The RSC’s big Christmas show this year is The Tempest directed by Gregory Doran in association with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios. Starting from the premise that Shakespeare used the cutting edge of Jacobean technology for his masque in The Tempest, this production attempts to use the cutting edge of twenty-first century technology for the production. There is an avatar of Ariel; there are all kinds of projections; the masque is unusually played in full and is full of ostentatious spectacle. I’m sure that members of the audience interested in digital whatsits are going to be very impressed.
Steven Brinson-Lewis’s set design is also spectacular combining with projections of sea, forest and the mysteries of the island. The broken hull of a ship becomes the location of Prospero’s cell and there are some wonderful forest and landscape projections onto the backdrop. The use of Hockney’s paintings delighted me and I wondered whether it was a tribute to the way Hockney had experimented with the uses of new technology in his art.
For me the star of the show was the stage floor with wonderful red cut-out effects and constant visual changes. I’m very glad that we had decided to sit upstairs rather than in the stalls.
All the effects for me got in the way of the play and seemed unbelievably un-Doranlike. There was so much stuff going on – visual and aural – that one of Shakespeare’s most magnificent speeches, Ariel’s ‘You are three men of destiny’ speech was only partly intelligible. And spectacle dominated.
Not throughout, though. I really enjoyed Simon Russell Beale’s understated Prospero. There were almost none of Beale’s characteristic physical and vocal tricks. It was still and poised, although not to everyone’s taste. Our friends were distinctly underwhelmed by his performance and did not see much of a connection between him and Miranda. There was certainly a connection between Ferdinand (a very cute Daniel Easton) and Miranda (Jenny Rainsford). I enjoyed watching Mark Quartley’s Ariel, although some of his movements were clearly for digital rather than character reasons.
The most enjoyable acting came from the wonderfully entertaining Tony Jayawardena as Stephano (what a pleasure to see him back on the RSC stage), Simon Trinder as Trinculo and Joe Dixon as Caliban.
In the end I wasn’t sure what it all was. Not really a play. Not focussed sufficiently on motivation and character development to be a drama. Maybe a spectacle. Maybe an experiment. Maybe just spending money and showing off.
I think you should come and see it because it is apparently breaking new theatrical ground and is probably the first of what becomes a tradition where the different elements are better integrated and more purposefully used to serve the play itself.
The Rover, review by Peter Buckroyd.
The Rover
This is a fast-paced high energy production directed by Loveday Ingram which is great fun to watch
and to listen to. Action spills all over the stage and there is lots of singing and dancing as it is set at
carnival time. The music is Spanish in style and there is lots of it. The costumes are Spanish and
sumptuous.
Joseph Millson portrays the main character, Willmore, the only character to have relationships with
two women, with gusto in piratical swashbuckling style and there is plenty of energetic acting to
complement his physical agility.
The style overall is appropriately informal with some witty asides and clever jokes as well as
interaction with audience members which keeps those in the front row alert and on their guard.
The four couples are nicely differentiated enabling Aphra Behn to make a study of the relationships
with regard to sexual attraction, love, lust, honesty and deceit. Of course because she constructs
the play by comparing the behaviour of the couples time and time again, there are some moments
when one is tempted to count how many have had their moments and therefore how many there are to
go before the plot can move on. But this is a small price to pay for some very entertaining scenes.
Blunt’s duping by the prostitute Lucetta is one end of the failed relationship spectrum and they are not
really essential to the plot, but discombobulated Blunt is splendidly played by Leander Deeny in a
virtuoso performance which makes the character more than bearable. At the other end of the
relationship spectrum is Belvile, believable and very well played by Patrick Robinson who displayed
bsome chemistry with Frances McNamee’s Florinda, particularly in their very well played
reconciliation scene at the end.
Faye Castelow’s Helena is a joy to watch and to listen to. I had not realised before how closely she
and Willmore are based on Beatrice and Benedick. This interpretation makes her more credible than
most Helenas and her interaction with Willmore is great fun to watch.
Women in this play have the upper hand and Ingram brings out Behn’s proto-feminism well
throughout the play. Famous courtesan Angelica Bianca played by Alexandra Gilbreath several times
asserts her dominance from the beautifully designed wrought iron balcony but I was a little
disappointed that when she was at stage level she did so much shouting. We could get to understand
Helena, but I wasn’t able to understand Angelica; I thought she asserted all the time rather than
Demonstrating. In some ways she is the most interesting character in Aphra Behn’s play but she
isn’t in this production. Even her lovely crimson velvet dress smelt like caricature. Jamie Wilkes
made an attempt to give Don Antonio some character but he was not as effective here as in Two
Noble Kinsman, I thought.
