Category Archives: 8/10

The Winter’s Tale – August 2009 (1)

8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by David Farr

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Thursday 13th August 2009

This performance was so much better than the one we saw back in June. The dialogue was clearer, the individual performances had more detail, our view was better, and we suspect there was less paper on the floor in the second half. I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing this one again, but now I’m glad I did.

Of course, we’ve also attended various talks, including a chat from Kelly Hunter which was both interesting and revealing about the production and her own choices. She mentioned that she uses the time off stage between her ‘death’ and her arrival as a statue to get her body prepared for staying still, including lowering her heart rate. It certainly pays off, as I was watching her closely tonight and I couldn’t detect any movement at all, which is remarkable. I’ve only seen one other person do so well on stage, and he was a professional street performer who stands still for a living (Don Juan In Soho).

So to any specific differences or extra things we spotted. I watched Leontes closely tonight, and saw how the interaction between Hermione and Polixenes sparked the idea of jealousy in him, and how their subsequent, innocent behaviour added fuel to the fire. Hermione was indeed getting physically close to Polixenes, but it was at her husband’s request, and as Kelly mentioned earlier, her large bump made her sexually unavailable so flirting would have seemed more permissible. I was also conscious that Polixenes himself announces that he’s been there for nine months and it seemed to me that that detail contributed to Leontes’ delusional obsession. The whole scene came across more clearly, and while I enjoyed some of the early humour, I found I was out of sync with most of the audience at times as I wanted to savour the darkness of Leontes’ behaviour rather than laugh at it.

I had no such problems when Paulina takes the baby to the king and gives him a good telling off in the process – plenty to laugh at there. The trial scene was also stronger, and I was starting to get the sniffles at the sad news, first of Mamillius’s death, then Hermione’s (even though I know how the play ends). The bear seemed to work better this time, and Steve remembered the mittens hanging down from the sleeves of the young shepherd – a nice touch, showing us directly that he’s not the sharpest tool in the box.

The second half rattled through much as before but I enjoyed it better. Autolycus seemed to have come on, or perhaps I was just used to this portrayal. His stint as a courtier, manipulating the two shepherds for his own ends, was definitely funnier. The final scenes, with the Bohemia crew arriving en masse in Sicilia, followed by the revelation of the statue and Hermione’s return to life, were all very good, and I noticed a reference to Mamillius which was quickly quashed by Leontes, which answers a point raised during some of the talks, that Hermione and Leontes don’t mention the boy at all during the reunion scene. The play finished as before, with Autolycus left out in the cold. The audience showed its appreciation, and I left the theatre happier than I’d expected to be.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

As You Like It – August 2009

8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Michael Boyd

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Wednesday 12th August 2009

Not the understudies this time. I was a bit worried, as I’d liked several of the performances in the Understudies run, but I was looking forward to seeing Katy Stephens as Rosalind and Maria Gale giving us her Celia – we’d heard them talking about their roles earlier in the day. I needn’t have worried, of course, as the performances were just as good all round, and some were even better. I won’t name too many names, but Forbes Masson was superb as Jacques, especially in his opening scene, whipping us up into a frenzy of audience participation. Katy Stephens had commented on how hard she was finding it to do Rosalind’s intelligence as she tends to come more from the heart, but personally I found the strength of her Rosalind’s emotions helped the part enormously. After all, the woman has just fallen deeply in love, so I’d expect her to be feeling at least as much as she’s thinking, and that came across clearly in tonight’s performance.

I also loved Mariah Gale’s Celia. Her Rosalind was fine, but as Celia she was definitely on a par with Rosalind as a character. Her subtle reactions during Ganymede’s ‘wooing’ scenes with Orlando showed a young woman concerned for her friend and what she was getting herself into, while still being happy for her in having the man she loves present in the forest. She managed to behave girlishly without being silly, and I loved the way she totally joined in Rosalind’s emotional rollercoaster when Orlando fails to turn up the first time. Both actresses have created a very strong relationship between the characters, the closest I’ve seen on stage.

I was also aware from this angle that the Duke was looking at the girls as they applauded Orlando during the wrestling, and it seemed to me that, having discovered who Orlando is, this is what triggers his banishment of Rosalind, as he thinks she’s having too much of an influence on his own daughter. I didn’t spot any significant changes to the staging, although I did see more of some bits, and of course there were more lords both in the court and in the forest. There was an unpleasant smell after the forest feast – presumably something had been spilled while grilling the kebabs – and a couple of Phoebe’s rolls disappeared into the audience, but otherwise all seemed well. In fact, the only minor (and I mean minor!) quibble I had at the start was that Orlando, the youngest son of Sir Roland, looked older than his brother, but I soon got past that, especially as Katy had informed us that Jonjo O’Neill is a great snogger. (On stage, at least, I have no idea what he’s like in real life.)

The rabbit skinning incident drew fewer squeamish responses from the audience this time and I hope we were suitably supportive of the changed epilogue tonight. Katy certainly looked happy at the end, as did the rest of the cast. And so were we.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Death And The King’s Horseman – June 2009

8/10

By Wole Soyinka

Directed by Rufus Norris

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Wednesday 17th June 2009

On seeing this set, Steve thought it was the latest installation by Anthony Gormley. How awkward, I thought, when they’re trying to put on a play at the same time. When I saw it, I was intrigued. The stage floor was dark and shiny, with a broad red stripe curving round the front and more red speckles behind it. The rest of the floor seemed to be shiny black. There were about twelve figures spread across the centre of the stage; I assumed they were examples of Nigerian carving. They were eerie and beautiful at the same time – I don’t know the significance, although they may be a reference to the ancestors, so important in Nigerian culture.

