Category Archives: Drama

Pack Of Lies – February 2009

6/10

By Hugh Whitemore

Directed by Christopher Morahan

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Monday 16th February 2009

We saw this back in 1983 (Theatre Royal, Brighton) when Judi Dench and Michael Williams played the married couple at the heart of this story. I don’t recall much of the performances (I’m sure they were excellent) but in any case I’m sure I’d still have enjoyed this production just as much.

Jenny Seagrove and Simon Shepherd play Barbara and Bob Jackson, neighbours to Peter and Helen Kroger, good friends and Russian spies, both at the same time. The play takes us from the good times, through the initial request for help from the British Secret Service and the gradual realisation of the true nature of their ‘good friends’, to the tragic ending with the death of Barbara. The strain of having to keep their secret, not just from their friends but also from their daughter, Julie, proved too much for a woman of nervous disposition.

The set was much as I remember. It’s the interior of the ground floor of a semi-detached house in a London suburb, Ruislip in this case, showing us the sitting room, entrance hall and stairs, and kitchen. All very 1950s. The costumes all matched the time period perfectly, with Barbara and Bob being conservative, even dowdy, and Helen being flamboyant and glamorous. The paintings on the sitting room wall which are meant to be by Barbara are of decent quality for an amateur (I’ve seen a lot worse in The Deep Blue Sea), and seeing the old Bakelite telephone reminded me of the days when a phone call was an event, and people formed communities with those they lived close to, rather than logging on to the global village. How things change.

It’s an interesting play which never drags, for all the relative lack of action and amount of information to get across. Due to Roy Marsden’s indisposition, the part of  the Secret Service chap, Stewart, was played by David Morley Hale, who made good use of his character’s notebook to remind himself of the lines. His delivery was a bit flat as result – he’ll be better once he’s off the book – but it’s a fairly dry part anyway, so I don’t think we lost too much from the cast change, and I suspect most of the audience were just grateful he was there.

I liked the way the casual snobbery of the time was thrown in now and again. Describing one neighbouring couple as British, and then qualifying it by commenting that the wife came from Wales, was typically spot-on. The solo speeches to the audience were also good, as they filled in a lot of the information that the structure just wouldn’t accommodate otherwise. In all, a very good evening out.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

King Lear – February 2009

6/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Rupert Goold

Venue: Young Vic Theatre

Date: Wednesday 11th February 2009

The set was interesting, and needs to be described in detail. We were sitting just to right of centre, in the second row. The seats this time were in a wide horseshoe, with the entrance off to our left. At the back of the stage was a set of concrete steps, some chipped and worn, with grasses and flowers sprouting from them; the effect was something like a disused railway station. There was a doorway back left, and about halfway down on that side there was a platform area, big enough to contain a trapdoor. On the right, there was a broken-off tunnel entrance towards the back, and another entrance nearer ground level. A small door on that side gave access under the stairs. Centre front, and very close to the front row (which is why we sat in the second row), was a water trough, partly filled with water. A curved tap arched over the left hand side of the trough, while the right hand side had a wooden cover, allowing it to be used as a seat. The trough was also used for the stocks. In the opening scene, there was a throne sitting in the middle of the steps, and two plush chairs front left and right. Other furniture was brought on as required, though as most entrances involved steps, it must have involved a lot of planning.

I enjoyed some parts of this production, but not all, and some of the choices left me completely detached. To begin with, there was a mix of accents, mostly northern but with a couple of Irish as well. I found the actors’ delivery was sometimes weak, and this wasn’t always helped by the accents. The performances were mostly very good, and the relationships between the characters were clear and generally believable. I didn’t take to Edmund; with his Irish accent and lack of clarity he didn’t come across so well for me. The smaller parts were fine, but didn’t have much to do, and although I found Cordelia lacking in personality in the early stages, I was aware for the first time towards the end that she’s reluctant to speak to Lear because she doesn’t know how he’ll feel about her.

For the other characters: the fool (Forbes Masson) was excellent, very bitter and clearly getting through to Lear with his comments. He’s also got a lovely singing voice, which was put to good use several times. Goneril was very good. She came across as an older daughter who’s seen her father behaving badly for many years, and has learned to stay quiet and out of the way till his fit is over or he’s left the room, and that’s what she does. She was very still during the love competition, while the others were doing their stuff, and she mostly looked away, at the ground or occasionally at her husband. She’s about seven months pregnant(?), which gives greater emphasis to Lear’s curses later on.

Regan is clearly the middle daughter, jealous because she’s missing out on his affection, and determined to put on a show of being loving, presumably to try and win Lear’s attention if not his love. She starts up a chorus of “for he’s a jolly good fellow” for Lear’s first entrance. Kent was OK, but didn’t come across strongly. He was wearing a dog collar (religious rather than canine), and neither of us could figure out why. I noticed in the scene with Gloucester, he didn’t have his disguising specs on, and when Gloucester refers to “poor banished Kent”, he realises this, slips them out of his pocket and puts them on discretely.

Gloucester himself was more bluff in manner than I’ve seen before, and the emotional changes didn’t come across as clearly as I’m used to – production rather than acting I suspect. On the whole, I got the impression that Rupert Goold didn’t want to be bothered with all that depressing emotional stuff that usually goes on in Lear, but he did want to have some splendid visual stuff instead, preferably gory and with a high yeugh factor. So for the blinding scene – and this is a first, me actually watching any part of this bit – the second eye was removed by Regan herself. Cornwall held Gloucester down while she pressed on the second eyeball with her manicured fingers, finally leaning forward and sucking the eyeball out with ferocity and for quite a long time. She then stood up and slowly, very slowly, moved towards the water trough at the front, mouth unmoving. At last she squirted the fake eyeball out of her mouth and collapsed over the trough, retching away. Pretty yeugh, for me and quite a lot of the audience. And there was more to come, though nothing can be quite as bad as that scene.