Swashbuckling fun though it was, I still came away thinking about love, sex, trust, honesty and
Relationships which makes me think that this is a really good production.
Two Noble Kinsmen, review by Peter Buckroyd.
Two Noble Kinsmen
The RSC’s 1986 production of Two Noble Kinsmen made a big impression on me and I can still visualise much of it. It wasn’t just the brilliant playing of Hugh Quarshie and Gerard Murphy that impressed; it was also the oddity of the play itself with the interpolations of the story of the Jailer and his daughter and the tangential material about the Schoolmaster and countrymen.
Faced with this odd text with its many soliloquies, one after another towards the end, director Blanche McIntyre does something even more interesting, not all of which I grasped. The overriding theme of her production is that real love lies in same sex relationships which don’t necessarily have to be sexual. Even Hippolyta, about to be married to Theseus, acknowledges this and McIntyre follows the theme throughout.
Emilia’s insistence that she has no interest in marrying is followed through by the attentions of the character known in the 1977 New Penguin edition as ‘Woman, servant of Emilia’. This character is oddly omitted from the Cast list in the programme. She has very few lines but, splendidly played by Eloise Secker, is an almost constant presence. Emelia is clearly attracted to her and she to Emelia. The on the lips kiss between Theseus and Pirithous at the beginning in front of Theseus’s fiancée drew ooh and ahs from the audience but was crucial in establishing the production’s primary idea. The most important same sex relationship is between the cousins Palamon and Arcite, wonderfully played by James Corrigan and Jamie Wilkes. They are made for each other, mimick each other’s speech and gestures and are perfectly matched physically. It is an unmarriage made in heaven.
Beside these relationships the others pale. Hippolita is Theseus’s war trophy. Both Palamon and Arcite ‘fall in love’ with an image, Emilia, and remain faithful to their adolescent fantasy until the very end when, on Arcite’s death, they realise that it is only their love for each other which matters. The Jailer’s daughter also falls in love with an image, Palamon, ignoring her faithful wooer.
In political terms McIntyre makes clear that power lies with women: the three queens dominate Theseus into submitting to a war against Creon; Hippolyta with her strong Scottish voice dominates Theseus and the Jailer’s daughter ends up controlling several men through her madness.
So far, so good, much of it brilliantly good.
Then the Schoolmaster and the Countrymen. They aren’t, at least according to the programme. They are the gods, one of whom looks like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. It is a Schoolmistress of course (to fit in with the theme) but the relationship between the Morris dancers and the gods eluded me and still does. Surely the play says that we make our own foolish decisions, based on impulse and ridiculous notions of romantic ‘love’, not that we are controlled by the gods who kill us for their sport. I think this is very much a post-King Lear play. The jailer’s daughter replaces her red cardigan for a dirty white one when she goes mad but takes the curtain call with her red one back on. This to me suggested that she recovered from her madness and did end up marrying her wooer, rather than thinking that the Jailer’s account of her marriage was simply to prevent Palamon from seeing her at the end.
The end of the play, after all the soliloquies, the combat and Arcite’s death (the only moment in the production which descended to actorly deathbed spluttering) is powerful and affecting. The characters are all on stage. Having learned that he is to marry Emilia, Palamon merely walks off upstage and exits. Pause. Then Emilia leaves. Pause. Then her Woman leaves. Then Theseus tamely utters his concluding platitudes. Theme continued right to the end.
I had another thought, too, but I won’t labour it. Was there some Brexit material lurking round the edges? Was the Jailer’s daughter’s red, white and blue costume telling us something? Was Hippolyta’s Scottish accent a reminder that the conquered are now in the ascendancy? Was there a tiny hint of the return of grammar schools?
There is so much more to say about this splendid production. You had better come and see it for yourself. If you treat yourself to a night at Moss Cottage you can have homemade jams and marmalade on homemade bread to follow your full English breakfast or smoked salmon and scrambled egg.
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.
Cymbeline, Royal Shakespeare Company. Review by Peter Buckroyd
Cymbeline
Royal Shakespeare Company
Cymbeline isn’t very often done. It’s easy to understand why. There are several plots: the Roman colonisation of England and the conflict between England and Rome, the love story between Cymbeline’s daughter (here called Innogen) and the more lowly born Posthumus, the theft of Cymbeline’s two other children when they were in infancy and what happens to them, the Machiavellian Italian Iachimo’s attempt to besmirch Innogen’s virtue and make Posthumus insanely jealous. These eventually come together after a number of unlikelihoods to create a problematic happy ending.