There was a torn slit curving along the back at eye level with a bright white light shining through, and above it hung a long bundle of something indistinct – body parts, clothes? – which was lit from above. The overall effect was of a strange world, where spirits may walk and other values than our own hold sway – a good start.

When the lights went down (a bit late – there were a lot of people who needed to change seats because they found themselves in the wrong place) a trapdoor opened behind the figures and the cast began to emerge. The first, a woman, had a long lighted taper, and she came forward to light several flames round the front of the stage. By this light I could see that the red stuff was small granules, which some of the other women started to brush out of the way with the bundles of sticks they carried. Some of the men were taking the figures off stage, and with the musicians setting a good beat, it wasn’t long before dancing broke out, with one group of young women and another group of young men chasing each other around the stage. Meanwhile, Lucian Msamati (Pericles in the latest RSC production) and Jenny Jules were sitting on stools near the front being whited up. It was a very colourful, dynamic opening, where we could take in the spectacle and some of the details at our leisure.

Then, with all the figures off the stage and most of the actors having left as well, the play proper started with the dancing haystacks. Three of them, and they were dancing with the women. The Elesin (played by Nonso Anozie, the RSC Academy King Lear) came along and played hide and seek with the women amongst the haystacks until a chap in a bright blue outfit turned up, complaining that he’d been left behind. I didn’t follow all of it, but I gathered that the great man, the Elesin, the king’s horseman, was meant to have the services of someone to sing his praises, and this was the blue peacock’s job. I got the impression that the Elesin wanted to get on with chasing the young ladies, but he relented, and told the peacock to follow him. Their relationship reminded me of Shrek and the donkey – it was just as difficult to get peacock man to shut up.

At the village, there’s much rejoicing when the great man turns up, with lots more song and dance. The Mother of the market turns up (Claire Benedict) and is wonderfully gracious and commanding at the same time. She’s treated with great respect by Elesin, and after a bout of mock anger by him, they tog him out in some fresh clothes. During the dancing he spots a lovely young girl and is determined to have her that very night, even though she’s betrothed to another man. He talks it over with the Mother, and persuades her that he needs to unburden himself of his seed and leave it to grow in the earth before he dies that night. The image of the plantain is used a lot for this, the idea that the sap never dries out, that the old stem withers to feed the new sapling, that the cycle of life is continuous. The Mother agrees with him, but warns him not to leave seed that will harm the people. The marriage goes ahead, with the tendrils of the bundle descending over the couple, and then they sneak off to the marriage bed.

Just to explain – the King has died, and his horseman, the Elesin, is meant to die shortly afterwards, to continue serving the king in the afterlife. He’s expected to commit suicide, and this is what he plans to do that night.

Now we get to see the whited up characters, the District Officer and his wife. Mind you, we don’t get to see them at first, because they arrive in two magnificent red costumes with headdresses covering their faces completely, and dancing. Their furniture, veranda and two bushes also arrive dancing – I thought the lampshade in particular looked very fetching. The costumes are for a fancy dress party they’re off to that night and they’re used by the natives to represent the dead, or death. So when the sergeant turns up to report the imminent death of the Elesin, he can hardly get a word out for his fear of the costumes. Eventually the District Officer tells him to write down his information and get back to work.

The District Officer and his wife then try to find out what’s going on with the Elesin, so they question their steward, Joseph. He’s been Christian for a couple of years so isn’t bothered by the costumes. He is bothered by the drums, though, as they’re sending mixed messages. One minute they’re saying the king will die, then they say he’s getting married. With typical colonial insensitivity, the District Officer orders his men to arrest the Elesin to stop him killing himself, then he and his wife head off to the party.

When the two policemen arrive at the village they’re hounded mercilessly by the young women, who use their small brushes to good effect. The Mother arrives, but also chides them for wanting to take the Elesin away from his bride on the wedding night. There’s a lovely section where the women do impressions of the posh white folk (I’d have liked to have heard more of the lines) and the men are eventually sent packing after one of them has his underpants removed by the women.

Now the Elesin arrives, fresh from the consummation. The Mother shows a cloth round all the women to prove that sex has taken place. His wife, now a fully fledged woman herself, is led off, and after the women smear blue paint on his body the Elesin is left alone to die and accompany his king into the world of the ancestors. Interval.

The second half shows us more of the ‘white’ people at the fancy dress party. Some of the women carry yokes on their shoulders so they can carry two other dummy characters, one on each side – I’m not sure if the men were doing this too. All the party people were in historical frocks and outfits, except for the District Officer and his wife. They did some dancing, and then the District Officer was called away to deal with the problem of the Elesin and his intended death. His men catch the Elesin and bring him to the prison to prevent him committing suicide.

Around this time the Elesin’s son turns up. We’d already heard in the first half how the District Officer helped this young man to leave Africa and go to England to train as a doctor. As the eldest son, he would have been expected to carry on his father’s tradition and become horseman to the next chief. With his father not able to do what needs to be done, the young man kills himself instead to keep the cycle of life intact. Hearing this, the Elesin, manacled at the end of a long chain that hangs from the ceiling, also kills himself by wrapping the chain round his neck and strangling himself. It’s a sad ending, but a powerful and moving story, well told.