When Edgar comes forward promptly (for once) at the third blast of the trumpet (didn’t sound much like a trumpet to me, and the answering blasts on the siren seemed a bit unnecessary), he emerges from below the rear step with a Union Jack wrapped round his face as a mask, carrying a pole with a small yellow flag on it, and with two wooden swords tied to his waist with a twine belt. Edmund and Edgar then start their fight with these swords, but it’s a silly business, swatting each other’s swords like children, and it’s only when they discard the swords that the real fight begins. They grapple pretty viciously, and finally Edgar gets Edmund on his back on the ground. That’s when the swords come back into play. Or at least one of them. Edgar pushes the point of it into Edmund’s mouth to kill him. It’s unpleasant, it’s messy, and it doesn’t strike me as being an effective way of fatally wounding someone so that they’ll be around just long enough for the reconciliation, the (belated) warning about Lear and Cordelia, and some final words about the two dead daughters. But that’s just me. Anyway, they’d lost me on Edgar’s bizarre entrance, and didn’t manage to get me back again before the end.

Neither of us could figure out the reasoning behind that choice of wooden swords during the trip back to the hotel, though in the morning I realised that it might have been due to the use of modern weaponry in this production. How do you square the sudden use of swords when they’ve been brandishing various types of firearm all evening? Personally I don’t have a problem with that idea – people could still fight a duel with swords if they wanted to – but it’s the only idea I could come up with for that choice.

We had watched the Newsnight Review section on this production, and so we were slightly surprised tonight that certain things were different, particularly the loss of the three glass cases which had been used to demonstrate splitting the kingdom. Whether it was for practical or artistic reasons, these were replaced with three pieces of paper, or envelopes. That worked just as well, for me, and prevented the stage being cluttered up with unwieldy props.

There were a number of other interesting or unusual stagings. When Lear is out in the storm, and Gloucester rescues him, he takes them to a potting shed, where instead of a joint stool, we have two pot plants. The actual plants are removed, so only the pots are being put on trial. The bench in this shed is the one used when Gloucester is being blinded. (No need to go into that again.) Earlier, when Edmund is seducing his father to the dark side, it’s staged with Gloucester as the two lads’ trainer, sitting near the top of the steps while they do their exercises and Edgar goes for several laps of the theatre. During his time off stage, Edmund works on their father, and there are glances at Edgar as he goes by during this scene, with Edmund having to restrain the duke on Edgar’s final pass. Edgar is then conveniently present for Edmund to work on alone. This certainly has the advantages of showing us that Edmund is a risk-taker, and letting novices know who Edgar is, but I found it contrived, and as the idea wasn’t used again, it didn’t deepen my understanding of the characters nor the production.

The fool didn’t die in the storm or afterwards; this time he apparently gets to Dover. He’s with Lear in the awakening scene, dressed in a doctor’s white coat, but with his fool’s outfit underneath, his hat (coxcomb) in his hand, and still wearing his makeup. Well, they do say that laughter’s the best medicine. So when Lear is mourning, amongst other things, that his “poor fool is dead”, it’s likely he also has been hanged for being on the losing side.

The storm scene was an unusual combination of music, movement, water and dialogue. Lear used a microphone – there was another one during the “who loves me best” scene – and he is carried on by the cast, initially held aloft and then lowered to the ground. There’s a fine mist of water coming down over the steps where all this takes place, the music is very loud, and what with the cast doing some slow and impenetrable mime or dance during all this, I completely lost the lines and any sense of what was going on, intellectually or emotionally. It may have looked good, temporarily, but so much was lost that I would have to rate this as the worst staging of the storm scene that I’ve experienced. The water, by the way, ran onto the floor space, but didn’t get anyone else wet. And Goneril went into labour at this point, clutching her belly and having to be helped off (I think). When she turns up back home to discover the news about Cornwall being dead and the war about to start, she’s pushing a pram, so the birth was successful, and the baby is soon picked up by Albany – he’s more maternal than Goneril, especially in this production.

At the end of the second section – we had an interval and a pause tonight – Cordelia appears at the back with a soldier, and they do a slow-motion thing, backlit, to show that she’s arrived. OK, but didn’t do a lot for me. The early scenes with Lear’s unruly knights were a bit lacking in the knight department, and in general there was more of the domestic about this production than others I’ve seen. Regan is poisoned by a strawberry French fancy, the only one on the plate (the others are chocolate).

So to the main event, as it were, the central performance itself. Pete Postlethwaite is a tremendous actor, and his performance didn’t disappoint. I felt the production hampered it occasionally, but it still shone through, filled with an intelligent understanding of the human experience and the talent to show us lots of small details in what is a huge performance. The production choices meant that this was more of a working-class Lear, a family man who doesn’t understand what family’s about, and who shows remarkably little interest in his future grandchild, though perhaps grandparenthood only kicks in for some people when the baby’s actually born. His erratic behaviour is corroborated by his daughters’ different responses to him. Certainly, they have different personalities, but their attitudes have been shaped by long years with a temperamental man, who can shower affection one minut, and be a block of ice the next. The set implies that Lear hasn’t been a very good king – everything seems to be going to rack and ruin, and Lear’s comment about not having cared enough for the poor compliments this. Despite this, we have Kent and Gloucester, both of whom are loyal and also surprised when Lear banishes Cordelia. This is always a puzzle, and I felt this production didn’t even attempt to provide an answer. Which is fine, though it doesn’t add to my understanding of the play.

Lear was suitably full of himself at the start, all jolly and looking forward to the wonderful things his daughters were going to say about him, especially Cordelia. He brought on the microphone stand himself, and set it up to the left on the lower steps. Goneril was slow to get started, but did her best, Regan had to think for a bit to outdo her sister, and Cordelia, sitting on the trough, gave us all her asides by leaping into the middle of the stage. Lear’s rage at her refusal to play his game was good, and by throwing the last envelope on the floor, we could enjoy a little tussle between Cornwall and Albany about who gets it first.

