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King Lear, The Attic Theatre, Review by Peter Buckroyd.

When you know it’s a great play and when you’ve already seen over twenty productions of it you can sometimes feel reluctant about seeing yet another production, particularly if you have memories, as I do, of wonderful things you have already seen.

Tread the Boards Company is doing its double act again this spring – two Shakespeare plays done by the same company, playing in repertoire. King Lear is the first, directed by John-Robert Partridge. Much Ado About Nothing is following next week.

It’s a wonderful coincidence that Kunene and the King, a play where a dying actor has the chance of his last role as King Lear, is playing at the Swan Theatre at the same time as King Lear is playing at the RSC. If you don’t know King Lear back to front you need to see it. If you don’t know Kunene you have to go to the RSC after you have been to The Attic.

Because John-Robert Partridge’s production is played with eleven actors there is a great deal of doubling. Right from the opening Robert Moore impresses with his presence as the King of France, impresses again as Edgar and then wows us with his very physical and often lightning speed Poor Tom. Matilda Bott is a beautiful Cordelia played with apparent simplicity and a vigorous Fool. I’ve been to lots of productions where it’s not easy to remember which daughter is Goneril and which Regan. Not so here. Kate Gee Finch’s lively sinuous Regan, all over her husband Cornwall when occasion allows, is contrasted by Alexandra Whitworth’s steely Goneril, stuck in a loveless marriage to the delightfully wimpy Albany . Joe Deverell-Smith differentiates his roles splendidly and is the best Doctor I have seen. Pete Meredith is chilling as the villainous Edmund.

The revelation is Philip Leach as Lear. The hardest thing an actor has to do is to look as if there is no acting. It takes tremendous skill and control and Leach does it perfectly. We never quite know why Lear does and says what he does. He’s always in the moment. It’s a most impressive performance.

Those who know the play well will enjoy some splendid touches – Regan putting on Lear’s crown once he has cast it aside, Albany’s rather insipid milky tenderness, the Fool and Kent (Philip Jennings) as attentive but unobtrusive onlookers in the storm scene, the stunning end to the first half where Partridge takes away the metaphor from Act V’s  ‘And my poor fool is hanged’, the way Georgia Kelly is used as Oswald and other servants as a thread which binds the whole play together, the Fool’s fear of lightning.

Rarely has the way Lear makes the transition between the stale court and its stuffy characters and the transformative power of nature shown by Poor Tom in the storm been so clear.

Partridge made me think again about different manifestations of madness and the ways in which image, metaphor, symbol and reality collide. I loved it.

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Kunene and the King, The Swan theatre. Review by Peter Buckroyd.

It’s a great coincidence that this play by John Kani is playing in the Swan Theatre at the same time as King Lear is playing at the small but splendid Attic Theatre. Why? Kunene and the King, set in post-apartheid South Africa, features an ageing and dying actor who keeps himself alive by his casting as King Lear in an upcoming production. Kani cleverly but subtly uses a lot of elements of King Lear in his play as well as its main plot being about the relationship between actor Jack Morris (played by Sir Anthony Sher) and his new carer, Sister Lunga Kunene (played by John Kani).

Janice Honeyman directs this two hander carefully and subtly. The play has a wonderful explosive opening when Kunene arrives and Morris goes to attack him as an intruder. Race and sexism are thrust immediately into the play as Morris is not expecting a black male to be his carer. We soon realise that ‘carer’ is both a theme and a metaphor – in Morris’s house and in South Africa. The room set with screens allows the audience to imagine the room they see leading to others and to outside and although there is a sense in which the set is the inside of Morris’s head there is also a sense of a wider environment where social and political interactions take place. Much of the opening scene of the play is comic, although there are always dark edges to the comedy. Morris tells Kunene that he has given up drink but he has gin bottles hidden everywhere and the audience is prompted to guess where the next one might be found.

The play explores the relationship between the two men but also between the two races and because much of the play is taken up with going over the lines of King Lear further parallels are made between theatre and life, being and acting and both metaphorical and literal black and white. There is a wonderful moment at the end of the second scene where Morris reaches out and holds Kunene’s hand, Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee enacted in miniature. Indeed the parallels between what is going on in the room and what went on in South Africa run throughout this fine play.

The third and last scene is about transformation, heralded by the turning round of the flats to reveal Kunene’s house in Soweto, the room presided over by the bust of Shakespeare which Morris had given him, now swathed in Kunene’s favourite football team’s scarf. Kani draws on medical sources for the final scene as Morris loses his pain and gains manic energy culminating in a kind of dance of death.

The acting is exemplary, the emotional roller coaster finely calibrated. It would be a hard-hearted audience member who was not stimulated and moved.

