Category Archives: Absurd/Surreal

Black Comedy – July 2014

Preview Performance

Experience: 7/10

By Peter Shaffer

Directed by Jamie Glover

(Paired with Miss Julie)

Venue: Minerva Theatre

Date: Monday 7th July 2014

We stayed in the Minerva for the interval after Miss Julie to see the set being changed. There was a lot to do; they had to move from the kitchen of a country estate in 19th century Sweden to an impecunious artist’s flat in 1960s London in fifteen minutes. The existing set was cleared, with some of the back wall sections being turned around to provide additional wall parts for the new set. The biggest item they brought on was a large piece of construction which had the bedroom upstairs and a screened off studio area underneath; getting this into the right position took some time. With that placed correctly, the rest of the set could be sorted out, which involved placing lots of chairs, a patchwork of rugs, the stairs up to the bedroom and many paintings plus a tree-like sculpture. The door was in the same place as before, but that was the only similarity to the previous set which I could spot. There was also a telephone on the floor on the left side of the stage, a chaise centre back and a wooden block at the very front of the stage on which stood a brightly-coloured Buddha statue.

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Candide – September 2013

Experience: 3/10

By Mark Ravenhill

Directed by Lyndsey Turner

Venue: Swan Theatre

Date: Friday 6th September 2013

Well that’s one and three-quarter hours of my life I’ll never get back again. As I was on the aisle for this one (left side) I did think of nipping out after the first scene (and then after the second, then during the third, the fourth and even the fifth) but I always have that nagging worry that the evening will suddenly take off and I’ll have missed the good bits. I needn’t have worried tonight; apart from some so-so laughs there was nothing to miss, and an hour or so in the bar waiting for Steve would have been much more entertaining.

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The Hothouse – July 2013

Experience: 7/10

By Harold Pinter

Directed by Jamie Lloyd

Venue: Trafalgar Studio 1

Date: Thursday 18th July 2013

The heat definitely affected my enjoyment today, as the Trafalgar Studios simply don’t have air conditioning worth the name. And having experienced cinemas in Hong Kong where we had to wear a cardigan indoors because of the chill, there’s no excuse for the sort of heat we had to endure today. Of course, if it was difficult for us it must have been hell for the actors, especially with those suits, but at least they could get off stage from time to time to cool down, and with only forty-five minutes each way it was just bearable.

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The Captain of Köpenick – April 2013

Experience: 7/10

By Carl Zuckmayer, new English version by Ron Hutchinson

Directed by Adrian Noble

Venue: Olivier Theatre

Date: Wednesday 3rd April 2013

I wasn’t sure what this would be like, but as we’ll be seeing Arturo Ui again this year at Chichester, this seemed like a good play to contrast with it. They started on an empty stage with a black background which had a working clock projected onto it; according to this clock the performance began at ten to seven. Lots of prisoners came on stage and formed up into rows, singing a hymn. There was some dialogue at this point, but the music was too loud for us to make out much of it. At the end of the song, two of the prisoners were due for release, but there was a problem. One of the prisoners had the correct papers but the other, Voigt, had none.  There followed some amusing exchanges as the Prison Director didn’t want to free Voigt until he got his papers but the guard refused to take him back as there weren’t any papers authorising his return to prison. Eventually the Director was distracted by memories of his time in battle, and Voigt was released into the care of Kalle, the other prisoner being released and Voigt’s friend.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It ) – August 2012

2/10

By Dmitry Krymov, loosely based on some elements of Shakespeare’s play

Directed by Dmitry Krymov

Company: Chekov International Theatre Festival/Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory/School of Dramatic Art Theatre

Venue: RST

Date: Wednesday 15th August 2012

For lovers of this director’s work, this was a joy, but it certainly won’t persuade me to sample the rest of his repertoire. The performers were all brilliant at what they do, and there were some fun moments during the hour and forty minutes it took to get through (plus a cute little dog running around on stage), but the rest just dragged, and I was surprisingly unmoved by the deaths of the two lovers at the end. For once, I didn’t even have the heart to pretend to applaud, apart from the ballet dancers. Fortunately the regular fans more than made up for my lack of enthusiasm, and gave them a standing ovation.

Despite the title, this was not A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the director found he could only relate to the mechanicals in this play, so all we got was their presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe. Nothing else – no Duke, no lovers, no fairies. Before the start, the stage had wooden flooring covered with a large plastic sheet. The backs of the chairs near the stage had cloth covers too, and Steve soon realised that water was likely to be involved.

We sat by the right hand walkway, only this time it had been removed and stairs put in (similar on the other side). Along the length of these stairs lay a huge tree trunk, with the base resting on one of the steps up to the stage. Several of the mechanicals were guarding it and chatting to members of the audience as well. Above the central aisle hung a huge chandelier, swathed in white cloth and hanging quite low. At the back of the thrust on both sides were two makeshift boxes, and I assumed these would be for the onstage audience. They had assorted chairs, and were marked off with planks of wood resting on piles of bricks or whatever else was around. The areas of the circle above them were also sectioned off, and I could see colourful throws spread on the backs of the seats. At the very back was a sheet, but it didn’t come into use till later, and apart from that I think the stage was bare.

