Romeo And Juliet – March 2010 (2)

7/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Michael Fentiman

Company: RSC Understudies

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Tuesday 30th March 2010

This was much better than yesterday, with less of the excessive comic business, and some very good performances from this permutation of the ensemble.

The introduction by Michael Fentiman was a stumbling effort – he was clearly nervous – but he still managed to make us laugh a few times. The initial staging for the prologue was the same, but Romeo took some time to get his headphones untangled, so there were fewer pictures taken of the inside of whatever building we were in. Capulet, Montague and the Prince were all much better today, with more gravitas, and the scene where Juliet defies her father was very strongly acted. But Mercutio showed the greatest improvement, and not only increased our enjoyment of the performance, but also cut the running time by ten minutes by not doing all the unnecessary stuff we saw last night.

As it was the understudies’ run, Mrs Montague wasn’t in the final scene tonight, but her death was still not announced. Balthasar spoke the closing two couplets, and the second song he sang was as the friar heads down to the crypt. The Romeo/rosemary lines were missing today, as was almost all of Mercutio’s miming – hooray. This Mercutio was much better, clear and lively and intelligent. I was sorry to see him go this time, but there was a lot more blood and he was clearly wounded. Romeo was just as good (Peter from yesterday), and the Friar was also pretty good.

There was a lot of coughing in the second half. I’d noticed this last night, and where we were sitting today I found out why. All the smoke from the nurse’s pipe and Lady Capulet’s cigarettes drifted over our way, and I felt my throat tickle a few times. Juliet was less sulky today, twirling her toy thingy for fun, because she’s still a child, although this interpretation doesn’t fit so well with her clever sharing of the sonnet form with Romeo.

For the potion scene, Juliet wasn’t writhing around in pain this time, she just moved a little bit and then lay still. Her reactions weren’t so ludicrous during the death scene either. Lady Capulet didn’t do her keep fit routine at all today – hooray! We could see better today from this position – consider for future. The hip-hop references by Romeo and Juliet were dropped. I was more aware of Paris’s plight, poor man, in love but doomed to failure. Steve spotted that, during the party when Lady Capulet leaves the upper level, she went past Tybalt and kissed him – something you want to tell us, m’Lady? Steve reckoned she may have been closer to Tybalt than anyone’s ever suggested before.

During the confrontation between Mercutio and Tybalt, Mercutio used the bicycle pump to ‘inflate’ first one finger, then a second. Just as crude as yesterday, perhaps, but much funnier. After he bent Tybalt’s sword, he used it as a fishing rod today, instead of playing cricket. Romeo rode around the stage in circles when he first visited Friar Laurence, who stopped him with a hand on the handlebars when he guessed, correctly, that Romeo hasn’t been to bed. Romeo siad ‘nope’ when the friar guessed he was up early, and when he told the friar that he wanted him to conduct the marriage ceremony between himself and Juliet, he did an imaginary drum roll before saying ‘today’.

When Capulet was first speaking to Paris, there were various sellers walking around with boxes on their heads – fruit, flowers, that sort of thing – and Paris selected a bunch of flowers from one of them.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Romeo And Juliet – March 2010 (1)

Experience: 3/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Rupert Goold

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Monday 29th March 2010

This was an interesting experience. Steve and I have seen so many Shakespeare productions that we can no longer hope for that wonderful experience of seeing a play of his for the first time (Cardenio excepted, possibly). Tonight, however, we were treated to a rare thing, a performance of the RSC’s production of The Comedy of Romeo and Juliet. It’s possible of course that Rupert Goold was simply trying to stage that well known, but sadly lost piece, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter, but with no extant text had to base it on the closely related Romeo and Juliet with which many of us are familiar, and simply add as much comedy as he could. Or, of course, he was trying to do the Romeo and Juliet, but chose to go for every cheap laugh available, leading to a diminished sense of the tragedy (what am I saying, diminished? The only tragedy was that the performance lasted three hours and twenty minutes, about three hours and ten minutes too long!), and establishing such a comedic perspective that I was seeing jokes all the way through, and doing my best not to laugh out loud at them. (Didn’t quite manage that – sorry.)

Let me give an example. When Juliet’s ‘body’ was discovered, the nurse was so upset she just stood still. Lady Capulet, on the other hand, after the first shock, apparently remembered that she hadn’t done her daily workout yet, and ran round the stage for several laps before collapsing in a heap. Steve reckoned she was training for the marathon, though on this evidence she wouldn’t make it to the first refreshment point. I found myself thinking that the RSC might be going in for a new form of Shakespeare-related merchandising – the Lady Capulet fitness DVD, perhaps?

And another one: when the modern-dress police turned up at the tomb to investigate the multiple homicide, complete with walkie-talkies and apparently unfazed by the fact that most of the suspects, and indeed the victims, were in Elizabethan fancy dress, I fully expected a forensics team to walk on set and start taking photos, look for blood spatter, etc.

