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July 29, 2018 by billbruce

Miss Littlewood, review by Peter Buckroyd.

Miss Littlewood
The Swan Theatre

Joan Littlewood was a hugely influential figure in mid-twentieth century British drama, innovating in theatre and theatre direction in a similarly important way to Jonathan Miller in opera productions.
Sam Kenyon’s new musical is a tribute to Littlewood, telling some of her story in a kind of theatrical biopic. It is hard watching it to separate what is his work and what is director Erica Whyman’s but this is consonant with Littlewood’s productions which often blurred the line between writer, composer and director, as seen in her iconic Oh What a Lovely War.
Littlewood’s innovations such as regional accents, ensemble productions, audience involvement, workshop rehearsals are all taken for granted now but they were strikingly new to her audiences in the north of England and then at her eventual permanent London base the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. In her company actors came and went, earned a pittance while they broke new ground and Kenyon and Whyman show these things throughout.
The show is narrated by one permanent Joan (Clare Burt) but Joan at different stages of her career is played by six other actresses (bug, small, black, white, with different accents) with the permanent Joan often breaking traditional theatrical boundaries by interacting with the audience and commenting on the performances of the Joans.
I wish I knew more about the specific directorial techniques Littlewood used (I am old but not old enough to have seen more than a few of her productions at Stratford East which came to an end in 1975). But it seemed to me that Whyman and Kenyon were telling the story in very much the same way as Littlewood would have done, so that this musical is an insight into mid-twentieth century theatre in Littlewood’s hands, theatre which led to the development of agitprop, for example. And Whyman, like Littlewood, expects her actors to be able to act, to play musical instruments, to sing and dance. These they do splendidly.
This production certainly gets across the idea that theatre should be an immersive experience, that theatre should not be elitist, that radicalism and satire are what drive our nation forward. It also raises timely issues such as inclusivity, equal opportunities for talent regardless of background and funding for the arts. The RSC can’t quite manage Littlewood’s dream of a multi-class audience, though the CV37 tickets ought to help.
Whyman’s meticulous attention to detail, the readiness of all her productions for a first preview audience, attention to detail and intellectual coherence are all on view. What is extraordinary is that she should have two artistic triumphs running at the same time at the RSC (Romeo and Juliet and Miss Littlewood) coming hot on the heels of the artful but seemingly artless direction of Three Letters at The Other Place. It all leaves me hungry for more of her work.
Whether the music will prove as catchy as Oh What a Lovely War’s and whether the satirical edge is a keen as in Littlewood’s work only time will tell.
But what remains very clear in my mind is the success of this show as an ensemble production. True, there are some fine performances (Clare Burt as Joan Littlewood, Greg Barnett as Jimmie Miller, Solomon Israel as Gerry Raffles, Sophia Nomvete and Emily Johnstone as Joans) and a great deal of slick stagecraft, scene changing and furniture removal – from the performers’ point of view it is all hands on deck. As I write this in the week that our Prime Minister threatened her cabinet with the news that she had replacements ready if they did not tow her line, this production’s message about co-operation and egalitarianism is stark.
How commercial this musical will prove to be I don’t know. Littlewood wouldn’t have cared. It doesn’t have the gimmicks and Dahlish appeal of Matilda, but it is much cleverer and more uplifting. Come and see it. If you can combine it with a visit to Romeo and Juliet and enhance your experience with a stay at Moss Cottage you will be made very welcome.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: Joan Littlewood, Miss Littlewood, review, rsc, rsc review, Rsc reviews, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Swan theatre

May 19, 2018 by billbruce

Romeo & Juliet. Review by Peter Buckroyd.