With the house lights still up – they were regularly on for the audience participation sections – the action began. The mechanicals started talking loudly amongst themselves, and lifting up the tree trunk they carried it onto the stage. Others came along with branches, and because the items were so big, they filled the stage and even brushed the audience as the mechanicals swung them around trying to sort them out. There was also a small dog, a terrier, which ran down the tree trunk and around the stage, getting to know the audience.

The tree and its branches disappeared off the back, and then a fountain was brought on down the same aisle, with water pouring out of it intermittently on either side. We didn’t get splashed much in the end, and the performers were quick to get the buckets under the flow (and towels were handed out immediately afterwards). The fountain was also taken off at the back, and neither tree nor fountain was seen again, although the sheet at the back had some smudgy markings that may have been intended to represent leaves. The dog stayed behind, and positioned itself centre back, while a screen came down on which was projected a long-winded description of the mechanicals argument. Apparently they had been discussing Shakespearean verse styles, and there appeared to be lots of in-jokes about the director’s wife; the fans were laughing, but apart from some lines I didn’t find it particularly funny. The dog sat up a few times during this, and again the fans thought this was hilarious. I noticed the dog had something attached to its collar – possibly to give it instructions remotely?

I’m not sure of the exact order of events – always a problem with non-textual business – but fairly soon the mechanicals came on stage half-dressed and proceeded to put on their evening clothes. They were in a tight group in the centre of the stage, and when they were done they formed up in rows and waited. At one point a woman tried to push her way to the front, but couldn’t get through. Then the on-stage audience arrived. There were lots of them, including two young girls, and they took a long, long time to get on stage, look around, and then take their seats. There was some fun as a stroppy older woman character, who was carrying a bunch of flowers, used it to brush wood shavings off the plank at the front of their box; this was when I realised there were wood shavings on all their chairs, indicating the rough and ready nature of the mechanicals’ performance. The way that woman cleared the chairs was good fun, even if it went on far too long. Then there was the inevitable wrecking of the boxes themselves, with people falling into the stalls and planks of wood landing on the stage. It was all very predictable and took many minutes to sort out, and it was probably at this point that I first considered leaving before I wasted too much of my precious time.

After they were seated, the on-stage audience were all given champagne to drink (yawn), and then there were several minutes of ringing phones to sort out. Later in the performance, one chap took a call on his mobile and we saw the dialogue come up on the surtitles. He told someone he was in Stratford (funny) and was paying a fortune for international roaming! (even funnier) He had several goes at switching his phone off before the ‘action’ continued.

Back at the start, the on-stage audience were seated, refreshed, and phone-free, so they waited for the performance to begin, as did we. And we waited. And we waited. I found myself thinking that Communism had given the Russian people great patience – all that queuing for bread, perhaps. Then the performer front right whispered something to the chap next to him, and it was passed back, one to another. When the surtitles started up, we learned that the chap who plays the lion was being told not to pare his nails (he didn’t, he informed us).

One of the performers came to the front and turned to face the group on the stage. He delivered an approximation of Peter Quince’s wonderful prologue, conveying the sense of awkwardness and confusion beautifully. He wanted the audience on stage to know that their performance wasn’t ready yet, but as they hadn’t seen it before they wouldn’t know that. They weren’t intending to give the audience any enjoyment, though if they did enjoy it that was fine. They just wanted to give a good performance. They pushed some of these surtitles through so fast that I could only just catch the sense of the last one; something about enjoying the fact that we realised the performance wasn’t ready. Whatever the punch line, the rest of the speech was funny, and for once the time they took was worth it. I even started to enjoy myself. But it wasn’t to last.

After the speech and whispering (they may have happened the other way round) one of the actors fell flat on his face, passing out from all that waiting. The others picked him up, and he ran back as if to go off stage to deal with his bloody nose, but then he stopped and came back to the front to explain what they were doing. They had obtained a copy of a very ancient text from a friend who was working for the RSC, or possibly from the KGB vaults, and had learned that Pyramus and Thisbe were real people and that theirs was the first true love story. Forget Adam and Eve – who else could they fall in love with? – this was the real thing, and all other lovers’ stories sprang from them. The list was long, and there were several laughs along the way. But each love story has a THING, the THING that caused Eve to eat the apple, etc. The THING in Pyramus and Thisbe’s case was a LION. They had decided to strip the Pyramus and Thisbe story down to the essentials and were going to present that to us.

