OTHELLO'S GUILT

OTHELLO'S GUILT

at the Rose Playhouse, Bankside

22.092016

for Remote Goat

We walk into a desert, strewn with the essentials of survival. Boxes, a camping stove. A lone prisoner, in orange overalls, lies chained under a polythene shroud.

It's Othello, whose inner turmoil – the torments of hell, maybe - make up this compelling monologue.

Marco Gambino makes a welcome return to the Rose, after performing the Italian version of this piece – La Colpa di Otello – at the ancient amphitheatre in Segesta this summer.

The words are Shakespeare's, repeated and re-purposed by director Roberto Cavosi.

Key words and phrases recur: “What dost thou think, Iago?” - handkerchief, confession, slave - “Leave me, Iago!”, “I am bound to thee forever.” Like Jekyll and Hyde, the two men seem locked in a self-destructive struggle, Othello's jealousy fuelled by his nemesis Iago. Occasionally another voice is heard: Emilia, Desdemona.

Gambino's Moor is a tortured soul – farewell the tranquil mind; he utters his thoughts in a rich Shakespearean tone with a touch of his native Sicily. There are snatches of dramatic music – Alfredo Santoloci the composer. And Othello's solitary life is punctuated with small rituals – making coffee, taking a piss, failing to light a roll-up, clumsily shaving. Sand runs through his fingers as Desdemona protests her innocence. He contemplates the green-eyed monster through a glass darkly. And finally crawls back under the polythene to lie with arms outstretched.

A powerful, poetical study of one man's conscience, making for an intensely moving hour in the company of a captive racked by guilt, grief and remorse.

HAMLET

HAMLET

at the Rose Playhouse Bankside

04.01.16

for Remote Goat

Hamlet at the Rose Theatre, the Bankside playhouse built in the 1580s by Philip Henslowe, where Shakespeare, Marlowe, Johnson and Kyd were staged until the early 17th century.

When the sweet prince last trod these boards, just three years ago, we were assured that Hamlet was staged here in 1594. Whether that's true or not, there is a definite sense of historical continuity here, even in this radical re-working of Shakespeare's longest drama.

“This bodes some strange eruption in our state,” warns Horatio, the first words spoken after an ominous soundscape. This is a wilfully disjointed, oneiric vision of Hamlet's world - “In that sleep of death, what dreams may come,” he muses, in his big soliloquy.

Chris Clynes is the black-clad Prince; he speaks the speeches with clarity, and occasional passion - “my mind's eye” - but never seems to have much mirth to lose; we're too used to lighter, more jocular Hamlets, perhaps. Messing with his mind in this claustrophobic space are Suzanne Marie's hysteric Ophelia, Louise Templeton's unfeeling Gertrude, and Nigel Fyfe's Claudius – an imposing presence, though not especially regal. Ross McNamara's Laertes, great-coat and rifle, brings a controlled passion to his role, and Luke Jasztal makes an engaging Horatio, especially in his closing speech, where he borrows some of Fortinbras's valediction.

Dermot Dolan's Polonius is dressed like a comic, and bears a banjo, but is singularly unamusing.

Yorick's skull makes an early, unlooked-for appearance – the Gravedigger a victim of the cuts – and returns as Ophelia's remembrances. Much of the poetry, and some of the soliloquies, are lost in this nightmare world.

The echoing excavation area is used for the ghost-watchers and much more – Hamlet's return, for instance – and there are some telling visual moments, like Ophelia's funeral procession. And Hamlet's little marionettes for the Murder of Gonzago.

The playlist is nothing if not eclectic: Goodnight Sweetheart, Mad About the Boy, Send in the Clowns, Leonard Cohen, Lonely Goatherd [for the Mousetrap], Lili Marlene [for Ophelia and Laertes sharing a bag of chips].

Director Diana Vucane's 90-minute tragedy seeks to see the play afresh through Hamlet's eyes, “focusing on the perspective of a disturbed mind, thus defying the reality-based structure of time and space, recognizing solely the inconceivable logic of a dream.” It comes across, though, as an earnest but unedifying student concept, offering only occasional insights into Shakespeare's play or Hamlet's troubled mind.

production photograph by Jana Andrejeva-Andersone

OTHELLO

OTHELLO

Time Zone Theatre at the Rose Theatre, Bankside

05.02.2015

for The Public Reviews

In a dank, chilly space beneath an office block – would make a useful car park – a City worker sleeps not at, but on, his desk. The weight of the faceless building seems to press down on him as he stirs restlessly.

This is Iago. In Pamela Schermann's new version of Shakespeare's tragedy, the jealousy is driven by raw ambition, the desire to supplant the “arithmetician” Cassio as the Moor's right-hand-man. Inspired, apparently, by the brutality and callousness of today's business world, she has moved her ruthlessly trimmed text from Venice to London, asking how much we should sacrifice to achieve our career goals.

It's a good question, and sits well here in the Rose, just over the river from the Square Mile. But in the end it's the workings of jealousy, the manipulation of motives, that fascinates most in this intimate space, thanks in great measure to the excellent Iago of Trevor Murphy. Genial, persuasive, but obviously driven by a thirst for power, coveting the executive chair, delighting at Othello's convulsions, revelling in the word-play and the point-scoring. His “I am a villain ?” is brilliantly done, and the closing moments, when the two men are locked into uncomprehending paralysis, are the strongest in the piece.