Romeo and Juliet
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
We nearly always go to the previews of the plays at the RSC and we have yet to go to one directed
either by Gregory Doran or Erica Whyman which isn’t completely ready for public performance.
I enjoyed this brilliantly paced production, splendidly directed by Erica Whyman, for many reasons. It
was great to see characters who are the age Shakespeare intended. You can believe that Juliet (Karen
Fishwick), talking ten to the dozen, is fourteen and her mother (Mariam Haque) twenty eight. Romeo
(Bally Gill) is also a convincing teenager with streetwise swagger, rapid changes of emotion,
impetuosity and body in perpetual motion. It is also refreshing to see a modern production which is
contemporary. It is dominated by gangland culture where the races and genders are mixed and knife
crime is rife. I think it’s most inventive of Whyman to present iambic pentameter and rhyming
couplets as characteristic of rap-like street culture; the form of language itself becomes myth. And
Romeo’s purchase from the apothecary makes clear that drug dealing is in contemporary cities a
response to poverty and threatened destitution.
You can see that although Shakespeare calls the feud an ‘ancient quarrel’ it is passed down from
generation to generation. Tybalt’s irrational belligerence is mirrored by Capulet in his vile and
abusive treatment of Juliet. In that scene you can easily imagine Lord Capulet in a street gang fifteen
or twenty years previously. The verse is well delivered throughout but the language and rhythms are
from the street. Splendid. There is impressive attention to detail, too. Don’t miss (as most of the
audience did when I saw it) the dumb show with Romeo and Juliet in bed together during the interval.
I had not noticed before how Lord Capulet talks about Juliet in the third person even while she is
present. The most highly political and social statement comes at the end of the play where the dead
walk among the living and where there is little understanding of how to change the world except by
splitting and violence – timely for me in week where the irrational President Trump took on Iran,
alienated Europe and was busy cosying up to North Korea.
Tom Piper’s set is simple. No need for the RSC to spend loads of money just for the sake of it when
the play is what we have gone to see. There’s a big cube with an open face which can be turned roun
as which deals with all the location changes prompting the thought that no matter who is involved and
wherever it is taking place the same things recur. There’s a small ladder, some ladders on the outside
of the cube and an armchair which is carried on and off. It’s all the more effective, therefore, when
after Tybalt’s death red candles, red roses and a red shroud are brought on. The complete lack of
unnecessary frills is demonstrated when the dead Tybalt is placed on the shroud which is then pulled
easily off stage – far more effective than trying to heave a sizeable Tybalt (Raphale Sowole) off by
muscle power. The music composed by Sophie Cotton, too, is contemporary and effective in creating
moods. The rock music at Capulet’s feast, with its undertones of energy and anarchy, creates
wonderful prolepsis and dramatic irony.
There are some subtleties of characterisation, too, all of which make sense of some of the problems in
the play. Rather than gloss over it, Whyman deals with the behaviour of Lady Capulet. She is faced
with a dilemma: she loves her daughter but is scared of her husband. She knows that he will react
violently towards Juliet when she refuses to marry Paris; that is why she leaves Juliet to him. It is for
her own survival that she sides with her husband. Paris is gentle, loyal and charming, genuinely
distressed at Juliet’s death. That is why he visits the monument at the end. Friar Lawrence (Andrew
French) is also interestingly characterised. In a different way from the street gang members he, too,
acts on the spur of the moment. All his decisions are made because he has just thought of them. This
is a clever choice because he’s just like Romeo, really. And one of the real problems of the text is
what to do with Mercutio and how. As a female gang member this Mercutio, played with
extraordinary physicality and energy by Charlotte Josephine, tries to outmale the gang’s males but
suffers in the end for it .The Duke, too, is female, striding on stage in her sharp suit and shoes and
making pronnouncements which sound authoritative but do little to solve society’s problems. We
cannot avoid thinking of our present Prime Minister. In this way Whyman invites us to think about all
the females in the play and their places in their society. And if we do that she has forced us to reflect
on contemporary Britain.
We are also invited to think about class, ethnicity and background. It becomes clear that some
members of the lower classes such as Balthasar (Tom Padley) have unfailing loyalty to their masters
in refusing to leave the monument even when instructed to do so, unlike Friar Lawrence who flees in
fright in order to save his own skin. Whyman gives the one illiterate character in the play a West
Indian accent. Lady Capulet and Juliet have Scottish accents. Benvolio a northern one. The Nurse
(splendidly played by Ishia Bennison), having escaped from her position merely as a wet nurse, has to
side with her masters in telling Juliet to marry Paris because she needs to keep her job. The black
characters, like the white, have a range of accents.
I feel I haven’t done justice to the depth and sophistication of the problemisation and interrogation of
the text which Whyman has undertaken. It is a play about extremism and impetuosity. It is a study in
false logic. It is truly contemporary with much to say about a multi-ethnic society. I have seen it
twice already and I am looking forward to seeing it again.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews, Uncategorized Tagged With: reviews, Romeo & Juliet, rsc review, shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon theatre, William Shakespeare

