Privacy & Cookies

Moss Cottage uses cookies to track and improve site performance and enhance your experience.

By using our website, you consent to our use of cookies. To learn more about how we use cookies, read our Privacy Policy

Moss Cottage

Tel. 01789 294 770
Email. info@mosscottage.org
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Blog
    • Local Attractions
    • RSC Reviews
  • Breakfast
  • Rooms
  • Tariff
  • Gallery
  • Contact
  • Book Now

February 10, 2020 by billbruce Leave a Comment

Rsc review. The Whip.

The Whip

The RSC’s most recent play in the Swan Theatre is just as good and just as interesting as A Museum  in Baghdad which it has replaced.

Ostensibly about the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 it goes far beyond the superficial and often somewhat PC and sentimental treatment of the topic, showing the political wrangling involved in the passing of the Act and some of the hidden history behind it. Playwright Juliet Gilkes Romero manages to intertwine two stories – that of the anti-slavery legislation and also the pressure to do something about child labour in factories which led to the Factory Act, also in 1833. All of this is played to the backdrop of the Reform Act which was passed the previous year and which brought to an end the purchasing of most parliamentary seats and increased those entitled to vote to about one fifth of the population. It was a time of considerable political turmoil. For me the play was even more interesting in that it was so timely, coming hot on the heels of the UK’s separation from the EU, and that it was so relevant to our political situation in 2020.

Democracy was said over and over again. Does that ring a bell? Can there be democracy when fewer than half the men and no women have the vote? Is there democracy when we have an antiquated first past the post system and when both Conservative and Labour MEPs said when we visited the EU in Brussels that because of our method of electing MPs Britain was the least democratic country in the EU?

But what came out loud and clear in the play – over slavery, slave ownership, factory ownership (and in the whole Brexit business) – was the masking of political self-interest by ostensible moral righteousness.

The play points to the iniquities following the Slavery Abolition Act of the ‘apprentice scheme’ whereby the lives of ‘emancipated’ slaves was even worse than under slavery, a scheme which had to be abolished in 1838. It does, of course, make one wonder what privations will occur after our emancipation from the EU legislation which is so widely chattered about.

So this is an important play, not only because it shows hidden and suppressed history but because of its relevance to our situation today.

Juliet Gilkes Romero tells her story well. She focusses on the relationships between Government Chief Whip, Alexander Boyd, who has adopted as ward a runaway slave Edmund who has made good, become a parliamentary assistant to Boyd but receives no salary even though he is over sixteen, on Horatia Poskett, an ex-cotton worker who has become Boyd’s housekeeper and on Mercy Price, a runaway slave and abolitionist.

Corey Montague-Sholay is outstanding as Edmund. So is Debbie Korley as Mercy Price, a remarkable performance which makes it hard to believe that it is the same actress who played the American soldier in A Museum in Baghdad. Richard Clothier held my attention and interest throughout in a performance which ranges from dignified, powerful, vulnerable, self-seeking and principled by turns.

There are some striking decisions made by director Kimberley Sykes. Which accent do you use when? Both Mercy Price and Horatio Poskett are made parallel in their manipulation by pronunciation variations and are therefore undercut at times as moral characters, making the play more complex and interesting.

I did get a bit irritated by Ciaran Bagnall’s highly stylised set but that’s just me. The whole thing is a square boxing ring surrounded by a slightly raised area where the actors spend much of their time. A rectangular table flies up and down, up and down, up and down throughout and lots of people stand on it to deliver speeches, mostly political. Akintayo Akinbode’s music score is excellent and really enhances the play. I particularly enjoyed the various takes on hymn tunes which are integrated with more contemporary and atmospheric sounds.

The play also has my favourite line of the year so far, that we are ‘leaping into the arse-end of oblivion’:  a line for all seasons.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: abolition, new play, parliament, rsc, slavery, Swan theatre, theatre, workers rights

November 22, 2019 by billbruce Leave a Comment

A museum in Baghdad. Review by Dr Peter Buckroyd.

Royal Shakespeare Company

Swan Theatre

A Museum in Baghdad was ten years in the making. Author Hannah Kalil began by writing a play about Gertrude Bell, an archaeologist who became the first custodian of the museum in Baghdad which opened in 1926. She then developed her play after she realised that there were parallels between this event in 1926 and the reopening of the Museum in 2006.

It is a complex and fascinating play drawing on both Tom Stoppard and Caryl Churchill in its techniques and looking at historical repetition compulsion as well as tensions between artefacts and politics, the influences of the past, clashes between cultures, the role of women and attitudes to history.

Until they realised that the two time periods are interwoven some audience members were confused about what is going on. It’s pretty straightforward, though, once you realise that Gertrude (1926) is paralleled by Ghalia Hussein (2006), that they each have their staff but that Abu Zaman as the local caretaker appears in both time periods, tying the two together through a consistent Iraqi presence.

The play is, perhaps, a touch longer than it needs to be. It’s sometimes a bit attenuated, sometimes a bit portentous, but Erica Whyman’s direction is absolutely superb. Her treatment of the interweaving of the two time periods is brilliant. A la Churchill there is a chorus, but the words of the chorus are split up and thrown around by all those on stage. There are brilliantly handled freezes and mime sequences. There are several moments when both Bell and Hussein say the same lines. There is real depth of characterisation. Each character has his or her own reasons for being involved in archaeology and museums.