Lear’s anger when returning from hunting to find all is not at it should be, came across as bluster more than real rage. He’s so used to being obeyed that he doesn’t know how to handle disrespect. Another sign of a decadent kingdom, when he hasn’t even had any opponents to deal with. As I’ve said, the fool was very bitter this time, and Lear does take his points on board, starting to realise that he’s done a foolish thing. His cursing of Goneril is perhaps more powerful with her being pregnant, but as the text doesn’t include her pregnancy, it actually lost some power for me because the obvious bump in her middle wasn’t being referred to explicitly. She holds it together well while he’s there, but she’s clearly shaken by it.

His descent into madness during the storm was obscured by the effects and music, sadly, though I did find it moving at times, and entirely believable. Later, at Dover, with Gloucester saved from himself, Lear appears in a woman’s front-buttoning dress, a floral print with a low V-neck. It’s very fetching, and sets the tone for the following conversation with Gloucester, which was more humorous in this production than I’ve seen before. It was still an emotional experience, mainly due to Edgar’s comments, but there’s always a risk that too much humour will lighten the mood so much that the darker elements don’t get a chance, and I think that happened a little bit here. Lear has been banging away at his crotch during some of his rants, and just before Gloucester asks to kiss his hand, Lear realises he’s produced some unfortunate substance from his nether regions, and gives it a wipe first.

The rest was all fine, and Lear died on the upper steps, with support from some other characters and Cordelia in his lap. The final lines were OK, though as I say I was out of the loop by that time, and they were running late, but the final touch was a nice one. I was very aware that with the birth of Goneril’s baby, there was now a proper heir to the crown, not the usual situation in this play. Albany’s request to Kent and Edgar, now Duke of Gloucester, to rule the country is therefore asking them to be regents rather than joint kings, and the final sound of the play is that of a baby crying. And why not, given the world his elders have left him?

Ultimately this was a patchy version of the play, with some good ideas and some less than helpful stagings. I’m glad I’ve seen it, and perhaps I won’t be so squeamish about the blinding scene in future – it’s unlikely I’ll ever see anything more unpleasant than this one.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Pitmen Painters – February 2009

8/10

By Lee Hall, inspired by a book by William Feaver

Directed by Max Roberts

Venue: Lyttelton Theatre

Date: Wednesday 11th February 2009

This was just as good as last time. Although there wasn’t any surprise value because we’d seen it before (May 2008), being more familiar with the characters and accents meant we got even more out of the humour, especially George’s fondness for the rule book. I love the way Oliver takes his time to reply to George when he turns up at the hut in the opening few minutes. Oliver comes in, George says “Oliver”, and Oliver walks over to the side, picks up a chair, takes it to the middle of the floor, opens it up, sits down, crosses his legs, and then pauses for a few seconds before responding “George”. Lovely stuff.

This time round, the interval happened after the group explains their experiences in London. In my previous notes, I remembered it as being after the life model turns up, but that’s quite early for a break, so perhaps I misremembered. I didn’t spot any big changes to the text, and I’ll have to check up on a couple of places where I thought the dialogue had been altered, but overall it was the same play we’d seen and loved so much last year, with the same cast and equally good performances. I found I was more aware of the artists and their development than the interaction with Robert Lyon this time round, and less keen on Helen Sutherland, though just as aware of the sexual underpinning of her passion for art and artists. The final scene didn’t feel so out of place today, what with renationalisation of the banks and possibly BT seeming increasingly possible; how things change, and how they stay the same!

This is definitely a classic play, and I hope we’ll get to see it again sometime.

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Duet For One – February 2009

7/10

By Tom Kempinski

Directed by Matthew Lloyd

Venue: Almeida Theatre

Date: Saturday 7th February 2009

What a start to our playgoing year! After a death in the family, several bouts of assorted illnesses, and retro winter weather that was a throwback to the 60s, I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever see the inside of a theatre again. So this was an extra special treat, giving me the confidence boost I needed, as well as a very enjoyable afternoon’s entertainment.

Both actors were on top form, getting every scrap of emotion and humour out of their parts. Juliet Stephenson covered a huge range in her performance, from overly bright and cheerful, through angry and depressed, via some truthful revelations to an eventual calm, but with some way yet to go. Henry Goodman had a lot less to do in the early stages, though he does get a good speech in the penultimate scene, but he conveyed the right amount of quirkiness and authority throughout to make both his patient’s outbursts and her occasional surrenders believable.

I don’t know if the text had been updated in any way, perhaps the reference to laptops was new(?), but the play didn’t seem dated at all. Sadly, in some ways – it would be nice if more progress had been made in treating MS. In any case, the story is about facing up to the challenges life throws at us, often unfairly, and this still comes across very strongly, especially with such powerful performances. There’s a great deal of humanity in this play, which is one of the things I like about it; it reaffirms life in the face of despair and suffering. It’s also very well crafted, as it’s not easy to keep an audience awake and in their seats with only two characters who hardly move, and who occasionally lapse into relatively long silences. Having a motorised wheelchair certainly helps, so at least one of the characters was more mobile than might have been expected, and the emotional outbursts from each of them certainly kept the energy levels up. But they would be nowhere without good writing, and this definitely qualifies. I will just mention though, that, in common with all other on stage psychiatrists, Doctor Feldmann short-changes his clients dreadfully. Three sessions in less than an hour and a quarter! Scandalous.

The set was a pleasant room, with windows to our left in a rectangular bay, the door next to these, and shelves filling the rest of the back wall. Unlike some other dramatic office/studies, these were mainly filled with records, CDs and presumably tapes, with books being squeezed into less than half the space. A chaise longue in front of the shelves had a richly woven carpet in front of it. The doctor’s desk was to the right, and there were two comfy armchairs on either side of the table in the window; at least they were once the doctor had moved one of them back – not needed for this client. The doctor was around for most of the short interludes between scenes, while Juliet Stephenson was changing her outfit, and there were also a number of musical extracts for our enjoyment – fortunately none of them set off my hearing aids, so we could relax and enjoy ourselves (and I did have a few sniffles as well).

