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Vice Versa. Review by Dr Peter Buckroyd

Vice Versa

This new play at the Swan is ‘A new Roman Comedy by Phil Porter inspired by the plays of Plautus’. I haven’t either read or seen any plays by Plautus and am therefore reliant on the RSC programme where I am told that they were borrowed from Greek comedy, ‘quite slight and short’, with stock characters, an author on the side of the underdog, puns, vaudevillian silliness, song, dance and lots of broad and bawdy jokes. Vice Versa has them all. Polonius says ‘Seneca cannot be too heavy nor Plautus too light.’ I’m not so sure. Vice Versa was too light for me. Also too long at just over two hours playing time.
The RSC programme has a discussion between assistant director Emma Butler, director Janice Honeyman and writer Phil Porter where much is made of adding some depth to the characters. If they have done this then I dread to think what it would have been like without the additions. I could find very little depth in anyone. It just seemed to be good fun, although rather lengthy and repetitive good fun (the repetition was part of Plautus’s style, we are told).
Constant addresses to the audience are designed to make the audience have a good time and to feel part of the vacuous world depicted. Granted there is a little very simple undeveloped satire – the play is anti-slavery, depicts women taking control, a little anti-war and anti-establishment – but most of it is based round a scheme by the slave/servants of General Braggadocio to take control and frame their freedom and the struggle that characters who are very dim have in being able to make any plan work.
Colin Richmond’s set is very pretty to look at. It’s a nice Italian street scene with two house facades and all the action takes place outside the house fronts. There is loads of stuff, much of which has a joke attached, the costumes are appropriately comedic: overblown, silly and unrealistically exaggerated. There’s a great deal of running about the auditorium. Sam Kenyon’s music is rousing and energetic.
Because it’s farcical it’s hard to say much about the acting. Carry On and Up Pompei provide many of the references, gestures and walks as well as allusions. Jon Trenchard’s monkey is fun to watch, Nicholas Day’s Philoproximus is a delight, with far more subtlety of comic gesture and timing than anyone else’s and Katherine Toy’s Melodius amused me whenever she appeared.
Felix Hayes’s General Braggodicio, having graduated from the School of Silly Walks and Postures, lived up to his name and Sophia Nomvette as the centre of the play was energetic.
I managed eventually to stop my mind trying to find an idea where there wasn’t one but I wish there had been something.
There’s a temptation to think that this is populist. It isn’t really. It’s entertainment for the theatre-aware middle classes who want to have an evening where they can laugh without thinking. Go see it if that’s what you like. You will enjoy it.

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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.

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Cymbeline, Royal Shakespeare Company. Review by Peter Buckroyd

Cymbeline
Royal Shakespeare Company

Cymbeline isn’t very often done. It’s easy to understand why. There are several plots: the Roman colonisation of England and the conflict between England and Rome, the love story between Cymbeline’s daughter (here called Innogen) and the more lowly born Posthumus, the theft of Cymbeline’s two other children when they were in infancy and what happens to them, the Machiavellian Italian Iachimo’s attempt to besmirch Innogen’s virtue and make Posthumus insanely jealous. These eventually come together after a number of unlikelihoods to create a problematic happy ending.

Set in the capital, Wales and Italy, the action moves between the three locations. Weird things happen throughout. When Posthumus arrives in Rome he finds Italians, a Spaniard, a Frenchman and a Dutchman. Innogen runs away to Wales and without difficulty finds her siblings, even though she’s not looking for them. Cloten gets his head cut off. Jupiter descends in a chariot.
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It’s long and unlikely so you have to do something with it. Director Melly Still certainly does lots with it. She draws parallels between Britain refusing but eventually agreeing to pay tribute to Rome with the Brexit debate. Should we or should we not pay tribute to the EU? In previous productions I have seen Posthumus as tall and strong and Cloten small and dumpy. Here Cloten is big and tall, Posthumus small, slim and a bit wimpy. Cymbeline is male and his wife the wicked witch. Here Cymbeline is female and her husband (the Duke) the wicked one. The two stolen boys are both male. Here Arviragus is male and Guideria female. Posthumus’s servant is male. Here Pisania is female. Shakespeare writes all his play in English but in this production when they are in Rome they speak Latin as well as Italian and there are smatterings of other languages, too. When Posthumus arrives in Rome he goes to a disco playing techno and ambient techno. The costumes are suggestive, related to character and situation rather than to a particular time period. As in Doctor Faustus the music is modern and brilliant, especially in the wonderful setting of ‘Hark, hark the lark’ and ‘Fear no more’. Jupiter is Posthumus. It is he who descends in a chariot, he who plays with paper cutouts of people in a series of set pieces about moral dilemmas. Posthumus dons Innogen’s dress in another dream sequence. The battles are completely non-realistic with a wonderful slo mo sequence. Asides are denoted by the dimming of lights and a spot. Early on there is an extraordinary moment of shag interruptus with Innogen wearing a kind of Miss Havisham tutu. The play is also often very funny, though never played for laughs.

I wouldn’t and probably couldn’t have thought of doing any of these things. That’s why I loved it. It made me think about Shakespeare’s play throughout. For me there was never a dull or idle moment.