The experience of seeing black actors whiting up was a good one; at last there was some balance after years of the other way round, and although I must admit it was a bit of a jolt at first, I soon saw the funny side and loved every minute. There were some good pointed comments about colonialism, from a different perspective than we’re used to, and while I’m not keen on ritual killings per se, the overall impression was of a culture in closer touch with nature and the natural cycles than we ‘civilised’ folk often are, and full of life and the enjoyment of it. A very good afternoon’s entertainment, and a tremendous ensemble performance.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Winter’s Tale – June 2009 (2)

8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by David Farr

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Monday 15th June 2009

Having seen the understudy run and enjoyed it, it was always going to be a risk the first time we saw the regular cast in action. Fortunately it wasn’t a disappointment. This was their first Winter’s Tale after a break from it so they may have been a little rusty, but the performance was just as good overall with some gains and some slight losses.

In terms of performance Greg Hicks was a more tortured soul while Kelly Hunter brought out Hermione’s dignity and courage in adversity. Brian Doherty as Autolycus had had much more time to work on the comedy business than Paul Hamilton, so naturally there were more laughs and some things went more smoothly, but I wouldn’t rate the performance much higher than the understudy’s. The light dome fell as it should tonight, landing upright in the middle to form a cradle for the baby Perdita, but otherwise the set seemed just as before. We were sitting further back but at a similar angle, and I couldn’t hear some of the lines so well tonight, but I certainly sniffled as much as I had before and laughed just as much so it was another good evening all round.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Winslow Boy – June 2009

8/10

By Terence Rattigan

Directed by Stephen Unwin

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 12th June 2009

This was another Simon Higlett design, which we’d seen previously at an afternoon talk at the Rose Theatre. The whole set was encompassed by a huge picture frame, set at an angle. The sitting room itself had double doors to the left with a glimpse of the hall through them when they were opened, another door on the right to the library and French windows centre back. The furniture was simple but of good quality, with a sofa to the left of the double doors, a table in the middle and Mr. Winslow’s chair to the right near the front.

No need to go into the story here. The performances were excellent, among the best I’ve seen. The dialogue was wonderfully well delivered and I don’t think I’ve seen another production get so much humour out of the play. In particular, I loved the underplaying of many of the reactions which made each situation funnier. For example, when Ivy inadvertently breaks the news that Master Ronnie has returned home early despite everyone else conspiring to keep Mr. Winslow in the dark, there was very little obvious reaction amongst the characters but we got the point loud and clear (and laughed loud and clear as well).

The whole ensemble performed brilliantly, but I will just mention two of the cast. Timothy West was superb as Mr. Winslow, showing a wide emotional range as well as delivering some wonderful lines to perfection. Adrian Lukis played a more oily version of the QC Sir Robert Morton than I’ve seen before, but it worked very well. I found myself wondering what it’s like to make your first entrance towards the end of the first half,and to build up so quickly to such a magnificent exit line. I didn’t feel he and Kate would be so likely to get together this time round, but you never know.

Finally, I must mention that interrogation scene just before the interval. The interruptions by the family were spot on and I was able to feel their concern along with them. The climax was just as good as ever, and I had to wipe away a tear in the interval. I do like Rattigan’s work.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Winter’s Tale – June 2009 (1)

8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Helen Leblique

Company: RSC Understudies

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Wednesday 3rd June 2009

Another touch of the ‘Smallwoods’ again today. Despite the lack of rehearsal time plus all the other distractions RSC actors are hit with during a summer at Stratford, this was another very good performance, up to a regular professional standard. There may have been a fluffed line or two, but not so’s you’d notice. Nobody was doubling up roles that were on stage at the same time, so the whole thing ran smoothly as for a regular performance. There may have been some cutting – I noticed the song by the shepherd’s love triangle was missing – but we won’t really know until the main event.

The set was very bookish. Two very large bookcases flanked the central doorway at an angle, just back of the thrust. For the opening scene a long dining table ran diagonally across the stage, towards our corner. It was removed after the initial scenes, with a couple of chairs being left behind. One of these disappeared later, so that Leontes had just one chair to sit in during Hermione’s trial. Although our view was blocked more than I would have liked, on the whole they kept the space pretty open throughout.

The gods’ anger with Leontes ran into the storm scene very well. The bookcases toppled forward and hung there, looming over the stage, with their books thrown onto the floor or hanging off the shelves. A lot of individual pieces of paper fell out as well; we kept the one that floated over to land by our feet – extract from Hansard. The central ceiling light, a large dome intended to be glass, fell down as well but bounced and ended up as a dome on the ground. Antigonus left Perdita there, and when the bear rose up at the back entrance allowed himself to be taken instead of the baby (sniffles). The bear looked as if it had been made of books, with bits of brown paper hanging off its coat. The ending of the first half was quite upbeat this time, with the end of the storm and two chaps relatively happy with their lot, especially as they’d just come into a lot of gold.