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Review, The Taming of the Shrew. Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

When I read that in Justin Audibert’s production the men would be played by women and the women by men I was all set to hate it. But then I thought it might be interesting. If, at the end of what Shakespeare wrote, Katerina triumphs then it might be interesting to see a production when the men triumph and I was amazed that I would be seeing an anti-feminist interpretation of the play.
That’s the great thing about live theatre. You can be completely wrong and I was wrong here on both counts.
Amanda Harris is strong and dominant as Baptista Minola and so sets the matriarchy setting firmly right from the start. The boys, Katherine (Joseph Arkley) showing a little bit of feistiness at the start and Bianco (James Cooney), established as a wimp at the start and maintaining this throughout, were nowhere as interesting as those characters played by women. Straight from a triumphant Jacques in As You Like It Sophie Stanton as Gremia is equally good here, showing off by gliding on metaphorical casters except at the end of the first half where for a single moment she realises she is defeated in her absurd quest for the juvenile Bianco. Claire Price is wonderful as Petruchia. Her character is much less obnoxious than usual and I found myself rooting for her in her task of subduing a dull Katherine. Melody Brown is also energetic and powerful as Vincentia.
Amy Trigg in her turbo charged wheelchair as Biondella is full of life and vigour. She could outsprint everyone – clever for the resourceful Biondella, whose set pieces were delivered at breakneck speed with every word audible. Charlotte Arrowsmith as the signing Curtis is as good here as she was in As You Like It and it is a great touch by Audibert not to translate what she signs. All Petruchio’s household know exactly what she is saying by her signs, even though we don’t. After all, she is talking to them.
The rest of the cast are all o.k. One thing I didn’t understand, though. The only significant character not to be gender switched is Grumio (splendidly played by Richard Clews). Why? Bill thought it might be because he was played as gay. If so I don’t approve. I don’t think gay men are women really.
There is song and dance. Indeed the play opens with a Spanish style dance. I didn’t get why it was appropriate to be Spanish but the dancing was great – better than the singing at the Preview we went to, but that might improve. You could see why Leo Wan was in it. He can sing.
There were several interesting and stimulating choices. In the sun and moon scene both Katherine and Petruchio drink water before she metaphorically baptises him. I liked the way Katherine was defiantly eating a chicken leg in his opening scene and eating another at the festivities at the end. I liked the way Petruchia kissed Katherine at the end rather than treading on her hand.
Hannah Clark’s costumes are sort of period, sumptuous, beautifully made, and full. Katherine’s wedding outfit, lit at first with black light, is stunning. Gremia’s handling and fondling of her sword was hilarious, particularly the way she wanked it at moments of stress. Petruchia’s odd boots and Grumio’s down-gyved one at the wedding scene were nice touches. I didn’t understand why Katherine didn’t have a wig, though. It certainly made her look out of place in company with these people. Can that be the purpose of it?
There’s a lot to enjoy here. Unfortunately for me it made clear the weaknesses in Shakespeare’s script. In this production it seemed obvious that Shakespeare was not interested in either Katherine or Bianco in the openings Acts they are barely characterised and have almost no motivation. I didn’t think Katherine was worth listening to before the final speech and the only characterisation of Bianco seemed to be an exaggerated walk and the tossing of his absurdly long locks. There was far too much sub-plot in the first half and I thought all the suitor for Bianco stuff was not only strung out but rather tedious. The play is about sex and money. Money was brought out well.
I think that seeing As You Like It and Taming of the Shrew as a pair is the way to do it. That experience shows off the versatility and skills of the best actors and the ways Shakespeare can be interpreted in many different ways.
Come and see them. There will be a warm welcome for you at Moss Cottage.

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Review, As you like it. Royal Shakespeare Theatre

