April 431 BCE. Day 5. City Dionysia. Athens. Aeschylus’s boy Euphorion has already paraded his dramatic wares as has arch-rival (and more successful) Sophocles. Euripides rocks up with his 3 tragedies, Dictys (no, me neither), Philoctetes (misanthropic soldier, later a winning tale for Sophocles) and, fortunately for us, Medea, as well as the mandatory satyr play, here Theristai (a p*ss take of tragedy with lots of dirty jokes performed by dancing fellas with comedy phalluses and clogs – hmm).
The audience, all blokes, no women (well maybe some but certainly not the posh wives and daughters) or slaves, knows the drill. A Chorus, here representing the women of Corinth to explain and react to the action. Incidental characters, a nurse, a tutor, a messenger, to advance the plot. Three men, Medea’s “husband” Jason, the king of Corinth, Creon, and his childless counterpart from Athens, Aegeus. And two silent boys. All played by men. In masks. With music and movement and in accordance with an established, if increasingly elastic, formal structure.
And, of course, Medea herself. A Barbarian other from Colchis across the Black Sea, sorceress trained by Hecate whose Auntie was Circe herself and whose granddad was none other than the sun-god Helios. Now she is the wife and mother of the aforementioned boys. Whisked off her feet by Jason, though hard to see why given his somewhat dick-ish qualities, there is a suspicion naughty matchmaker Aphrodite intervened. He has came from Iolcus with his crew on the Argo to purloin the Golden Fleece, which his usurper uncle, Pelias, rather rashly, had agreed to swap for the throne. (A complicated family history here involving rivers, rape, exposure on mountains, step-matricide, imprisonment, exile, a centaur as a stepdad and a missing sandal – standard issue Greek mythology).
Anyway, Jason nabbed the fleece, with a lot of help from Medea and her magic, having saved his bacon on multiple occasions, as he set about completing a bunch of somewhat ludicrous tasks set by its owner, Medea’s daddy King Aeëtes of Colchis. Unfortunately, this daddy promptly reneged on his deal and the only way to shake him off was for Medea to kill and chop up her (half) brother Absyrtus. Oops.
The run-aways, after seeing off a big bronze chap, turning Cretans into a bunch of liars, and Jason getting a fix of his Dad Aeson’s blood, returned to Iolcus. But, uh-oh here we go again, Pelias refused to give up the throne, so Medea, literally, cooked up a plan to kill him, involving his daughters, an old ram, a stew-pot and some herbs. Swift exit. Jason and Medea who end up in Corinth.
Which is where Euripides’s story kicks in. Jason plans to throw Medea over to marry Glauce, the daughter of Creon (king of Corinth, keep up). Allegedly this will secure his, Medea’s and the kids’ position in Corinth. A likely story. Medea is badass mad and doesn’t mind who knows it. Creon reckons it’s safest to banish her and the children. And chickensh*t Jason isn’t going to argue with him. However, Medea is clever, very clever. Buys some time and hatches a plan. The screw inexorably tightens. Glauce, Creon and, infamously, (surely no spoiler alert required), but still distressingly, herchildren are victims of Medea’s wrath.
All this Bronze Age myth will have been familiar to our Athenian geezers via Hesiod and the like. So presumably they settled in to see how, as Congreve would have it, “heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned”, with the Barbarian being put firmly in her place. Except this was Greek drama and this was Euripides. If it were all so simple we wouldn’t be caught up in it near 2500 years later. His predecessors Aeschylus and Sophocles, albeit through more formal structures, had already used myth and history to shine an often critical light on Athenian, and Greek, politics, society and mores. Drama was supposed to educate as well as entertain and to innovate and provoke. It is hard to imagine that Euripides, who broke the rules seven years earlier with the tetralogy which included the surviving tragedy Alcestis (one of Pelias’s daughters), hadn’t already started to get under the skin of his peers with his ambiguity, irony, sarcasm, comedy, subversion, needling, gender awareness, rounded “human” characterisations and all round meta-ness.
So, I do wonder if the apparent shock of the children’s murder at the hands of their mother and her subsequent coup de theatre/deus ex machina escape sans chariot really was all that shocking. Maybe Euripides came third and last that year simply because the jury preferred the competition. Maybe belief in arete, eudaimonia, rhetoric, aporia, hypsos, mimesis, diegesis, pathos, nous, akrasia/enkrateia, prohairesis, phronesis and sophrosyne offset pilotimo, kleos, agon, esthlos and other such “manly” virtues. Easy enough to be temporarily sympathetic to the plight of women when you know that the patriarchy persists and you can go out and get lashed up with your mates on cheap wine when the play ends. And, by then, the Barbarians, which the Greeks used as signifiers to assert their own superiority, were anything but uncivilised, rapidly Hellenising and the source of the grain on which the polis depended.
And so we roll forward to 2023 and @sohoplace (why!!??). Perfect sightlines and acoustics in the round even if the seats are a bit of a squeeze for the fuller figure, the décor is bouji baffling and egress is a health and safety nightmare. Vicki Mortimer’s set, with off stage basement, is an elegant solution which dovetails with Dominic Cooke’s unfussy direction, albeit with a few a la mode tropes, glam metal pre-prologue, a rain shower in the closing episodes and a bit of slo-mo shuffling from Ben Daniels, who, smartly, is cast in all the male roles. A nod to Athenian practice which underlines the manifold character flaws of the three chaps; for me Euripides’s excoriation of the male gender is nearly as powerful as his exultation of the female.
Our chorus, Penny Layden, Jo McInnes and Amy Trigg, initially sat amongst us, for we are all voyeuristic Women of Corinth, and delivered the concise poetry of Robinson Jeffers’s classic 1947 adaptation, exquisitely. Music to the ears as it should be. Marion Bailey’s Nurse is the mirror of our own escalating helplessness and dread (even if you know exactly what is going to happen) and, for my money, has the best lines as she describes the deaths of Glauce and Creon.
So, given this text and performance, no excuse for even the constantly whirring brain of LB, a Greek tragedy virgin but now convert, not to be drawn in. Let’s be honest though, even with this clarity, it is only the mighty presence of Sophie Okonedo that turns this into a memorable evening. No great surprise. Check out her Cleopatra in Simon Godwin’s A&C alongside Ralph Fiennes, her Stevie, (now theirs is a wronged wife), alongside Damien Lewis in Ian Rickson’s version of Edward Albee’s Grecian homage, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? or her Queen Margaret in The Hollow Crown: War of the Roses (where Ben Daniels played Buckingham and which was also directed by Dominic Cooke).
Barking witch or feminist revenger? And/or everything in between? Sophie Okenedo makes all readings credible, making Medea entirely human, clever, powerful, logical, desperate, passionate, pleading, sardonic, even as she commits this most inhuman act. Perspectives are subtly highlighted, Medea’s otherness is contrasted with the white skin and flaxen air of Glauce, Jason’s futile mansplaining, Creon’s prideful ego, Jason’s devastation. A shout out too for Gareth Fry’s sound design which ratchets up the tension and doesn’t recede as some contemporary designs are wont to do.