I thought the paper would be cleared away during the interval, but not a bit. In fact, more was added. By the time I came back in, there was paper all along the front of the stage and a lady stage hand was just sticking some extra sheets down along the walkway to our right. More books had been piled up underneath the bookcases – it gave the musicians somewhere to sit – and the general impression was of a paper-throwing free-for-all. The centre of the stage was relatively clear to give the actors somewhere safe to walk, but even so there were a few swathes of paper that tried to follow some actors around until a fellow cast member put a stop to it.

The opening to the second half had Time being lowered down in the glass dome, this time hung like a large swing seat (the dome, not Time). In the next scene, Polixenes laid the groundwork for Camillo’s little scheme later on by denying him the chance to go back to Sicilia for his final days. Then Autolycus popped out of the centre of the stage and started chatting with the musicians, getting their help when spinning his sob story to Perdita’s ‘brother’. Some trees descended, with one going right into the opening in the middle of the stage, and although it shook a bit when Perdita climbed out of it, just managing to keep her skirt on, it did well enough to suggest the countryside. The country fair went well enough – we got the satyrs and their enormous appendages – and then Florizel goes and pops the question right in front of his Dad, who’s not too pleased. Actually, I noticed a family resemblance straightaway this time. Pops likes dressing up in silly outfits, especially the worst fake beard I’ve seen in a long time, while his son takes delight in donning the naffest yokel’s smock he could find to cover up his posh clothes. Poor dress sense runs in the family, then. Anyway, the young couple head off to Sicilia, hotly pursued by Polixenes and Camillo and with all the other relevant characters in tow as well.

Back in Sicilia, Leontes is still in the grip of grief. Paulina is constantly rubbing more salt into the wound and fending off the suggestions of the other courtiers that Leontes should get married again. He seems to have fully recovered from his bout of insane jealousy, but Paulina is no doubt waiting for the fulfilment of the oracle’s prophecy before reuniting him with his love. I noticed the way that the revelations are reported to us and how moving they are, when perhaps they might not have been so emotive had they been acted out. Then we get the final revelation, of Hermione’s survival, and this worked very well for me. Hermione was amazingly still – she did have a reasonable posture this time – and I felt she wasn’t entirely sure how Leontes would react to finding his wife alive after all this time. More sniffles.

With everyone who is everyone happily reunited, they all head off through the rear doors to have a jolly good knees up, all except Autolycus, who’s shut out. The play ends with him sitting on the central plinth that held Hermione’s ‘statue’ and looking glum.

Although the bookish theme wasn’t always convincing, it didn’t get in the way, so I found myself enjoying this performance more than I expected. The standard of performance was high, and there were some lovely touches. I liked Noma Dumezweni and Kelly Hunter (normally Paulina and Hermione) nearly coming to blows over the young shepherd, and while Autolycus (Paul Hamilton) may have needed a little help on occasion, such as putting out his wares, he did have some nice lines, even inviting the audience to join in his song as well as chatting up the lady playing the violin. James Gale got across Leontes’ jealousy very well – Steve reckoned it had been building up for some time – and I saw a lot more in Hannah Young’s performance as Hermione than I’ve seen before, how she suffers not only for herself and her children but also for her husband, recognising that he’s trapped in his own delusion. When Leontes says to one of his lords that he won’t be happy until she’s dead, I saw the connection with Paulina’s deception, though whether that was cause and effect I’ve no idea.

Simone Saunders was a formidable Paulina, and whetted my appetite for Noma’s version, while the rest of the cast played their numerous parts very well. It was a true ensemble, as all the cast contributed to the understudy run including the ‘stars’, which gives a completely different feel to the performance.

At the end, David Farr came on stage to say a few words and to explain that this had been the public understudies run, and we applauded even more. I’ll try not to have too high an expectation of the regular performance.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Burnt By The Sun – April 2009

8/10

By Peter Flannery from the screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov

Directed by Howard Davies

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Tuesday 21st April 2009

This was a very interesting play and an excellent production. I’ve seen a number of pieces which comment on Stalin’s impact on the Soviet Union but this play gives a different perspective, bridging the gap between Chekov’s soon-to-be-ousted upper classes and the thuggish period of the mass cleansings and executions.

The set for this play was a beautifully detailed veranda and adjacent rooms in a dacha, with tall tree trunks round the sides and back. The dacha rotates to change the scene, and at one point two sets of wooden railings are brought round to screen the house while the action takes place on the front of the stage. I can’t comment on the accuracy of the costumes, but they all seemed fine to me.

The dacha is occupied (I don’t know if ‘owned’ is the right word for these times) by General Kotov, a hero of the Revolution who has married a member of the old upper classes and chosen to live in her family’s dacha. He’s generous enough to allow the remaining members of her family to stay there too, so we have Maroussia’s mother and grandmother, her uncle and the grandmother’s friend all living there as well as Kotov, his wife Maroussia and their daughter Nadia. The only servant we see is Mokhova, whom the older generation tease mercilessly when they’re not reminiscing about the old days and complaining at what they have to put with now. Mind you, it’s the uncle, Vsevolod, who notices the coming storm when he reads a story in the paper about how “confessions are the source of all justice”. Nobody wants to debate the issue with him and he’s constantly distracted by lecherous thoughts, so if it wasn’t for our knowledge of what’s to come I can see that many people at the time would have accepted such an announcement without comment.