Just five actors here – Bianca [Charlie Blackwood] a presence on Skype only. James Barnes is physically imposing as Othello, but not especially convincing as military commander or captain of industry. His finest moments come with the fires of jealousy - “It is the cause” movingly done with a single flame. His Desdemona is Samantha Lock – tall, passionate, her best scene the morality banter with Emilia, the “simple bawd” engagingly played, with energy and passion, by Ella Duncan. The hapless Cassio is Denholm Spurr.

Some ingenious ideas - “take my office” as Iago hands back his ID badge, the night watch becomes a graveyard shift, Desdemona searches her diary for a window “on Wednesday morn”, the corporate catering at the start includes strawberries. Voice-over is used for some soliloquies, which accentuates the intimacy, but also amplifies vocal flaws. But the stop-motion effect is powerfully deployed. The space is sparingly used – the red lines in the floor for murderous thoughts, a laser-pen killing across the lake - “the vapour of a dungeon”. Gillian Steventon's design gives us black and white details – the designer twigs, the swivel chair – and gauze hangings which, in the absence of wedding sheets, become Desdemona's shroud.

A pacy, fascinating take on the tragedy, with a very strong ending. But only Iago really manages successfully to combine compelling characterization with mastery of the verse speaking.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

Groundlings Theatre Company at the Rose, Bankside

16.07.2014

for Remote Goat

Praetorius on the soundtrack, and the Rose's already limited acting space half-filled with battered trunks and suitcases. Who was F J G GILL, and what would he think to see his luggage gracing the ancient boards of Bankside's earliest playhouse ? The boxes and the other baggage are creatively used here, setting scenes and concealing characters.

The Groundlings are based in Portsmouth – they offer training as well as producing their own shows. This pocket-sized comedy was first seen in their own heritage theatre near Gunwharf Quays. Six actors, eighty minutes, and a hectic canter through the comedy from the sea voyage to the farcical finale, where audience members are pressed into performing as the alter egos of Antipholus and his “man” Dromio.

Richard Stride's production has many happy moments amongst the box shifting: Mark Flynn's callow Antipholus doting on Emma Uden's bespectacled, russet-haired Luciana, the Dromios farting at the door, and the puppets-in-a-box for the Abbess and Egeon [Stuart Frank, who also gives us a memorable courtesan, and Oliver Gyani who makes a nicely anxious Goldsmith and an imposing Dr Pinch, with his phial sloshing ominously]. Anna Mallard, with huge hair, paces impatiently and speaks the verse impeccably.

Poor old Dromio bears the brunt of the mistaken identities as man and master “wander in illusion”. He's played in a green roly-poly suit by Helen Oakleigh – an excellent match, you'd think, for the greasy kitchen wench. Bags of energy, if too much on the same note for my taste.

This is reduced Shakespeare, of course, and works well in this largely traditional take, with its Elizabethan costumes and period music. The wordy dénouement could perhaps have been trimmed further, bringing us a little earlier to the lively jig.

The Comedy of Errors plays until July 27, in tandem with the Groundlings' Henry V: Oakleigh directs this time, with Stride as the hero of Agincourt.

AS YOU LIKE IT

AS YOU LIKE IT

at the Rose Theatre, Bankside

03.10.13

for The Public Reviews

After two open air productions of As You Like It this summer, it is curiously refreshing to see it again in the shadowy intimacy of the Rose Theatre on Bankside – already a thriving Shakespearean venue when this comedy was penned - with just one chicken-wire tree to stand for Arden.

There are huge advantages to this close-up and personal approach. The text can be delivered as if to a good friend, the audience can more easily feel a real affinity with the lovers and the cynic Jaques. The verse can be spoken at a breakneck pace, which would risk being unintelligible anywhere else.

Jessica Ruano's production is dressed in muted autumn hues; these young people look like stylish students from central Europe. The very cramped area is inventively used – the quartet of young people on the axis, the organic picnic under the greenwood tree, the bin-bag of verses scattered over the floor – and, as is becoming a tradition, the famous Rose lake [a thin covering of water protecting the archaeology] is pressed into service. Laughter and merriment drift across at the start, and references to other men's lands and the bay of Portugal are cheated out to catch the echo.

Tiny space, tightly trimmed text. We begin with All The World's A Stage, from Andrew Venning's likeable Jaques [though we do rewind to the warring brothers and the wrestling] and we end with the dirge for the dead deer - "Sing it: 'tis no matter how it bee in tune, so it make noyse enough …"

So no Touchstone, no comedy shepherds, almost all the subplots lost, all done and dusted in little more than an hour.

The cast of seven all speak the verse with admirable clarity [though the occasional line is mis-read, and much of the play strikes the same reflective tone] – Matthew Howell is a charming Orlando, and "Ganymede" and "Aliena" are excellently done by Suzanne Marie and Stacy Sobieski, working well together as the mischievous cousins. The girls' teasing Orlando about the outward signs of a man in love - "your sleeue vnbutton'd, your shoo vnti'de" is a lovely, lively moment, and Rosalind's suggested "cure" - "Hee was to imagine me his Loue, his Mistris" was wonderfully sustained.

There are few laughs here – partly because of the melancholy mood, partly because an audience of thirty is quieter than an audience of three hundred. But all very enjoyably done – an opportunity to dissect without distractions the romance at the heart of the pastoral comedy.

this piece first appeared on The Public Reviews