Criticisms? We are done and dusted in 90 minutes so a little more breath might have been drawn to let us savour the text. The foregrounding of plot and character left the insights into the influence of the gods and the Greek mind somewhat hanging. Some of the movement felt a little “staged” – yes I am perfectly aware how daft that sounds but I know what I mean. And camping up Aegeus continues the long tradition of viewing him as a plot irritant. But all in all I would hope that punters came out knowing that Greek tragedy, for all it’s “then-ness” can be right, slap bang, of now.
In which the Tourist condenses down 2020, in and out of lockdown, mostly watching stuff on a screen. Don’t worry he also took walks, saw punters when permitted and growled at the state of his disappointing nation, but it is only now he is back out in the live cultural realm, receiving “multiple inputs” as BUD would have it, that the cognitive slide has stopped. I know, egregious first world world privilege, but this is a blog about culture so forgive my insensitivity.
Where to start. A few highlights of the filmed performances I saw over the year I think, then the same for the “digital” theatre which I consumed and also a word on the “live” performances that snuck in under the wire as restrictions lifted and were then reimposed. Chronologically because I am naturally idle and that is easier. BTW the idea of a “freedom day” per our comedy government raises my liberal, remainer, metropolitan elite hackles but, on the other hand, it couldn’t have come quicker for my theatre ecosystem chums.
April 2020.
First out of the block was one of Schaubuhne Berlin‘s performance streams, namely Hamlet filmed at the Avignon Festival, with Thomas Ostermeier in the directorial chair and Lars Eidinger as the eponymous prince, so mad with toddler tantrums that he couldn’t be mad surely. Bordering on the slapstick, with earth, blood and water liberally splashed around, breaking the fourth wall, cuts galore, extra, incongruous lines, “to be or not to be” a drunken rant, Gertrude and Ophelia psychosexually doubled up, by playing up the comedy and meta-theatre in Hamlet, Ostermeier locates new truths in the greatest of plays (?). Elsinore as excess. Not for those who like their Shakespeare all sing-song verse and doublets. I bloody loved it. As I did later in the month with the company’s take on Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. The scene where the audience is invited into the central political debate, after Stockmann’s prescient rant about liberal hypocrisy, is electrifying. Even in German. What I would have given to see this when it came to London in 2014. What a tit I was for missing it. This is utterly contemporary, Stockmann and mates even have a rock band rehearsal, the conflicts personal as much as political. I am biased since this is one of my favourite Ibsen’s but it is enthralling and a perfect vehicle for TO’s brand of “Capitalist realism” theatre. Finally there was SB’s take on Orlando this time with Katie Mitchell directing with Jenny Konig superb as Virginia Woolf’s eponymous hero/heroine in an adaptation from Alice Birch. This was due to come to the Barbican in this very month but, perforce, was cancelled There are times when I find KM and AB’s aesthetic baffling (The Malady of Death) even as I absorb the provocation, but here it all comes together. And, thanks to the customary live narration and live and pre-recorded video projection, it works brilliantly on the small screen where an expert is guiding your eye (not always the case with KM’s regie-theatre). In contrast to Sally Potter’s lush film version, also brilliant in part thanks to Tilda Swinton’s performance, KM works the comedy, almost rompishly, and revels in the anachronistic artificiality of the story. I hope that SB will be back in London soon but, in their absence, the Tourist will have to live up to his name and get on the train to Berlin.
Another highlight was the filmed version of the Old Vic production of Arthur Miller’s Crucible with Yael Farber at her very best directing and Richard Armitage as John Porter showing he can act as well as well as take his shirt off and shoot up baddies. YF’s brooding atmospherics and measured pacing bring a real sense of paranoia to Salem adding to the petty vengeances. The trinity of Procter, wife Elizabeth (Anna Madeley) and scheming Abigail (Samantha Colley) have real strength and depth, and the thrilling power of the final act is full beam. The political allegory takes a back seat to a critique of religious intolerance and hypocrisy. It is also brilliantly shot and edited, something you can’t say about all filmed productions. Well worth seeing.
Other standouts in a busy viewing month (ahh the novelty of armchair viewing, tea, biscuits and pee breaks) were Breach Theatre‘s It’s True. It’s True, It’s True dramatising the rape trial of Artemisia Gentileschi and Imitating the Dog‘s Night of the Living Dead REMIX, the live frame by frame reconstruction of the George A Romero Zombie classic satire. Genius. Both are available still to watch.
Also of note. The Peter Grimes filmed on the beach at Aldeburgh from the Festival, Sophie Melville’s firecracker of a performance in Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott, the Glyndebourne Fairy Queen, Maxine Peake’s Hamlet, an RSC Two Gentleman of Verona (a play I had never seen before completing the Bard set) and a revisit of Simon Godwin’s Twelfth Night at the NT with Tamsin Greig. Pretty sure the enterprising amongst you can find all of these to stream.
May 2020.
More Schaubuhne Berlin. This time Thomas Ostermeier’s take on Hedda Gabler. Ripped out of its buttoned up C19 Norwegian context this petulant, anomieic Hedda, brilliantly captured by Katharina Schüttler, can’t be satisfied by men or material, rails against her bourgeois cage, here a modernist glass house, but can’t give it up. So her suicide is more “you’ll all be sorry when I’m gone” than her only escape from masculine tyranny. And no-one notices. OK so a lot of Ibsen’s delicious text is lost but this is still a thrilling re-imaging of a classic.
On the subject of flawed heroines, and currently the subject of intense study by the Tourist, next up was Blanche Dubois in the form of Gillian Anderson in Benedict Andrews’ 2014 A Streetcar Named Desire at the Young Vic. Ben Foster as Stanley and Vanessa Kirkby (showing why she was destined for higher things) as Stella are superb but Ms Anderson, who doesn’t always get it right, was perfectly cast, capturing the many , and there are many, sides of our Blanche. Treat yourself. It’s on NT at Home. As is the NTFrankenstein double header with Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch alternating as creature and doctor under Danny Boyle’s explosive direction. (Also now on Prime I think). Missed this on stage so was overjoyed to catch this and was not disappointed.
Also of note. A Wozzeck from Dutch National Opera, Alexander Zeldin’s LOVE at the NT, revisits of Simon Godwin’s Antony and Cleopatra at the NT, Complicite’s The Encounter and Simon Stephens’s Sea Wall with Andrew Scott. Midnight Your Time from the Donmar Warehouse was a pretty successful Zoom based revival from Michael Longhurst with script by Adam Brace though largely thanks to Diana Quick’s turn as the lonely, domineering do-gooder mother Judy. Oh, and Bound from the Southwark Playhouse, a pretty good play written and directed by Jesse Briton (though terrible footage) which tells the tale of trawlermen in Brixham. Yey.
June 2020.
