I really didn’t want to go to yet another production of Hamlet, especially after the RSC’s last attempt where the setting was a public school fencing hall, Hamlet middle aged and where the political backdrop of the play was omitted with the cutting of Fortinbras. I was fearful about what they would do this time. I should have paid more attention to the fact that it is directed by Simon Godwin whose outstanding Two Gentlemen of Verona was such a delight in 2014.
This is a fine production. Over an hour is cut and yet the cutting is seamless. No famous lines are omitted. The soliloquies are all there. And yet time passes quickly (except for the Players scene and the enactment of Priam) and my attention was held throughout.
The opening interpolation is masterful. The play opens on graduation day at the University of Wittenberg, establishing a multi-racial cast and where the only line is the play’s title. What a brilliant way of establishing that this is a contemporary play featuring young people. And the context is further established by the dumb show of the funeral cortege of Hamlet’s father. The battlements are manned by soldiers with machine guns. The ghost is smoke. A blood pact seals the silence of Marcellus, Barnardo and Horatio. When the ghost does appear he is indeed ‘strange’ with a Caribbean accent, in contrast to the African English of Claudius and Gertrude, his voice amplified by an echo chamber.
Horatio (Hiran Abeysekera) is a delightful young man, both modern and Elizabethan at the same time with his tiny earring in his left ear and Rosencrantz (James Cooney) and Guildenstern (Bethan Cullinane) are also delightfully youthful in their tourist garb. There is, of course, nothing gender specific that Guildenstern says and so the gender switch works perfectly. Gertrude (Tanya Moodie) is completely inscrutable. In more private moments she can’t keep her hands (and mouth) off Claudius (Clarence Smith) but in the more public ones her rather haughty distance is rather chilling.
Hamlet is an artist, the scenes with his street art and the link between his clothes and artwork are a most imaginative way of visualising the play’s verbal imagery. In a completely unexpected moment Hamlet shoots Polonius through the street art arras with a gun. This gun had previously been drawn to out attention because Hamlet treated it as a totem, unwrapping it, fondling it and then wrapping it up again.
The surprise continues with the interval placement after the line ‘And now I’ll do it’ as Claudius is attempting to pray. Not for a moment would anyone want to leave.
More delightful surprise interpretations occur after the interval. Instead of comparing Claudius to his father in the bedroom scene Hamlet compared himself to Claudius. When Hamlet appears in handcuffs on his way to England, it is obvious that he can’t trust Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; they have been dragooned into being his warders.
Laertes descends from a helicopter. Ophelia in her madness creates her dead father out of her clothes.
All of this, all of it interpreting the details of the text in a brilliant way, kept my attention and interest throughout. As did Paapa Essiedu’s acting as Hamlet. He was never dull, never long-winded, never tedious. Quite a triumph.
Designer Paul Wills created masses of costumes changes. The shoes are meticulously chosen and often informative. Despite the basic bare stage, the ‘set’ is constantly changing.
I think this production is a triumph. I loved it. I shall go again. Come and see it and make your stay complete with a stay at Moss Cottage. You can even taste the marmalade that won silver and bronze awards at this year’s World Marmalade competition.
Don Quixote. rsc Swan Theatre, review by Peter Buckroyd.
The production of Don Quixote directed by Angus Jackson which has recently opened at the Swan Theatre is the RSC’s tribute to Miguel de Cervantes who died at almost exactly the same time as Shakespeare.
It is a modern play by James Fenton based on some of the episodes in Cervantes’s picaresque novel. The first half before the interval is a series of farcical sketches as the ancient and deluded Don Quixote played by David Threlfall persuades his servant Sancho Panza played by Rufus Hound to accompany him on his misguided and misinterpreted adventures. Don Quixote speaks in an antiquated, anciently formal way, while Sancho Panza has a modern demotic. It is full of visual stimulus: puppet horses, puppet babies and a toddler, flying, sword fights, windmills, games of catch, sheep, the collection of content for a fardel, a chain gang of gallery slaves, a cage for imprisonment. The scene changes and manipulation of props is slick and skilful, missing few attempts at comedy along the way. One of the ways it is held together is by the frequent presence of a delightfully gormless boy, splendidly played by Richard Leeming. Another is the delight of seeing which cast member is going to be next horse and anticipation of what they will do to create horsiness. The third is the frequent appearance of quasi-Spanish songs.