A former friend of the family, Mitia, arrives back after many years away. It’s clear there was a relationship between him and Maroussia and at first I thought he’d come back to get her to run off with him. He’s been spending a lot of time abroad, playing the piano and singing to make ends meet apparently, but now he’s back and he and Kotov are immediately at odds. The battle is quite subtle at first, then escalates through storytelling and Mitia taking Maroussia away for private conversations. Finally it emerges that Mitia is in fact an agent of the NKVD come to arrest Kotov and garner evidence to be used at his trial (though why they need evidence when he’s going to confess….). The rest of the family have gone to the zoo, a promised treat for Nadia, and after roughing Kotov up a bit (he resisted arrest – honestly, he did) and shooting a lorry driver who came along looking for Mokhova, they drag Kotov off leaving Mitia behind on the veranda. He uses Kotov’s own pistol to play a losing game of Russian roulette with himself, with the lights going out as the shot is fired.

It’s a powerful ending and a pretty powerful play. Light at the start, it darkens down through all the revelations until the final act of desperation snuffs it out completely. The characters are well drawn and well acted, and there’s a lot of humour as well as emotion. I so wanted Mokhova to get together with the driver, who came to the house originally for directions as he was lost. They seemed so well suited, but he turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time and death was inevitable. The old biddies with their twittering, grumbling and opera singing were very reminiscent of Chekovian characters. It was surprising to see how well they’d survived the initial stages of the Revolution, but then there would have been lots of them and only so much time in the day for executions.

Mitia is an interesting contrast to the other, raincoat clad NKVD men. He’s bright, articulate and full of stories and song, which gives him excellent camouflage in spying out the Russian exiles who might be a danger to Stalin. He clearly feels the loss of everything he cared about when he first left the area, initially to fight in the Revolution and then sent away to spy by none other than Kotov. It was Mitia’s protest that he had to get back to see Maroussia that led Kotov to investigate this woman, fall in love with and marry her, so Mitia’s grudge is easy to understand. His despair at what he has to do to keep his bosses happy is evident, and his final act completely at one with his personality and situation. Rory Kinnear’s performance was superb in this role, showing off his many talents to perfection.

Holding all of this together is Ciaran Hinds’ Kotov. A man of the people, he’s proud of having achieved so much in his life entirely on merit. He’s hard but not completely ruthless; believing that the victory has been won, he’s inclined to relax and enjoy life a little. He doesn’t seem to be aware of the danger he’s in immediately although he’s certainly suspicious of Mitia’s arrival. But then, he knows the sort of work Mitia’s been doing, so no wonder. He comes across as a loving father and a generally decent man, though prepared to take tough decisions when he has to. It’s sad to see him brought down by Stalin’s paranoia but that’s how it was. Anyone who was popular or successful was a threat and had to go.

There was a fair bit of humour during the play but I’ll just mention two bits here. The first happened in the opening scene when Kotov is roused by neighbours complaining that there are tanks in the fields of wheat. Kotov uses his rank to get them removed and the change in attitude of the two young soldiers is very entertaining. At first they’re throwing their weight around, thinking they’re dealing with peasants (or comrade peasants) but when they realise who they’re talking to, they turn into simpering schoolgirls and are only too happy to put him through to their commander. In relating Kotov’s instructions, one soldier translates “piss off” as “go away”, which also got a good laugh.

The second occasion was the singing near the end when the family is heading off to the zoo. The NKVD men have arrived, and to provide a cover story Mitia introduces them as his colleagues. The family assume that means they’re musicians with the Moscow Philharmonic, and from the expressions on their faces these blokes wouldn’t know one end of a bassoon from another. Still, they end up joining in a chorus or two of Evening Bells, and one chap even sounds quite good. It’s a nice bit of humour before the unpleasant ending.

Although I’ve mentioned a few of the actors by name, all the performances were excellent. I liked the set very much, although the veranda rail was in the way for a lot of the breakfast scene, cutting off the actors’ mouths, which was a bit irritating. It was well worth seeing, and I hope to catch it again sometime.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Measure For Measure – March 2009

8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Jamie Glover

Company: Theatre Royal Plymouth

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Tuesday 24th March 2009

This was the first Shakespeare play directed by Jamie Glover, and it’s a pretty good start to this phase of his career. Also present tonight were his mum and dad (Isla Blair and Julian Glover), Penelope Keith, Charles Kay and Greg Doran, whom Steve spotted giving someone a big hug afterwards – presumably young Jamie. So it must have been a pretty nerve-wracking first night at Guildford for everyone and I think they handled it very well.

The set consisted of a brick wall along the back with an entrance either side, topped with a row of wooden shutters which could be opened a number of ways to show the windows and create the different locations. There were two pillars on each side of the stage and a plain, flagged floor. Desks, chairs, etc. were brought on as needed, but sparingly. The costumes were Victorian and the whole effect was very sombre, with only the prostitute’s clothes providing a splash of colour. The walls even ran with water to make the place look dank and unpleasant. The lighting worked very well to change the location, although occasionally a character’s face would be in shadow when they were talking with someone else, which hopefully they can correct.

Alistair McGowan was playing the Duke and opened the play with what seemed like a melodramatic style, lurking mysteriously by the pillars and then starting with fright when his court appeared. His tendency to wave his arms around wasn’t the worst I’ve seen and although I would prefer him to rein that back a bit, I soon got used to his style and started to enjoy the performance. His animation also emphasised the stillness and lack of expression of Angelo, which is a useful point to make.