© 2009 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Don John – December 2008

Experience: 2/10

By Emma Rice and Anna Maria Murphy

Directed by Emma Rice

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Wednesday 17th December 2008

We went to a pre-show talk with the director, where Emma Rice gave us some interesting information about Kneehigh’s development process for this piece, along with her ideas of what it was about. I’ve discovered that most of it is covered in the program notes and in the video interview on the RSC website, so I won’t go into too much detail here. She was very alert, and really listened to the questions, which corroborated the information that she has to be aware of everything that goes on in rehearsal in order to pick up every good idea that the cast come up with (usually in the tea breaks). While she’s fully open to these ideas, she’s also very clear about which ones will fit into her vision of the piece; “strong but wrong” is apparently a common assessment of many of the actors’ suggestions.

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The Tragedy Of Thomas Hobbes – December 2008

5/10

By Adriano Shaplin

Directed by Elizabeth Freestone

Company: RSC

Venue: Wilton’s Music Hall

Date: Saturday 6th December 2008

Wilton’s Music Hall currently has the decorators in, so it looks worse than any other temporary home the RSC has used in London to my knowledge. The toilets were OK, though strapped for space, but everything else could do with improvement. I wasn’t impressed with the acoustics, the chairs were comfortable enough (given the state of many West End theatres, they were above average) but space was at a premium in every direction. We arrived later than we would have liked so had to sit in the balcony, and my neck is just about de-cricked from the excessive twisting it had to do. The ice creams in the interval were below average, and I won’t even go into the horrendous crowd that was the bar area.

So with all this affecting my sensitive nature, it’s no surprise it took me a wee while to get involved in today’s performance. Also, not being able to see some of the action was a drawback, though not so serious as not being able to make out the dialogue clearly. Hence the comment about the acoustics. The volume was fine, but I just couldn’t make out enough of the words to follow the early stages. However, things improved, especially when there weren’t half-a-dozen people talking at the same time on stage, and I started to get what was going on about the time that Robert Boyle (I thought it was Foyle from the way they said it) took Rotten into his service and they attended a demonstration of an experiment (sadly, the dog died).

Basically this play, commissioned by MIT, is about the beginnings of full-blooded scientific research practices, and the tussle between the experimental scientists and the natural philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes. The arguments didn’t always come across clearly, but I gather that Hobbes (he wrote Leviathan, don’t ask me what it was about) was in favour of rational thinking and testing of hypotheses, but stopped short of actually getting his hands dirty by testing said hypotheses against physical reality. The new boys on the block, including Boyle, Robert Hooke, some others less well known, and eventually Isaac Newton, wanted to go all out with repeatable experiments that would verify or refute theories.  And all of this was played out against the backdrop of the Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II. It’s a busy period, and with so much to be crammed into just under three hours, there wasn’t much opportunity for a nap, thank goodness.

The play makes good use of self-deprecating and self-referencing humour. At the start of the second half, Rotten and Black, former actors currently resting due to the interregnum, are seen rehearsing a piece by Hobbes, which is intended to counter the arguments of his opposition. Rotten and Black make some entertaining comments about how they can change the piece to make it more acceptable to the audience, and suggest Hobbes play himself, but in disguise.  When they interrupt a demonstration by the newly formed Royal Society, they’re dismayed to find the king is present, so they don’t get to finish their piece. A shame, as Angus Wright looked particularly fetching in a large bush of pubic hair and not much else. The play itself finishes with an extract from another play, The Virtuoso by Thomas Shadwell, which poked fun at the new scientists and especially Robert Hooke. Hooke was now under threat from the up and coming Newton, and found himself in a similar position to Hobbes, with his views being derided and fresh approaches being put forward.

It may be that that was what was intended by the title of this piece; that the tragedy wasn’t just that of Hobbes, but the tragedy of any scientist who failed to keep up-to-date with his thinking. Other than that, I can’t for the life of me see why the title was chosen, as Thomas Hobbes himself is around far less than Boyle, and isn’t a particularly appealing character in any case. It’s still a good play, and I’d like a chance to see it in better circumstances than today’s.

The set was about as rickety-looking as the theatre itself, though with health and safety rampant, I suspect the scaffolding and ladders were actually more robust than the building they were in. Actors accessed all levels – we had them pounding the floorboards behind us a few times, which could be distracting, if only because it let us know the scene was coming to an end – and even came up through a trapdoor, as well as using the space in front of the stage, the sides of the auditorium, etc. About the only thing they didn’t do was swing from the ceiling, but if Michael Boyd had his way….

The performances were all very good, and possibly excellent, given our unfortunate location. I especially liked Arsher Ali, first as John  Lilburne, giving us his “what about the workers” diatribe, and then as Charles II, exiled to France and then resplendent as the restored king. He had a soft spot for Hobbes, his old tutor, but not soft enough to overlook his misbehaviour, nor to ignore that he had fallen behind the times. Stephen Boxer as Hobbes also gave us a good performance, though as I’ve said, there didn’t seem to be enough of it. Robert Boyle was played by Amanda Hadingue, the only woman in the cast, which did rather emphasise the lack of female roles in this play, while Jack Laskey was excellent as Robert Hooke, growing from young enthusiastic scientist from a poor background to self-important self-appointed leader of the scientific establishment, finally ousted by the likes of Isaac Newton. We were also treated to two old men, called Statler and Waldorf, à la The Muppets, who commented on the developments on stage, and even joined in a bit. Overall, it was an interesting play, and deserves better than a short run in this small, out-of-the-way theatre, I hope it gets it.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Romeo And Juliet – December 2008

Experience: 6/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Neil Bartlett

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Wednesday 3rd December 2008

We attended a director’s talk before the show which was very illuminating. He was very emphatic that this play is not about a clash of different cultures. The “two households, both alike in dignity” were very similar families, and with similar attitudes. They set out to show this quite deliberately. Casting a black actress as Juliet was accidental in that sense – he went for the best actress to get the qualities he wanted and it just so happened she was black, but he hadn’t noticed until someone asked him about it.