The above is just the best of the best from a couple of months of intensive “digital” theatre. By June I can see that the sun had come out, I started taking my cinematic responsibilities more seriously and the theatre online opportunities diminished. Schaubuhne Berlin‘s take on Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi was another highlight but didn’t match Robert Icke’s electrifying, and subversive, adaptation at the Almeida from 2019. I wasn’t quite as taken with the Donmar Warehouse Coriolanus as I had hoped, with Tom Hiddleston as the eponymous kvetch directed by Josie Rourke but it was still worth the long wait.
Otherwise a pair of revisits stood out. This House, James Graham’s breakthrough political comedy at the NT and The Madness of King George with Mark Gatiss from the Nottingham Playhouse.
July 2020.
The BBC’s anthology of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads was the standout in July. Some new additions to the canon but my favourites were Imelda Staunton, Harriet Walter, Lesley Manville and Monica Dolan, though they also happen to be my favourite actors from an enviably talented dozen.
Otherwise there was the Glyndebourne Billy Budd and a revisit, with BD and LD who loved it, of Nick Hytner’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the Bridge as well as the NT Amadeus with Lucien Msamati.
And our first “live” event for a few months. At the Garden Museum. Derek Jarman: My Garden’s Boundaries are the Horizon. Mind you there wasn’t much too it but it was good to tick something off.
August 2020.
Amongst the welcome staycation action there were a fair few digital entertainments of note. A magnificent Turn of the Screw at Garsington Opera with a perfectly balanced cast and a striking set from Christopher Oram. I will definitely need to look out for the work of director Louisa Muller. I see it is a highlight of their 2022 season but I can’t be doing with the faff of getting there, the price they charge and the dressing up like a toff. Followed by the RSC Timon of Athens with Kathryn Hunter in the lead. Directed by …. yep, Simon Godwin once again. Timon of Athens as a play makes perfect sense to me as did this production and not just because of Ms Hunter’s performance. The very different Simon Russell Beale also convinced at the NT under Nick Hytner. The knotty parable of a rich man who falls and then, through a process of ironic self-enlightenment, turns on the commercialised society that made him works as well in C21 London as it does in ancient Athens. Yes there are a few plot holes and unexplained appearances/retreats but that is the case in a lot of Shakespeare.
And then there was the classic Glyndebourne The Rake’s Progress with designs by David Hockney and directed by John Cox. More opera. Well bits of. Namely extracts from the Holland Festival/Dutch National Opera/Royal Conservatoire The Hague staging of Stockhausen’s Aus Licht. Itself a selection, over three days mind and covering 15 hours, from the total seven day opera which runs to 29 hours. Mind blowing. Another reason why Holland might just be the greatest country on earth.
September 2020.
The first appearance of theatre made to be streamed. First out of the blocks, the Old Vic with Three Kings a monologue written by Stephen Beresford delivered by Andrew Scott as Patrick. BD and SO sat in and we were all transfixed by this eloquent “sins of the father revisited …..” story. Better still was Faith Healer, Brian Friel’s triple memory monologue play which is both a) brilliant and b) made for the Zoom format. Especially when you have the fantastic Michael Sheen playing the fantastic Francis Hardy, in full on Welshness, Indira Varma as his long suffering wife Grace, and David Threlfall as an uber cockney manager Teddy. Loved the play, love the production.
But lo. There was more. Some live theatre. As the Bridge brought the Bennett Talking Heads monologues to the stage (****). We opted for The Shrine (a new addition) with Monica Dolan as Lorna who discovers there was more to husband Clifford than met the eye after his fatal motorcycle accident. Very funny. And then A Bed Among the Lentils with Lesley Manville utterly convincing as vicar’s wife Susan who seeks solace at the corner shop. Just glorious.
It didn’t end there. Two live exhibitions. The Andy Warhol at Tate Modern (***) which was good but I guess lacked discovery and the Electronic: From Kraftwerk to The Chemical Brothers music history at the Design Museum (**) where I sort of lost interest after Kraftwerk and 80s synths but BD was very enamoured.
There was a cracking Prom broadcast with the London Sinfonietta serving up an eclectic programme of modern.contemporary faves including Philip Glass’s Facades, Julia Wolfe’s East Broadway (for toy piano) a couple of Conlon Nancarrow Player Piano Studies, Tansy Davies’s funk workout neon, Edmund Finnis in situ, Anna Meredith’s Axeman for electrified bassoon and Steve Reich City Life. Tremendous.
But amongst the screen viewings to my surprise the highlight of the month was La Monnaie/de Munt‘s recording of a 2107 production of Luca Silla. Director Tobias Kratzer carved out a jewel from relatively meagre materials by Mozart’s standards in this early opera (composed at just 16) which tells the story of the rise, fall and redemption of a Roman tyrant. BUD, who accommodated with grace all my suggestions for shared lockdown viewing, strongly agreed.
October 2020.
No live theatre this month. You never quite know where you are with our callow cabinet. A couple of exhibitions however. Young Rembrandt at the Ashmolean (****), proof that even the very greatest have to work hard to exploit their talent. All sorts of stuff that I am never likely to see again. So glad I got to see it. And joy of joys we got to see Artemisia at the National Gallery (*****) which I thought we had lost to the pandemic. To be fair there were a few Biblical group scene commissions which to me were less impressive and, understandably a few omissions, and I have already gone out of my way to look at her paintings on show in venues that I have visited, (the NG itself, Palazzo Pitti, Uffizi, Prado, in Bologna, Seville, Pisa), but that still left a clutch of stunning works to take in. Don’t like the underground space in the NG (I know it is perfectly lit), too hot and busy, but still stopped in my tracks by St Cecilia, Mary Magdalene and Cleopatra, for it is in the portrayals powerful women that AG excelled.
A couple of live streamed theatre treats, the Mark Gatiss (with Adrian Scarborough) Ghost Stories from the Nottingham Playhouse which cut the muster and a revisit of ITA‘s Medea which once again astounded. A fair few streamed concerts this month. Igor Levit went out of his way to entertain during lockdown, I caught a Beethoven recital from Wigmore Hall, finally saw the RSC production of Tom Morton-Smith’s play Oppenheimer and the whole family enjoyed the interactive online adventure The Mermaid’s Tongue (and went on to its precursor Plymouth Point) from a couple of Punchdrunk alumni.
November 2020.
By now the live or specially made for streamed theatre was coming thick and fast. Now I am firmly in the camp that sees recordings of theatre productions, or live streamed events, as additive to, rather than a substitute for, live theatre. I appreciate if you can get get to a live show, or missed it, then of course, you should see it on a screen. I understand that your armchair is way better for back, bum and neck than most theatre seats and refreshments come better, quicker and cheaper. And don’t get me started on the toilets. After all I have wasted more than enough text complaining here about West End theatres. I also believe that some of the made for streaming theatre of the past 18 months or so has been interesting and innovative in its use of technology. But it’s just no the same as sitting in a dark room with other punters wondering what is going to happen next on that stage. I had forgotten just how much I miss the electricity and the immersion.