I found the dialogue in the opening scenes a bit brisk for easy understanding, but with Lucio’s arrival at the nunnery it calmed down and I found I was very keen to listen as the story unfolded. That made the somewhat excessive amount of coughing a bit annoying, and I may have rated this performance even higher if it hadn’t been for those distractions which mainly seemed to come from the younger audience members. Too much TV, not enough theatre going perhaps.

Anyway, the story rattled on at a good pace (the whole performance came in at just over two and a half hours, including interval) and I found I heard many of the lines afresh tonight. The comments about the dowries came across clearly, which made me think that if that society hadn’t put such an emphasis on the commercial aspects of marriage there wouldn’t have been such a need for fornication in the first place. Or at least it would have been the legitimate kind, although I also agree with Pompey that it’s a “vice” that will never be stamped out till humanity has left the planet for good.

The scene with Pompey, Froth and Elbow in front of the judges was the best I’ve ever seen. We’re fond of Robert Goodale anyway, and his rendition of a Dogberry type constable was absolutely perfect. I could totally believe that he thought he was saying the right word every time while committing some wonderfully funny verbal faux pas. Froth was a straightforward dimwit with no attempt made to pad his character out excessively, and Pompey got his lines across really well all through the play. I also liked the fact that, with limited numbers, Elbow is frequently on stage as one of the officers, even if he doesn’t get any extra lines.

From reading the program notes I was very aware that this play was written during the reign of James VI and I, and it seems to be designed to pander to the king’s interest in theology. It’s as if Shakespeare has expanded the second half of The Merchant Of Venice, adding a lot more detail to the arguments and changing the context to a sexual rather than a religious or financial one. With this production, I found I could hear the debate raging very clearly, and that more than anything else hooked me and kept me engrossed. There wasn’t such a focus on the psychological elements of the characters and I felt the balance was just about right. The personal aspects, particularly with Isabella, were an important part of the debate – these characters had to make these points because of their situation – and I wanted very much to know how it would turn out. Which is bizarre, as I know, or thought I knew this play pretty well. That’s why we keep coming back, of course.

Emma Lowndes as Isabella gave a very complete performance. Not as stiff as some Isabellas at the start, she was still fairly upright and virginal. She seemed to find her voice and her emotions in pleading her brother’s case with Angelo, and after all she’d been through I felt she’d grown up a lot and seen aspects of life that she would never have encountered if she’d shut herself away in a nunnery. At the end she was left on stage, having gone through the emotional upheaval of having lost her brother only to find him again and then the Duke’s unbelievably clumsy proposal, and I could see she would be in emotional turmoil, not knowing what to do next. No wonder she doesn’t say anything. The Duke returns to wait at the door for her and as the lights go down she appears to be getting ready to get up and make her move, but which way will she go? With him, or back off to the cloister? It’s a nice touch to leave the matter undecided, and I suspect that she might need time to make a decision herself.

Jason Merrells as Angelo gave us all of that character’s uprightness followed by the descent into viciousness, pretty clearly. He had a wonderful guilty shiftiness in the final scene, forcing a false smile and then showing his nasty temper when given a chance to complete the apparent cover-up of his fall from grace. I still feel Mariana’s got her work cut out making a half-way decent man out of the scraps she’s left with at the end, but redemption is everything in this play so she’ll probably manage it.

I’m coming to the tentative conclusion that Shakespeare wanted his plays to end happily for some reason (popular appeal, perhaps?) and didn’t care about the ‘realities’ of the situation he’d left his characters in as much as we seem to. For example, Mariana is married to Angelo, a man who’d repudiated her and was intending to semi-rape another woman, Olivia (Twelfth Night) is married to Sebastian, a man she hardly knows but has mistaken for his disguised twin sister, etc. I suspect if he came back today he’d be amazed and hopefully amused at the amount of analysis that had been done on perfectly straightforward plays, even on misprints, although he might be a bit annoyed to find they were out of copyright and he was no longer making money on them.

All the other performances were fine (nice to see George Anton on stage again) and Lucio (Patrick Kennedy) was in fine form, irritating the Duke beautifully. I was having some sniffle moments in the final scene – Mariana acknowledging her husband, Isabella choosing to plead for Angelo’s life – and despite the moving nature of these events, Shakespeare, and the cast it must be said, did a fine job turning immediately to humour in the form of Lucio’s interruptions without spoiling my involvement in the play. Life’s like that. It only remains to mention Clifford Rose as Escalus doing a fine job as usual, and I’m almost done.

An excellent production all round, shame about the audience, and we look forward to more opportunities to see work from this source (and perhaps even get down to the West Country to experience it in situ).

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Julius Caesar – March 2009

8/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Andrew Hilton

Company: SATTF

Venue: Tobacco Factory

Date: Thursday 19th March 2009

Here we are, back at the Tobacco Factory, and it feels a longer gap than just a year. The place is much the same but the entrance to the auditorium has been moved. We now enter via the southwest corner, which is more straightforward and may help the ventilation(?). The only other set dressing is hexagonal grilles round the base of each pillar. Now for the play.

The Elizabethan costumes reminded me of the significance of this play in Shakespeare’s day – discussing politics publicly was a dangerous, but important part of that society. The fact that the two patricians at the start are dressed in the sombre black I associate with the Puritans adds to the effect; they are, after all, about to spoil the working men’s fun. The cobbler was entertaining, and I understood many more of his references about mending soles (souls) and how provocative such comments could have been.