This Lady Capulet is very unhappy, and apparently we will see that in this production. Capulet has three opportunities to go to bed with her, and avoids all of them. That’s the reason Romeo and Juliet get on so well so quickly – both come from identical circumstances, so they’re in sync from the word go. We were told to watch when each child is with their parents – they don’t speak to their parents much, if at all. Both are only children, and both carry the full weight of family and society’s expectations.

Shakespeare tells us twice that Juliet is thirteen (which may have been Susannah’s age) – why does he do this? Neil reckons she’s at an age where her parents need to do something about her before she grows old enough to make up her own mind.

He was asked about the choice of setting, and he thinks the play needs to be set in Italy. It’s a country ruled by religion, with a very conservative society. The time is the 1940s, but not a specific year. All the women are very sexy, helped by the costumes, which appear demure but are actually very sexy.

In the original story, the priest is forgiven, while the nurse is hung (‘twas ever thus, he murmured). However, he pointed out that this priest is not very upright; he does a lot of lying, as do the others of course. He wanted to get across a society in which violence was a “normal” part of society, where young men hung around on street corners looking for a fight. In our culture, carrying a knife is weird. In Verona, knives are normal. The violence is technically illegal, but happens a lot because everyone is keen on it. Problems only occur when it goes wrong. It’s a macho culture where men expect to fight each other and treat women as possessions. The characters think that violence is sexy, but the director doesn’t.

The language was mentioned. He said any Renaissance text has language difficulties, and this is not a naturalistic drama.  The casting of the two leads was intuitive. They have to have good technical skills, as the parts are vocally demanding, and to get across the idea of two sexually inexperienced young people.

Asked about the connection between love and death, he said he wasn’t conscious of it. He let things come out, and audience can decide for themselves.

Were there tragic flaws in the lead characters, or was the tragedy due to the other characters? Not in the characters themselves, but there are structural problems in the families and religious ideologies. Basically, there was no place for these young people in Verona.

He told us the story of how one marketing chap had asked him if the play had any sex or violence! Have you read the play? was about the only response he could think of.

Now for the play itself. It wasn’t a full house tonight, though there were plenty of school parties.

The whole production was very gray, white and black. I had some problems distinguishing the characters at first because of this, though fortunately I knew what the leads looked like, and knowing the play as well as we do we could work it out pretty quickly. The set consisted of a black wooden floor, with a back wall that was part rough brickwork, part smooth buttresses. For the final scene, the side sections were swung round to form part of the side walls of the tomb, while the central panel rose up to create a high doorway, through which Juliet’s bed, surrounded by a railing, was wheeled onto the stage. For the balcony scene, there was no balcony, which was interesting. Instead Juliet’s bed, with high brass header and footer, was placed centre stage and the rest was up to our imaginations. Good call.

The opening chorus was done using most of the company, and when it was over they took to the chairs at the back to wait for their turn in the fight. I often like this approach, and it was OK here, but it was only used this once so didn’t really add to the production overall. For some reason, the servants who start it all had a radio with them, and turned it on and off. The asides were done with the rest of the action frozen, and sometimes an actor would snap their fingers to get things going again, but here it seemed to be the radio that did that function. With the fight well underway, a telephone was used to summon Capulet and Montague to the fray. The women joined in the fighting, which is clearly a widespread pastime, enjoyed by much of society.

I was very aware that Mr. and Mrs. Capulet have spent very little time with their daughter. The nurse’s comment about them being in Mantua when Juliet was weaned really brought that home. The nurse (Julie Legrand) was very good, the best performance along with Romeo (David Dawson). Juliet (Anneika Rose) was also pretty good – a bit weaker vocally, but she got her emotions across reasonably well. The nurse was especially good when she delivered the news about Tybalt’s death and Romeo’s subsequent banishment. For once, it was clear that it wasn’t clear; that the way the nurse was telling it, it was natural that Juliet would misunderstand at first.

A microphone was used during the party scene – why? It didn’t add anything and was cumbersome to bring on and off, though the photography session with all the guests lined up for a group photo was OK. It allowed Romeo and Juliet to have a few minutes alone together, out of time.

We got the second prologue which is almost always cut – I’m not actually sure if I’ve ever seen it before – and was between the end of the party and Mercutio and Benvolio’s attempts to find Romeo. This time it consisted of the spare women removing the chairs and bringing on Juliet’s bed, and giving us the prologue as they did so. I’m not sure it helped the play particularly, but then it was so novel I would need time to get used to it. We were warned it would be done tonight; I just didn’t know where it came.

During Juliet’s scene before her second wedding – the potion scene – both Steve and I thought she’d taken the stuff before she went through all the possible ways it could go wrong, so I put some of her emotional state down to the fact that she’d already taken an irrevocable step, and possibly even to the effects of the draught itself. However, she then drank it off again in the usual place, so either she had two healthy swigs from a small bottle, or she didn’t actually go the distance the first time round. This could be made clearer.

When she talked about all the ghosts she might encounter when she wakes up in the tomb, various cast members drifted onto the stage, including Tybalt. When this had happened before, during the post-nuptials scene, I found it distracting. The extras were required to help Romeo leap from Juliet’s bed to the ground below and then to remove the bed, but I found it intrusive and clumsy to have them there. This time, although I found it intrusive to begin with, once I realised that they represented the family ghosts in the vault, it worked well for me.

We also got the musicians in full tonight, and at the end of that bit one of the musicians lingered behind to become Balthazar and deliver the bad news to Romeo. With the understudy playing Tybalt as well as his usual role of the apothecary, we had the interesting sight of the murdered man reappearing at the back of the stage, blood still evident on his shirt, putting on the apothecary’s white coat to sell his killer the poison that will exact his revenge. It was a nice touch, and a fortuitous one. For the first time ever that I’ve seen, Lady Montague was present for the final scene in the tomb – this avoids an unnecessary distraction, I feel – and I realised tonight that the friar’s recapitulation of the story was essential, not for the audience, assuming we’ve been awake and paying attention, but for its effect on the people there in the tomb.