March 25, 2018 by billbruce

Mrs Rich, review by Peter Buckroyd

The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich
Swan Theatre

I went to the preview of the RSC’s production of this play with considerable excitement. I had reconciled myself to thinking that I would never see a production of one of Mary Pix’s plays and here it is. Why should I care? In the very early 1970s I spent three years reading and studying the three hundred or so tragedies that were performed in London between 1695 and 1740. I have only ever seen a production of one of them. Now admittedly The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich is not a tragedy but it is by one of the more popular tragedians of the period. It’s a Restoration comedy. It would be untrue to say that the RSC has uncovered a neglected masterpiece, but Mrs Rich is a perfectly good well-made Restoration comedy, all the more interesting because it is by a woman rather than a man. Most people are unaware that there were at least five well known and popular women dramatists of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century – Aphra Behn, Susanna Centilevre, Mary de la Riviere Manley, Catharine Trotter and Mary Pix.
What I found most enjoyable about this production, directed by Jo Davies and designed by Colin Richmond is that it catches a great deal of the spirit of what a production might have been like at the end of the seventeenth century. Of course the stage mechanics are very different, but instead of having flats in grooves pushed on from the side stage Richmond has painted curtains which can be furled and unfurled or pulled down as needed. Typical of the period are the many scenes with just a small number of characters who would have performed near the front of the stage because it wasn’t easy to see what with the fumes from the candles and the cigarette smoke. And Richmond has candlelike footlights round three quarters of the stage. There is spectacle, too, in the form of the sumptuous costumes, gorgeous to look at, colourful and a way of filling the stage and in the form of the toy coach in Hyde Park. The set consists of hand props – lots of them – all carried on and off by the cast. The mechanics of this give visual variety and all the transitions are slickly accomplished.
Davies uses a great deal of movement in the production and all members of the cast employ a series of expansive hand and arm gestures which give an authentic sense of period. There are period style songs, too, written by Tarek Merchant and a wind quartet and harpsichord in period costume and wigs which form a pre-show concert. Sentimentality is assured by the appearances of elder Clerimont’s dogs, Lossie and Theia.
What of the play itself? It’s all pretty familiar and recognisable if you know Restoration comedy. It’s a mildly satirical comedy of manners. It unmasks hypocricy, deals with social pretentions, reveals the shallowness of ‘persons of quality’, deals with the complications of inheritance, the crucial need for money in society courtship, marriage, plotting, twists and turns, mistaken identity, mischief making, the more grounded nature of members of the working classes. The only difference is that it is the women who are controlling everything, rather than the men and they are therefore alert to and manage to unmask male folly. One of the more hilarious moments is when there is a challenge and duel between Mrs Rich and Lady la Basset and they engage in a sword fight in their undergarments. Rich widows are searching for husbands and take the lead in their quests. The men might look as if they have some power and authority but they don’t. In the end the women find their husbands and there are marriages (giving the opportunity for yet more gorgeous costumes).
The cast is very good. Compared with the dire performances in Macbeth playing only a few yards away the acting here is properly professional. For me the star is Sadie Shimmin playing a wonderful servant/landlady magnificently. She is a joy to watch and to listen to whenever she appears. But there are other excellent performances, too. Mrs Clerimont turns out to be the moral centre of the play and Jessica Turner does a fine job, completely convincing. Sophie Stanton is on stage most of the time as Mrs Rich. She has most of the songs and is a commanding presence, her gowns taking up a great deal of space on the beautiful shiny parquet floor and the wearer showing them off to their maximum advantage. I felt at the beginning that there was something not quite right about her accent but then realised that that is because she is not a ‘person of quality’ and so her vowels indicate her pretentions. Effective. There are no weak links in this production. It’s a clever move to cast Tam Williams as Sir John Roverhead. He’s a slight figure who looks cute in his posh brocade but he is a small man, morally flawed, who gets his comeuppance at the end. I didn’t grasp why he had rouge only on his right cheek; that possible symbolism was lost on me.
Don’t expect anything very deep and you are bound to enjoy this production. Come and stay at Moss Cottage with its sumptuous breakfast and award winning marmalade and your visit will be complete.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: rsc, rsc review, Swan theatre, The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich, theatre review