Having said that What a Carve Up!, based on the Jonathan Coe novel, a co-production from The Barn Theatre in Cirencester, the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich and the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield was a triumph and by some way the best digital theatre work we saw during lockdown. Coe’s novel is a satire which examines the workings of power during the 1980s through the lens of the predominantly unpleasant upper class family the Winshaws. But it is also a whodunnit as Michael) Owen, at the behest of Tabitha Winshaw is tasked with documenting the murky family past. And it is this thread that Henry Filloux-Bennett, the AD at the Lawrence Batley Theatre, and director, Tamara Harvey from Theatr Clywd, wisely chose to pull on. What a Carve Up! not only switches in time but also employs multiple narrators, in first and third person, across different genre styles. And its protagonist spends a lot of time holed up in his flat shuffling papers and watching videos. A narrative collage if you will that is perfect then for splicing between “live” interviews, direct to camera Zoom addresses, film excerpts, TV and radio clips and photos. Especially as HF-B reverses the “chronology” of the story, starting with the murders, and filters out material not relevant to the central mystery. More inspired by, than faithful interpretation then, but gripping nonetheless. Especially with a cast that includes Alfred Enoch, (a new character Raymond, the son of Michael), Fiona Button and Tamzin Outhwaite as well as the voices of Derek Jacobi, Stephen Fry, Griff Rhys Jones and Sharon D Clarke. Is it theatre? Who cares when it is this good.
Not quite in the same league in terms of story, structure and execution, but still engrossing and technically adept was the Original Theatre Company’s Apollo 13: The Dark Side of the Moon which dramatised that il fated expedition predominantly through close ups of the three astronauts as well as video footage and an imposing score from Sophie Cotton. Writer Torben Betts also explores the racial tension between Michael Salami’s Fred Haise, here cast as an African American, and Tom Chambers as the rightwing Jack Swigert. Credit to directors Alastair Whatley and Charlotte Peters and film director Tristan Shepherd for their realisation.
By way of contrast Little Wars by Carl McCasland from Ginger Quiff Theatre was limited to the simple Zoom reading format though the story, an imagined dinner party involving Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Dorothy Parke, Lillian Hellman, Agatha Christie and anti-fascist freedom fighter Muriel Gardiner and the cast, Juliet Stevenson, Debbie Chazen, Natasha Karp, Catherine Russell Sarah Solemani, Sophie Thompson and, best of all, Linda Bassett went a long way to overcoming this.
We also saw a slew of excellent filmed live productions, in order of impact: Sarah Kane’s Crave at Chichester Festival Theatre, a powerful and surprisingly lyrical evocation of love, pain and pleasure, under Tinuke Craig’s potent direction, with committed performances from Alfred Enoch (hello again), Wendy Kweh, Jonathan Slinger and, especially, Erin Doherty; Who Killed My Father, a current favourite of Continental European directors, a monologue from ITA based on Edouard Louis’s impassioned testament to his own father and the treatment of the poor and marginalised in France, with the world’s greatest actor, Hans Kesting, at the top of his game; Death of England Delroy, part 2 of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s ongoing NT trilogy examining race, masculinity and other state of the nation gubbins, with Michael Balogun commanding (we missed this live thanks to a period of isolation, bah); and 15 Heroines, the inspired collection of 15 short monologues by women playwrights shaping narratives to the voices of Ovid’s women brought to us by the enterprising Jermyn Street Theatre.
I expected Daniel Kitson wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to used the pandemic as material and an opportunity for formal experimentation. In Dot, Dot, Dot, he toured the nation’s theatres performing to an audience of …. no-one. At least not live. I picked the stream from the Tobacco Factory to hear his alternatively poignant and hilarious dissection of the impact of lockdown on our everyday lives and human connections, the schtick being a table of Post it notes acting as prompts. Maybe not vintage Kitson but good enough for now.
There was enough in the filmed performance of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia from the Vaudeville Theatre to persuade us of its many merits but the quality of the stream was just too poor, though we were warned. In contrast the filmed performance of Richard Eyre’s brisk Almeida Theatre production of Ibsen’s Ghosts from 2013 was exemplary both technically and dramatically, and not just because Lesley Manville played Mrs Alving.
A few other plays and concerts but nothing to write home about so on to December and that bizarre British obsession with Christmas.
December 2020.
A couple of live productions managed to sneak in before doors closed again. A fine revival of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter at Hampstead Theatre (****) with Alex Newman as Ben and Shane Zaza as Gus, directed by Alice Hamilton. Not quite up to the Jamie Lloyd Pinter season version from 2019, or the more recent Old Vic offer, but it is too good a play to disappoint. And, at the Rose Kingston, Shit Actually (****) from fringe favourites Shit Theatre, aka Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole, whose deconstructed tribute to Love Actually’s women is way funnier and more thought proving than we had any right to expect.
Unfortunately the streamed theatre the Tourist took in this month wasn’t up to much; the NT production of panto Dick Whittington felt a bit rushed and predictable, and the RSC Troy Story, which I had high hopes for, turned out to be no more than a fairly mediocre and static reading.
In contrast, with limited means at their disposal, Grange Park Opera made a powerful case for someone to create a full blow stage production of Benjamin Britten’s pacifist “TV” opera, Owen Wingrave, and VOPERA, along with the LPO, produced the definitive virtual opera in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, designed by Leanne Vandenbussche and directed by Rachael Hewer. Do try and track it down.
I would repeat that advice for Jack Thorne’s A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic which is about to open on stage and for Blackeyed Theatre’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which is currently on tour.
I am very partial to the work of Ella Hickson. Precious Little Talent, Boys, Oil, The Writer, ANNA, all have met their, expansive, ambition. Splendid theatre with something powerful to say. With Swive she has collaborated with director Natalie Abrahami, (who marshalled cast and technology so effectively in ANNA), and has alighted on the life of Elizabeth I, not a novel subject for dramatic treatment, in theatre, film or small screen, but still a vital subject for the dissection of women and power. (The SO, BD and LD scored an early collective lockdown viewing success with Josie Rourke’s cinematic debut Mary, Queen of Scots, for example).
The play is small scale, mixing the political with the domestic, and casts two actors, Nina Cassells as the young Princess Elizabeth, (as well as an unnamed Court washerwoman and Lady Katherine Grey) and Abigail Cruttenden as Queen Elizabeth, (as well as her step-mother Catherine Parr, and her predecessor Mary Tudor). In a series of short scenes, enlivened by Ben Stokes’s sly, chip-boarded, candlelit set and teasing costumes, we see how the young and mature Elizabeth negotiate the patronising and miscalculation of significant male influences, Michael Gould as long time adviser and Protestant defender William Cecil, and Colin Tierney as pervy “step” father Thomas Seymour and hubbie-in-waiting Robert Dudley, and how this extraordinary woman was able, ultimately to rise above patriarchal repression and dominate Court and Country.