At the end, I wasn’t sure how genuine the reconciliation between Capulet and Montague would be. With such a negative take on this society, such a “positive” outcome seemed a little perverse, and I could even see the possibility of both men rejecting the idea and continuing the feud. I was also aware that these two noble houses hadn’t just lost two of their children, they’d lost their entire future, as neither family had an heir. So any reconciliation, however genuine, would be hollow. However, as the two men hugged in joint commiseration, I was reminded of Leontes and Polixenes in A Winter’s Tale, and it seemed fitting that these two men should be ‘brothers’ again, as they may have been before.

In the director’s talk before the show, Neil Bartlett had talked about not liking productions which told the audience what to think. I couldn’t help feeling as  I watched this performance that he’d fallen into the very same trap himself. In deciding so much about the play, and in some areas apparently judging the characters and the choices they make, he seems to have fallen out of sync with Will, who never seems to judge and who usually gives us at least two sides to everything. (Often it’s more like three or four, but then you see another one, and another. Why else do we keep coming back to these plays?) Because of these judgements, I found myself out of sympathy with the characters so much tonight that I was willing, nay wanting, Romeo and Juliet to die horribly so that we could all go home. I’m more accustomed to having a little sniffle somewhere in the finishing straight; this time it was all I could do to stay in my seat for the last half hour.

The performances. I’ve already mentioned the nurse and Juliet. Romeo was very good, though with less emotional input than I’m used to; more thinking than feeling, but at least I was clear about his character and emotional journey. I felt the friar was too theatrical, especially during the post-exile scene with Romeo. Romeo was speaking remarkably calmly and making a lot of sense, expressing his emotions and thoughts very clearly. The friar was raving and gesticulating wildly, looking the very picture of a mad fool which he paints of Romeo, so for once the friar seemed to be the immature one needing help from the wiser young man. Yet I was also aware that it’s the friar who points out to Romeo the positive perspective which Juliet has found for herself – that Romeo’s alive and Tybalt, who wanted to kill him, is dead. The friar seemed to be in another play at this point, and with David Dawson having played Smike in Nicholas Nickleby at Chichester, I decided that the overacting going on in the friar’s performance would have fitted very nicely into the Crummles’ production style. At times it bordered on hammy, though it never quite crossed that line. I assumed this was the manifestation of the director’s view that this was not a naturalistic piece of work, though usually I find the language does all that for you and semaphore practice is not required.

I found Lady Capulet’s accent (the actress is Hungarian) a distraction, as it took some time for me to get the hang of it, and I lost a lot of her lines because of it. Mercutio was quite good, especially in the Queen Mab speech, but alas his role was cut short, as usual. Although I liked his performance, I felt his character didn’t matter so much in this play, where all but the leads and nursy were remarkably undifferentiated. It’s as if none of these people mattered all that much, it was Verona itself that killed them all – a touch of Fuente Ovejuna – but here it doesn’t seem to help the play, leaving it remarkably cold. For such a passionate people, with love, sex, fighting and vendettas constantly on the agenda, that seems inappropriate.

The fight scenes weren’t entirely convincing, but that may be partly because of the understudy, so no criticism intended. The finger clicking to restart the action or denote a change of scene, usually when the scenes were being overlapped, was too erratic to be effective. On the whole, I found that the strange mixture of realism – costumes, knives, music, etc – jarred with the stylistically heightened acting, so that I could never fully engage with the production. I actually felt the Victorian type of ending, as depicted  by Dickens, would work just as well here, as so many of the characters came across as clowns. Paris, for example, with his suit and little ‘tache, reminded me of Captain Darling from Blackadder 4, and his behaviour suggested the similarity may not have been accidental. It’s possible that this production works much better on a proscenium arch stage; if so, I hope they adjust rapidly, as we’re due to see this again during the Winter School, and I’m not sure how I’ll handle it if there aren’t some changes. [Didn’t get to see it again, in fact]

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

The Holly And The Ivy – November 2008

5/10

By Wynyard Browne

Directed by Michael Lunney

Company: Middle Ground

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Friday 21st November 2011

This was a revival of an earlier Middle Ground touring production which we’d seen at the Connaught several years ago. We’d enjoyed the previous performance well enough, and tonight was a similar story.

The set was as before. A large sitting room with a sofa and chairs, a window at the back showing us the local church, doors off back right (vicar’s study), back left (kitchen and dining room), and an entrance lobby front left, with access to the stairs. The time is 1947, Christmas Eve, so there’s a Christmas tree and some decorations.

When the play starts, Jenny is finishing the decorating, but is interrupted by her friend, David, and her father the vicar, who needs to get to a school for some pre-Christmas event. From these conversations we learn that a group of people are expected for Christmas, including a couple of aunts. David wants Jenny to come away with him when he leaves for South America at the end of January, but she feels she can’t leave her father. There’s another sister, Margaret, who could come home and look after him, but it seems to be generally accepted in the family that that’s not going to happen. Jenny’s brother Michael arrives unexpectedly – he’s doing his National Service and managed to wangle some leave by making out it could be his last Christmas with his father – and he helps David to decorate the room while Jenny gets on with the dinner.     Then the aunts arrive, and they’re well worth the price of admission. Aunt Bridget is Irish, the vicar’s sister, I assume, as he’s also Irish, and she’s as outspoken as you could wish for. Aunt Lydia was presumably married to Bridget’s other brother, long since dead, but she’s still part of the family. Both women have all the instincts of the most intuitive vulture, and they soon figure out that David has sort of proposed to Jenny. So their next task is to arrange for a happy ending by getting Margaret to take over the job of caring for her father so that Jenny can get away with her young man. Aside from all this, aunt Lydia has a nice line in offering to help, but sinking happily back into the sofa when the offer is turned down, while Bridget insists on sitting in her preferred spot on the sofa, and she only has to stand and look, for others to realise their mistake and move. They were very good fun.