It’s an inspired idea to make Cymbeline female; the theft of a mother’s children hangs over her throughout. The cliché of the wicked queen turns into a more powerful examination of the envy and rage which can kick in when it is one’s wife who has all the power. It is his unconscious which leads Posthumus eventually to self-realisation. Innogen can only find herself by running away from court and being in touch with wild but consoling nature. The play’s denouement heightens the growth of the play’s young people, but it also points to the difficulties which lie ahead as Arviragus and Guideria learn who they are, as Posthumus and Innogen have to learn to know each other again and Cymbeline has to face her situation of being a rather ineffectual capitulating queen and now a widow too.

When you have seen the same actors in two different productions over a short period of time it’s inevitable that you link them together in your head. Melly Still gains a good deal by casting James Cooney as Arviragus and Natalie Simpson as Guideria. They were brilliant I thought as Rosencrantz and Guildernstern. Here they are brilliant together again, the chemistry of the first roles feeding into these very different ones. But the performances are so different that I still find it almost impossible to grasp that they are the same actors. Their scenes with the wonderful Graham Turner as Belarius are powerfully moving. I loved watching Horan Abesekera again, too. Both as Horatio and Posthumus his vocal and physical skills are unflashy but consummate. In each part he interprets the character differently from what I expected and in each he is convincing. Gillian Bevan as Cymbeline brings out the character’s changeability and even manages to accrue some audience sympathy or at least empathy at the end – no mean feat. Marcus Griffiths avoids playing Cloten as a stereotypical stage villain and forces you to think about what he is up to. Similarly, Oliver Johnstone is a modern embodiment of evil in Iachimo, not a stereotype. The more you think about what he is up to the worse it is, but you can begin to understand him a bit. James Clyde’s Duke is nasty, but he has a certain charm. Spooky.

I loved Dave Price’s music. It creates a modern/ancient/timeless backdrop to the action. And Anna Fleischle’s design facilitates quick transitions from location to location while offering the audience some powerful images which complement the action. This is a world where growth is difficult. The people gathering herbs have to dig these tiny signs of life from small cracks and with considerable difficult. Thus pieces of added action create metaphors for the ideas underpinning the play, the concrete and literal becoming metaphorical and sometimes symbolic.

In the centre of the stage is a huge tree trunk. There was life once but the tree is limbless. It is also encased in a cubed frame. One of the delights of this conceptualised production was to consider what happened on the cube; when characters sat and stood on it; what was signified each time this happened; how that space becomes a mental space which many characters unknowingly share. It is a wonderful unifying idea.

This Cymbeline and the concurrently playing Hamlet are productions which I shall never forget. It was a privilege to see them. Don’t miss out. Come and see both of them if you can and enjoy a stay at Moss Cottage as you relish the RSC’s outstanding season.

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Romeo & Juliet at the Attic theatre. Review.

Romeo and Juliet

The Attic Theatre

 

How would most people like to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death?  By taking part in a ballot for tickets to an exclusive concert? No. By going to visit a theatre which is not putting on any plays that weekend? A daft idea, particularly for regular theatre-goers. By seeing a play by Marlowe the week before or after? I don’t think so. Or an adaptation of Cervantes? No. By going to an expensive lunch with a speaker? Certainly not.

Luckily we have in Stratford a theatre company which does not share the RSC’s disregard of and bproduction of Romeo and Juliet, the only play by Shakespeare to be seen in Stratford the anniversary weekend. Good for them. They have listened to their audience and given them what they want.

James Tanton’s production is set in France which necessitates the substitution of Paris for Verona and Britannia for Mantua. What works well is the decision to make Juliet rising 18 rather than Shakespeare’s rising 14. Tanton is concerned to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet and for this reason only the young people are psychologically credible. We side with them rather than with the Irish Friar Lawrence, the overblown Lord and Lady Capulet and the often strident, loud and shrill Scottish Nurse.  The Nurse and Friar Lawrence are, of course, rather a nightmare to play in this early Shakespearian tragedy because their motivation is so sketchily drawn, and I didn’t understand why they did what they did any better here than in other productions I have seen.  Anthony G Wilkes’s down to earth Benvolio forms a solid moral centre in the piece, but a centre which cannot hold, powerless against the more sinister forces operating in the play. Tom Riddell’s Paris is good to look at, effectively understated and entirely credible. I didn’t understand why Mercutio is female, nor why she is so bizarrely hyperactive, often to the point of incomprehensibility. When she is with Romeo Ashleigh Dickinson’s Juliet is real, tender and worthy of our empathy. With others she often speaks too fast and too loudly.

The star of the show, however, is Matthew Bradley’s Romeo. This is a fine performance, a respite from the shouting and over-projection which characterises the action and discourse when he is not on stage. His Romeo is reflective, the moments of hot-headedness clearly the effect of youth rather than natural temperament. Bradley’s verse speaking is impeccable and his character completely understandable. The famous balcony scene sees both him and Ashleigh Dickinson at their very best. It is beautifully done and worth going to admire. Together in the tomb in Act V they are similarly real and affecting.

Congratulations, Tread the Boards and Producer Catherine Prout, for celebrating the anniversary of our greatest playwright’s death appropriately.

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Hamlet. RSC review by Peter Buckroyd.

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.

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