I have to admit that I’m a Kathryn Hunter groupie. Some of most exciting theatrical experiences I have had have involved her – as director of an incredible Pericles at the Globe and as actor in Kafka’s Monkey at the Young Vic, in The Skriker at the National, as the best Fool I have ever seen at the RSC and as a Cleopatra which had me on the edge of my seat and open mouthed with amazement and admiration at the RSC. So I have been excited since the present season was announced that she is playing Timon.
But her highly individual physical and vocal delivery is not to everyone’s taste. And at the preview which we attended people further back said they couldn’t hear everything. That wasn’t my experience because I had made sure I was in the front row so that I could see at close quarters her incredible use of hands and arms. She is an actor (like the incomparable Oliver Ford-Davies and Ian McKellen) who excites me as soon as she appears on stage and opens her mouth.
One of the things about this performance is that she gives nothing at all away about what she is feeling and why in the first half. Her Timon is engaged with philanthropy and generosity but not at all with the people she invites to her lavish banquets. She smiles, greets and embraces but without any real personal connection. Her guests recognise people and types we can recognise but she doesn’t. She is on a different planet altogether. And so it makes sense that she can be as intense in her rejection of the world as she was in displaying her generosity. She was never part of the world as evinced by her ignoring her Steward’s warnings.
I wasn’t convinced in the first half that the acting was as good as it might have been but then I realised that director Simon Godwin was turning things on their head by suggesting that the servants were real and the Athenians shallow caricatures. Flavius the Steward (Patrick Drury), the Welsh Apemantus (Nia Gwynne), Lucilius (Salman Akhtar) and Servilius (Riad Richie), all dressed in black, were not part of the corrupt world. Only they seemed ‘real’ in modern terms. It was striking in the opening banquet scene Alcibiades (splendidly played by Debbie Korley) looked different from all the others. And it was masterstroke by Godwin that these Corbinites, genuine in their desire for a revolution from all the self-seeking, utterly selfish Tories, should turn out to be the ones in Alcibiades’s victorious army.
I’ve never thought that Aristotle had much to do with Shakespearian tragedy and yet I ended up thinking at the end of this production that it was as Aristotelian as Shakespeare gets: greatness meeting with a fall, realisation and purgation for the audience, all the greater for not witnessing Timon’s death on stage.
This production is pretty amazing to look at. Just about everything in the early part of the play is gold – the backdrop, the carpet, the statue, the table settings, the gifts Timon bestows, the chairs and chandelier and the wonderful OTT costumes designed as is the set by Soutra Gilmour. Then it turns to black and white so that gold, black, white and dirt all become powerfully and resonantly symbolic, especially when Timon digs up the chest of gold from the dirt.
There are lots of splendid moments – the freezes at the banquet, the intertwined missions to get contributions for Timon’s impoverishment, Alcibiades’s protest march, the barefootedness of Timon’s second satirical feast, the picnic Apemantus brings to the hermitised Timon, the unforgettable
moment then Flavius shares his little reining gold with the other servants.
Two things I don’t understand. This is just about the only Shakespearian tragedy when there is no mention of the protagonist’s family. Why was Timon wearing a wedding ring then? I fear this was an error. The other thing is that it has become a fashion in plays not directed by Gregory Doran or Erica Whyman for actors to lose their consonants this means that they become hard to hear. It is an issue for the RSC voice coaches (such as Kate Godfrey in this case) to address with some urgency.
I think this is a play worth seeing – as is Tartuffe. Come and make a special treat of it with a night or two at Moss Cottage with its newly refurbished bathrooms.
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.
Rsc Twelfth Night, review by Peter Buckroyd
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Twelfth Night
Maybe it’s because Shakespeare chose Illyria as the setting for his play – part of the western Balkans in the time of classical antiquity – a place with no particular resonances either for an Elizabethan/Jacobean audience or for us, particularly when Sebastian and Antonio are staying at a hostelry at the Elephant just down the road from Bankside in London – that directors and designers have chosen to set the plays anywhere they like. Most of those I have seen have been decorative. But the best productions choose somewhere which enriches the text rather than just decorates it. I’m thinking particularly of the RSC production about thirty years ago which set the play in Stratford and made the entertainer Feste’s home ‘hard by the church’ New Place, setting off a mass of possible biographical allusions in the play. But I haven’t seen many productions like that.
