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

November 29, 2016 by billbruce Leave a Comment

The Seven Acts of Mercy at the RCS. Review by Peter Buckroyd

The Seven Acts of Mercy

This gritty new play by Anders Lustgarten, playing at the Swan Theatre, is brilliantly directed by Erica Whyman.
The starting point is simple enough. Caravaggio’s painted altarpiece The Seven Acts of Mercy, is set in a Naples Street and depicts the seven acts of mercy undertaken by the lay brothers of the church of the Pio Monte della Misericordia where the painting can still be found. Caravaggio used real people as his models for the allegorical figures in the painting and so Lustgarten intersperses the story of Caravaggio’s creation of his painting with scenes from everyday poverty and deprivation in Bootle. The play examines the disgrace of governmental policies of austerity creating poverty and homelessness, raising the question of whether it is possible or likely that those not wedded to Toryism and Bexitism can do anything positive to act. It centres on pensioner Leon Carragher and his relationship with his grandson Mickey as they discover that they are going to lose their home. Leon’s son Lee, himself a product of this social spiralling, an edgy and difficult character like Caravaggio, is instrumental in evicting people from their homes and is in part instrumental in hastening his son’s and father’s imminent demise.
The stories are told unsentimentally and there are many moments when Whyman slows the action down, forces the audience to be mentally active during long pauses and therefore to be engaged with the characters’ dilemmas. It is political drama but only occasionally agitprop (a politician’s speech about housing had me yawning and looking at my watch, but this was rare).
The set is splendid. Tom Piper has designed a range of locations simply on a stripped down, no frills, essentially bare stage, dominated by Caravaggio’s transparent picture frame on casters. A room is quickly and efficiently created. So are streets, a food bank, and a hospital room. This enables the action to flow freely between Naples and Bootle and for one to be a metaphor for the other. Caravaggio’s paintings are projected onto the backdrop and the sides of the stage so that the audience is prompted always to think of one setting while they are presented with the other on stage.
The acting, particularly the ensemble work, is extremely strong. We are forced to examine the relationship between Caravaggio and the prostitute Lavinia and to ponder the difficult relationships between fathers and sons. Indeed the best bits of the play are where very little is happening. There are some wonderful moments between Leon (Tom Georgeson) and Mickey (TJ Jones), between Caravaggio (Patrick O’Kane) and Lavinia (Allison McKenzie) and between Caravaggio and the Marchese (Edmund Kingsley). There is also the delight of Vincenzo’s (or is it James Corrigan’s?) wonderful naked upper body.
In preview I felt the play was a touch long and I could have done without some of the sermons about social issues. But I loved the vignettes of the food bank presided over by Karen (Eloise Secker) and the relationship between Sandra (Lena Kaur) and Danny (Nicky Priest).
This is a fine new play which you should see. The RSC is not just Shakespeare.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: rsc, rsc review, shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon, Swan theatre, The Seven Acts Of Mercy, William Shakespeare

November 14, 2016 by billbruce 3 Comments

The Tempest, RSC review by Peter Buckroyd

The RSC’s big Christmas show this year is The Tempest directed by Gregory Doran in association with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios. Starting from the premise that Shakespeare used the cutting edge of Jacobean technology for his masque in The Tempest, this production attempts to use the cutting edge of twenty-first century technology for the production. There is an avatar of Ariel; there are all kinds of projections; the masque is unusually played in full and is full of ostentatious spectacle. I’m sure that members of the audience interested in digital whatsits are going to be very impressed.
Steven Brinson-Lewis’s set design is also spectacular combining with projections of sea, forest and the mysteries of the island. The broken hull of a ship becomes the location of Prospero’s cell and there are some wonderful forest and landscape projections onto the backdrop. The use of Hockney’s paintings delighted me and I wondered whether it was a tribute to the way Hockney had experimented with the uses of new technology in his art.
For me the star of the show was the stage floor with wonderful red cut-out effects and constant visual changes. I’m very glad that we had decided to sit upstairs rather than in the stalls.
All the effects for me got in the way of the play and seemed unbelievably un-Doranlike. There was so much stuff going on – visual and aural – that one of Shakespeare’s most magnificent speeches, Ariel’s ‘You are three men of destiny’ speech was only partly intelligible. And spectacle dominated.
Not throughout, though. I really enjoyed Simon Russell Beale’s understated Prospero. There were almost none of Beale’s characteristic physical and vocal tricks. It was still and poised, although not to everyone’s taste. Our friends were distinctly underwhelmed by his performance and did not see much of a connection between him and Miranda. There was certainly a connection between Ferdinand (a very cute Daniel Easton) and Miranda (Jenny Rainsford). I enjoyed watching Mark Quartley’s Ariel, although some of his movements were clearly for digital rather than character reasons.
The most enjoyable acting came from the wonderfully entertaining Tony Jayawardena as Stephano (what a pleasure to see him back on the RSC stage), Simon Trinder as Trinculo and Joe Dixon as Caliban.
In the end I wasn’t sure what it all was. Not really a play. Not focussed sufficiently on motivation and character development to be a drama. Maybe a spectacle. Maybe an experiment. Maybe just spending money and showing off.
I think you should come and see it because it is apparently breaking new theatrical ground and is probably the first of what becomes a tradition where the different elements are better integrated and more purposefully used to serve the play itself.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: rsc, rsc review, Rsc reviews, rsc | Theatre review | White Devil |, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Somon Russel Beale, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, The |Tempest., 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