A chap called Richard turned up – Margaret’s godfather, otherwise not sure what his connection with the family was – but he hadn’t brought Margaret with him from London. She had the flu and couldn’t come. Nevertheless she turns up shortly afterwards, and appears to be the career woman type; smart suit, acts superior, and appears rather unemotional. During a chat with her sister, which starts out as a confrontation and ends up as a heart-to-heart, she confesses that she’d had a child by an American soldier she’d fallen in love with during the war. The soldier died, and after a few years the child also died, of meningitis. As she was an unmarried mother, she felt she couldn’t tell their father, and so she rarely came to visit. Her problem now is that she can’t face the prospect of coming back to stay with her father and living a lie for the rest of her life.

After dinner, Margaret and Michael head off for the cinema, while the others sit around and ‘chat’. Lydia and Bridget have decided that for Jenny to find happiness, the vicar will have to retire. He’s not keen on that idea, so they have to tell him about Jenny’s situation. To add to his troubles, Michael and Margaret come home well sozzled; she faints and is taken up to bed. Michael tries to cover it up, but it’s no good. He makes some comment about nobody being able to tell the vicar anything, and also heads for bed.

The next day, Christmas, brings more revelations. The vicar persuades Michael to reveal all he knows (Margaret spilled the beans to him the night before in the pub), and so the scene is set for the final showdown between father and daughter. It goes quite well, remarkably. Since he already knows the story, it’s more a case of sorting out their relationship. It’s clear that personal relationships have never been his strong suit, and he’s aware that his parishioners don’t get as much pastoral care from him as he feels he should have been giving. With Margaret on the point of leaving (they had trains on Christmas day back then!), he finally manages to connect with her, and for the first time in their lives, they actually talk to each other like normal human beings. This changes her attitude so much that she’s quite happy to stay now and take care of the old man, and when David turns up to get Jenny’s final answer, she can give him the ‘yes’ they both wanted.

It’s an interesting play, though not the best written. The dialogue is stilted at times, and the structure feels unbalanced; we get to know Jenny so much more than Margaret, yet Margaret and her experiences are really the key to the whole piece. The vicar’s attitudes are also very important, but again I don’t feel they come across strongly enough for the final confrontation to be as moving as it could have been. I was very moved to realise that this man has only just found out that he had a grandchild and lost it as well, but this was only a passing thought, when it could have been more prominent. The play is still enjoyable, but not as strong as some.

In terms of the performances, the aunts and cousin Richard (now I’ve checked the program I know how he fits in) were the strongest and most entertaining. The others were mostly fine, but Philip Madoc, fine actor though he is, didn’t seem able to get the lines across clearly in the Irish accent he was putting on. Not that there was anything wrong with his accent as such, though at times I sensed the lilting Welsh straining to burst through, but his delivery was so abrupt that I couldn’t distinguish the words. When he spoke more slowly, as he did after the final scene with Margaret, it was fine. It’s always a shame to lose so much dialogue, and I would like to see this play sometime with the father’s part more strongly cast, though as it’s not the greatest play I’m not sure who would put that on. So on the whole I enjoyed the evening, our last but one up at Guildford this year.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Mountain Hotel – November 2008

6/10

By Vaclav Havel, translated by Jitka Martinova

Directed by Sam Walters

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 20th November 2008

This set was more complicated than the first: three cast iron style patio tables with matching chairs (very lightweight – I checked) on three sides. A wooden bench with metal ends sat across the far left entranceway, and a picnic rug filled the rest of the space. There was a thermos flask and some odds and ends (sun tan lotion, hair gel, razor) by the rug.  A canopy had been put up over the entrance far right from us.

Mind you, the set was a lot less complicated than the play. Surreal doesn’t begin to cover it. The same scene kept repeating, many characters shifted and changed, different stories were presented to us, and the whole performance became like a merry-go-round, with the horses spinning faster and faster until we were almost dizzy with multiple possibilities. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I found it enjoyable and interesting to watch.

To begin with, various actors came on, stood in their positions, and then sat down. The lights were partly up for this. There was also some music playing, and that was used each time the scene changed. The actors went through the same routine for each scene change as well, with most of them changing their positions. Initially, there was a man, Kubik (Stuart Fox), seated with his back to us, just to our left. To his left, a woman, Rachel (Paula Stockbridge), was sitting at the far table, knitting. I confess to being curious about what she was knitting, and occasionally my thoughts were more on that than the play. However, along from her, on the bench, sat Orlov (James Greene), while Pechar (Paul O’Mahony) sat on the picnic rug, sunning himself. To our right, sitting alone at his table, was Kotrba (David Antrobus), who never spoke, and rarely got involved with anyone else. There’s also Tetz (Mike Sengelow), who dashes on, catching a ball, the sporty type, and who sits down next to one of the characters, Orlov I think first time round.

Other characters come and go. Liza (Esther Ruth Elliot) dashes on and off stage regularly. She’s dressed up in a fancy frock, carrying some flowers, and looking a bit distracted. Orlov usually tries to intercept her, insisting that they had a relationship many years ago in Paris, which she denies. As the hurdy-gurdy of the play cranks up its madness, however, we even get to see a scene in which she accosts Orlov, claiming they’d known one another, and he denies all knowledge of her. There’s also Pecharova (Rebecca Pownall), who seems to be the wife of Pechar, fussing over him, insisting he wear a jumper though he wants to sunbathe, bringing him tea which he doesn’t want, and talking about his possible liaison with another woman. This other woman, Milena (Faye Castelow), is the waitress, who regularly brings on some orange juice and offers it round. She seems to be having a relationship with two different men, both of whom are Pechar. With each scene change, Pechar becomes the other man in this triangle, so we get to see the relationship develop with two men in one. It’s totally surreal, but surprisingly watchable and entertaining. Pechar also has a piece of repeated business, and I think it comes at the end of each scene. Milena, or possibly Pecharova, goes off in a huff, and Pechar seems to become aware of everyone watching him, including the audience. He looks around – he’s kneeling at this point – looking mortified at being the centre of attention, and then looks at Kotrba and shrugs. Thanks to Paul O’Mahony’s performance, this worked very well.

