WOLF
HALL / BRING UP THE BODIES
RSC at the Swan
Theatre, Stratford
26.03.2014
This
stunningly successful stage version of the Hilary Mantel novels has
just played its last performances in the intimate Swan.
I'm glad
I finally got to see it there – the modest thrust stage and the
wrap-around seating seem ideally suited to the subject and the
swift-paced dramatisation. But it's excellent news that it will be
taking up residency at the Aldwych, including the original Cromwell
and the original King, amongst others.
Devotees
of Shakespeare's Globe will find much that is familiar, and not just
familiar faces like John Ramm [Thomas More, Henry Norris] and Joshua
James, an excellent Rafe Sadler. The first play starts with a sort of
jig, with all those Tudor faces crowding the stage. And director
Jeremy Herrin is no stranger to Bankside – Much Ado and The Tempest
among his recent successes.
His Wolf
Hall turns out quite witty and light-hearted, all things considered.
Paul Jesson's superbly worldly Wolsey has an inexhaustible store of
bons mots - “do they have lemons in Yorkshire ?”, and
there's lightness of touch in the Cromwell household too. Tragedy is
never far away, though, and the death of Lizzie, Cromwell's wife, is
done with a masterly simplicity.
The wily
fixer, the skilled arranger, later Master Secretary, is compelling
played by Ben Miles. As in the book, though probably not in life, he
is often likeable, his common roots making him a sympathetic
character.
His King,
a man with passions, fears and dreams as other men
have, is commandingly played by Nathaniel Parker, with a hint of that
heroic actorly voice that idols like Richard Todd used to have.
Two other
memorable performances – Pierro Niel Mee's irrepressible servant
Christophe, and Nicholas Day's outspoken Norfolk. But all the
characters are given recognizable personalities; there are many
delights, and much doubling, further down the cast list.
The
staging is commendably simple – a row of flames to suggest a winter
interior – but often spectacularly effective – the barge carrying
the fallen Cardinal along the Thames, echoed in the second play by
another barge carrying Anne Boleyn [a lively, feisty Lydia Leonard] …
Two key characters are tellingly glimpsed throughout – Joey
Batey's Mark Smeaton with his lute and Jane Seymour, played at the
end of the run by Madeleine Hyland.
There's a
dark, ominous ending to Wolf Hall, a mood which characterizes much of
Bring Up The Bodies, which begins with the Hunt, and young men
blooded. The king's jousting accident is strongly, very swiftly,
depicted, and there are significant contributions from the afterlife.
The fateful testimonies against Anne are played out in front of the
witnesses; Anne's end has a heart-rendingly tender flashback at its
heart.
Mike
Poulton, who took on the seemingly impossible task of bringing these
massive novels to the stage, says that it was like dismantling a
Rolls-Royce and reassembling the
parts to make a light aircraft. It is certainly fast-paced, and
carries the audience along with it, whether they have read the novels
or not.
It would
be good to think that these two masterpieces might one day return to
the Swan – maybe as a trilogy with The Mirror And The Light ...
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