There are more sketches in the shorter second half: bed scenes, a joust fight on ‘horseback’, a charming caged lion, court scenes and a flying horse, a variety of silly walks. The humiliation of Don Quixote by the court introduces sourer, more sombre tones as does Don Quixote’s encounter at a graveside and his final deathbed scene.
Rufus Hound interacts throughout with the audience (it is hard to believe that it is Sancho Panza doing so) with plenty of scope for improvisation. It is an entertaining show. Make sure you leave your brain at home.
Othello: A Review by Peter Buckroyd
One of things I so admired about Iqbal Khan’s production of Much Ado about Nothing at the Courtyard was his ability to make fundamental decisions which at one stroke get rid of some of the distracting features of a play which tend to dominate inappropriately in a discussion of the play, particularly in the A Level classroom. In Much Ado these were the racial casting and the brilliant setting at an upper class Indian extended family household.
Khan does the same with the Othello which has just opened at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, only this time there were even more decisions to clarify and interpret the play which took me by surprise. The play is set in a properly multi-racial society. Racism is one issue which can take up countless A Level hours. By making Iago black the simple possible white-black racism problems are thrown onto possible racism about a white Cassio and Brabantio’s possible racist response to the relationship between Othello and his daughter Desdemona. But Khan dispatches these quickly, too. Brabantio misjudges terribly. We believe Othello when he says he seduced Desdemona with his romantically told stories because he appears early on in the play to be charming, soft spoken and lyrical and we don’t believe Brabantio at all when he describes Desdemona because she is not like that at all. Cassio’s problem is that he can’t hold his drink; this is obvious in the party scene. It’s not that he is white.
More A Level hours are often spent discussing Iago’s motivation. Here it is simple and obvious: ‘I hate the Moor’. Why becomes immaterial in this production because Iago hates everyone: Othello, Cassio, Emelia, Roderigo – everyone he has dealings with. He has no affect; he uses everybody to create mayhem. To begin with I found Lucian Msmati’s lack of sibilants irritating until I realised that his speech fits into the pattern of using physical attributes to denote character. It is Iago who lacks sibilants, I decided, not Msmati, just as we see throughout that it is Emelia uncomfortably straight back rather than Ayesha Dharker. Physical traits as metaphors permeate the production.
The third A Level issue which I though Khan dealt brilliantly with was the change that appears to take place in Othello. Othello’s epileptic fit is a psychotic episode when he becomes sadistically and almost uncontrollably violent. There are two Othellos – one the charming and lyrical and the other violent and potentially bloodthirsty. It explains his reputation and also the denouement of the play. I vividly remember Hugh Quarshie’s lyricism in Two Noble Kinsman at The Other Place decades ago; it has not deserted him and was used to create some strikingly underplayed and effective moments here.
These were just some of the ways in which this splendidly intelligent production made me think again about the play and thinking again about a great work of art is what has driven me over the years to see multiple productions of apparently the same text.
The stage movements and stage pictures are splendid. The first half has lots of enjoyable set pieces, beginning with Iago and Roderigo on a gondola in a Venetian canal and culminating in a splendidly rowdy rap party in Cyprus to celebrate Othello’s marriage. Diane Alison-Mitchell’s movement complements Khan’s ideas throughout, physical distances always representing relationships. An example would be the space that Emelia (played by the stunningly beautiful Ayesha Dharker) has around her; she is alone and isolated in her marriage; she remains subservient to Desdemona, often lurking on the sidelines.
This very strong cast expresses interesting things about other characters; too. I have never seen a stronger Desdemona that Joanna Vanderham’s. No shrinking violet, she. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd’s oversexed Cassio is a delight to watch, expressing a wide range of emotions and moods physically as well as vocally and the initially ebullient Roderigo physically shrinks in James Corrigan’s body as the play proceeds. My only beef was not about the acting but the casting. I am now tired of female Dukes, Princes, Cardinals. Vigorously played as the character was by Nadia Albina, Khan was unable or unwilling to follow through the casting decision into an idea. I thought this by now mannerism of the RSC was silly and detracted from the otherwise highly intelligent treatment of the text.
There is a mass of carefully thought through detail to admire. The whole play is framed by a neo-stone arched entrance upstage which is clearly crumbling with a crack down the middle at the top. The symbolic rose window is already broken and also crumbling. Army costumes create a military background to the whole play. Othello’s use and taking off spectacles while he is being duped by Iago is a beautifully handled extended metaphor as is the metaphorical fruitless search for an Internet signal in the same scene. Â The ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary by the use of DIY tools, representing Iago, perhaps, Constantly changing shadows create just the right atmosphere in Ciaran Bagnall’s lighting plot. It is no surprise to discover from the programme that the set and lighting were designed by the same person. The only thing I didn’t really get was the mixture between army costumes, contemporary suits, decorated modern costumes and star trek outfits. Was Fotini Dimou’s costume concept about the past, the present and the future? I didn’t quite get it but I will think about it when I return to see the production again.
I need to say that not everyone I have talked to likes this production. Some thought it dull; others thought it flat. I don’t agree. But then some people don’t like the stylistically very different The Merchant of Venice (with many of the same cast) either. I think they are both must-see productions. But interpret the plays afresh. That’s what I want from theatre. Why not come and try to see them both, enjoying a comfortable night or two at Moss Cottage where you will find a warm welcome?
Love’s Labour’s Won: Review by Peter Buckroyd
It is an inspired choice to play Love’s Labour’s Lost set just before the war – the first world war in this instance –  with Love’s Labour’s Won (better known as Much Ado About Nothing) set just after it, payed by  the same cast and both directed by Christopher Luscombe.
Love’s Labour’s Won is the harder task. I don’t think I have ever completely believed or understood Claudio and Hero and I’m afraid I didn’t in this production either. The decision to play Benedick (Edward Bennett) and Beatrice (Michelle Terry) a bit younger than usual works particularly well, though. It’s not their last chance for love or marriage; they are genuinely attracted to each other; there is strong chemistry between them; they are also a bit edgy; they want to love but find it hard to commit: all very modern and appropriate. Their scenes together are a delight but, unlike in Love’s Labour’s Won there are a few set problems. Beatrice overhears Benedick from a balcony in the stage left tower but unfortunately can’t be seen by those in the high and low numbered seats. It’s pretty ridiculous for the RSC to sell Restricted View seats at all in a twenty-first century theatre, but it’s even more ridiculous to block in such a way that maybe a hundred extra people who are not supposed to have a restricted view can’t see what is going on. There is enough in the play itself (Claudio and Hero’s antics; the Dogberry stuff; the ‘villainy’ of Don John; the fact that Shakespeare tells rather than shows Hero’s ‘unfaithfulness’) which strains credibility without adding to audience members’ alienation. Too much action takes place upstage left.
The music is great. Several non-Shakespearian songs were interspersed and the inclusion of ‘In the bleak mid-winter’ was an inspired choice by Nigel Hess. Once again his music serves the play beautifully.
The usually dreary Dogberry business is very well handled because Nick Haverson is so funny, although I felt that the scene in his kitchen was TV sitcom farce. I enjoyed the acting itself rather than the effect. Leonato (David Horovitch) needed to hear Hamlet’s advice to the players. I was not convinced that it was Leonato who was sawing the air with his hands; I strongly suspected it was Horovitch.
As in Love’s Labour’s Won there is a lot of visual spectacle and variety: Benedick hiding in the Christmas tree; Dogberry’s kitchen; the great hall of Charlecote commandeered as a military hospital.