I think the group broke up after this bit, and then two large black bags were carried onto the stage and placed on either side. The one on the left turned out to be Pyramus’s puppet, while Thisbe’s was on the right. They spent a lot of time setting up Pyramus; the puppet was at least ten feet tall, with the performers just able to walk under his legs. He had two large hands, one of which could actually grasp things, and the face stuck to his head looked like an icon’s face, a young one at that, and quite good looking. They played with the idea that the puppet was difficult to control, having it fall over a couple of times by the boxes, and then brought it over to the front of the stage where it teetered on the brink for a few moments. As it was just by us, I spotted the puppet’s reaction to not falling on top of the audience – he wiped his hand across his brow and then flicked it to one side. I found it amusing, but I suspect the gloomy lighting hid it from the fans in the audience as there was no response from them. Mind you, there was plenty going on with all the mechanicals rushing around, the dog scampering here and there, and occasional interruptions from the on-stage audience, particularly the outspoken older lady who’d been cleaning the seats with her flowers. When they did interrupt, the performers stopped what they were doing and waited patiently for them to finish.

Once they had Pyramus up and walking, he went over to the circle on the left side and held out his hand to the people there. The woman who was with the children up there was frightened, and swatted at his hand with her bunch of flowers to make him go away. The older girl realised what was wanted, took the flowers and gave the bunch to the puppet, who grasped them in his hand. Then the stroppy one on the other side took a rose out of her bouquet and demanded that Pyramus pick that up as well. This was when the balancing acts came to the fore. The Shustov brothers, highly regarded acrobats in Russia (and I wouldn’t disagree with that assessment) did a couple of routines to hand Pyramus extra flowers to put in his bouquet. To give him the rose, they first had to get one of them on the other’s shoulders, and this took a few goes, as the upper one kept falling over the lower one and landing on the stage. Once they were balanced, someone handed the top guy the rose (flicked up from another acrobat’s foot?) and he held it out as Pyramus came over and took it in his right hand, then moved it over and slotted it into the bouquet he was holding in his left hand. It was impressive work for a puppet. To cap all this, the brothers then went into reverse, as it were, and handed Pyramus another colourful bunch of flowers with one balanced on the other’s head, and the flowers held in his outstretched foot. It was impressive, I’m sure, but as my view was blocked almost entirely for this bit I had to guess at what was going on from the audience’s reactions. They did take a break during this section – don’t remember if it was another audience interruption or not – and I could see the top brother walk his way down the wall and rest there, at right angles to the lower brother, while whatever else was going on was completed. Pyramus added these flowers to the bouquet with equal dexterity, and to much applause.

There was another balancing act as well, but neither of us can remember what was given to Pyramus by this means. This time it was Boris Opletaev (as far as I can tell from the pictures in the program) who stacked several cylinders, with short wide ones being placed rim down and longer narrow ones placed across them on their side and oriented in different directions. When he placed a board on top of these, we could see that the stack rolled every which way, and yet he stepped up onto it, steadying himself with a hand on a nearby shoulder, and stood there, rocking relatively gently, to do whatever this bit required. It was an impressive performance – they all were – and a momentary relief from the monotony.

With Pyramus good to go, we only needed Thisbe, so her bag was unpacked too. The woman who had been hanging around at the start turned out to be Thisbe’s voice; she and one of the men sang beautifully to convey the characters’ feelings, sometimes just ‘ah’ sounds, sometimes songs in German. Thisbe herself was as tall as Pyramus, and made out of odds and ends as he was. She had a white skirt, two breasts, and a doll’s head, large size, and her mouth worked when she was talking. We didn’t get any surtitles for the songs, but her “Nein” in response to Pyramus’s declaration of love was pretty straightforward. She said ‘no’ a few times, and Pyramus had to flaunt his shapely leg before she would sit down with him and chat.

Once seated towards the back of the stage, the wooing could proceed in earnest. First the food. Pyramus obviously likes his women well fed, so he gave her a peach, then a pair of cherries, then a pineapple, still with its spiky top. It was impressive enough the way he held out his hand, grasped the fruit which was put into it, then transferred it round to Thisbe’s mouth. She was a girl with a good appetite, too; her head had been changed during the move to the back of the stage, and now she had a head which flipped back at mouth level so she could swallow large fruits whole, which was very funny. She did stop Pyramus when it came to the pineapple though; instead, she took the fruit herself and put it in her own mouth, leaving a bit of the top sticking out, also funny.

For entertainment, the dog act came forward, and the lovely little chap (I’m talking about the dog) did some fun tricks, including a back flip. With the foreplay done, Pyramus needed some help to get ready for the next stage. Accompanied by many sound effects, his metal crotch panel was unscrewed and a large penis thrust through the gap. It was lying on the floor, and a pump had been brought on to get it upright, when the on-stage audience started to protest about the appropriateness of such things when there were children present. To be fair, it was mainly the old lady, but even so they had to interrupt the coitus, and a deflated Pyramus left the stage through the back curtain.

With Thisbe left alone, the lion made his appearance. Another black bag had been brought on and left near the front. Not as big as the others, it was still large enough to have a person inside it, so I wasn’t surprised when the lion leapt out. Don’t know who played him, but it was a lovely costume, with claws on the knees as well as the hands, a shaggy mane and a long tail. One chap held the tail and used it to drag the lion back when needed – I assume it would be too difficult to move backwards in that costume – and two other men attached bat wings to the lion’s back and held them open, flapping them to suggest a devil-lion. As they stood in front of me throughout this scene I had to rely on my knowledge of the story to guess what was happening. After each lunge of the lion towards Thisbe, I did see one chap come forward and place strips of white cloth and red ribbon around the centre of the stage, obviously representing the bloody cloth that Pyramus will find later. At some point, possibly before the lion left the stage, the stroppy old woman interrupted the action to tell a long-winded story about a lion that had destroyed a town, some of which was quite funny.