And that wouldn’t have been out of keeping with this production. The opening request for the audience to turn off, not shoot, not record, etc, was made by Noma Dumezweni, dressed in a suit and using a Caribbean accent. The set, as far as I could see at this point, consisted of some gates at the back of the thrust, some kind of opening above, and an ironwork window pattern in the centre of the stage, courtesy of a single light. The use of church music beforehand set the scene very well, and it became clear after Noma’s announcement that she was a guide in some cathedral or other. When Sam Troughton arrived in his modern clothes, including a hoodie, and carrying a camera, she gave him a headphone set for the audio tour. He had to fiddle with it a bit to get the English version, and then that was how the prologue was given. Neat. After he wandered off to explore more of the building, the actors for the first scene arrived, and went straight into the thumb-biting scenario (Samson and Gregory didn’t get a chance to puzzle us all at the start with their dextrous word-play around the word ‘choler’). The fight soon escalated, and Benvolio, doing his best to stop it all, ended up tied to a stake in the middle of the stage with a cloth stuffed in his mouth. Tybalt was about to set it on fire (eugh! Just how nasty do you have to be to get the point across?) when the principals in this conflict turned up. Sadly, this didn’t help, since they pitched in as well, and even the Ladies got into a cat fight (a pretty pathetic one, mind you). When the Duke finally got there, we went from truly nasty to comedy, as the clatter of weapons being dropped on his command goes on, and on, and on. Capulet in particular never left the house without a good dozen knives secreted about his person. Sitting down must be a precarious thing to do – he could easily stab himself in the groin.

This humour was OK, but already it was undercutting the seriousness of the situation; it was hard to tell whether the warring families are in Apocalypse Now or Love Thy Neighbour. [After the understudies performance, I realised that the attempt to fry Benvolio happened after Montague and Capulet joined in, and some petrol was poured over Benvolio first from a can. Also Tybalt had previously lit a match and thrown it down on the grill in the centre, causing a huge flame to flare up.]

With the factions sent packing, and only the Montagues left on stage, the next bit of dialogue was badly delivered – I know roughly what they’re saying, but tonight it just didn’t come across. Once Romeo arrived, the delivery improved, but sadly Benvolio was being played as a buffoon, and again this weakened the performance. In fact, just about every character was played as a buffoon, the lovers and possibly Paris and the friar excepted, which boosted the comedy alright, but…..well, I think my views on this point are already well established.

Sam Troughton’s Romeo still had the camera, and it was put to good use in this scene, with Romeo showing Benvolio the picture of his love (Rosaline) on the screen, and Benvolio using the camera to take a picture of a woman in the audience to show Romeo that his love wasn’t the only beauty around. This bit of humour also worked well, with Romeo holding out his hand in apology to the audience lady when he compared her unfavourably to his love.

There was a good deal of overlapping of scenes in this production – it’s a tried and tested method for speeding things up, and can provide some interesting juxtapositions – and I think this may have happened when Capulet arrived on stage for his next scene before Romeo and Benvolio have left. Played by Richard Katz, Capulet is another weak interpretation (I blame the director), played more for comedy than gravitas. Peter was sitting on the steps which were pushed through the gates, and the humour of his performance when he was given the task of inviting the guests to Capulet’s party was entirely appropriate and very well done. His cringing attempt to get noticed by Romeo and Benvolio was very funny, as was Romeo’s blatant reaction to seeing the name ‘Rosaline’ on the guest-list. When Peter mentioned the name Montague, he hawked and spat superbly, so no prizes for guessing where his loyalties lay.

After they left, Lady Capulet appeared at the upper balcony, with several makeup artists whose help she evidently needs. Her hair was a mess, she was only partly dressed, and to be frank, she wasn’t looking her best. As they got to work, the nurse below summoned Juliet, who came on carrying something strange, a three foot long piece of rope with a light at the end – some new-fangled toy, I expect. She started twirling this around, casually at first, but with increasing vigour as the conversation went in directions she found unpleasant, and even raised it above her head when things got really bad and marriage was mentioned. As a way of showing her inner sulky brat, it worked quite well, though it was a bit distracting, and meant she never showed us her relationship with her nurse which usually gets its first outing in this scene. Noma did her best with the nurse’s part, but against the whirling she was a bit low-key. Also, I wondered if she’d been smoking the old wacky-baccy in her pipe, as her manner suggested a relaxed calm not entirely at odds with such a practice. But there was no other indication, so perhaps I just made it up. By the end of the scene, Lady Capulet was looking much better, and that’s about all I can remember from that bit.

The next scene brought on Mercutio for the first time, with the challenge of the Queen Mab speech. We both like Jonjo O’Neill, and have seen him give any number of good performances, so we don’t mean it unkindly when we say that we were both heartily glad to see the back of this Mercutio. His going, normally a cause for grief, was a real blessing tonight. He wasn’t too bad in this scene, admittedly, although the policy of encouraging some of the actors to exaggerate their natural accents, presumably for comic effect, can lead to many of the lines being unintelligible, and so it was with Mercutio. I did get his point that dreams are nothing, mere fantasy, so the speech wasn’t completely wasted.

And now for the party. Forget the dialogue, this was all about the dancing and music, of which we got plenty. So much so, that most of Capulet’s lines were lost, though the way he held a dagger to Tybalt’s throat conveyed his point well enough. I found myself wondering if there were film influences here that I wasn’t aware of – Romeo + Juliet, perhaps. I definitely had the feeling that I was missing something.

Only Romeo and Juliet themselves were allowed space and silence in this scene to deliver their dialogue, which they did very well, and at this point I had high hopes that this production might work out fine. Juliet had seen Romeo a couple of times during the dancing and shown no interest in him that I could see, so it was a bit of a surprise that she suddenly got into kissing mode with him, but that’s young love for you. They both showed clear reactions to finding out who the other was, and we were set up nicely for their balcony scene.

Unfortunately we had to put up with Mercutio and Benvolio again for a bit. With Mercutio having so few lines, this part usually doesn’t take long, but tonight we were ‘treated’ to as unnecessary a chunk of ‘comic’ business as you could wish not to see. For some reason, Mercutio had to emphasise that he was talking about Romeo screwing his love – at this time they still think it’s Rosaline he’s in love with. Starting with hand gestures, he went from a finger-fuck to an arm, then his whole body climbed inside – much laughter from the younger section of the audience – then there was a surreal sequence where he appeared to be having a cup of tea in the party in her uterus, then he kissed somebody (was he meant to be a sperm that’s come into contact with an egg?), and that scared him so much he ran back out of the vagina, falling flat on the floor from a fart, whether vaginal or anal I couldn’t say. One or two bits of this were mildly funny, but it went on far too long for us.