March 20, 2018 by billbruce

Duchess of Malfi, review by Peter Buckroyd

The Duchess of Malfi
The Swan Theatre

In The Duchess of Malfi Webster takes the popular Elizabethan and Jacobean genre, Revenge Tragedy, just about as far as it can go, with the result that after Webster there are some pale imitations of the genre, but it soon goes out of fashion. The play is a kind of generic and non-specific political warning, although there are some significant elements such as the too-powerful ruler, the church, the victimisation of women and the dangers of the time-serving self-interested.
In her decision to use modern dress Maria Aberg invites the audience to think about whether any of this has any relevance to our modern world. Of course it does. And she invites us to be horrified by the consequences of being governed by each of these things and by revenge. By her casting decisions she adds racism to the mix.
I have yet to see a production of Maria Aberg’s where I saw what I expected. This is no exception. The production opens with a woman (presumably the Duchess (Joan Iyiola)) laboriously dragging the corpse of an enormous animal – I thought a bull – diagonally across the stage when it is eventually hung up. Pretty soon violence, eroticism and masculinity are depicted in a boxer dance, and a heavy metal thugs dance. The Jacobean obsessions with sex and death soon become clear with the Duchess’s obsessive but forbidden relationship with Antonio (Paul Woodson) and the repressed incestuous and sexual attractions of Ferdinand (Alexander Cobb) set up the ensuing plot nicely, particularly when he castrates the hanging bull and blood rushes from its genitals. Gross. I have seen many attempts to provide motivation for the villain Bosola (Nicholas Tennant), but here he is motiveless and blustering, his shouting in the early scenes simply adding to the audience’s frustration and disgust.
The executioners are big sexy boys supporting Bosola who becomes the executioner, having been the tombmaker. It would be hard for the audience not to have some modern parallels in mind and only those incapable of thinking in metaphorical terms could avoid the warnings of horror.
Blood soon begins to seep across the stage and towards the end the mad people are in white, contrasting with the thugs in black but all trying to negotiate their way across the increasingly bloody and slippery stage. The whole set becomes a metaphorical prison of death. But Webster does allow a glimpse of an alternative world in the minor characters Delio (Greg Barnett) and Cariola (Amanda Hadingue) who offer an alternative world of moral normality.
The play and production are gloomy (with dark lighting) and inevitably disastrous and I thought Aberg did a tremendous job in presenting so little for us to empathise with. All except Delio and Cariola are morally flawed and even Cariola succumbs to trying to save herself by lying at the end. But I did tire of it when the last ten or fifteen minutes simply reiterated what had gone before. Until then, however, my attention was fully held and my brain was active.
This is not a play for the squeamish and it certainly isn’t a producton for them. But I think there is much to admire in it.
Where better to return to after seeing it than the welcoming comfort of Moss Cottage where you will have a warm welcome and no dead animals or pools of blood?

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: duchess of malfi, John Webster, rsc, rsc review, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, Stratford-upon-Avon, theatre review

March 18, 2018 by billbruce

Macbeth, review by Peter Buckroyd

Macbeth

We went to the first actual preview of Polly Findlay’s production, the first two having been cancelled. It interests me how Macbeth, one of the easiest and most straightforward of Shakespeare’s plays to mount, unleashes a considerable amount of creativity and innovation from director and designer. Take, for example, the Old Vic production where Peter O’Toole exited backwards and knocked the set down. Or Mark Rylance’s Greenwich Theatre production when Macbeth and Banquo travelled across Scotland in a stationary half car and when Lady Macbeth weed on stage and her gentlewoman mopped it up with kitchen roll, provoking prolonged hysterical laughter from the teenagers studying the play for GCSE. Or even Stratford’s production when the witches became Macduff’s children and when Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth prepared for battle at the top of a stepladder on a bare stage.