After several lunges at Thisbe, the lion left the stage. Thisbe was in a terrible state. She was so terrified that she peed in a basin for a very long time. Then she too left the stage, and they used a lovely piece of staging to create the moonshine. A rope of some reflective or glowing material was laid out in a wavy pattern on the stage further back from most of the bloody strips of cloth. Behind the sheet, a wobbly moon rose, and as it did so, the rope lit up, shining in the moonlight. It was a beautiful effect.

Pyramus returned to discover the bloody strips of cloth by this light, and he went to pieces at this point, literally. His arms came off and danced around towards the front of the stage, while his head came off and turned around towards the back. When it turned back again, his face had aged – a good trick – and as this happened twice he ended up with what looked like a bearded Christ face. He stabbed himself through the stomach and fell forward, dead or dying.

Thisbe returned accompanied by four swans carried by four of the performers. The swans had red beaks which looked suspiciously like dildos to me, and the rest of the swan was made of a sheet wrapped round and round for the neck and bundled together for the body. While the woman on stage had normally sung for Thisbe, I think it was the woman in the circle who now sang, and she had a lovely contralto voice, deep and rich. Thisbe saw Pyramus, and after a short lamentation she also fell on top of him, with the swans grouped round them, bobbing their heads. Pyramus raised his head briefly when Thisbe arrived, but it sank back down again quickly, and finally the show was over. Or was it? There was no way of telling with this production.

The on-stage audience were offered the option of an epilogue or a dance, and the old lady was very emphatic that they do the dance. Being Russian, this naturally meant ballet, and four dancers in tutus came to the front of the stage. As the music for the Dance of the Cygnets started up, they formed a line – with difficulty, as one of the four was preening herself in front of the audience too much – and did a set or two of the dance in step with each other. After that, things went from bad to worse, with heads going in different directions, bobbing up instead of down, and some cygnets forgetting which direction they were dancing in. It was a lovely interpretation of Shakespeare’s scene: with the Russian fondness for ballet this would instantly have illustrated the mechanicals’ ineptness, and it reminded me of the Nine Worthies scene at the end of Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The on-stage audience gradually left during this dance (lucky people), and when they’d finally gone the dancers stopped, very relieved and gasping for breath. Most of the cast were towards the back of the stage, with the dancers breathing heavily near the front, when the stroppy old lady came back to have a word with the man who was sweeping the stage. He’d been getting in the dancers’ way, wanting to sweep the bit of stage they were dancing on, but now he stopped and talked with the woman. She had recognised him – he’d played Shakespeare – and although the surtitles didn’t give us much of their conversation, I gathered that she was arranging to see him sometime soon. It was a little romance to end the evening with, after this tale of thwarted love. The music started up again, the dancers tried to carry on, but they were completely out of sync this time and the whole show ground to a halt.

The man with the bloody nose came to the front to tell us that although there was no need, he’d summed up the story for us. He handed a piece of paper to the main singer, who stood centre front and started scat singing – quite funny. The woman also came forward and tore off the bottom half of the paper, then joined in with a different set of scat noises. Others also joined in, some taking smaller and smaller bits of paper, until there was a cacophony of music. I don’t remember how they ended this bit, but eventually the cast disappeared off the back of the stage, though the bloody nose chap came back on to remove something which he’d used near the start to keep some raised flaps in place. As they fell back, he left the stage and the applause suggested we were finally at the end of the performance. The whole cast came back on to take their bows, the director presumably appearing as well although I couldn’t see him; some in the audience stood, there was lots of cheering, and I left after the first set of bows, glad to be getting out into the fresh air.

While this description of the staging may sound interesting, I’ve left out a lot of the boring bits, mainly because nothing happened during them. The Russian ability to pause is beyond belief, and the length of time they spent on some sections of the business left me cold. The physical business was usually telegraphed well in advance, and while I enjoyed some bits, and laughed quite a few times, there wasn’t enough of that for me. I like puppetry very much and I was becoming very fond of these two giant people, but the pauses for other business, including the woman’s lion story, drained any enthusiasm I’d developed for the performance, and I was very glad when it ended. I haven’t looked at my watch so often at the theatre for a very long time, and I hope I never feel the need to do so again. Brilliant as the performers clearly are, this just didn’t work for me, but thankfully most of tonight’s audience enjoyed it more than I did.

© 2012 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Physicists – June 2012

6/10

By Friedrich Dürrenmatt, in a new version by Jack Thorne

Directed by Josie Rourke

Venue: Donmar Theatre

Date: Thursday 21st June 2012

I’m wary of European writing; it tends to the obscure and dull, and while this was undoubtedly a very funny play, it did have its low points for me, superb performances notwithstanding. Three physicists are housed in an asylum; two of them are convinced they’re Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, while the third actually is Johann Wilhelm Möbius who’s gone mad simply through being a physicist. With two of their nurses dead, and the public prosecutor getting restless, what will happen to the three men? And what has all this got to do with the debate about the responsibility of scientists in the modern world?