Fortunately, the scene between Romeo and Juliet was clear and uncluttered by this inappropriate and over-fussy business. Juliet appeared at the upper level, simply standing or sitting with her legs dangling over the edge. Romeo started at the stairs at the front of the stage, then moved around a bit, finally climbing the trellis to claim his snog. In fact, they might have had the wedding night a day early, the way these two were carrying on, but Juliet is a good girl, and pushed him away. This was very well done, and was starting to get me involved, and if they can build on these bits and drop the rubbish encrusting the play, they might do very well. We can only hope.

The next scene introduced Friar Laurence, and Forbes Masson did a perfectly acceptable job with the meddling friar. I did think his displays of temper were a bit out of kilter with his words of moderation, but not enough to give me a problem. Romeo’s change of attitude was remarkable. He arrived on a bicycle, and was full of enthusiasm. Friar Laurence was initially concerned to hear that Rosaline was, like, so yesterday’s news. He even slapped Romeo’s face where he could still see the tear stain, while Romeo’s blank reaction when the Friar mentioned Rosaline’s name was perfect. But after some time to think, the Friar saw the possibilities in the marriage between the feuding families, and agreed to help them out.

Next Mercutio and Benvolio waited for Romeo, and the only thing I got from the dialogue was that Mercutio seemed to be criticising Tybalt, and perhaps others, for faults that were more part of his character than anyone else’s, as of course he does later when he accuses Benvolio of being quarrelsome. When Romeo cycled in, he sparred with Mercutio in a much livelier way, not that I could follow half of it, but it’s clear that he’s back to the Romeo of old, full of wit and spirit. The nurse turned up with Peter, and again the sexual innuendo of Mercutio’s insults to her are emphasised, with him calling her a whore many times over. She was wonderfully funny in her non-delivery of Juliet’s message, and in her readiness to dash off as soon as Romeo has told her he protests. Strangely, some lines that are often included seemed to be dropped, while lines I haven’t heard before, about Romeo and rosemary both starting with the letter ‘R’, were included. God knows why, as I couldn’t see what they were getting at, and the nurse simply pulled out of that conversation and leaves. Bizarre.

For the Nurse’s return to Juliet, there was a platform that raised up in the centre of the stage, similar to the one used in King Lear. It may have been raised earlier, but I specifically remember it in this scene. [Certainly used during party scene, possibly earlier.] Juliet had been waiting impatiently, and her frustration was very clear. When the nurse did arrive, there was the usual bickering as Juliet pushed to get what she wanted, and the nurse took her time to get what she wanted – in this case, a back rub – before divulging her news. There was a nice bit where Juliet started rubbing one side of her back, and the nurse said, ‘other side’ – it gave us a chuckle. The timing of her abrupt change of subject – “where’s your mother” – was very good. Then we were off to Friar Laurence’s cell for the wedding – a short scene, with nothing to comment on.

Now we come to the point where I found the funny side too much for me. It’s the scene where Mercutio and Benvolio encounter Tybalt, get into a fight, and Romeo, in trying to part them, gets Mercutio killed (hooray!). The stairs were forward again, and the platform was raised. The fight between Mercutio and Tybalt was OK, with Mercutio at first threatening him with the bicycle pump (cue for some more sexual innuendo from the pumping action), and then snatching Tybalt’s sword, after which the whole thing escalated until Tybalt, in the final clinch, used his concealed blade, Wolverine-like, to stab Mercutio in the guts. All fine and good, but I was distracted by the sudden bursts of smoke and fire that belched up every so often from vents in the floor and platform. There had also been flame effects projected onto the screens either side of the gates from the first fight scene onwards – these gave the impression that Verona was already ablaze, similar to the Julius Caesar that I was so very unfond of last year. Now, however, I was struck with the thought that this Verona was actually built on Vesuvius, and the constant mini-eruptions were due to that. I found it hard not to giggle, so I did, silently, but from now on my sense of humour was going full blast, and I saw so much to laugh at that I couldn’t take anything seriously again.

During the fighting, Mercutio handed Tybalt the bicycle pump and took Tybalt’s sword. When Tybalt thumped him in the stomach with the pump, Mercutio bent Tybalt’s sword over to a right angle, and then used it to play cricket. Mercutio’s final speech was delivered in as perky as fashion as I can remember from a dying man, while Romeo tried to strangle Tybalt at first, then turned his own blade on him. Benvolio’s clownish nature made his recounting of the fight seem feeble and petty, and so the prince’s concern, and the threat to the families, was again undercut.

The scene between Juliet and the nurse where Juliet discovered what has happened to Tybalt and Romeo, was excellent, with Mariah Gale’s reactions just perfect, and the nurse suitably deadened by the loss. This scene was intercut with the next, where Romeo and the Friar argued over whether banishment was good news or bad. The plus point here was that it got things over quicker, and the nurse could leave from one scene, then reappear quite quickly in the next, linking them together effectively. The down side was that each scene had to have long pauses in it to allow the other scene to continue. As Steve said, if they hadn’t mucked around so much with the rest of the play, this intercutting might have been effective, but as it was, it came across as simply part of the muddle. I quite liked it, but I take his point. I did notice yet again how Juliet talked herself out of despair, but Romeo needed the Friar’s help to stop him killing himself.