This production also has a range of creative and innovative features which are just as effective as in those three productions I have just mentioned. Designer Fly Davis has created a large rectangular stage with a walkway round it where actors can perambulate without having to sully the huge main bare area. The opening is remarkable: an old man is in his bed and there are three little girls in their Christmas pyjamas sitting miles apart from each other, each fiddling with her teddy bear as well as another character who turns out to be female when she stands up sitting facing away from the bed doing nothing. Upstage right is a person who looks homeless sitting on a chair. He remains when the bed is pushed off for the next scene. Who are they, one asks oneself? Later we learn unsurprisingly that the old man is Duncan. Surprisingly the little girls are the witches who eventually speak, in chorus, miked with an echo chamber, a few of the lines which Shakespeare wrote for them. The female turns out to be someone’s wife (if she is Duncan’s daughter in law why does she completely ignore him?) and the homeless man is the Porter/Old Man/Seyton (all in the same clothes so it is obviously not an actor playing three parts although he has three different accents). Another masterstroke is the digital clock with red numbers which counts the time down to Macbeth’s death in real time, often prompting audience members to realise how incredibly slowly time can go when you’re not having fun and when all you want is a glass of wine. Innovative, too, are the projections, mainly rather random although always portentous quotations from the play except for the most commonly shown one, “Later” which might be helpful to those members of the audience too bemused by what they are seeing to realise that the play is a chronological narrative. The technical problem of the ‘line of kings’, obviously much too demanding to realise on stage, is shown by means of a blurry and dimly lit film projection. I was just glad that the clock didn’t show that we historically had to wait fifteen years for Macbeth to die.

Two levels were used, too. So that the main large stage could remain as empty as possible for as much of the time as possible, Polly Findlay placed a social group on an upstage balcony, suggesting social interactions but economising on props and on bringing things on and off stage. Nothing significant happened up there but it provided a welcome distraction from the ‘sawing the air’ happening down below.

Unusual decisions have also been taken in the acting department. Because so many of the scenes and speeches have been cut in length there aren’t many words left to fill the advertised two hours and five minutes and so the unusual decision has been made to have what remains delivered very, very slowly.
This should ensure that every word can be heard and pondered on in isolation. Unfortunately the actors’ articulation at the first preview was so poor that there were only three actors whose every word could be heard. I don’t think that this was a conscious decision. Although the effect was in keeping with the mildly surrealistic nature of the whole, I think it was incompetence. Another extraordinary decision was to have a great deal of crouching in the production and to characterise Lady Macbeth by manic rushing about in her early scenes (once she had read her husband’s letter while sitting upstage next to the homeless person). There was much flailing of the arms, too, such as pointing exaggeratedly to where something might be happening. Stevie Basaula as the Bloody Captain managed to amalgamate all these extraordinary acting decisions by not only emphasising every word (sometimes every syllable) but accompanying each with a kind of nodding gesture. I had never seen this technique used in professional theatre before. I had also never seen a battle staged like this before. Macbeth and Macduff were alone on a bare stage waving a sword apparently randomly, sometimes near each other. Another surreal scene, I suppose. Underwhelming, though.

Christopher Ecclestone plays Macbeth. My partner thought that he displayed inner turmoil. I didn’t get it. You could hear what he said (or sometimes shouted), however. Niamh Cusack plays Lady Macbeth. Bally Gill as Ross and Tim Samuels both had moments where what they did and said made sense. Other people played the other characters. I felt sorry for Michael Hodgson as the Porter and others. He walked about a bit in the Porter scene but had to watch the whole thing, mainly sitting down except when he was turning a light on or off.

Come and have an enjoyable stay in Stratford. You will have a warm welcome at Moss Cottage if you decide to stay the night. And in the evening you can go and see a play in the Swan Theatre or at the lesser known Attic Theatre or Bear Bit theatre.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: Macbeth, rsc, Rsc reviews, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

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Reviews from the RSC

King John. Review by Dr Peter Buckroyd.

A museum in Baghdad. Review by Dr Peter Buckroyd.

The boy in the dress. Review by Dr Peter Buckroyd.

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

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

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