October 11, 2016 by billbruce 1 Comment

King Lear. Review by Peter Buckroyd.

King Lear

We have finally managed to get to see Greg Doran’s eagerly awaited production of King Lear starring Antony Sher. Sher is splendid at the beginning and the ending of the play. The middle I was less convinced by. Sher characterises Lear physically by slightly hunched shoulders, a slightly forward bent posture and by bear-like heaviness, matched by his animal fur costume. Vocally, though, there is a good deal of monotone. It is not entirely Sher’s fault that I could not warm to him mad on the heath. He is elevated on an unnecessary metal structure and surrounded by an unnecessary huge tarpaulin (which muffed its lines badly on the night we went necessitating a pause in the production while the tarpaulin was removed). The best of Sher was when he was relieved of this clutter. By the end we are able to understand his Lear. Lear ‘slenderly knows himself’. He reacts with gusto to the moment but he doesn’t link those moments together and so he is perceived by others as inconsistent while he is simply responding to whatever moment presents itself to him without joining them together and without thinking in a systematic way.
The best moment in the production is when Lear and the blind Gloucester are sitting talking on an otherwise bare stage. That brings me to the real star of this production: David Troughton as Gloucester. Every phase in Gloucester’s rich characterisation is portrayed with wonderful clarity, both physical and vocal. I didn’t watch the blinding, of course, which took place in another structure – a Perspex box – but I did listen. Troughton’s Gloucester is an efficient court servant, a deluded credulous father, a self-sacrificing prisoner, a dignified victim of torture, a blind creature of insight and a despairing tragic figure. The fall from the ‘cliff’ was breathtaking in its simplicity. It is a wonderful performance.
There are other excellent performances, too. Oliver Johnstone was equally powerful and effective as Edgar. Natalie Simpson was strong, practical and dignified as Cordelia, as clear and unfussy as you could ask for. Both James Clyde as Cornwall and Clarence Smith as Albany make the most of their thankless roles and Antony Byrne’s Kent is as powerful in disguise as he was before his disgrace. I have thought long and hard about Paapa Essiedu’s Edmund because I have to admit that while I was sitting in the theatre I could not grasp why he did so little. But then it dawned on me. Edmund is completely devoid of affect. He is a heartless, conscienceless, evil bastard who smiles and smiles and is a villain. Clever, I now think, and interesting because it makes Goneril and Regan even more stupid for being in love with him. And even cleverer when you realise that he just acts in and on the moment as Lear does.
As for design, I thought the high chair on which Lear appeared in Act I effective. I thought Act I, as well as being brilliantly cut, looked stunning in black and gold while Cordelia was in white and Lear draped in furs. The hand held barren trees and what became two planets were thematically effective. The dim lighting and the preponderance of shadows are completely in keeping with the play’s mood, and the tableau of Lear with the dead Cordelia echoing Michelangelo’s Pieta, created another layer of depth and meaning.
This is a production well worth seeing. It has all the hallmarks of Doran’s contrast between movement and stillness, his lovely stage pictures, his brilliant cutting, his control of pace, his eschewing of stagey ‘acting’, his creation of intense and understated emotional moments.
Come and see it and make it an enhanced treat with a night at Moss Cottage.

Filed Under: RSC Reviews Tagged With: Anthony Sher, King Lear, review, reviews, rsc, Rsc reviews, RSC | Theatre reviews | RSC reviews | Theatre |, shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 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