wistful persecuted hero and vocal righter of wrongs. "Honest" appeared to be key, rather than "good" - his test of Lady Orlean's virtue was initially extremely creepy and lecherous; his readiness to draw against Amiens and the officers showed him proactive; and he took no small pleasure in his final passing of judgement against the dishonourable suitors. This made him far more interesting than the stoic sufferer I'd initially expected, and a much more compelling protagonist.

The play fell rather conveniently into two halves, the first dealing primarily with Montaigne's fall at the hands of creditors, lawyers etc. and the second moving into a much more domestic sphere in and around Lamira's house. Longaville (Orman) and Dubois (myself) are quite prominent in the first half and much less so in the second, Dubois in particular being practically forgotten about by the text. The text appears to set up a great deal with the two, particularly their agreement to feign loyalty to the great lords (which provided great scope for a lot of shouting, bravado and flailing of imaginary swords), which then unwinds in one key scene as the Lady Orleans is apparently shot. This isn't just a note on the amount I had to do (!) but speaks interestingly to the change in tone and focus, with male friendships and public relationships replaced by a greater concern for heterosexual union in the second half. The unifying factor in this was Kelley Costigan's melancholic Veramour, always positioned to the side of the stage in the first half declaring his devotion for his master; but moving to more central roles in the second half as his gender came into question. The page dominated the final act too, Costigan bringing out the playfulness of Veramour when posing as a girl, before revealing his true gender.

The comic characters were surprisingly effective. Martin Wiggins brilliantly stepped in at short notice to play Charlotte and La Poope. The former began by playing on the type of the lecherous maid-servant, flirting shamelessly with the humbled Montaigne and providing a clearly undesirable contrast to the higher-class ladies; but later Wiggins brought out the sweetness of Charlotte's loyalty, culminating in the revelation that she had only been wooing Montaigne on behalf of her mistress. As La Poope, meanwhile, he was a gruff and blustering sailor whose disregard for social niceties made him a constantly entertaining presence. Nicola Boyle contrasted ideally as the courtier Laverdure, whose character was defined primarily by the amusing banter with Veramour during their flirtation and the shared cowardice with La Poope, the two cowering in doorways rather than joining in battles. I also particularly enjoyed the contrast between the two men in the final moments, as La Poope took Laverdure's place and embraced Veramour as a potential new cabin boy. I took on Mallicorne at the last minute and didn't really do the role justice - he begins as a fairly unambiguously treacherous character, tricking Montaigne's money away from him and then smugly revealing he has arranged for his arrest. Then, however, he tags along with the comic duo of Laverdue and La Poope, but I struggled to work out how he integrates with their already-established dynamic.

Alex Samson was the villain of the piece as the jealous Orleans, giving the role the forcefulness necessary to drive the action of the first half - he unseats Montaigne, drives away his wife and Amiens, encourages the conflicts between Longaville and Dubois and, finally, maintains the negative energy that leads up to the climactic staged assassination of Lady Orleans. He is only accorded a relatively quick penance, but Samson stuck to the principle that the character is essentially noble, which allowed his about-face to carry conviction and a consistency in the vehemence with which he repented. He was contrasted throughout (in a play full of doubles, these contrasts abounded) with Astrid Stilma's Amiens. Stilma brought a complexity to the role similar to that accorded to Montaigne - essentially virtuous, but with a temper and aggression that argued for virtue as an active and combative quality rather than a passive state. Much of the post-show discussion focussed on Amiens, who is interestingly established as an honest man at the play's opening and remains throughout a potential mate for Lamira, but who is ultimately left disappointed at the play's conclusion, despite his pleasure in Lamira's choice of Montaigne. I particularly liked Stilma's sense of sadness as she deferred to Montaigne at this final point.

Finally, the two women stood as types of female virtue, but once more interestingly contrasted. Jackie Watson (I hope I've spelled that correctly) played Lady Orleans as patient victim, pushed away by her husband but remaining loyal, and acting throughout as a voice of conscience. Claire Bartram's Lamira, meanwhile, was interestingly independent of male attachments, aloof with the suitors and tender of her servants. She held court throughout and, in some respects, took the Ducal role of the guarantor of order and restitution. It was an interestingly powerful role for a woman, despite the voiced objectification of her by the suitors, and it was fascinating to see her preside over the final scene and put Montaigne through the performance of espousing virtue and condemnation, in a gender-reversal of the conclusion of Shrew.

So, a fun event, even if I can't review it properly! It's a fascinating play, and generated some interesting post-show discussion. Hopefully the publication of a new edition in the Malone Society reprints this year will encourage further production, and with the re-opening of the Swan, it'd be wonderful if the RSC could explore it at a professional level in the near future.

Peter Kirwan : 09 May 2011 11:36 |  Tags: Events Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Too Many Danes

How many Hamlets can we sit through?

In many ways, we're still in the shadow of the RSC and Donmar "celebrity" productions, more recently joined by the National's major stab. It's one of the big institutional shows, and it's had a good run round the main theatres over the last year and a bit.

But then there are the myriad smaller versions I've caught: the RSC Young Person's version, Tom Cornford's reconstruction, the Zimbabwean Kupenga Kwa Hamlet, the National's Prince of Denmark.

You'd think this might mean Hamlet was being exhausted for the time being, but oh no. First up is Northern Broadsides on tour; then the Factory Hamlet is returning to the Rose Kingston. The Young Vic is mounting its version with Michael Sheen, and the RSC YP version is still doing the rounds. And finally, Shakespeare's Globe are doing a touring version.

A serious question arises. However good Hamlet is, does it really warrant this level of public saturation? I love the play, but I do find productions of it (with notable exceptions, such as Two Gents) rather too similar to one another to justify the continuous repetition. It's partly to do with the cultural baggage that Hamlet drags along with it: directors are happy to put slightly different glosses and tones on it, but the essential production remains the same in a way that, say, the similarly huge number of Macbeths avoids through breathtaking variety.

Here's a plea to the directors of all the forthcoming shows (and I know the Factory one will at least manage this): PLEASE temper your reverence to the text with an awareness that we are spoiled for Hamlets. Play with it!

Peter Kirwan : 08 Dec 2010 22:46 |  Tags: Hamlet Thoughts |  Comments (6) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

For the Christmas wishlist

Courtesy of the National Theatre bookshop. You too can pretend you're part of Team Hamlet at The Mousetrap:

Hamlet 'Villain' T-shirt

£15.00

Peter Kirwan : 26 Nov 2010 12:03 |  Tags: Thoughts |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem