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.
Merry Wives of Windsor. Review by Peter Buckroyd
The Merry Wives of Windsor
RST
There are several quite different ways of going about mounting this play. One extreme is to highlight all the darker edges: the cruelty to Falstaff; the scheming malevolence of women; generational conflict; the subjugation of young people by parents; male power; satire of the rising Elizabethan middle class; subduing the old order. At the other is a light hearted romp, with farcical elements.
Director Fiona Laird chooses the latter in a very funny and delightful comedy. In order to gain some contemporary resonances she uses the Essex cliché, choosing the Old Lady of Brentwood (rather than Shakespeare’s Brentford) in order the make the audience think about The Only Way is Essex. It works beautifully, the mood and genre established right at the start by a messenger announcing that Queen Elizabeth wants a new play with Falstaff in it and wants it quickly.
There is a lot of light hearted music, some of it country and a long dumb show dance which introduces the characters. Falstaff’s arrival is heralded by cacophonous music Liz Brotherston’s costumes are wonderful, combining modern dress, tastlessness and Elizabethan ruffs. There is lovely detail such as Slender’s chavvy rings and Falstaff’s codpiece. There are some clever and witty jokes. The statement that there are ‘some simples in my closet’ is made hilariously literal because Simple is hiding in the closet. Dr Caius’s franglais is a joy throughout, with some Brexit allusions and jokes. Ford’s disguise as Brook is great with plastic nose and coat while he still wears the same posh M and S carpet slippers that he wears as Ford. I guess he knew that Falstaff never looks at anyone’s feet! The director also has fun with Nym, Pistol and Bardolph, the latter played by Charlotte Josephine who is also splendid as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Nym (Josh Finan) is used as the boy who dresses up to masquerade as Anne at the end, giving rise to a lovely joke as Caius (Jonathan Cullan) realised ‘it’s a Nym’ (it’s an him’). Nima Taleghani has very little to do as Robin but executes an audience focussing role splendidly in several scenes where he has no lines as well as being very welcome eye candy. Nym and Pistol (Afolabi Alli) act as the servants who manipulate the laundry basket (here transmogrified into a wheelie bin) with delightful cod Slavic (Polish?). Fenton is short sighted and accident prone, falling over frequently when he isn’t wearing his glasses. Sir Hugh’s Welshness is highlighted by a Welsh choir. The Essex girls display themselves on sunbeds which Falstaff attempts to hide under. Mistress Page displays Carry On style Barbara Windsor (get the joke?) tits. There is an absurd remote control golf buggy. Slapstick and high farce and well handled for Falstaff’s escape.
David Troughton is close to perfection as Falstaff. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actor play Falstaff before when I haven’t been drawn to the farcical nature of the fatty prosthetic padding. Not so here. I could have been deceived into thinking that Falstaff was grossly fat.
Laird just gets rid of the Herne’s Oak stuff and sets the final scene in the town square presided over by a statue of Queen Elizabeth with a Spanish carnival like atmosphere. I always find the Herne the Hunter stuff irritating as well as barely comprehensible, despite my work on provenance and footnotes and Laird obliterates the problem so easily.
It’s all great fun.
I only had one disappointment. Shakespeare’s text is striking in its use of prose except for Mistress Anne and Fenton. Their parts were cut and I could not hear any verse. I ended up caring only for what happened to Falstaff (in keeping with the way the play began and with what Laird was doing) but I missed the extra layer of aural stimulation and seriousness that Shakespeare creates.
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.
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?
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.
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