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November 22, 2019 by billbruce Leave a Comment

King John. Review by Dr Peter Buckroyd.

Royal Shakespeare Company

Swan Theatre

King John isn’t done all that often – a good reason to see it if you haven’t seen a production of it before. But this is the third production of the play in recent years and all three have been very different from each other.

I recommend that if you don’t know the play you read a synopsis first. It can be a bit confusing as it is very political and the character of The Bastard isn’t easy to grasp at first.

I guess that each RSC production of the same play needs to be different. There are clever ways of being different and just ways of being different.

Director Eleanor Rhode clearly thought that it would be different to have a woman (Rosie Sheehy) play King John and doubly different to have an obviously female character referred to ‘he’ and ‘him’ throughout. She borrowed the idea of having a woman play the Cardinal, too, from a previous RSC production but whereas on that occasion the excellent Paola Dionisotti played the Cardinal with gravitas and dignity, Rhode makes Katherine Pearce play the Cardinal as a comic character. Another way of being different is to play the Bastard as a Scottish mixed race man who comes from Northamptonshire. Whereas the gender switch in a previous production gave rise to some interesting dynamics between King John and the Bastard, Rhode makes sure that there aren’t any. Nothing I could work out is done with the doubling of characters and it is not always clear when the actor is playing one character and when another and which.

There is some good acting. Michael Abubakar as the Bastard is good to watch throughout. Rosie Sheehy does well with an impossible and untenable brief. Charlotte Randle as Constance has some strong and effective scenes and the boys who play Arthur (I saw Gianni Saraceni-Gunnar) are very good.

It’s been a while since I have seen a production of anything which is gender blind, colour blind and doubling blind. If you enjoy this then this is the perfect production for you.

The production is also noteworthy in that every battle is done in a different way. And there are lots of costume changes.

Many of our guests at Moss Cottage have said that they have thoroughly enjoyed the production.

A Museum in Baghdad is also playing at the Swan in repertoire with King John and is well worth seeing.

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

September 19, 2018 by billbruce Leave a Comment

Tartuffe. Review by Peter Buckroyd

Tartuffe
The Swan Theatre

Some time after his inspired production of Much Ado about Nothing, set in India, which made sense of a lot of Shakespeare’s tiny details which often strain comprehension and credulity, comes his much awaited Tartuffe. Not only is the play set in Birmingham, it is also in a rewritten version by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto.
Moliere is the French Ben Jonson and Tartuffe’s early history robbed it of some of its originally conceived satirical pungency because of the political situation and its warring elements in the early 1660s. Gupta and Pinto restore much of Moliere’s biting satire of hypocrisy, combining it with the hot potatoes of religion and politics. The transposition to Birmingham is a joy and the introduction of the narrator/participant character Darina as the Bosnian cleaner (brilliantly played by Michelle Bonnard) creates further universality and contemporary relevance.
The Muslim Pervaiz family is ruled over by Imran, beautifully played as a thoroughly convincing rather stupid and gullible despot by Simon Nagra, gets religion and becomes besotted by Moliere’s Tartuffe character. Imran’s zealous conversion causes credible complications for his westernised family – his sharp but astute wife Amira (Sasha Behar), his daughter Mariam (Zainab Hasan) and street boy son Damee (Raj Bajaj) – because they have no love for the ‘adopted’ Tartuffe and can see that he is an outsider. They catch Taruffe’s phoniness which Asif Khan so cleverly conveys in subtly gradated stages at the same time as the audience does. Imran eventually gives his house over to Tartuffe before the latter’s hypocrisy is unmasked because he is unable to find fault in him despite his lecherous groping his wife’s breast. In the end Tartuffe is unmasked and the new surprise ending gives some measure of order to the chaos that unthinking devotion to pseudo-religion has caused. There are so many contemporary jokes and references throughout the play that the audience can hardly fail to realise that religious infatuation is no different from political infatuation.
The text is hilariously funny, the pace extremely brisk, the music wonderful in the variety of ways it characterises, the direction inventive and full of gags of different kinds (Darina vacuuming in the stalls seats, Damee hiding in a huge floral display, Imran hiding in the sofa in the unmasking scene, fun with cushions, Tiger briefs, Tartuffe playing basketball, for example). The wonderful music catches elements both of contemporary England and the Baroque elements of the play’s source, as well as being used as a tool for characterisation, culminating in a concluding dance rap.
The satire is sharp. At the end it is revealed that Imran was an illegal immigrant who realises in his moment of anagnorosis that he should never have voted Leave and that Tartuffe is not the only imposter. He may have brought the family close to disaster but his religious sidekick Usman (Riad Richie) turns out completely unexpectedly to be an undercover police agent. Opposite sides of the moral spectrum, then, both use religion as their tool. It leaves you with something rather more complicated to think about that you had reckoned.
The whole thing is a romp, a suspense story, a keen satire, a delight to see and hear. Moreover it shows up the stupidity of most men (Mariam’s finance Waqaas, charmingly played by Salman Akhtar and Usman apart) and the potential power of women caught up in evnents over which they have apparently little control.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: Anil gupta, Moliere, Richard Pinto, Rsc reviews, Swan theatre, Tartuffe, 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

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

October 11, 2016 by billbruce Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, Stratford-upon-Avon, Swan theatre, theatre, theatre review, Theatre Stratford upon Avon, Two Noble Kinsmen, William Shakespeare

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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.

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