I had the misfortune last year to see two execrable productions at Shakespeare’s Globe – As You Like It and Hamlet, both of which contained subsidised theatre’s latest obsessions: a character who used British Sign Language and gender switching. Gender switching usually means that women play men’s parts but the Globe went further and switched the genders of both Orlando and Rosalind. These two gimmicks both led to the text often being rendered incomprehensible, particularly as there seemed to be no good reason to feature a relationship between a female to male transvestite and a drag queen. Just as bad was having a main role (Celia) signing so that he lines had to be reallocated to other people. Confusing and ludicrous. Similar nonsense was in Hamlet where the main character’s university friends were a white geriatric man and a signing woman and where both Hamlet and Laertes were female (the latter of challenged stature).
Such decisions went right against the text so it was with some trepidation that I went to the RSC to see this production as it featured both gender switching and signing. And yet in the hands of director Kimberley Sykes these decisions enriched the text and worked perfectly. I was amazed. It just shows the different between a play which has a talented and inspired director and one which has a rubbish one (or, in the case of Hamlet no director at all).
The central concept of Kimberley Sykes’s (and designer Stephen Brimson Lewis’s) production is ‘All the world’s a stage’. So, when the actors from Duke Frederick’s court become characters in Duke Senior’s, curtains fall, costume racks come on and we watch the actors change in front of a metallic strip globe which forms the backdrop to the Forest of Arden. Ironically there had been a large round fake grass carpet in Duke Frederick’s Court which is folded in two by Rosalind when she and Celia reject it for a bare wooden floor with a large circle in the middle. Set, metaphor and symbol come together. And what about Jacques? Just as M. le Beau becomes Madame Le Beau, tottering hilariously in her heels on the fake grass, so Jacques becomes Madame Melancholy. It is an inspired choice which places Jacques at the heart of the play. It is even more inspired that Jacques is played by Sophie Stanton, usually part of but on the fringes of the court, remote yet sensitive, exquisite in her verse speaking, completely devoid of histrionics and by far the best Jacques I have ever seen and heard.
This production is in many ways a breath of fresh air. There are no gimmicks. Even the giant puppet of Hymen who presides over the weddings at the end proved to be a deus ex machina, another example of the world as a stage and vice versa, joining the lovers together but whose task could not be performed without stage mechanisms and the assistance of other human characters.
The range of possible relationships is fully highlighted by the imaginative choice to make Audrey use sign language (so that she can’t hear or grasp Touchstone’s almost ceaseless bibble babble) and provide the touching moment when she rejects her signer, the loyal William, for the hilariously clad Touchstone, he of the large lunchbox. Even making Silvius Sylvia has its benefits, introducing a touch of modern non-binary into the play.
It is a strong cast. Lucy Phelps is splendid as Rosalind and Sophie Khan Levy almost convinces that Shakespeare created a viable female character in Celia. Even she can’t give Celia’s falling in love with Oliver credibility, though. For me the real joys of the show were Sophie Stanton’s Jacques and Richard Clews’s Adam. Their verse speaking, movement and stillness were quite magical.
I really enjoyed this production, even more on a second viewing. You should see it. And you can sample the homemade jams and marmalades at Moss Cottage, especially as for the first time Moss Cottage has gained a gold award in the World Marmalade Competition.

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Tartuffe. Review by Peter Buckroyd

Tartuffe
The Swan Theatre

Some time after his inspired production of Much Ado about Nothing, set in India, which made sense of a lot of Shakespeare’s tiny details which often strain comprehension and credulity, comes his much awaited Tartuffe. Not only is the play set in Birmingham, it is also in a rewritten version by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto.
Moliere is the French Ben Jonson and Tartuffe’s early history robbed it of some of its originally conceived satirical pungency because of the political situation and its warring elements in the early 1660s. Gupta and Pinto restore much of Moliere’s biting satire of hypocrisy, combining it with the hot potatoes of religion and politics. The transposition to Birmingham is a joy and the introduction of the narrator/participant character Darina as the Bosnian cleaner (brilliantly played by Michelle Bonnard) creates further universality and contemporary relevance.
The Muslim Pervaiz family is ruled over by Imran, beautifully played as a thoroughly convincing rather stupid and gullible despot by Simon Nagra, gets religion and becomes besotted by Moliere’s Tartuffe character. Imran’s zealous conversion causes credible complications for his westernised family – his sharp but astute wife Amira (Sasha Behar), his daughter Mariam (Zainab Hasan) and street boy son Damee (Raj Bajaj) – because they have no love for the ‘adopted’ Tartuffe and can see that he is an outsider. They catch Taruffe’s phoniness which Asif Khan so cleverly conveys in subtly gradated stages at the same time as the audience does. Imran eventually gives his house over to Tartuffe before the latter’s hypocrisy is unmasked because he is unable to find fault in him despite his lecherous groping his wife’s breast. In the end Tartuffe is unmasked and the new surprise ending gives some measure of order to the chaos that unthinking devotion to pseudo-religion has caused. There are so many contemporary jokes and references throughout the play that the audience can hardly fail to realise that religious infatuation is no different from political infatuation.
The text is hilariously funny, the pace extremely brisk, the music wonderful in the variety of ways it characterises, the direction inventive and full of gags of different kinds (Darina vacuuming in the stalls seats, Damee hiding in a huge floral display, Imran hiding in the sofa in the unmasking scene, fun with cushions, Tiger briefs, Tartuffe playing basketball, for example). The wonderful music catches elements both of contemporary England and the Baroque elements of the play’s source, as well as being used as a tool for characterisation, culminating in a concluding dance rap.
The satire is sharp. At the end it is revealed that Imran was an illegal immigrant who realises in his moment of anagnorosis that he should never have voted Leave and that Tartuffe is not the only imposter. He may have brought the family close to disaster but his religious sidekick Usman (Riad Richie) turns out completely unexpectedly to be an undercover police agent. Opposite sides of the moral spectrum, then, both use religion as their tool. It leaves you with something rather more complicated to think about that you had reckoned.
The whole thing is a romp, a suspense story, a keen satire, a delight to see and hear. Moreover it shows up the stupidity of most men (Mariam’s finance Waqaas, charmingly played by Salman Akhtar and Usman apart) and the potential power of women caught up in evnents over which they have apparently little control.

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