Now by this time, I was looking at my watch quite regularly, as I wanted a break, and time was passing, but we still had a little bit to go. Capulet talking with Paris got the expected laugh when he decided Wednesday is too soon, so the wedding will have to be on…..Thursday. Then we saw Romeo climb the balcony to meet his new wife; they kissed and started stripping each other off. The music swelled, the lights went out and it’s the interval. Fairly innocuous, you might think. Well it would have been, but for the high camp use of rays of gold streaming out from the upper level like a sunburst. Totally over the top, and hugely funny. I do hope that was the intention, but I suspect it wasn’t.

We were now two-thirds of the way through, so at least the final part would be quick. After comparing notes, and finding we were of one mind about the production so far, we braced ourselves for the final stint, and although there was much to laugh at, it was also this part that decided me (and Steve) on the three star rating. It was dire. From the still camp sunburst of the opening scene, where Juliet was reluctant to say goodbye, to the final body count at the cemetery, this performance mostly didn’t get past the comic atmosphere it had set up, and when it did, it was just plain boring.

The scene where Lady Capulet breaks the news to Juliet of her arranged marriage was done over breakfast (on the platform). Juliet’s sudden strength of character was fine, as were the rest of the family’s reactions, though I noticed Capulet had a tendency to crush fruit at every opportunity – he’d done it earlier before giving Peter the list of guests. Juliet’s decision to deceive the nurse was swift and unheralded, but fine, and for some strange reason, when the servants were clearing the stools, they held them in a line diagonally from the corner of the platform, so that Juliet could stride along them as she left the stage, with the servants whisking them off immediately afterwards – why?

The scene between Paris, the friar and Juliet was well done, though with her hoodie, the knife she draws on the friar and her agitated manner, she looks like she’s mugging him to get his spiritual counsel, something else that made me chuckle internally. The scene on Juliet’s return to her father and mother was equally OK. I was starting to lose the will to listen by this time, though. Also, I couldn’t stop smiling, and that’s not really the attitude that goes with this play, certainly not at this stage. Juliet’s final thoughts before drinking the potion were OK, and Tybalt’s ghost appeared just before she downed it, carrying a cloth folded across his arms. He placed it at the head of the platform/bed and left. Once Juliet had drunk the potion, she lay down, and started writhing about in some pain – why? It’s a sleeping draught, for heaven’s sake. The other characters whirled about, saying lines which presumably come from the play, until eventually, with Juliet almost in her death-like state, the nurse came in to wake her.

I’ve already commented on the reactions to Juliet’s death – at least seeing the funny side helped to pass the time. I was not only glad that Mercutio died this time around, I was now keen to see the lovers get it as well. I was very aware that the friar gives his instructions about Juliet’s ‘body’ so that his plan will work properly – not such a bungler as often appears, this one. Juliet’s body got up and walked off by itself – her father picked up the folded cloth to represent carrying her away, which worked quite well. No chance the musicians would get a look in, though.

Then it was Romeo in Mantua. Balthasar arrived, and for no reason I could see, sang part of his message to Romeo, attempting a falsetto delivery which didn’t quite come off tonight. This scene was staged with Balthasar on the upper level, and Romeo on the lower, facing forward. Not my favourite way of doing it, and the singing didn’t help either. The apothecary wasn’t as poor as some – dressed in modern clothes, he can apparently afford an iPod, so he must be doing something right.

The bad news came to Friar Laurence and he headed off to the vault, which was formed with the stairs forward and the platform raised. Juliet was carried in by several men and placed on the platform, still in her Elizabethan-style wedding dress. Paris came and went, Romeo kissed Juliet before he took the poison, and one nice touch here was that after the kiss he turned his back on her, and so missed her first stirrings from her sleep; one of those ‘if only’ moments. Pity I just didn’t care by then. He put the poison in a bottle of water and drank it off, crushing the bottle as he did so, which meant there was a plastic bottle knocking around for the remainder of the play, not that’s there’s long to go, thank goodness.

When Juliet woke up and discovered her husband dead beside her, she let out some weird and wonderful cries which made me think, it’s too late to fake an orgasm now, dear. The stabbing was OK, but again her screams were funny rather than moving. I’ve described the final stages already, and both Steve and I noticed there were major cuts in this section, including the bit about Lady Montague being dead. Just as well, as she was standing there large as life, a most unusual occurrence. Balthasar again attempted a song sometime during the final bit, but again the falsetto was too much and he finished it at regular pitch. We still have no idea why he was doing this. With no sign of a monument to the lovers, the final nail was put in the coffin of this play, as the star-crossed nature of the lovers became completely irrelevant. Minor players in a soap opera world. If ever a production could have presented the Nicholas Nickleby version of the Romeo and Juliet ending, this was it – that thought kept me giggling through much of the final part, and to be honest, using that ending would have improved my enjoyment enormously.

There were enough signs here of some good ideas and good performances, but a lot of work needs to be done to strip out the non-essentials and change the whole nature of the production. There were even some hip-hop/rapping references by Romeo and Juliet that felt really out of place. Unfortunately, a lot of folk at tonight’s performance loved it, so there won’t be much pressure for change for a while, even though a few folk left at the interval. We’re both intending to use our next appointments with this production to simply see how it develops, although the understudy run tomorrow obviously won’t have much time. Hopefully the understudies won’t be so extreme either. Wait and see.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Taking Steps – March 2010

8/10

By Alan Ayckbourn

Directed by Alan Ayckbourn

Venue: Orange Tree Theatre

Date: Thursday 25th March 2010

What joy! Not only a great performance of one of Ayckbourn’s funniest plays (as with Shakespeare’s ‘problem’ plays, the description ‘funniest’ seems to apply to the vast majority of Ayckbourn’s work), but the master himself was there at the post-show, answering questions with patience, kindness and humour. A great afternoon.

This particular play was first performed back in the 70’s, and because of the way it’s set up, it only works in the round, as with the Stephen Joseph theatre itself. So the London transfer to a proscenium arch didn’t work too well, and, knowing this, Sam Walters persuaded Alan Ayckbourn to let him put it on again at the Orange Tree, a space only slightly smaller than its Scarborough birthplace.

The plot of this farce is unbelievably complex, but as usual Ayckbourn has woven a rich tapestry of humour with a fairly straightforward situation and a cast of complete misfits. Lizzy, an ex-dancer, is married to Rowley, a successful, sorry, very successful businessman who’s in buckets. And bin liners. If you’ve got rubbish to dispose of, he’s your man. Only he’s not going to be Lizzy’s man much longer, as she’s in the process of writing a note for her husband to tell him she’s gone for good. If only her handwriting was clearer. Her brother, Mark, a man who could take gold in 2012 if boring people to sleep was an Olympic sport, attempts to read it out, and we were in fits of laughter as he tried to figure out what she was saying. ‘Courage’ did especially badly, coming out first as ‘cabbage’, then as ‘carnage’. Lizzy takes so long packing that Rowley’s back home before she can make her escape, and she has to wait for a suitable moment to get away, Mark having already left to pick up his ex-fiancée Kitty from the station.

When Rowley does get back, he’s confronted by Mr Watson, who’s been sent by Rowley’s solicitor with the contracts for the purchase of the big Victorian house he’s currently renting from Mr A. Not that Mr Watson explained his presence so concisely. He’s one of those characters who drifts along on sporadic eddies of words; if you’re lucky, they make a coherent sentence. Few people were lucky this afternoon. Mr A also turns up, hardly recognisable in his biker’s gear and helmet, and he, Rowley and Mr Watson go for a tour of the house. Mr A is a builder, and Rowley wants to talk through the massive amount of work that needs to be done.

Mark arrives back with Kitty, and leaves her in the attic, where she also decides to leave a note and run off. By this time, Lizzy’s note has been found, and after an initial misunderstanding, Rowley learns he’s been abandoned. Mr A leaves without getting the money he needs to keep his business afloat, and Rowley persuades Mr Watson to keep him company, just for the night. With the usual awkwardness of characters in farce, Mark ends up in one of the ‘brown’ rooms, Rowley goes to bed in the attic, thereby trapping Kitty in a cupboard for the night, and Mr Watson spends the night in the master bedroom. When Lizzy returns, having decided to make a go of it with Rowley, she’s completely unaware that it’s not her husband she’s getting into bed with, while Mr Watson, believing the story of the ghost of a prostitute who spends the night with a man who then dies the next morning, is horrified when this ‘ghost’ materialises next to him. And that’s just the first half!

The second half involves suspected suicide attempts, Mr Watson being discovered in bed with two different women (on separate occasions), a near strangling, the purchase of the house, and yet more bids for freedom. And it was all huge fun, and well appreciated by the audience.

Now for the set. We sat at the left end of the first row far left. To our left was an upright chair, then a dressing table with stool, then the corner was filled by the folding bed in the attic which was just in front of the cupboard door. Next to that was a bedside table with a small light, then the sitting room sofa with coffee table in front, then a space for a doorway, then a bedside table next to the master bedroom double bed which was on the diagonal, then another doorway, then another armchair from the sitting room, then the third doorway right by us. To our right, and along the far side, there were banisters with strips of green carpet beside the set, and these had brass strips across them to represent stairs. From the ceiling hung two lights, a fancy one for the sitting room and a plain one that didn’t work (no bulb) for the attic. The action took place on all three levels, often at the same time, and the actors did a lovely jogging movement to indicate that they were going up and down stairs. The amazing thing is that it worked so well – we always knew where people were, and even when the set was crowded they managed to keep out of each other’s way. Alan Ayckbourn commented on this during the post-show, explaining that the actors’ movements had to be planned carefully so they didn’t all try to go through the same doorway at the same time.

Other gems from the post-show: Ayckbourn doesn’t do rewrites. Actually he did one for this production – we were the first to hear the changed word! The script referred to Foxtons as a business within the world of the play. As it’s also the name of a local estate agent, he changed it to Scanstons for this run. He also told us that when he was starting out, not yet twenty years old, everyone thought they knew how to make his plays work better, even the theatre cleaners. He had to work hard to keep things as he wanted them. Once he was successful, and got a reputation, people started taking the text too seriously, even memorising the misprints. He’d had to correct someone when they read a line wrong because the text had a mistake in it.

He was asked if he’d ever suffered from writers block. He told us that for a short time after his stroke, a couple of weeks say, he hadn’t had any ideas in his head at all. As he works by letting ideas develop in the back of his mind, sometimes for years, this was a frightening experience. But one morning he woke up, and an idea was floating around in there, so he knew he was alright.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Dunsinane – February 2010

Experience: 8/10

By David Greig

Directed by Roxana Silbert

Company: RSC

Venue: Hampstead Theatre

Date: Wednesday 24th February 2010

We’ve come to expect very little from the RSC’s new writing in recent years – interesting ideas, good performances, but the plays need work (sometimes a lot of work). So it’s a delight to find that this new play is not only interesting and not only has some great performances, but is also a fully fledged piece which I would like to see have a longer run, preferably at Stratford (in the Swan, please).