Dlask (Philip Anthony) brings on a bottle of wine and two glasses, and joins one of the other characters to share some wine and have a chat. Kunc (Robert Austin) appears every so often and spends some time whispering in Kotrba’s ear; they both have a good laugh at whatever it is that he’s said, and then he leaves without talking to anyone else.  Then there are the director(s) of the hotel, or institute, or whatever else this place represents. Drasar (Jonathan Guy Lewis) and Kraus (Christopher Naylor) take it in turns to be director, while the other one gets to be henchman. Each director comes on, accepts the warm response from the guests(?) and staff(?), then searches for a piece of paper with increasing degrees of panic. They find a small scrap of paper in one pocket, not much bigger than a credit card, which seems to be all they need. They then make a little speech, which includes statements ranging from the philosophical (e.g. unity is strength) to the banal (the light in the downstairs toilet has been fixed). Each statement is greeted as if it were a most important pronouncement, and with each scene we get a different assortment of choice statements, each delivered as if it were the most important thing in the world.

As the characters become more and more mixed, with lines being said by anyone in any order, the whole group stands up and starts dancing. With fewer women, the men have to cut in from time to time. Eventually, the dance stops, the actors stand still, and the lights go out. End of play. It made sense at the time, though describing it makes it seem really weird. Actually it was weird as well, but perfectly in keeping with the rest of the play.

The fun was in the performances, and the way these little cameos built up a larger picture without mapping it out too clearly. I got a sense of people having to be careful about revealing too much of their past, of having to change stories depending on who they were talking to, of reinventing themselves on a regular basis depending on who was now in power. Yet still the standard relationships were there, struggling to maintain normality when everything has gone horribly wrong. There was a subtle sense of menace in the air – characters talked about Kubik having missed some event, and how this would affect him. It was an intriguing play, which had a bit too much repetition in places for my liking, but which I still enjoyed overall.

There was the usual post-show chat, but I find I’ve forgotten most of what was said. There was some confirmation of the way Havel and many other writers chose to use surrealism to mask anti-government writing – if they couldn’t understand it, they couldn’t ban it. I suspect that’s what makes some European drama inaccessible to me – you had to have been there. The amount of beer being drunk in the first play (Audience) was commented on; apparently the timing of each bottle and glass was tricky, but turned out to be crucial to the scene. I do remember there were some long anecdotes by people who had been to Czechoslovakia, which seemed to have very little to add to the experience of the discussion, at least not as much as the actual Czech folk who contributed to the earlier talks, so perhaps that’s why I don’t have a lot more to say here.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Audience – November 2008

6/10

By Vaclav Havel, translated by Carol Rocamora and Tomas Rychetsky

Directed by Geoffrey Beevers

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 20th November 2008

The set was an office in a brewery. There was a table in the middle of the stage, surrounded by crates and metal barrels, and there were two chairs. The place looked rough – there was an old style radio (old even in the 70s) next to a barrel on our side of the table, and a small ball of twine sat on the barrel itself. To the far left, the door had the usual nude pictures, and a sign above the door said something like if you’re full of beer, you’re full of cheer.

The first of two plays, Audience concerned a meeting between Vanek and the foreman of the brewery he’s working in. When the lights go up, the foreman is snoozing, face down on his desk. When Vanek knocks, he wakes up and invites Vanek to come in and sit down, which he does, eventually. The foreman also offers him a glass of beer. Vanek is a reluctant drinker – we learn he prefers wine – but he does manage to drink a little. He also manages to get rid of a fair bit into the foreman’s glass when he’s away relieving himself. The foreman puts away more than enough for the both of them, though, as he keeps reaching into the crate beside him for another bottle. This became quite funny, and before long he had to disappear through the little door. Sounds of water in various forms, and then he’s back again, adjusting his flies and pulling down his apron. This became the major structural motif for this play.

Verbally, there was a cycle of repetition of what Vanek liked to drink, stories about the brewery, and warnings about Vanek’s relationship with another writer. Gradually, as the foreman became increasingly drunk, the pressure he was under to report on Vanek and his activities was revealed.

After too many beers, the foreman falls asleep, and Vanek puts him back in his chair, the way he was at the start, and leaves. We then get a reprise of the opening, with Vanek knocking on the door, the foreman waking up, etc. This time, Vanek seems more confident, and readily drinks the first glass of beer he’s offered – perhaps he’s learning? – and that’s where the play ends.

This was lovely little piece which showed us the effects of living under a repressive regime. The wariness about saying too much too openly, the recourse to alcohol to deaden the senses, the need for others to conform so as not to cause problems for those around them, all these came across very clearly as we went through another little repetitive dance. Along with the humour, and seeing just how human these people are to remind us that this can happen anywhere, this made for a very enjoyable opening play.

There was the usual post-show chat, but I find I’ve forgotten most of what was said. There was some confirmation of the way Havel and many other writers chose to use surrealism to mask anti-government writing – if they couldn’t understand it, they couldn’t ban it. I suspect that’s what makes some European drama inaccessible to me – you had to have been there. The amount of beer being drunk in the first play (Audience) was commented on; apparently the timing of each bottle and glass was tricky, but turned out to be crucial to the scene. I do remember there were some long anecdotes by people who had been to Czechoslovakia which seemed to have very little to add to the experience of the discussion, at least not as much as the actual Czech folk who contributed to the earlier talks, so perhaps that’s why I don’t have a lot more to say here.

© 2008 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me