This is no dry history though. Key events are obliquely referenced but EH’s and NA’s dialogue is more concerned with the how and why of Elizabeth’s tortuous negotiations, rather than the what, before and during her reign. Overcoming her “illegitimacy”, avoiding the fall-out from the association with the scheming Seymour, countering the threats posed by half- brother Teddy VI, and “bloody” half-sister Catholic, Mary Tudor, stringing Dudley along and pimping him out to Scots Mary, claiming the right to be head of the Church as well as the State, despite Cecil and the other geezer’s misgivings, (yet not, if she had married, head of her family), the obsession with her, and others, uberty (yep new word for me). All are cleverly crammed in but the vernacular words the two Elizabeths use to highlight their dilemmas could come from any woman now, asked to justify herself when justification is unjust and unwarranted.
This equivalence of then and now occasionally fails, the perpetual question of the succession for example as Lady Katherine Grey blows her chances, but the message so vital and the delivery so lucid that it doesn’t matter. Abigail Cruttenden is as deliciously peremptory as you might imagine and Nina Cassells masks the young Elizabeth’s decisiveness with a precocious air of vulnerability. Both are adept at turning the arguments of the men back on themselves.
There are some laugh-out loud zingers, the artifice of the SW Playhouse is acknowledged right at the beginning, and even the candle snuffing and relighting seems rhetorical. All this, the 90 minute run time, a paracetamol and and a wisely chosen perch, meant the Tourist’s back remained in fine-(ish) fettle until the trot back to London Bridge. Not quite enough to persuade him that visits to the SWP, and the Globe, should not remain few and far between given the hair-shirt comfort levels, but more than enough to ensure that Ella Hickson’s remains very near the top of his list of favourite contemporary playwrights.
As You Like It? Not really like this. Mind you I have yet to see a production of the play that really bowled me over. The NT production from 2016 directed by Polly Findlay looked great, office chairs becoming the Forest of Arden, and reminded us of the immense talent of Rosalie Craig and Patsy Ferran, but didn’t quite do it for me and I have a vague recollection of a previous RSC outing with Niamh Cusack as Rosalind and David Tennant as Touchstone. So maybe it is the play that doesn’t quite persuade.
I get that Will’s exploration of gender roles, sexuality and the rules of attraction still intrigues and resonates. And I get that, as a paean to the joy of love, and specifically the slippery notion of “love at first sight” there isn’t much better in the Shakespeare, or any other, canon. And it has a couple of pukka roles for women. As a generally miserable f*cker I can’t help but be attracted to eeyore Jaques and there are plenty of laughs, though they don’t always land from the lips of the sketchier supporting characters and some are just too knowing. What I don’t really buy is the whole pastoral, simpler life vibe, the magical forest is more convincing in AMND, and, absent Rosalind and Celia, I have never been convinced by many of the relationships, courtly and common, of which there are too many to really round out character. The banishments, and reconciliations, of Fred and Duke Senior, and the du Bois boys (here Leo Wan and Aaron Thiara), isn’t properly explained or resolved. The songs are a bit ropey. The prose and verse inversion and switching can be distracting and adds to the bitty, “a string of chance encounters”, quality of the play.
There are however plenty of other WS plays where similar criticisms might be levelled. But plot, character, language, message and spectacle, or some combination thereof normally finds a way to lift you up and into the world of breathless, nothing else matters, concentration that is the magic of the Bard. So maybe as I say I just need the right production of AYLI.
Here Kimberley Sykes, the brains behind the RSC Dido from 2017 which the Tourist annoyingly overlooked, has offered up a timeless Arden, supported by Stephen Brimson Lewis’s design, which focuses on the key connections, between the excellent Lucy Phelps’s confident Rosalind, her forthright bessie coz Sophie Khan Levy and a gentle, though ardent, Orlando in the form of David Ajao. Sophie Stanton, as a detached, almost inert, female Jaques, was polished, and Sandy Grierson, once again, stood out with his grotesquely camp Touchstone.. A whole bunch of gender switching for the other roles left the characters even less defined than normal, and, whilst it was not difficult for an actor of Antony Byrne’s quality to pull off the roles of both Dukes, I am not sure I got the point in a play already stuffed with mistaken identities.
There were a lot of nice visual touches, but there were also times when the cast seemed to be keen to move on to the next scene, lines a bit too hurried, and some of the blocking felt a little unconnected on the roomy Barbican stage. And then there was the lighting, designed, as were the costumes, by Bretta Gerecke, which was often the wrong side of insistent. And then there was the audience participation. And a giant puppet of Hymen, god of marriage, looming over Lucy Phelps as she delivers her, slightly desperate, epilogue at the end.
What to do with Taming of the Shrew. Pretend the framing device with Sly deceived by Milord gets you off the hook. Not sure audiences buy that. Mine the text very carefully and add detail through direction which undermines the misogyny. That takes real skill. Ironically play up the “comedy”, and cast Kate and Petrucio’s final lines as a “show” to mask them coming together, and hope the audience keeps up. Play it straight, as nasty as you dare, even venturing into dark psycho-sexual territory, and hope the audience sees that Will S, as we surely must assume, him otherwise being the unparalleled oracle of the human condition, meant for us to recoil at both the story and our reaction to it. (Though remember John Fletcher, Shakespeare’s successor with The King’s Men felt compelled to write a now rarely performed response to Shrew, The Woman’s Prize, in which Petruchio’s second wife “tames” him). That can work but don’t be surprised if modern, as contemporary opinion did, criticises.
Or change gender as here? One of the best versions of the play that I saw was Edward Hall’s all male version for Propellor. Sly (Vince Leigh) became Petruchio, the misogyny is initially ridiculed in a genuinely funny production, but then becomes more menacing, punky Kate (Dan Wheeler) continually fights back making his/her final submission even uglier. The point being that Sly will continue the cycle of male violence outside the play.
In this RSC production directed by Justin Audibert, not for the first time, the genders are reversed, with Claire Price now a swaggering, derring-do Petruchia, and, names unchanged, Joseph Arkley the very pliant Katherine, the object of her undoubted affection, and James Cooney his more attractive and preening brother, Bianco. Padua becomes a matriarchy, pronouns are judiciously changed, gags retained, but it still doesn’t properly scrutinise the dominance/gaslighting power plays at the heart of the action. We already know what is wrong with or without role reversal.
Elsewhere though the inversion adds sheen, notably the wooing of Bianco by the salacious Gremia (Sophie Stanton complete with comedy glide pace Mark Rylance’s Olivia), the inept Lucentia (Emily Johnstone) aided by her capable sidekick/double Trania (Laura Elsworthy) and Hortensia (Amelia Donkor). The deceptions, rivalries and put downs all entertain. Amanda Harris as Mum Baptista, Amy Trigg as Lucentia’s other servant Biondella and Melody Brown as Vincentia, Lucentia’s mum all have fun with the roles.
The production looks terrific thanks to Stephen Brimston Lewis’s set (here seen to best effect when compared to the other RSC productions in the season) and Hannah Clark’s costumes. Composer Ruth Chan gets away with her “rock Renaissance” vibe. And Alice Cridland’s marshalling of wigs, hair and make-up mightily impressed. But none of this really solves for the fact that simply reversing and softening the genders and positing a social order that doesn’t, nor ever did, exist, can’t magic away the central offence. Which, in itself, is a lesson.