The Hampstead Theatre’s auditorium was seriously remodelled for this production. The first three rows of seats were removed, and placed on the right hand side of the stage, which cascaded out in a triangular shape into the space between the seats. From the left of the stage, now the back, a set of irregular stone steps flowed down from a high point, topped by a Celtic cross. The ground below was fairly neutral, both in colour and texture. There was one fire pit opened up during the second half, otherwise it stayed the same (as far as I can remember). There were three ‘chandeliers’ hung across the stage – basic flat wooden circles with numerous candles – and in the second half some bare tree trunks with a few branches were planted here and there. Centre back were some doors, removed in the second half. Furniture was brought on as needed, and the removal men were very efficient. Costumes clearly reflected each ‘side’ or nationality, with the English soldiers wearing chain mail covered by white tabards with the red cross, and the Scots being dressed in leather tunics, cloaks and woollen breeches, apart from the women, of course. The queen wore a lovely deep blue gown which set off her long red hair beautifully, while her women looked more like nuns in their simple clothes. Almost forgot – the band were at the very back, looked like a three-piece.

The play began with a young English soldier telling us of his experiences on the way to Scotland. He spoke to us a few times during the play, as if he were writing letters to his mum. The next thing, all these other soldiers trooped on carrying skimpy bits of branches with leaves. The sergeant handed a branch to the young lad and told him to pretend he was a tree. He then gave the group some coaching in how to look like a forest. It was a very funny scene, and got us off to a good start. To the RSC’s credit, they put enough bodies on stage to make a credible army which really helped the performance, especially as they got them on and off remarkably swiftly.

Next we saw the queen and a couple of men, but as they were speaking Gaelic I haven’t a clue what they were saying – no surtitles. She hugged one of them and he headed off while the other chap, who’d been shooting arrows through the window of the door, stayed behind. When the English soldiers turned up he was soon killed, and pretty quickly the fighting was over. Siward learned of the death of his son, while another Englishman, Egham, entertained us all by doing his man-flu routine over a minor arrow-in-the-shoulder injury. Siward pulled it out for him, not that he got any thanks as Egham passed out from the pain.

Now we were into the post-war phase, or peace, as Siward liked to think of it. Trouble is, it turned out that not only was the queen still alive, she has a son who was now in hiding (the chap who ran off earlier) and not all the Scottish nobles are straining at the leash to shower Malcolm with their vows of allegiance. When Siward raised these points with Malcolm, he was given a wonderfully funny lesson on the Scottish way of using language, which seemed to involve a fairly liberal use of the word ‘seems’. In other words, Malcolm told the English what they needed to hear to get them to invade, but calling Malcolm a liar to his face will get you into trouble. Ring any bells?

After this, Macduff gave Siward an explanation of Scottish politics that made my head swim, never mind his, and I knew a little bit about the setup beforehand. Basically, there were two royal houses in Scotland, Moray and Alba, constantly at war with one another. Gruach, the queen who is still alive, is the highest ranking princess in the Moray line, and whoever she marries becomes king, while her children are the heirs. Personally I think passing the kingship through the female line is a much more sensible approach, since before DNA testing it wasn’t always possible to know who the father was, but the mother was pretty obvious. Of course, even now there can be doubts about royal bloodlines, despite our modern technology, but that’s another story.

Back to the historical situation. Malcolm is the heir of Alba, and apparently unencumbered with wife and kids, so Siward’s proposal at the end of the first half that Gruach and Malcolm marry to unite the two houses must have seemed like a really good idea at the time, at least to him. My first thought was, who’s going to kill who first? The festivities had scarcely got under way when Gruach’s followers invaded the castle, killed a load of people and took her away, a fitting climax to the first half.

The second half was less funny, but then there was more killing, including the execution of Gruach’s son, and Gruach herself wasn’t around till the final scene as we were seeing the action from the English perspective. Questions about the English reasons for still being there abounded, as they now indulged in great brutality with no clear purpose in view. Siward wanted ‘peace’, but hadn’t grasped that there are some wars you can’t win in a pitched battle, the simple way. They need a devious kind of political understanding, and even then the deep rooted loyalties keep getting in the way, even when these allegiances are always shifting and ephemeral. The best option all round was for the English forces to get out, but we didn’t get to see that far in this play. Instead, we were left at the end with Siward delivering Gruach’s son’s mutilated corpse to her, and her showing Siward her grandchild who is, at least in her view, the next king of Scotland. When he couldn’t bring himself to kill it, to try and create some kind of unity out of the mess that he’s helped to bring about, Siward headed off, leaving Gruach alone on the stage, a dramatic and powerful conclusion.

There was much more humour than this description brings out, and I really enjoyed myself this afternoon.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

King Lear – February 2010

5/10

By William Shakespeare

Directed by David Farr

Venue: Courtyard Theatre

Date: Monday 22nd February 2010

This was only the fourth performance. I felt there was some good stuff, and some things that didn’t work so well. The biggest problem was blocking – Darrell d’Silva as Kent kept blocking our view through several scenes, and didn’t budge for up to five minutes! Also, I didn’t care for the flickering lights – if the acting can’t create the tension required, those lights ain’t gonna do it. And when there was a good atmosphere of suspense created, I found the lights distracted me.

The set design was a warehouse, much dilapidated and crumbling – very industrial grunge. A square plinth was raised or lowered in the middle of the stage as required. Assorted lights hung over the stage, from a chandelier to modern strip lights. There was also a bell in the far right corner with a rope that hung down to the stage. Furniture and other props were brought on as needed, and the setup and removal was pretty brisk.

They used Edwardian/first world war costumes and uniforms for the daughters’ side, with Lear and Cordelia in romantic medieval dress, and using swords. Contrasting the disillusionment of the ‘modern’ age with the romantic ideals of earlier times, perhaps? This production also used the technique of bringing the characters for the next scene on stage, having them speak the first few lines of that scene, then holding their position while the stage is cleared or reset. I only remember it being done a few times – will this change? Also, this production blended three scenes so that all three sisters are on stage at the same time – Goneril reading her letter from Edmund, Cordelia praying for her father, and Regan trying to tempt Goneril’s letter to Edmund out of Oswald’s keeping. Nice touch.