Set in the capital, Wales and Italy, the action moves between the three locations. Weird things happen throughout. When Posthumus arrives in Rome he finds Italians, a Spaniard, a Frenchman and a Dutchman. Innogen runs away to Wales and without difficulty finds her siblings, even though she’s not looking for them. Cloten gets his head cut off. Jupiter descends in a chariot.
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It’s long and unlikely so you have to do something with it. Director Melly Still certainly does lots with it. She draws parallels between Britain refusing but eventually agreeing to pay tribute to Rome with the Brexit debate. Should we or should we not pay tribute to the EU? In previous productions I have seen Posthumus as tall and strong and Cloten small and dumpy. Here Cloten is big and tall, Posthumus small, slim and a bit wimpy. Cymbeline is male and his wife the wicked witch. Here Cymbeline is female and her husband (the Duke) the wicked one. The two stolen boys are both male. Here Arviragus is male and Guideria female. Posthumus’s servant is male. Here Pisania is female. Shakespeare writes all his play in English but in this production when they are in Rome they speak Latin as well as Italian and there are smatterings of other languages, too. When Posthumus arrives in Rome he goes to a disco playing techno and ambient techno. The costumes are suggestive, related to character and situation rather than to a particular time period. As in Doctor Faustus the music is modern and brilliant, especially in the wonderful setting of ‘Hark, hark the lark’ and ‘Fear no more’. Jupiter is Posthumus. It is he who descends in a chariot, he who plays with paper cutouts of people in a series of set pieces about moral dilemmas. Posthumus dons Innogen’s dress in another dream sequence. The battles are completely non-realistic with a wonderful slo mo sequence. Asides are denoted by the dimming of lights and a spot. Early on there is an extraordinary moment of shag interruptus with Innogen wearing a kind of Miss Havisham tutu. The play is also often very funny, though never played for laughs.
I wouldn’t and probably couldn’t have thought of doing any of these things. That’s why I loved it. It made me think about Shakespeare’s play throughout. For me there was never a dull or idle moment.
It’s an inspired idea to make Cymbeline female; the theft of a mother’s children hangs over her throughout. The cliché of the wicked queen turns into a more powerful examination of the envy and rage which can kick in when it is one’s wife who has all the power. It is his unconscious which leads Posthumus eventually to self-realisation. Innogen can only find herself by running away from court and being in touch with wild but consoling nature. The play’s denouement heightens the growth of the play’s young people, but it also points to the difficulties which lie ahead as Arviragus and Guideria learn who they are, as Posthumus and Innogen have to learn to know each other again and Cymbeline has to face her situation of being a rather ineffectual capitulating queen and now a widow too.
When you have seen the same actors in two different productions over a short period of time it’s inevitable that you link them together in your head. Melly Still gains a good deal by casting James Cooney as Arviragus and Natalie Simpson as Guideria. They were brilliant I thought as Rosencrantz and Guildernstern. Here they are brilliant together again, the chemistry of the first roles feeding into these very different ones. But the performances are so different that I still find it almost impossible to grasp that they are the same actors. Their scenes with the wonderful Graham Turner as Belarius are powerfully moving. I loved watching Horan Abesekera again, too. Both as Horatio and Posthumus his vocal and physical skills are unflashy but consummate. In each part he interprets the character differently from what I expected and in each he is convincing. Gillian Bevan as Cymbeline brings out the character’s changeability and even manages to accrue some audience sympathy or at least empathy at the end – no mean feat. Marcus Griffiths avoids playing Cloten as a stereotypical stage villain and forces you to think about what he is up to. Similarly, Oliver Johnstone is a modern embodiment of evil in Iachimo, not a stereotype. The more you think about what he is up to the worse it is, but you can begin to understand him a bit. James Clyde’s Duke is nasty, but he has a certain charm. Spooky.
I loved Dave Price’s music. It creates a modern/ancient/timeless backdrop to the action. And Anna Fleischle’s design facilitates quick transitions from location to location while offering the audience some powerful images which complement the action. This is a world where growth is difficult. The people gathering herbs have to dig these tiny signs of life from small cracks and with considerable difficult. Thus pieces of added action create metaphors for the ideas underpinning the play, the concrete and literal becoming metaphorical and sometimes symbolic.
In the centre of the stage is a huge tree trunk. There was life once but the tree is limbless. It is also encased in a cubed frame. One of the delights of this conceptualised production was to consider what happened on the cube; when characters sat and stood on it; what was signified each time this happened; how that space becomes a mental space which many characters unknowingly share. It is a wonderful unifying idea.
This Cymbeline and the concurrently playing Hamlet are productions which I shall never forget. It was a privilege to see them. Don’t miss out. Come and see both of them if you can and enjoy a stay at Moss Cottage as you relish the RSC’s outstanding season.