The Tourist has been very much taken with previous Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory productions, Othello and Henry V, both here and on home turf in Bristol. This latest, MAAN, directed by Elizabeth Freestone, as was Henry V, and who will be bringing Stef Smith’s take on A Doll’s House to the Young Vic next year, didn’t quite match these predecessors but still provided an entertaining, if inconsistent, evening of Shakespeare comedy.
At least it did when I snuck downstairs in the second half. I had forgotten just how dire the sound is upstairs at WMH, blighted by reverb, even if there are now some comfy perches. Not a big deal, and for some of the actors no deal at all, but it did mean that I had to strain to hear the lines of, particularly Alice Barclay as Ursula, Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Beatrice and Imran Momen as Claudio. And, in Shakespeare, every word counts, however often ypu may have seen or read the play. In fact the more viewings the richer the language becomes.
Now MAAN is a comedy. And, unlike some of the Bard’s other comedies, it largely sticks to the make the punters laugh script. Even so, in amongst the comic couplings and the gossip, rumour, eavesdropping and misunderstandings, the “noting” of the original title, there are some dark ideas, to do with honour and patriarchal dominance, as Daddy Leonato (Christopher Bianchi) farms out his daughter Hero (Hannah Bristow) to Claudio and doesn’t for a moment consider she might be innocent of the charge of adultery. As ever with WS there is a questioning of gender stereotypes, even as those stereotypes are played out, which is what drives the comedy and is what Ms Freestone alights on in her interpretation through her gender blind casting, notably Georgia Frost (who stood out as she did in Kneehigh’s Dead Dog in a Suitcase), as Don Pedro’s (Zachary Powell) here sister Don Jon, and, less successfully Louise Mai Newberry as Dogberry.
Of course MAAN largely succeeds or fails on the “chemistry” between Beatrice and Benedick and here Ms Myer-Bennett, who it has been my pleasure to see in multiple plays in the last few years, and Geoffrey Lumb, who is a fine, and experienced, Shakespearean, were up for the fight. Verbal sparring only, of course, but sufficiently pointed throughout that at the end, you still sensed they would be chary of each others’ true feelings long after the ceremonies when we had all left Messina. Maybe not quite up to the benchmark set by Lisa Dillon and Edward Bennett in Christopher Luscombe’s RSC version from 2017 but still eminently watchable. Ms M-B’s Beatrice is, by some way, the smartest person in the room, but wields her fierce intelligence deliberately. Underneath the boorish exterior typical of his profession and sex there lurks a sensitive soul in Mr Lumb’s Benedick.
Some of the other relationships in the slimmed down dramatis personae don’t work quite as well. This tender Claudio’s love for his demure Hero persuades, his harsh about-turn later on less so. The soldiers’s banter works, the sibling rivalry between the Don’s seems forced. The party, complete with superhero costumes, clever, excites, the pivot to the disastrous wedding day, feels telegraphed, and the switch back to what is, in fairness, not the most hilarious Watch scene I have ever encountered, seemed to take this audience by surprise.
All in all, whilst there are some splendid passages and performances in the production. all set against Jean Chan’s delightful design, the rhythm of this STF production is just a little too erratic. However, once I was up close, the largely prose dialogue was, without exception (which is not always the case), pin sharp in its delivery. Whilst the look, feel and intention of the production is to present a MAAN for all time, that it works is largely down to this lucid approach.
Minus the echo of course. Won’t make that mistake again.
He’s only gone and done it again. Robert Icke, the departing Associate Director at the Almeida, has ended on a high. Like that is any great surprise. Once again he has taken a classic text, this time Arthur Schnitzler’s dissection of anti-Semitism in pre WWI Vienna, and updated it for our contemporary age. Though to be fair it is a pretty good story even without the deconstruction and reconstruction. Yet by expanding the critique, and the central dilemma which underpins it, beyond religion and cultural identity and into gender and race, through both his adaptation and the casting, Mr Icke opens up a whole Pandora’s box of unresolved questions.
There are times when the clever dick nature of the project can irritate but, as I have said before, in the context of his Wild Duck on this stage, he is so, well, clever, that he gets away with it. His self professed aim is to clear away the fusty patina of performance history and get back to the roots of these often disturbing and radical plays. Professor Bernhardi fits the bill perfectly. But as well as bringing the play alive for a modern audience, and making them think, so hard that sometimes it hurts, Mr Icke also rarely fails to entertain us, ensuring the plot is as transparent as the message and the characters.
Of course we are fortunate that one of his favourite collaborators Juliet Stevenson was up for the central role of Doctor Ruth Wolff, an authority in Alzheimer’s disease, who heads up the Elizabeth Institute. She is a secular Jew who doesn’t suffer fools gladly and is dedicated to her calling. She is however unable to prevent a 14 year old Catholic girl from dying who has been admitted to the hospital after a self-administered abortion. She refuses to allow a priest to see the girl just before she passes, a decision that splits her team and has repercussions, social media outrage, petitions and political debate, when it leaks to the outside world. The Institute’s funding is threatened and Dr Wolf is forced to choose between her principles and self sacrifice.
This plot sticks fairly closely to Schnitzler’s original but divisions within the Institute, and outside, open up along gender and racial lines, as well as between Catholic and Jew. This is made more striking as we see that the cast largely plays characters which do not “fit” our perception of their identity and are not identified by name in the programme. Even after you grasp this central conceit it can still surprise, notably when we discover the priest is black. We see how medical ethics are shaped by professional and public opinion, and economics, and how identity, and the language which defines and contains it, can be co-opted for personal and political gain.
Naomi Wirthner is outstanding as the deputy plotting to oust Ruth, accurately capturing male entitlement. Paul Higgins plays the passionate priest with an agenda and Ria Zmitrowicz is once again captivating as the young transgender friend that Ruth inadvertently betrays. Pamela Nomvete and Oliver Alvin-Wilson, as Ruth’s loyal colleagues are pitted against Daniel Rabin, Mariah Louca and, eventually, Kirsty Rider who all see warped principle and pragmatic advantage, in turning against her. All this takes place against the clinical, fluid set design of Hildegard Bechtler, never black or white but shades of grey, with lighting and sound from Natasha Chivers and Tom Gibbons to match. And a live drumming performance from Hannah Ledwidge which serves to discomfort and ratchet up the tension.
If all this sound too tricksy, or woke-y, well it isn’t. Juliet Stevenson brilliantly portrays Ruth as some-one who is right, but hard to like, obdurate and emotionally naive. Her final monologue is shattering, played in conjunction with Joy Richardson, her lost partner, “Charlie”. RI keeps pulling us into arguments that simultaneously assert the inviolability of identity and the strictures and contradictions it can impose. The dichotomy between “freedom to” and “freedom from” as my old history teacher taught me all those years ago. The scene where the sceptical Ruth is interrogated for a TV show “Take the Debate” is the most acute satire of identity politics. And all this is done with sacrificing any momentum in the story: quite the reverse, the near 3 hours just bombs along.