In terms of the staging itself, they had enough actors in the cast to provide Lear with a number of followers at the start, but I felt there wasn’t enough of a reaction from them when Goneril was telling her father off. The advantage of having large numbers to show how Lear’s followers leave him was negated by the deadening effect if we don’t see any reactions.

The storm scene used ‘real’ rain, falling on the raised plinth, with only Lear getting wet. Not much thunder, so the lines were easier to hear, but there was much less tension. The interval was taken after this, when Gloucester led Lear away to shelter.

When Lear has been brought to shelter, and has the trial of his daughters, Edmund had previously been left at the back, sitting in a chair at a desk, having just betrayed his father. As the next scene is set up, Goneril appears from behind the curtain and straddles Edmund. Didn’t see what else happened – too caught up in the scene in the foreground. After the trial, the Fool chooses not to go with Kent and Lear to Dover, and isn’t seen again, hanged or otherwise.

The battle sequence, with Gloucester still lying in a corner of the stage, was done by each side striding across a lit diagonal, followed by the sound effects of gunfire, etc. Then several bags deposited small piles of sand across the stage, although one bag kept going with a small dribble of sand through the rest of the scene – intentional or accident? Certainly distracting. [From understudies run, it was an accident – didn’t happen for that performance.]

Edmund has a pistol during the duel, but with a big two-handed sword to deal with, he doesn’t get a chance to draw it until later, when a watchful soldier disarms him. The duel was over quickly, a good choice, I think.

The performances: Kathryn Hunter was good as the fool. I don’t know if I’m just getting familiar with the lines or they were better delivered tonight, but I got more than usual from this part – probably a bit of both. Greg Hicks’ performance is good overall, but still a little patchy. Once or twice he reminded me of Lily Savage – not an image I usually associate with Lear. I think it was the large fur collar on his jacket that gave that impression. He was believable in the mad scenes, although he didn’t display as much emotion as some I’ve seen. Not sure what Lear was like before the play begins, how did he ever hold a kingdom together? This production may have suffered a bit from the discrepancy between the set and the costumes, especially in the first half – the performance didn’t seem to fit in that space. I felt it worked better in the second half, as the military uniforms blended in more.

Katy Stephens was good as Regan, and well matched by Kelly Hunter as Goneril. Both were predatory, and I got the feeling that their treatment of Lear wasn’t premeditated from the start, but when they confronted Lear together at Gloucester’s place they took the opportunity to tighten the noose. I’m not sure about the other performances yet, although James Tucker was good as Oswald, those lines that he was left with anyway.

The cuts we noticed – if it be lawful, I take up what’s cast down (one of my favourite bits!), Oswald’s lines asking Edmund to take the letter to Edgar, Lear’s lines at the end about Cordelia reviving.

Overall, I hope this improves, but I’m not banking on it.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

11 And 12 – February 2010

Experience: 6/10

Adapted from the work of Amadou Hampate Ba by Marie-Helene Estienne

Directed by Peter Brook

Company: C.I.C.T./Theatre des Bouffes Nord

Venue: Barbican Theatre

Date: Saturday 20th February 2010

What a day we’ve had! Congestion on our usual route to Haywards Heath meant a long detour via Crawley. We caught the last possible train to London Bridge, only to find that the various tube line closures had led to a horde of would-be travellers clogging up the platforms of the Northern Line, so we had to wait, in a growing crowd, for the gates to open. After enduring all the jostling that such a pent-up mass of people creates, we were glad to finally get to Moorgate and the open, empty spaces of the Barbican, that cultural hub in the City. As Steve said, we thought things couldn’t get any worse, and then…..

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Six Degrees Of Separation – February 2010

6/10

By John Guare

Directed by David Grindley

Venue: Old Vic Theatre

Date: Wednesday 17th February 2010

We’d seen this years ago with Stockard Channing and Adrian Lester, and apart from bits of the story, what I remember most from that production was the cynical humour, showing up the high flyers in New York society as vain, superficial and gullible. This production was much nicer to the socialites, and with the cultural references dating the play so quickly, perhaps that was inevitable. Steve rated this higher than I did, based on the excellent performances and the overall quality of the production. I agree with him on all of that, I just find the piece too insubstantial to rate it any higher.

The set was simple, with a sofa and table on the revolve, starting with its back to the audience, a double-sided Kandinsky hung at the back and rotating gently before the start, and four curved wall sections that sneakily backed away at one point (I didn’t notice them moving) to open the stage up. Two side walls had the main entrances and the main colour was a plush warm red, with the sofa in green. The inkwell and the dog picture that the husband is concerned about at the start are dangled over the side of the balcony (or box?) to right and left, and spotlit, so we won’t miss them.

The story concerns a young black man who cons his way into rich people’s apartments by pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier. He’s very charming, talks knowledgeably about Catcher In The Rye, and gets small sums of money from his hosts. When the Kitteridges find out he’s also brought a rent boy into the house for some casual sex, they’re horrified (of the ‘we could all have been murdered in our beds’ kind).

There’s a lot of humour in the situation as the couples discover a number of them have been taken in, and when they try to report the incidents to the police, they realise that no actual crime has been committed. A little more investigation on the parents’ part brings their kids into the play – sulky teenagers or what! The shock expressed by one of them that they gave away his pink shirt was good fun, though I think that bit went on a little too long. The prospect of the children narrowing down their friends to a small group of suspects by looking for drug addicts, alcoholics, homosexuals and similar brought suitably contemptuous responses. As if!