The performances are outstanding. Emma Fielding gives one of the performances of the decade as Gertrude Bell – she radiates charisma in a very gentle way with exquisite attention to minute detail. Her assistant Salim is wonderfully played by Zed Josef; his movement and vocal technique is impeccable. Rasoul Saghir is also outstanding as Abu Zaman. He is on stage when the audience enters, fulfilling his role as caretaker in ways more than literal.

There are some wonderful moments involving metaphors and symbols. Several times Abu Zaman withdraws something from his pocket which is preceded by a handful of grains of sand (sands of time, no doubt, as well as of desert) which fall to the ground. There is debate in both time periods about the museum’s most treasured possession, a goddess and a headdress, and these become highly charged symbolic objects where the audience is invited to create their own meanings. A display cabinet is commissioned in each time period and we are invited, by shadow play and fog, to imagine what is in it. Towards the end other artefacts appear against the backdrop which are hard to realise are only projections, so that even the technical word, projection, accrues meanings.

Many found the ending when Gertrude died very moving. I thought the symbolism and myth making were a wee bit obvious but there is no doubting the power of the imagery. This is a very interesting and thought provoking play, but I am not convinced that I have ever seen better direction.

It should be seen.

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

March 14, 2019 by billbruce Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: reviews, rsc, rsc review, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, The Taming of the Shrew

March 14, 2019 by billbruce Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: As you like it, rsc, rsc review, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, Stratford upon Avon theatre, William Shakespeare

September 7, 2018 by billbruce Leave a Comment

Tamburlaine. Rsc review by Peter Buckroyd.

Tamburlaine
The Swan Theatre

I guess it was a mistake to go to a Preview of Tamburlaine because it is directed by Michael Boyd and his productions are often not in their finished form for the Previews (unlike Gregory Doran’s or Erica Whyman’s). However I did. Friends tell me that it is much better ten days or two weeks into the run. Good.
The story itself is pretty simple. Tamburlaine, born a shepherd, wants to rule the world and sets out to do so by whatever means it takes. He invades, kills and conquers. It was immensely popular with Elizabethan audiences, the first play to spawn a sequel in Tamburlaine the Great Part 11.
This production puts the two plays together, cutting them violently, to result in 2 hours 55 minutes playing time. And for me this is the main part of the problem. A vast number of Marlowe’s mighty lines have inevitably been cut, resulting in a loss of poetry, lyricism, political philosophy and debate and leaving sometimes little more than plot. There are vast numbers of characters (or at any rate named people) involved and so doubling and trebling is parts is necessary. It only takes about an hour or so for the audience to realise that the issues are the same regardless of who is being conquered and that the motivation of the main character is simply megalomania. It’s interesting to see kings killed and reappear as other kings whose behaviour is similar as is their fate. Maybe that is the message of the play, warning Elizabethans of the danger of expansionism and drawing parallels with modern day atrocities. The primary women (Tamburlaine’s wife Zenocrate (Rosy McEwen) and Bajazeth’s wife Zabena (Debbie Korley)) do a good job of attracting audience interest and involvement, despite their curtailed parts and both Tamburlaine (Jude Owusu) and Bajazeth (Sagar I M Arya) are powerful and effective as oppressor and oppressed.
Mycetes, King of Persia, is made semi-comic. Sychophantic Meander (James Tucker), in black, looks out of place and therefore transcends particular time and place.
There is much casual walking over dead bodies. Characters are either smeared in chocolate blood when they die or have chocolate blood poured over them from a bucket. There is a good deal of subtle unobtrusive music, mainly percussion. Bajazeth’s cage is pushed in and off efficiently and serves several symbolic purposes. There are dodgy human horses who pull on Tamburlaine’s chariot after the interval, making obvious political links with Bajazeth in the first half.
There is a horrifying violent immoral ending with the sacrilegious burning of holy books. Kings, we sense, are ten a penny. There are guns and a good deal of leather at the end. All becomes gratuitous violence and slaughter.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: rsc, rsc review, Swan theatre, Tamburlaine, theatre review

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 12
  • Next Page »

Quick Links

  • Home
  • About Us
    • Blog
    • Local Attractions
    • RSC Reviews
  • Breakfast
  • Rooms
  • Tariff
  • Gallery
  • Contact
  • Book Now

About Moss Cottage

Moss Cottage is a charming 1930s detached house located just a 15 minute walk from the very heart of Stratford-upon-Avon … More...

Our Latest Posts

Orchestra of the Swan, review from May 29th concert. Sonnets.

A little about Moss Cottage

Welcome to our new blog

We’re Rated on Tripadvisor!

Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence

  • TripAdvisor

 

Tripadvisor Reviews

  • TripAdvisor

Contact Us

Moss Cottage Bed & Breakfast
61 Evesham Road
Stratford upon Avon
Warwickshire
CV37 9BA

Tel:  01789 294 770
Email:  info@mosscottage.org

Reviews from the RSC

Rsc review. The Whip.

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.

copyright © 2015 Moss Cottage | website by studio595