The religious schism which informs the original play just about survives the expansion (primarily through the “right to life” debate which the unseen girl’s abortion precipitates), and there will be some for whom all this subversion detracts from the plot but the Tourist, once again, was awed by Mr Icke’s theatrical genius. I am signed up for his next outing with ITA in Amsterdam based on The Doll’s House and I see his version of Chekhov’s Ivanov is currently pulling then in in Stuttgart. I hope we see him back in Blighty soon though too, ideally having another pop at the Greeks, or maybe some Marlowe or Webster.
No great surprise to learn that this is transferring to the Duke of York’s Theatre from April next year. If you didn’t catch it at the Almeida here’s your shot at redemption.
Directors’ Festival 2019, Orange Tree Theatre, 7th August 2019
The Tourist is a firm fan of the annual Directors’ Festival at the Orange Tree which gives students taking the theatre directing MA at nearby St Mary’s Uni, (in conjunction with the OT), an opportunity to try their hand at a full scale production. Unfortunately this year other commitments and a diary cock-up, (entirely my fault I admit SO), left me only seeing one of the four productions. Pilgrims directed by Ellie Goodall.
This was chosen largely on the strength of writer Elinor Cook, specifically Out of Love which appeared here at the OT last year and her adaptation of The Lady from the Sea which Kwame Kwei-Armah directed at the Donmar in 2017. She has a rare gift for lyrical dialogue and elastic character wrapped up in temporally uncertain, non-naturalistic settings. (And, I might say, a wonderful first name). Pilgrims followed the same pattern. Though not quite as effectively as Out of Love it must be said.
It tells the story, well stories since we see all three perspectives, of the love triangle between two mountaineering friends Will (Nicholas Armfield) and Dan (Luke MacGregor), and would be folklore academic, and our narrator, Rachel (Adeyinka Akinrinade). The extrovert, excitable Will and the deeper, introverted Dan are famous in their world for having climbed Everest together aged 18. But their climbing partnership is starting to fray. Rachel falls for Will first but, later, it is Dan with whom she makes a real connection. Not ground-breaking stuff in terms of set-up but from this Ms Cook explores themes such as female agency, gender expectations and male ambition through flash-backs and flash-forwards as the two men face danger on their latest, virgin, climb. In tales of derring-do men usually do the derring and women wait on the sidelines for their return. Not here.
Chris McDonnell’s lighting and, especially, Lex Kosanke’s sound do a grand job in taking us from mountainside to bar to front room which renders the simple props that the cast cart around on Cory Shipp’s set somewhat redundant. All three actors are, moreorless, on top of Ms Cook’s zigzagging text, though Adekinya Akinrinade has the best of the evening (as is meant to be) and Ellie Goodall’s direction shows she has a firm grip on plot and character.
It is just that sometimes Elinor Cook’s eloquent prose, (with its references to the Penelope of Homer’s Odyssey and Mary Magdalene), may just be a little too fractured, trying to do too much, (ideas, image, exposition, dialogue), with too little. Not for one moment suggesting a non-linear, lyrical approach to story-telling is a problem, far from it, that is what theatre is for. Just that in this case the warmth and humour which characterised Out of Love was less apparent and the message, the marginalisation of women in life as well as stories, might have stood a more direct approach and a less compressed structure.
Mind you I am an old bloke so maybe beyond understanding. Though, if it helps, I can categorically stay I wouldn’t be stupid enough to climb a mountain just to prove how manly I was.
How difficult can it be to get to Kilburn? Very it would seem if you are the Tourist, this being the second time this year that he has missed the start of a matinee performance, (and having cut it perilously fine on another occasion). Message to self. Stop twatting about with the Overground and buses to get here and stick to the Jubilee.
Anyway it was a somewhat frustrating idea to watch the first scene of Wife on the tiny black and white stage telly, however accommodating the ever friendly front of house. Aussie Samuel Adamson’s latest play, (you may know him from The Light Princess musical at the NT of his Chekhov/Ibsen adaptations), is an intertwining affair which examines the relationships of four couples from 1959 to an imagined 2049. Ibsen is the stepping off point. Specially A Doll’s House, (there is a lot of Doll’s House inspiration coming up, see the Lyric Hammersmith, the Young Vic and International Theater Amsterdam).
After that scene and the infamous door slam, Wife opens with stiff-necked Robert (Joshua James) properly wound up after the performance, which he sees as an attack on the sanctity of marriage. His wife Daisy (Karen Fishwick), who dragged him along, doesn’t agree. She is in love with Nora the character and yearns for a similar freedom. Things ratchet up when we find out she is also in love with the actress, Suzannah (Sirine Saba) who plays Nora in the production. This is the scene I missed “live” but it was still plainly a compelling set up even if I couldn’t completely follow the subsequent ding-dong exchange of ideas and feelings between these three characters .
Next up 1988 and a couple of young gay men, with something of a class difference, the posh, volatile Ivar, (Joshua James again, named after one of Nora’s children), railing against the straight world, Thatcher and Section 28 and the younger, not-yet-out Eric (Calam Lynch) . They have retired to the pub after a Norwegian language version of the Doll’s House, and, after some exquisite verbal jousting, are joined by another Suzannah. On to 2019 and Clare (Karen Fishwick again) and Finn (the versatile Joshua James) who are at the Kiln Theatre bar (!) waiting for ….. well not the Suzannah who breezes in from the avowedly queer production of A Doll’s House being staged but Ivar, now 58 (Richard Cant, who also plays Peter in the first Doll’s House and the pub landlord in Scene 2), now bruised by life, and, after a while, his younger husband, bitchy actor Cas (Calam Lynch again). Clare and Ivar, as you pretty quickly surmise are connected.
And, in a final meta flourish, the finale is set in 2042, with an extract from a naturalistic play featuring Daisy, Robert, Suzannah and Marjorie (Pamela Hardman), a dresser. Now the whole point of this journey through time and coupledom is to show we are no closing to reconciling the struggle between the need to explore individual freedom, and the desire for equality, in domestic relationships, than Ibsen and his characters were in 1879.
In other hands this have could have become more than a little tricksy or worthy or muddled, but Mr Adamson pulls it off largely through the quality of his dialogue, they are some terrific lines and witty observations, and the way in which the cast it self has to shift pretty radically between the characters, even those that are linked by family ties, notably Joshua James (who has a knack of standing out in smaller roles in previous productions that the Tourist has enjoyed), Karen Fishwick (following her RSC stint, a fine Juliet, and Our Ladies from NT Scotland) and Calam Lynch (whose Claudio in the Rose Kingston’s Much Ado attracted disproportionate attention from LD, and not just for his acting talent). All three young actors served up really fine performances.
Of course it helped that Kiln AD Indhu Rubasingham took the chair herself lending customary energy to the production and papering over the cracks when words and actions pushed a little towards the artificial: these people don’t really do reflective silences. Richard Kent probably had more fun designing the costumes that the somewhat unremarkable set, as did Alexander Caplen with his sound contribution and Guy Hoare with lighting.