Director Christopher Luscombe and designer Simon Higlett have chosen the 1890s for their production, maybe fortuitously but particularly appropriately timed because of the current Oscar Wilde season at the Vaudeville theatre in London. The sometimes dodgy sexual and gender issues in the play are seen in a new light. Orsino (Nicholas Bishop) is not the usual Chattertonian melancholic but a dandy about town who really doesn’t care very much what gender his love object is. established right at the beginning with his kissing Valentine. Olivia (Kara Tointon) indulges herself in fashionable Victorian prolonged mourning but is quite open to the attraction of a bit of eye candy. All this is set against the twin stuff. Of course it was obvious that after Hamnet’s death Shakespeare was always reminded of Hamnet when he saw Judith; maybe that’s why he doesn’t appear to have liked her very much. In their normal clothes Viola (a spirited and rather splendid Cesario played by Dinita Gohil) and Sebastian (Esh Alladi) are dressed identically and we can begin to understand why people can’t tell which is which when we realise that the great English unwashed say that all Chinese people look the same or that the Chinese call white Westerners ‘big noses’ because they all look the same. Further use is made of the 1890s by the references to Queen Victoria’s patronage of Abdul Karim, mirrored by Olivia’s patronage of Feste (and, possibly Queen Elizabeth’s and later King James’s patronage of Shakespeare). There is an aesthetic exoticism about the households of both Olivia and Orsino which unifies the setting. The production is a rich presentation of ideas which a twenty-first century can engage with.
That is not to say that the setting solves all the problems in the play. Antonio’s misery and disillusionment at the end of the play picks up on the complex sexual dynamics in the play but (and maybe this is a costuming issue) doesn’t quite convince that he is a pirate or that he belongs in the 1890s. And I didn’t see how Sir Toby or Sir Andrew were from the 1890s either. I did get Malvolio, though. Adrian Edmondson gives him a rather sinister and unpleasant edge, familiar both in Shakespeare’s dealings in the theatre world of the 1590s and Oscar Wilde’s encounters three hundred years later.
It took a second viewing of the production for me to realise that this is very much a contemporary, twenty-first century interpretation of the play, showing that where sexual attraction, and even love, are concerned, gender is not a significant issue. So Orsino can give Cesario a passionate kiss while sending ‘him’ to woo Olivia. Olivia can fall for Cesario while ‘he’ is pretending to be Orsino’s emissary. Olivia can fall for and marry Sebastian as it doesn’t matter what gender he is and whether he is really male or just masquerading as male. Orsino loves Cesario anyway so it doesn’t make any difference at all when ‘he’ turns out to be female.
Of course there are casualties of all this. The older generation, with more conventional views of love and marriage – Sir Andrew’s (Michael Cochrane) that they can be bought, Sir Toby’s (John Hodgkinson) that they are a reward for misdeeds and favours done, Antonio’s (Giles Taylor) that a gay relationship is all that counts, Malvolio’s that he can overreach his status and class – all suffer because they have not been able to enter this new world, characterised on one hand by metrosexuality, on the second hand by the covert bisexuality of the 1890s and on the third hand (eh?) by the hidden and unspoken sexuality of Elizabethan and Jacobean England..
Maybe this is all too much about ideas. What about production values?
This is the first production I have seen where I have been able to believe that Viola and Sebastian could be mistaken for each other. They are dressed the same and to a considerable degree mirror each other’s postures and gestures.
Simon Higlett’s design is outstanding and beautiful to look at. The exotic and opulent cushions, furnishings and pre-Raphaelitish paintings in Orsino’s establishment give a clear indication of the aesthetic decadence of the 1890s while evoking in the interior of Leighton House. The painting being done by Orsino at the beginning is very similar to one of Linley Sambourne’s photographs, though here the model is the dishy Tom Byrne rather than Sambourne’s servant. Feste, described in the programme’s dramatis personae as Olivia’s munshi, wears Asian/Middle Eastern costume, linking him in terms of ethnicity and culture with Viola and Sebastian and therefore providing a kind of prolepsis of the Olivia/Viola/Cesario/Sebastion plot. A railway station entrance hall establishes the idea of a journey, sets period and gives a new and interesting geographical dimension to the distance between Orsino’s and Olivia’s courts. The Gilbert and Sullivan style patter song at the end frames the whole play in the 1890s. Olivia’s garden provides the setting for the best comedy in the play – Sir Andrew, Sir Toby and Fabria’s spying on Malvolio being statues behind a fountain – at the same time as providing ideas about Malvolio’s blind self-absorbtion and the gullers’ ridiculous posturing.
Luscombe’s use of short pauses and caesuras, particularly in his presentation of Viola, made me listen afresh, and his decisions about when characters would address the audience rather than each other drew attention to a range of details and phrases often skated by.
This production is shaped with changing tones which create the effect of an exquisite piece of music.This rich production is not only worth seeing. It is worth seeing more than once. Splendid.
Orchestra of The Swan, Review.