Ms Kitteridge soon figured out who to talk to, a chap who was now at MIT, and she got the full story of Paul’s start on his career of non-crime. The MIT chap bribed Paul to have sex with him by teaching him how to speak and behave, and feeding him all the information about his classmates’ families that Paul would use later to carry out his con trick.

When these families go public, Paul has to change tack, and now he cons a young couple from Utah, up in New York to make it big. This time, he tells them he’s Mr Kitteridge’s illegitimate and unacknowledged son, living in Central Park, and trying to get in to see his father. They offer him a bed, he cons the guy out of their savings after the woman has turned him down, and then spends the money treating himself and Utah guy to a great night out at the Rainbow followed by sex. Realising what’s happened, Utah guy throws himself off a building (took me a while to get that it was him), and with Utah woman making a complaint, the police finally have something to go on.

When Paul makes a phone call to the Kitteridges, they, or rather Mrs Kitteridge, persuade him to wait where he is; they will come and pick him up and take him to the police themselves. She makes all sorts of promises to him, as his fantasies are rampant, and although he clearly has brains and charm we can see he needs a lot of help if he’s going to be able to use his talents. Mr Kitteridge, much less tolerant than his wife, lets the police know where Paul is, and with heavy traffic delaying them, the Kitteridges arrive too late.

Since they’re not family, and don’t know Paul’s real name, Mrs Kitteridge can’t find out what happened to Paul. She hears, some months later, that a young man hanged himself in prison using a pink shirt, and while she’s telling us this, we see Paul walking along the top of the wall towards the picture. I think when he gets there, he points at it, and smiles at the audience. Lights.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Alfie – February 2010

6/10

By Bill Naughton

Directed by Adrian McDougall

Company: Blackeyed Theatre

Venue: Connaught Theatre

Date: Thursday 11th February 2010

The main problem with this performance was the sparse response from the audience. The cast did their best, but with such a small turnout we couldn’t get any atmosphere going until nearly the end, and then the abortion section took all the fun out of things.

Neither Steve nor I have watched the film all the way through (it’s impossible not to have seen clips) but since the story was familiar we reckon we may have seen the play years ago. The vast Connaught stage had no trouble holding the various chairs, tables, beds and other paraphernalia needed for the production and still had plenty of room for the band at the back. The pauses between scenes were often covered by music, but they still slowed things up too much for me. Again, the size of the stage didn’t help them, as they had even further to push or carry the furniture.

There were only five actors in the cast so there was plenty of doubling, and I thought they all did their characters very well. Edward Elks as Alfie was very good, delivering his lines well and getting across the inner emptiness of Alfie’s life of ‘pleasure’. The chauvinist attitudes are largely out-of-date, and so too hopefully is the passive acceptance by the women, though I suspect there’s more of both about than I would like. The change in perspectives probably also contributed to the lack of response, as it was hard sometimes to find Alfie’s banter funny. This production is mainly touring to smaller places and I expect a more intimate venue would improve the experience tremendously.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Celtic Footprint – February 2010

8/10

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Sunday 7th February 2010

The first act was called The Gentle Good, which sounds like a band, but was in fact a solo artiste, Gareth Bonello. A Welsh folk singer/songwriter, he was accompanied on this gig by harpist Harriet Earis. Between them they made light work of some songs (in Welsh) which all seemed to be about sad, depressing subjects, and some livelier tunes which were much more robust than I’m used to hearing from a harp. Harriet kept looking round at us with a broad grin on her face, like a mischievous elf looking for someone to play tricks on. She was probably just checking that we hadn’t all scarpered, because there was the usual wide gulf between us and the musicians, one of the drawbacks of the Festival theatre when it comes to bands. Their set had some lovely pieces, and the CDs are definitely on our list.

Second act was Galician piper Anxo Lorenzo. My God, what an amazing talent! He started at the back of the front stalls, playing on his bagpipes, and then walked down and onto the stage, to join his two mates playing on fiddle and guitar or mandolo (similar to a mandolin, but larger and flatter, with eight(?) strings). His set got us all fully warmed up, with some marvellous tunes played on both the bagpipes and other pipes, and his sense of humour came across really well too. No CD available, sadly.

Third act, after the first interval, was Daimh (pronounced dive). This group was an eclectic blend of Scottish, Canadian and Breton musicians, with songs being sung in Gaelic, and bagpipes again well to the fore.

Finally, for the last long set, Dervish took the stage, an Irish band specialising in music from the Sligo area (references to tunes from other areas of Ireland were somewhat derogatory). Their singer, Cathy Jordan, was dressed in green, and did most of the talking, introducing the songs and suchlike. She has a good voice, and the songs and tunes were fine. There was even some audience participation, strongly encouraged by Cathy.

At the very end, for the encore, everyone else joined them on the stage for a final song – don’t remember which one – and we went away thoroughly happy with our long evening of music.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Graft: Tales Of An Actor – February 2010

8/10

By Steven Berkoff

Venue: Mill Studio

Date: Saturday 6th February 2010

Another one and three-quarters straight through! Performed wonderfully by George Dillon, this play is basically a series of sketches, snippets from the life of a generic actor, from the first innocent auditions for drama school to the final final curtain. In the intimacy of the Mill Studio, Dillon held us in the palm of his hand throughout, moving with ease from exaggerated, over-the-top declamation to subtle, quiet moments. We’re shown some of the other people who inhabit the actor’s world – the agent, keen to get the fading talent out of his office, sticks in the mind best – and the corrosive effect of constant criticism is well documented. There’s not as much humour in the later stages as in the earlier, but overall it’s a very good piece, well performed.

© 2010 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me