Luscombe tried to do something about Don John’s unconvincingness by giving him crutches and making him a casualty of the war. At the previews Sam Alexander didn’t look completely comfortable with them; no doubt this  later developed into it looking as if Don John was not comfortable with them.
There is much to enjoy and many audience members greatly enjoyed the preponderance of farcical scenes. There is certainly a lot to be gained by seeing these two plays as a pair. If you come to see them make sure that you are not sitting in seats on the edges for Love’s Labour’s Won; if you do some of it might be lost.
King Henry IV Part ii
OMG, I thought, anticipating this production: it’s OFD – not as King Henry which might have been expected, but as Justice Shallow. And Gregory Doran makes you wait until after the interval to see him, but what a treat when it happens!
I taught this play twice for A Level many, many years ago. I wish I had seen this production before I did so. I would have taught it much more intelligently if I had done. I hadn’t paid attention to the fact that Hal’s shadow, Poins, disappears after Act 2 scene iv. He, anticipating Lear’s Fool, is no longer needed when his work on Hal is done. I hadn’t seen all the parallels between King Henry and Falstaff. I hadn’t noticed how modern all the stuff is about Rumour in the play. I don’t think I’d noticed Warwick at all.
At his best Gregory Doran infuses his productions with an imaginative and empathic intelligence which is unsurpassed. He clearly also works with his colleagues to create unified works of art where costumes, set design and lighting are all expressive of central ideas. This production is, I think, one of them.
Having seen Part I a week ago I told Bill before Part 2 began to notice the shadows this time and that I expected the shadows to have disappeared completely at the end when Hal rejects Fastaff. They did. Tim Mitchell’s lighting plot is brilliant throughout – conceptual, never merely decorative and always contributing to mood and idea. But the absence of shadows also signifies the hope of something better and so in the brightly lit Gloucestershire scenes we are asked to consider whether there can be a pastoral idyll to contrast with the machinations of court and city. While we are there it seems almost as if this is possible, but, of course, as soon as Shallow and Silence move to the city with Falstaff at the end they are caught up in its shadows and are doomed.
Stephen Brimson Lewis’s set design is similarly conceptual. It is lovely to look at as in Part 1, but if the stage is the political world there is a series of islands on a large moving block: Mistress Quickly’s tavern, Shallow’s Gloucestershire home, King Henry’s bed. The entrances and exits from these spaces become metaphors for the interaction of their characters with the main political world. They are one thing when they are separate but another when a transition is made to a greater world. This was made powerfully clear when everyone left the tavern except Mistress Quickly and King Henry entered through the door of the tavern, walked past her, down onto the main stage and sat with his legs into the trap exit from the tavern to the imagined street of the real world – a half-way psychological place as well as a halfway place for him between life and death.
There is some wonderful acting. It would be hard to imagine a better scene than that between Shallow (Oliver Ford-Davies), Silence (Jim Hooper) and Falstaff (Anthony Sher), all subtle, engaging and touching and all three masters of timing. Lady Percy (Jennifer Kirby) has very little to do but her one scene was superbly spoken and acted. What a stunning RSC debut. I want to see more of her. Part I is Hal’s play, but Part II is Falstaff’s and Antony Sher is at the height of his physical and vocal powers. I was amazed at the quiet gravitas with which Jonny Glynn infused Warwick. Jasper Britton got better and better as King Henry. Paola Dionisotti brought out all the chaotic contradictions in Mistress Quickly.
So. What on earth to make of Alex Hassell’s Prince Hal? Doran is certainly doing something with him in addition to having him and Poins bare their lovely torsos. He really isn’t appealing (flesh apart). I don’t warm to him. He is arrogant and horrible in the final scene. Maybe he’s a scheming bastard just like his father was when he ascended the throne. Most interesting and certainly something to ponder for some time to come.
I think this is one of those ‘Don’t miss!’ productions. Make a break of it and see both parts. You will have a warm welcome at Moss Cottage if you do.
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