The proper reviews were, rightly, pretty positive overall. I have a very strong feeling that this will not be the last we see of this play.If so the Tourist will make damm sure he turns up on time.
Go join the Shakespeare party down at the Bridge. Nick Hytner pretty much always nails the Bard and he has done it again here. Ignore the lukewarm reviews from the critics who seem to have got a little bit antsy with Hytner’s central inversion of Titania/Hippolyta and Theseus/Oberon. Yes this creates a couple of creaky moments, but what it gains in its celebration of non-binary, gender fluid sexuality, more than compensates. And it helps make this the funniest Dream I have ever seen. Add to this the sense, if not maybe the actuality, of immersion which comes from the promenaders in the pit, (though this may not be the best place to take everything in), and the multiple wow moments that flow from set, staging, costumes and cast, and, for me, this became unmissable. My only regret is being tucked away in a corner on my tod because I couldn’t persuade any of the usual suspects that this would be a Shakespeare production free from their usual misgivings. Should have tried hared.
Did I also say that the cast delivers the full text with perfect transparency? Because they do. OK so maybe a little of the poetry gets sidelined amidst all the activity, and there are some fairly unsubtle, though often very amusing, additional lines. But if you want a Dream to show exactly what is going on along the way then this is for you. The unpleasant nature of the genesis of the story is also not shirked. Theseus was the king in Greek myth who founded the Athenian democracy, having defeated the Amazons led by Hippolyta, whom he subjugated.. The play opens with a “celebration” of this event, here with the women dressed in religious habits and Hippolyta in the form of the imposing guise of Gwendoline Christie, (you know who in you know what), imprisoned in a glass cage. Oliver Chris, who I confess I am now even more a little bit inn love with, cuts a rigid Theseus. All the guff about the little baby and Egeus’s (Kevin McMonagle) demands of his daughter starts to make sense. Hippolyta looks at Hermia (Isis Hainsworth) and the brutal truth of the patriarchal norm is established.
Not for long though. AMND after all is all about the dreams. What happens when we are plunged into another, freer “reality.” And how that other “reality” affects our real reality, if you see what I mean. And it is joy, celebration, sexy time and swapping which defines this particular “reality”. So to invert the two dual characters makes perfect sense and lets fly the interventions which fuel all sorts of other passions, from the Athenian lovers, from the fairies and best of all from Bottom (Hammed Animashaun) and the now liberated Oberon. You would be hard pressed tp find a better double act on any stage than these two. Anywhere. Anytime. I am constantly amazed just how good a comedy writer big Will was and how, in sympathetic hands, even gags I have heard multiple times can still make me smile. Though here it is much what we see as what we hear that makes it so funny.
Anyway once all the shenanigans in the forest is over and we return to the city, and the weddings, and the mechanicals, the change in Theseus rings true. His world changed for good over one blinding night out. Like I say I cannot praise Oliver Chris enough. In my book one of the best comic actors on the British stage. As is Hammed Animashaun. A Bottom who might have stepped off any London street today.
Mt Hytner has not neglected the rest of the play to perfect his central conceit. The mechanicals here are mixed gender led by Felicity Montagu’s sincere Quince. She is another comic acting genius. We all have our top ten funniest Partridge moments. An honest appraisal will see Lynn feature in many of them. (BTW if you don’t have a Partridge top ten I have to wonder why you are here as clearly you have no sense of humour). Ami Metcalf as Snout, Jamie-Rose Monk (I need to see her one woman show) as Snug, Francis Lovehall as Starveling and Jermaine Freeman as Flute are equally amusing. In both the rehearsal scene and Pyramus and Thisbe, every comic detail has been thought through to leave the real audience in stitches.
Yet, at the same time the lovers, Helena (Tessa Bonham Jones), Hermia, Demetrius (Paul Adeyefa) and Lysander (Kit Young) with their asides and silences as they watch the “performance” reveal that not all has changed gender-relationship wise in Athens. It isn’t entirely clear whether the two cheeky chaps, who even had a snog in the forest, are going to rise to their better selves with their new wives as they lay into the generous, if hapless, mechanicals. Nor do they see the tragedy, which they avoided, in the inadvertent comedy presented by the proles. Clever Mr Hytner and clever Mr Shakespeare.
Whilst in the forest the couples roam, romp , argue and sleep as you would expect. But here the set transforms into a magical world. As in the production of Julius Caesar last year, the stage hands and the marshals doing an incredible job of marshalling platforms and people into position. From which the beds, on which the various lovers frolic, and even a bath for Bottom and Theseus to soap up, create context and structure. Add to this the rise and fall of said beds, (a fair few of the cast spend an inordinate of time suspended, kipping), and the acrobatics of the fairies, Peaseblossom (Chipo Kureya), Cobweb (Jay Webb), Moth (Charlotte Atkinson), Mustardseed (Lennin Nelson-McClure, the leader of the troupe) and Bedbug (Rachel Tolzman), and even those with minimal attention spans would surely be satisfied. The teen next to me was a little restless in the first half and needed a minor dressing down from Mum. Come the second half though and she was as gleefully engaged as everyone around me was.
The fairies were a little wobbly on the lines but their movement and music, (Mr Rascal’s Bonkers a particular highlight), more than made up for this. I praise Nick Hytner so highly because he is the captain of the ship, and I know what he can do with Shakespeare, but frankly all his ideas would have come to naught without Bunny Christie’s set, Christine Cunningham’s costumes, Grant Olding’s composition, Bruno Poet’s lighting and Paul Arditti’s sound. And very especially Arlene Phillip’s movement. Though this went beyond movement into complex, three dimensional choreography. Just wonderful. And Suzanne Peretz also deserves a massive call-out for her wigs, effects, hair and make-up. I am not sure I would be going put looking like one of the fairies at my age but I would have killed for a make-over from her before hitting a club in the glory days of New Romanticism in 1981. The Tourist and partners’ homemade efforts at the time being exactly that, homemade.
Of course our fairies celebrated gender diversity but David Moorst’s Puck goes one step further, a pangender Pan with flat vowels, perfect comic timing and a nice line in exasperation with his now, female, mistress. And you try delivering Shakespeare whilst executing perfect aerial silks. In fact try either one and see if you get anyway close to Mr Moorst’s virtuosity. This is an actor who has not stood out for me before. He did this time.
Now I can see that if you want pure verse, gossamer wings and a donkey head this might not be the Dream for you. But then I am not sure that Dream is relevant, or mines the multiple layers of Shakespeare’s imagination, in any circumstances. I do not believe that even big Will realised the complexity of interpretation that the Dream affords, all that anxiety and repression of urges, though he probably had a pretty good idea, so it is up to each generation to examine its meanings, as well, of course, to entertain. Mr Hytner, as he always does, takes a view, and works it through to almost perfect effect, but he also never forgets to entertain us. These shadows mend all those who would search for offence in who we want to be.
At Home He Feels Like A Tourist 