The set was almost completely white. The back wall was a mass of doors; the three main doors were helpfully numbered 1, 2 and 3, while the rest of the space was filled with similar doors, some on their sides to fit in the gaps. There were two stubs of brick wall on either side, with megaphone speakers high up – these were never used. Above it all were serried ranks of institutional lights, four rows of five. A table and chair were placed towards the back of the stage and in front of the middle door, while a 60s style armchair with a high curving back, and a matching footstool were on our left. Front right was another round table with a carved wooden chair, all in white. There was a muted green wastepaper basket by the table, a small light on it, and a table and light over by the armchair. The only splashes of colour were the bowl of red apples on this round table – very vivid in this setting – and a huge portrait leaning against the right hand wall. It showed an older man with wire rimmed glasses and a white moustache. The painting also had a hidden drinks cupboard.

The play began in the dark. When the lights went up, a body was lying on the stage in front of us, the body of an attractive blond in a nurse’s uniform. She was clearly dead, and the others present revealed themselves to be a police inspector, his assistants – one medical, one photographical – and a very stern senior nurse for whom all sorts of pleasure were definitely forbidden! They went through the procedures for dealing with a dead body, finally removing the corpse altogether, leaving only a red taped line to show where she had been, and there was a lot of humour all through this section. The inspector then met Newton, who also kept us entertained for a while with his intelligent and barbed comments. The ‘perpetrator’ of the murder, Albert Einstein, was unavailable at this point, though the strains of his violin playing were just discernible from behind the wall; this was his way of calming down. Newton had also murdered his nurse some three months earlier, and his residency in an insane asylum had obviously provided the perfect antidote to arrest and a different form of imprisonment.

The inspector’s investigation petered out after a chat with the institution’s founder and chief psychiatrist Dr von Zahnd, played by Sophie Thompson, recently a marvellous Mrs Hardcastle in She Stoops To Conquer at the National. Her portrayal of Dr von Zahnd involved a hump that would not have disgraced the most outrageous Richard III, and her shambling gait, pale face and clinical manner made me think of a cross between Ygor and Baron Frankenstein. She must win awards for these performances, surely! Her explanations for the murders and assurances that it wouldn’t happen again – the only other physicist left in this part of the institution, Möbius, was entirely harmless – appeared to satisfy the inspector, and the geniuses were left alone to their madness.

The first half culminated in the murder of another nurse, this time Möbius’s, following a visit from his ex-wife and their sons. She had remarried, and was heading off to some distant islands in the Pacific with her new husband, who was a missionary. She wanted to say goodbye before she left for good, and the stress of this news seemed to affect Möbius badly. He threw a fit of madness, throwing off his clothes, pouring body lotion all over himself, and generally behaving badly. His ex was glad to leave, and with Dr von Zahnd’s reassurance that Möbius would still be cared for at this expensive facility, she left with a clear conscience.

Möbius’s nurse was well aware that he’d been faking his madness, and now she wanted to marry him and help him achieve the greatness she knew he deserved. This prospect was too horrific for him and so he strangled her with her own belt, leaving her body in almost exactly the same position as the first body we saw, as outlined by one of the policemen in red tape. The second half therefore started in a similar way to the first, with a dead body on the floor (played by the same actress) and the police beginning their investigation. At least the inspector now knew where the brandy was concealed.

After this second body was cleared away, the play moved into a different phase, with male security guards, sorry, nurses, arriving to replace the women – mind you, there was only one female nurse left alive. These men set up the dinner table for the three inmates and left them to it, allowing us to hear their private conversation. It turned out that Einstein and Newton were, indeed, faking it, each having been sent to the asylum by their government to observe Möbius and learn what they could about his scientific discoveries. Newton, himself a respected physicist, was from a totalitarian country, while Einstein, another physicist in disguise, was from a more democratic country, but one where scientists had very little real power. The rest of the play was largely a debate about the responsibility of scientists for the information they discovered, and frankly this bit was rather dull. There was a final twist, not entirely unexpected, which made the whole debate irrelevant, and that was that.

I enjoyed much of this play, and the performances were terrific, but the style and theme weren’t to my taste. I find this kind of discussion too ethereal, lacking pragmatism, as if going over and over these issues can somehow resolve them. The debate itself is valid and can be interesting, but I prefer to be connected to it through caring about the characters, which didn’t happen here. Still a good production, though, and an interesting choice from the new artistic director.

© 2012 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Next Time I’ll Sing To You – December 2011

5/10

By James Saunders

Directed by Anthony Clark

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Saturday 10th December 2011

This was good production, but the subject matter and style weren’t our cup of tea. Nominally about a real-life man who spent most of his life as a hermit, it covered a range of existentialist topics and was a self-referential piece, with the actors frequently commenting on the fact that they were performing.

Some of the ‘sketches’ within the play were quite funny, especially the opening of the second half. Meff and Dust had entered under cover of darkness, and when the lights went up they found them too bright. They tried to get them lowered, but all their signals, handsweeps and the like, had no effect. As a last resort, they decide to use the ‘dark’ lantern, so Meff asked for a volunteer from the audience to help him light it. He tried everything; bigamist, either male or female, Jesuit monk, crematorium shoveller, cat thief – nearly came a cropper with that one when a lady in the audience misheard him and thought he was asking for a ‘Catholic’ – pathological liar, and a range of other absurd options, but no luck. Fortunately Spud had a box of matches, and between them they prepared to light the dark lantern, blowing out the match just as it came near the wick, causing the lights to go out. Success. Except that the lights came on again soon after, at which point they ditched the lantern and gave up on darkness for the time being.

There was one female character, Lizzie, who claimed she was one of two identical twins, although other characters were convinced there was only one of her. She played the female characters – the hermit’s mother and a girl he left presents for – and got on well with Meff. They were even completing each other’s sentences by the end.

Meff started the play off by launching into a prepared speech about something or other, and then breaking off from that to start chatting to the audience; this is familiar stuff nowadays. Dust arrived soon after this, and a lot of their chat was about the arrival of another character – don’t remember when we first heard his name – and this was where most of the references to the repetitive nature of their actions came in. Lizzie turned up next, and then, finally, the auteur character, Rudge. This was a lovely performance from Aden Gillet. With a small goatee beard, he was the ultimate creative poseur, throwing intellectual tantrums and bossing everyone around.

When the character of the actor who’s playing the hermit turned up, his main concern was how to play the part. What was the key to the hermit’s character? His pleas for guidance were ignored or rebuffed by Rudge, with Dust occasionally joining in to explain the philosophical non-basis of the hermit’s life. It was tough going, but to our relief, there was an interval, and we could rest our few remaining brain cells before the second half.

There were some snippets of the hermit’s life story in the second half, and gradually the ‘actor’ slipped more and more into being the hermit. His beard, which had been obviously false in the first half, became attached. He started talking differently, and even when he was talking ‘out of character’, he spoke more as the hermit than as the actor. The play pretty much ends with his death, as far as I can remember.

The performances were all very good, the set was simple and items were shunted around as needed. There was a ladder to our left across the corner, a plinth made of two parts, an inflatable bed, chairs, etc, and the clothes were relatively modern. There were some nice touches of the surreal and the absurd, but the whole piece ultimately depends on the audience being sufficiently familiar with the philosophical arguments being put forward, some of which the author seemed to be mocking. I have no background in these ideas, and so I couldn’t really engage with the play beyond a very basic level.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead – May 2011

Experience: 6/10

By Tom Stoppard

Directed by Trevor Nunn

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Thursday 26th May 2011

I’ve usually found Tom Stoppard’s work a bit cerebral for my taste, and this play was no exception. There are some good bits, and this is likely to be a very good production once it’s settled in, but I wouldn’t say it was one of my favourites.

Tonight’s performance had a ripple of understudies due to the indisposition of Tim Curry, so although I didn’t detect any significant fluffs, future performances are bound to come on a lot. I didn’t catch all the understudy names, and it was too recent a change for printed slips in the program, but I gather that the part of The Player was taken by Chris Andrew Mellon.[Oops, we’ve since found the insert – Chris Andrew Mellon confirmed, and his role as Player King taken by Stephen Pallister 3/6/11] Since they haven’t yet had their understudies run, the audience was suitably appreciative of his efforts, and he managed the part really well, getting across the swagger and bluster, and doing a particularly good death scene, I thought. All the best to Tim Curry, of course, for his recovery.

The set was quite beautiful, one of Simon Higlett’s best. The floor of the stage was covered in glossy black boards which followed the stage’s shape apart from two triangular cut-outs, one on each side, giving the overall effect of an arrow head. Above this was a similarly shaped layer of black boards, but with gaps, like a pergola. The back wall and surround were full of stars for the outdoor night scenes, and the central rear doors were flanked by two concealed doorways with false perspective arches, which gave a fantastic impression of a vast castle.

At the start, there was a tree centre back; this was removed when the players arrived with their cart (very Mother Courage), but it was done so well that I just didn’t spot it. After the players leave, R&G are transported straight to the castle, so the arches are on show for a major chunk of the play. There’s some set dressing for The Murder Of Gonzago – this time we’re seeing the dress rehearsal – which was mainly four tall candle holders, a rug and two small chests.

Once off to sea, part of a ship and three barrels are carefully positioned on the stage. The ship has an upper deck with a deckchair, screened by a large umbrella; it turns out that Hamlet has been snoozing there through the start of this scene. The barrels are large, which is just as well, as the players, scared by the hostile reception of their play at court, have stowed away by hiding in them. One of the best bits tonight was watching them all clamber out.

After the ship scene, I think the set was bare till near the end, when some of the Gonzago trimmings were brought back on for the very end of Hamlet itself, when the ambassadors from England have arrived to report that R&G are dead.

The play is certainly interesting, taking a sideways look at these two minor characters as they wend their short path through this famous play, and bringing up many philosophical ideas along the way. It’s those philosophical bits that tend to drag, in my view. It may be that Jamie Parker as Guildenstern (or was it Rosencrantz?) will find a delivery that brings out more humour in those lines, but I suspect they would be a bit dry for me regardless. Samuel Barnett as Rosencrantz (or ………?) was more down to earth, stupider and generally had the funnier lines, and his was the more assured performance at this point in the run. The constant coin tossing had some humour, though it went on a bit long, and the players were good fun, though also a bit long winded. I enjoyed the mathematical joke of the bet – that a date of birth, doubled, will be even – and it shows how wide-ranging this content of this play is.

With their arrival at Elsinore, the actual Shakespearean dialogue makes an appearance, and it’s to Stoppard’s credit that he manages to blend the two styles so well. Many another writer has incorporated chunks of Will’s work into theirs, only to show up their own inadequacies; Stoppard holds his own just fine, and although I wasn’t totally loving this, I didn’t find myself wishing I was watching Hamlet instead, a good sign. (Mind you, I did wonder if the actors having a go at a partial Hamlet were wishing they could do the full version.)

The dress rehearsal was nicely done, adapting the snippet we see in the regular version into a reprise of the Hamlet plot, with two new characters, looking uncannily like R&G, involved in this one. We even get to see the executions in England. R&G are troubled by the similarities for a while, especially when their doubles take off their capes and their costumes are so similar to the original R&G’s, but the pair soon reassure themselves that all is well.

There’s a string of pearls used in this section – I think it was presented by the usurping king to the widowed queen to persuade her to marry him – and tonight the string broke, scattering pearls everywhere. Presumably this was not meant to happen. The actors soon cleared up most of them, but a stray pearl travelled further than the rest, and it was Rosencrantz who did the honours and removed it in passing.

When the duplicate R&G’s are killed, and their capes placed over them, the lights go down – it’s after Claudius has stormed off – and when they come back up, it’s the ‘real’ R&G who are under the capes. These two are on stage all the time, with the action of Hamlet coming to them, so they can’t actually go anywhere to search for Hamlet, leading to an entertaining scene where they opt to go in different directions, then together, then one way, then another. There’s a short scene on the beach, where Hamlet encounters Fortinbras’s men, and then they’re on the boat. When Hamlet is saying his soliloquies, by the way, he has a tendency to drift to the back of the stage and mutter to himself.

In the process of figuring out what they’re going to say when they get to the English court, R&G role play that encounter, and as a result they open the letter and find out that Hamlet is to be killed. Much consternation. Then they go to sleep, Hamlet sneaks down from his deckchair and swaps the letters, and they’re on their way to oblivion.  The players emerge from the barrels, the pirates attack, and Hamlet disappears with them, leaving R&G with nobody to present to the king of England, so they redo the role play to get some ideas, open the letter again, and hey presto, they’re now the ones for the chop. That’s pretty much it for these two. We don’t see their executions, and the final scene shows their deaths being reported to the Danish court, or what’s left of it.

The performance showed signs of this being a very good production, once they’ve had time to bed it down. It’s not my ideal kind of play, but I hope it does well here and in the West End.

© 2011 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Waiting For Godot – August 2009

5/10

By Samuel Beckett

Directed by Sean Matthias

Venue: Theatre Royal, Haymarket

Date: Saturday 1st August 2009

I’m so relieved to have finally seen this play. I’m not a fan of Beckett’s work – I think he’s hugely overrated – but I did want to see this one in case it changed my mind and awakened me to the riches others evidently see in his oeuvre. It didn’t. But now, bliss, oh bliss, I can ignore Beckett productions with a clear conscience, confident that there’s nothing for me there. (But then there’s Endgame, Richard Briers’ farewell to the stage…)

The set was interesting. The stage had been built out a little (row A was lost) and on either side at the front was an arched entrance topped by two dummy boxes, designed to echo the real boxes next to them. However the stage ones were dusty and dilapidated, and the narrow bit of roof that stretched between the sets of boxes was crumbling away. There was also a lighting gantry stretching across the space which emphasised the theatricality of the performance. The back wall was of brick, with a plank door to the left hand side. A short distance in front of it was a crumbling wall, and since Estragon climbed up that way to get onto the stage I assume there was a ditch in between them. The stage floor was mainly planks, painted dusty white, and with a steepish rake from the wall down to the middle. The rest was flat. There was a gap in the raked planks approximately in front of the rear door, and a makeshift bench forward of that. Right of centre, at the bottom of the rake, stood the tree – a scrawny trunk and several windblown branches, totally bare. The lighting suggested various times of day, including evening and night time; each half ended with the two leads in a contracting circle of moonlight.

If there is a plot to this play, I, along with the rest of the universe, have yet to discover it. Two tramps, Vladimir (Patrick Stewart) and Estragon (Ian McKellen) spend two evenings waiting by a tree for a chap called Godot. If he comes, they’re saved. If not, they have to come back again and wait the next evening. There’s a sense of endless repetition, coupled with forgetfulness and uncertainty – was it yesterday they met Pozzo and Lucky, or is this the first time they’ve seen them? (And, frankly, who cares?)

Pozzo (Simon Callow) and Lucky (Ronald Pickup) are master and slave. On day one, we see Pozzo treating Lucky badly, as well as being ‘treated’ to a very long speech by Lucky which appeared to contain some garbled dialogue concerning the nature of existence. Possibly. (I found it pretty boring.) On day two, Pozzo has gone blind, and when he and Lucky arrive they fall over, leading to a surfeit of falling over gags. On both days, after they leave, a young boy clambers out from underneath the wall to give the tramps a message from Mr. Godot – he won’t be coming tonight, they have to wait again tomorrow evening. And that’s basically it. Nothing to get excited about or even stay awake for. There was a surprising and entirely necessary amount of humour throughout, mainly during the banter between the two old men. They were a regular old couple, been together for years. And that’s about all I can say about them.

Apart from the funny bits, I found it terribly dreary and I had to stop myself from checking my watch too often. Still, the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it and I did like the entertaining way they took their bows, with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen acting like a couple of song and dance men. Even so, it was good to be outside in the rain and heading home.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Kafka’s Monkey – April 2009

6/10

Adapted by Colin Teevan from A Report To An Academy by Franz Kafka

Directed by Walter Meierjohann

Venue: Maria Theatre

Date: Wednesday 1st April 2009

This was our first time in the Maria theatre. It’s an interesting space; bit cramped for leg room but reasonably intimate. Apparently this performance was being recorded, but I don’t think it affected the standard either way; the audience were very appreciative, even of the nit-picking.

My rating for this production is based on my enjoyment of the piece as a whole. Kathryn Hunter’s performance was superb – both Steve and I rated it as 10/10, and hopefully she’ll receive the recognition she deserves come award time – but the play itself was rather dull and after the early stages I found my attention wandering a bit.

The set was very plain. A large white square screen stood several feet from the back wall, plumb centre, and for a large part of the performance a picture of an ape was projected onto it. A lectern stood to the right at the front and there was a stool on the left at the front with a tray carrying two bananas. Some climbing apparatus on the left wall was the only other thing I can remember.

Kathryn Hunter entered through the fire doors back right carrying a suitcase and cane. She, or rather her character Red Peter, was dressed formally, in tails with a white collar and tie, and with a top hat. She made it clear she was waiting for us to welcome her which we did, eventually, and then she set down her suitcase and cane, very carefully, and strolled over to the lectern to begin her address.

I realise as I write this that it feels more natural to say ‘she’ when talking about this ape-man, so perhaps there was a flaw in the performance after all, as I really can’t get past her gender. Anyway, she told us that she couldn’t do what she’d been asked here to do, to talk about her time as an ape, as her memory of those days had been superseded by her experiences as a man. But she did offer to tell us about her memories of the period following her capture and how she changed into a semi-human.

The story was quite difficult to listen to at first, despite many funny moments. Some sailors had shot at her pack of monkeys and she was the only one wounded. They took her on board and kept her in a small, cramped cage, where she couldn’t stand or lie down or sit. She spent the first days in captivity with her back pressed against the bars and her face to the wall. It was unpleasant to listen to and brought up echoes of the slave ships and humankind’s general bad treatment of animals.

She learned to copy the humans she saw, culminating in drinking off a bottle of rum which led to her first spoken words. She was sent to a variety of trainers and with hard work developed enough skills to become independent. She now performed in variety theatre and otherwise led a quiet life, with only a female chimpanzee for company at night. The story over, she left us the way she came.

Her movements were totally in keeping with her character. The way Kathryn Hunter managed to twist her arms round to point behind her looked impossible, but she did this regularly, usually to point at the screen. She picked up the tray of bananas and offered them to people in the front row, again using a very peculiar twisted arm movement. After the two women in the front took the bananas, there was an extra treat for one of the women as Peter checked out her hair for insects, eating what she found and commenting that there were lots in there. She also made use of a chap on the other side of the front row. She gave him the empty rum bottle that she was using to demonstrate that story and when she was caught in a cage of light she gestured to him to bring her the bottle, which he did. She also romped into the audience at least one other time, as well as using the climbing bars at the side, and given her small size this was probably as close as a human being can get to impersonating an ape.

I wasn’t sure what Kafka had meant by his original story, but I decided this was meant to be an allegory on the way society imposes its norms on the untrained human being, taking them from a place of ignorant freedom to a prison of education and knowledge. I was glad that the state of innocence wasn’t presented as some kind of ideal, a paradise to be yearned for and whose loss we should mourn. Mind you, there was still a strong sense of loss in the ape’s story, a sense that the suffering and hardships had left their mark and that there was no going back to the old ways. A creature caught between two worlds, neither of which was home anymore.

An interesting afternoon then, with some marvellous moments but ultimately less satisfying than I’d hoped for.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me