Mark Anthony was a little difficult to understand at first, partly the grief and partly something strange in his accent that I haven’t been able to pin down yet. He was much better in the second half. I especially liked the way the rabble (all six of them) drowned out the start of Mark Anthony’s famous speech. “Friends, Romans, countrymen” was completely lost in the hubbub, and it took till “The evil that men do lives after them” before I could hear what he was saying. A little cowardly, perhaps? Or just showing how difficult his task was after Brutus had convinced the populace that Caesar had deserved to die? I think the latter, and here Mark Anthony did his job so well that he had to stop the riot twice before he finally unleashed the frenzied mob on Rome.

I noticed how in this production, the conspirators got things badly wrong in the first half. They assumed that Caesar was the problem, and yet it became clear that the people were the real source of Caesar’s power. Even though they were being manipulated, they could make or break the political careers of the ‘ruling’ classes. There was also an emphasis on the conspirators’ perception of their assassination as reducing the amount of time for Caesar to fear death. Yet Caesar had made it clear that he didn’t fear death, or anything else for that matter. Did the man protest too much, or was he being accurate? (Personally, I wouldn’t believe any of this shower if they told me the sky was blue on a sunny day.)

These ironies and contrasts were brought out throughout the performance. Calpurnia is barren (a dreadful thing for a Roman wife) while Portia is pregnant. Caesar is surrounded by false friends, while Brutus can hardly find anyone to help him die. Brutus accuses Caesar of putting the Republic at risk through wanting to be king, yet ends up acting so autocratically that he might as well have put a crown on his own head. His behaviour before the battle was so authoritarian that despite Brutus and Cassius’ strong friendship, it was clear the Republicans were doomed.

The Empire, however, was in much stronger fettle, even with the glaringly obvious fault lines. Lepidus is indeed a feeble makeweight, whom Anthony derides at great length while Octavius watches and listens. It dawned on me that Anthony is inadvertently talking about the way Octavius sees him, a bit like a fox telling a crocodile about the silly bunny he’s going to have for his lunch, not realising the crocodile is eyeing him up for dinner. At the end, with Brutus to bury, Octavius bagsies the body – from Anthony’s reaction he’s not happy with that, and is beginning to realise what a shrewd political animal he’s up against – and while Octavius leaves in one direction, Anthony, looking grim, heads off in another. All is not well in paradise.

Calpurnia was a little weak, I thought, but the other performances were good, with all the main characters being strong. Brutus’ deception when he denies knowing of Portia’s death struck me as a way of showing his strength to his generals, something Cassius understands although he doubts his own ability to carry it off so well.

The interval was taken after the assassination, to get the body off and the stage cleaned up. Something, a scabbard probably, flew into the audience as the conspirators made for Caesar – Steve headed it behind him (over ‘ere son, on me ‘ead), and it was retrieved during the interval.

Another good performance from SATTF, though not as strong as last year’s. We’re booked for Antony and Cleopatra in a few weeks, so it will be interesting to see how these productions relate to each other.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

England People Very Nice – March 2009

8/10

By Richard Bean

Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Tuesday 3rd March 2009

Set: dominating the stage at the start is a big rectangular block of boards. Actually, it’s a double-decker set of doors, with six across the top, and the two on the right hand side of the bottom row turned horizontal. I expected something like the top one opening up to become a stall or some such, and I wasn’t far off. In front of these doors there’s a bigger raised area of floorboards. To the right of that and round the front are the wide black floorboards, while on the left the stage seems to be bare – I could see the line of the revolve quite clearly.

Behind the doors, many of which are open at the start, a mesh fence spreads across the stage from wing to wing, with two openings, one on each side. Through the fence and the open doors we can see rails of clothes, presumably costumes, and possibly some of the props. A set of stairs runs up behind the doors. There’s a drum kit to the right of the doors and some other musical instruments in that corner, and a red plastic chair, standard issue, centre stage. The whole effect is stripped down, as if the production is laying something bare.

Before the start, the cast gradually drift onto the rear of the stage, though one chap does come and sit on the red plastic chair. He’s working on his laptop and then he puts it aside and looks at some papers – photos perhaps, or artwork. Then there’s an announcement, telling the cast to assemble on stage, and we’re into the action for real.

Or not, as it happens. The play uses a framing device; all these people are at a detention centre, either working there or potential immigrants. They’ve been devising a play about the English response to successive waves of immigrants since the Romans, and they’re just about to give us their dress rehearsal. First though, the director, Philippa, gives some notes, and this gives us a chance to meet some of the “real” characters, as well as prepping us very nicely for some of the jokes, particularly the “fucking _____” gag, which worked particularly well, and the “wagon” joke, which only worked because it didn’t.

The director’s priceless pearls are regularly interrupted by an annoying man who turns out to be a Palestinian, Taher. He’s unpopular with everyone, and is banned from mentioning Israel – I sensed the backstory involved a lot of aggravation during the rehearsal process. Despite the interruptions, and the shock discovery that the “Imam” has shaved off his beard the night before the performance (he stuck it all back together to make a fake one), the dress rehearsal goes ahead as planned.