Orchestra of the Swan
Stratford ArtsHouse
8 November
In the past when Orchestra of the Swan has featured a newly commissioned work the audience has stayed away in droves. Not so in this 21st Anniversary year, mainly because of the imaginative way in which the new work has been introduced. At each of the concerts a newly commissioned work will be paired with a familiar classic, on this occasion Douglas J Cuomo’s Objects in Mirror with JS Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto no2 in F major which formed Cuomo’s inspiration for his new work. David Curtis made this new work accessible for the audience by having the orchestra play very short extracts of the Bach followed by short extracts of the Cuomo in order to show how Cuomo used some of Bach’s ideas and motifs, thereby helping the audience to find ways of listening to and accessing this new work. Brilliant. Particularly as the last two works on the programme were Bach’s Brandenberg Concerto no3 in G major followed by Stravinsky’s Concert for E flat for chamber Orchestra ‘Dumbarton Oaks’, a tribute to Bach’s work.
The programme began with Steve Martland’s arrangement of JS Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, an extraordinary arrangement which captured some of the ways in which Bach prefigures dynamic shifts and emphatic moments of contemporary rock music.
The harpsicord is barely audible in most Baroque music but Cuomo gives it real character and moments to itself so that for a change we could admire David Ponsford’s skilled playing and interactions with other instruments. I loved the intense and passionate second movement, the Ballad, where Cuomo showed he was not frightened to create slow delicacy, epitomised by Hugh Davies’s lovely playing of the muted trumpet.
Bach’s decision to have three violins rather than the customary division between first and second violins in Brandenberg 3 gave the audience quite a different string ensemble sound with just the four string lines rather than the customary five. And who said that minimalism was a twentieth century phenomenon? The two chord second movement must have been as startling to eighteenth century audiences as it was to us on Tuesday.
What a wonderful concert it was. I can’t wait for the next one.
King Lear. Review by Peter Buckroyd.
King Lear
We have finally managed to get to see Greg Doran’s eagerly awaited production of King Lear starring Antony Sher. Sher is splendid at the beginning and the ending of the play. The middle I was less convinced by. Sher characterises Lear physically by slightly hunched shoulders, a slightly forward bent posture and by bear-like heaviness, matched by his animal fur costume. Vocally, though, there is a good deal of monotone. It is not entirely Sher’s fault that I could not warm to him mad on the heath. He is elevated on an unnecessary metal structure and surrounded by an unnecessary huge tarpaulin (which muffed its lines badly on the night we went necessitating a pause in the production while the tarpaulin was removed). The best of Sher was when he was relieved of this clutter. By the end we are able to understand his Lear. Lear ‘slenderly knows himself’. He reacts with gusto to the moment but he doesn’t link those moments together and so he is perceived by others as inconsistent while he is simply responding to whatever moment presents itself to him without joining them together and without thinking in a systematic way.
The best moment in the production is when Lear and the blind Gloucester are sitting talking on an otherwise bare stage. That brings me to the real star of this production: David Troughton as Gloucester. Every phase in Gloucester’s rich characterisation is portrayed with wonderful clarity, both physical and vocal. I didn’t watch the blinding, of course, which took place in another structure – a Perspex box – but I did listen. Troughton’s Gloucester is an efficient court servant, a deluded credulous father, a self-sacrificing prisoner, a dignified victim of torture, a blind creature of insight and a despairing tragic figure. The fall from the ‘cliff’ was breathtaking in its simplicity. It is a wonderful performance.
There are other excellent performances, too. Oliver Johnstone was equally powerful and effective as Edgar. Natalie Simpson was strong, practical and dignified as Cordelia, as clear and unfussy as you could ask for. Both James Clyde as Cornwall and Clarence Smith as Albany make the most of their thankless roles and Antony Byrne’s Kent is as powerful in disguise as he was before his disgrace. I have thought long and hard about Paapa Essiedu’s Edmund because I have to admit that while I was sitting in the theatre I could not grasp why he did so little. But then it dawned on me. Edmund is completely devoid of affect. He is a heartless, conscienceless, evil bastard who smiles and smiles and is a villain. Clever, I now think, and interesting because it makes Goneril and Regan even more stupid for being in love with him. And even cleverer when you realise that he just acts in and on the moment as Lear does.
As for design, I thought the high chair on which Lear appeared in Act I effective. I thought Act I, as well as being brilliantly cut, looked stunning in black and gold while Cordelia was in white and Lear draped in furs. The hand held barren trees and what became two planets were thematically effective. The dim lighting and the preponderance of shadows are completely in keeping with the play’s mood, and the tableau of Lear with the dead Cordelia echoing Michelangelo’s Pieta, created another layer of depth and meaning.
This is a production well worth seeing. It has all the hallmarks of Doran’s contrast between movement and stillness, his lovely stage pictures, his brilliant cutting, his control of pace, his eschewing of stagey ‘acting’, his creation of intense and understated emotional moments.
Come and see it and make it an enhanced treat with a night at Moss Cottage.
