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March 20, 2018 by billbruce Leave a Comment

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 1 Comment

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

August 15, 2017 by billbruce Leave a Comment

Titus Andronicus, Review by Peter Buckroyd

Blood, guts, murder, revenge, the severing of limbs for rape, cannibalism, political assassination, fighting foreign wars, dubious political alliances, spin, the gullibility of the general population, political volte faces, framings and hypocrisy, nepotism, suicide, sacrifice… this list goes on.

Even when Shakespeare wrote this play it was old-fashioned: a revenge tragedy in the Roman tradition. And yet political murders, internecine struggles, nepotism, racism, political assassination were all things that the Elizabethan audience could identify happening in their own time. Even more of them can be identified as happening right now at some place in the world.

Exaggerated as it may seem, then, this is a play for Shakespearian times and it is a play for ours. That is why when you come to see this fine production you should be in your seats ahead of time. The contemporary context is set before the dialogue starts. There are three factions vying for power, represented by a retrospectively splendid extended dumb show.

Blanche McIntyre’s production highlights power struggles of many kinds. The placard ‘Austerity kills’ immediately sets the sub-text of the production, placed amidst street fighting, looting, rival gangs whose members are interchangeable, the police as another gang jockeying for power, all followed by an election. Ring any bells? Sure. So is the unlikely outcome of the election. The production is prescient in its presentation of a corrupt leader forming an alliance with a right wing foreign power in order to maintain power. How did he know this would happen? Because it is the stuff of dangerous and corrupt societies. What a message.

David Troughton’s Titus is a figure imprisoned within himself and within his own mind commenting on himself and others but not really engaging with the reality of any of them. This play is so harsh in its message that to begin with the audience found it hard to engage with the farcical black comedy with which this production is infused. The grotesque removal of Titus’s hand when he sacrifices it to save the lives of his sons is hard to watch.

The hands are not the only metaphors in this production. Sex is throughout a metaphor for politics and vice versa. And the many costume changes become a metaphor too.

The production is busy, often hectically busy, with action and yet there are some superb moments of stillness. Watch out for the powerful effect of Titus’s laughter scene.

And characters are distinguished not only by costume, behaviour and posture but also by the style of vocal delivery. Titus’s brother Marcus, for example, (splendidly played by Patrick Drury) is set apart from the others not only by his formal contemporary clothes but by his wonderful Olivier-like delivery and intonation – a survivor in an alien world.

There is so much to see and think about in this production that it is even better in retrospect. Emperor Saturninus’s Superman t shirt, extraordinary use of a cardboard box, the stew with Tamara’s sons’ heads in it, the banquet at a table set only for four, the framing of the drama with the spin of a political MC, the messengers on a bike, a pool scene: these are only some of the production’s inspired thought provoking elements which become ideas.
It’s all pretty exhausting.

You will need to recover with a relaxing night’s stay at Moss Cottage to bring you back to the kind of reality you would like to inhabit.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Theatre Stratford upon Avon, Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

November 14, 2016 by billbruce 3 Comments

The Tempest, RSC review by Peter Buckroyd

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.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: rsc, rsc review, Rsc reviews, rsc | Theatre review | White Devil |, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Somon Russel Beale, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, The |Tempest., William Shakespeare

October 11, 2016 by billbruce Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: rsc review, rsc | Theatre review | White Devil |, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, Swan theatre, The Rover, The Rover at the RSC, theatre review, Theatre Stratford upon Avon, William Shakespeare

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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.

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