It’s at this point that the multimedia aspect of the production becomes apparent. We’ve been told that Elmar, the chap with the laptop, has done some animations for their play (he regularly won a silver something-or-other in Azerbaijan), and these are projected onto the block of doors and the back wall throughout the play to add to the story. The first section deals with the original Brits, living their primitive lives, and being taken over by the Romans, who kill the man and ravish the woman (they didn’t have a lot of original Brits to work with). Then the Roman soldiers are killed by the Angles and Saxons, and it’s all much the same thing. This is all done to a jolly song, while the animation shows these successive invaders running up behind the previous lot, and then the next lot of actors come on to hew and slash, before shagging the woman. As the dead bodies mount up, the animation shows them filling the screen. We both liked this use of multimedia from the word go, as it didn’t distract from the performance at all, just gave it a more immediate effect as well as adding to the humour.

This quick series of invaders slows right down when a town crier announces from the upper storey that the French king has kicked the Protestants out of his kingdom, so there will be a lot of “frogs” coming London’s way. As the Huguenots are skilled cloth manufacturers, the local weavers are soon up in arms about the detrimental effect they’re having on local workers, while the French build themselves a church, and plan to civilise the English. This church, and the subsequent synagogue and mosque, are drawn in animation, with the appropriate symbol appearing physically above the roof. There’s the beginning of an eternal love story which echoes through the ages when Norfolk Danny, a silk weaver in Spitalfields, is persuaded to give shelter to a Frenchwoman, Camille, and her brother, also a weaver. The situation gets ugly when the weavers guild find this out, and when they interrupt Danny’s coitus to smash his loom, he stabs one of the men who attacks Camille, leading to his eventual hanging (and the “wagon” joke). This was shown on the screens behind, a good use of the film media.

Meanwhile, another set of characters have been introduced to us who will also echo down the years. The lower horizontal door slid forwards and becomes a bar, a table and chairs are brought on to the left of the stage, and we’re in the generic pub, with Fred Ridgeway as the landlord Laurie, Sophie Stanton as the barmaid Ida, and Trevor Laird as the pub regular Rennie, latterly from Barbados. Ida is the source of the “fucking ______” jokes, with the blank being filled with “frogs”, “Micks”, “yids” and a few other derogatory terms. The humour was in Sophie’s delivery of the lines (excellent), especially in the second half, when she holds a long pause after the “fucking”, gets the laugh anyway, and then compounds it by adding “yanks”. If we hadn’t guessed before, we knew at that point that we were up to the Second World War.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This first time it’s the “frogs” she’s upset about. Rennie tells us a number of French folk have moved in above him, and provides the insider’s view of life with the French (too unsavoury to repeat here). He’s an unlucky fellow, because the same thing happens when the Irish turn up (keep pigs), the Jews, and the Asians. (The Irish don’t build their own church, by the way; they have to worship in secret at “art appreciation classes”.)

Anyway, things come to a head when war breaks out between Britain and France. The leader of the French community changes his accent and starts talking colloquial English, and then I think they all move to Redbridge(?), leaving room for the new incomers, the Irish (but I might have got that wrong).

When the Irish arrive, Ida is now the granddaughter of a French immigrant, and we get to see how these groups have assimilated themselves, and laugh at the funny side. Later on, this same point is made about the other groups, but I think it came across most strongly this first time, possibly because that early tranche of immigrants was too long ago for anyone to get upset about now, unlike some of the later groups. The cycles repeat themselves, with the previous set of immigrants complaining about the new lot, and the only variation I could see was that the English Jews were equally as unhappy about the Jewish incomers as the non-Jewish residents.

The final group are the Muslims, and here the tension rises a bit as some of the Muslim community become militant, and start aggressively attacking the parts of British culture they don’t like (most of it, from what I could see). The play does show that not all Muslims take this hard-line stance; there are clear references to the Wahibi sect as the cause of the problem, and the Imam who arrives to take over from his more tolerant predecessor has two hooks for hands. This is the final wave of immigration they can show, and brings us up-to-date, with a pair of twins being born to a Pakistani man and a British woman from an adulterous relationship. The idea of the children, especially the boy, being our hope for the future was floated, but couldn’t be resolved within the scope of this piece.

The overall idea of the play within the play was that love conquers all, and can bring disparate and even warring communities together. Despite this happy ending, the context play ends with the guard handing out letters to the immigrants to tell them if they’ve made it into Britain. Some do, some don’t, and some don’t get a letter. This had a sobering effect, and I found myself, in the final moment, recognising that the director can walk out of the “detention centre” and go wherever she likes, while even those who have been accepted by Immigration will be limited in what they can do to begin with. Those turned down have few, if any, choices.

I didn’t find the play particularly racist, but then I don’t have the sensibilities of some people or groups, nor a readiness to take offence. I don’t know how I would have reacted to jokes about the Scots or Welsh, mind you. I do think this play had a specific scope – to show the effects of immigration on English culture and society over a long period, using a particular area, Spitalfields, to focus the drama, and then widening the focus to show us the reality of today. I appreciated the humour, and I suspect some of the critics were taking it (and themselves?) too seriously, as some folk did with Till Death Do Us Part, thinking that Alf Garnett was speaking up for the racists when he was actually a figure of fun. I’m certainly happier that plays like this can be staged, especially at such a high-profile venue, and I only wish more writers with different experiences and points of view would take up the challenge of showing us these subjects from another perspective. We can only hope.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me