THE TEMPEST

THE TEMPEST

RSC at the Barbican Theatre

17.08.2017

One for the purists, perhaps. Not that Emma Rice over the river has got her jazz hands on The Tempest. Greg Doran's production is pleasingly traditional, with a solid central performance from Simon Russell Beale. Even the much-vaunted technology is in keeping with the spirit of this late work, in which Shakespeare plays with stage effects and spectacle.

Only occasionally does the technical upstage the acting – in the opening storm, for example. The magical Ariel [Mark Quartley] and the underwater sequences are sublimely successful. The setting, in the ribs of the wreck, works very well, transforming into the gaudy pastoral thanks to the magic of projected digital graphics.

A strong company includes Jenny Rainsford's knowing Miranda, Simon Trinder's clown Trinculo, and Jonathan Broadbent very convincing as usurping [younger] brother to SRB.

Joe Dixon makes an impressive deformed Caliban, an amorphous monster lumbering clumsily like a beetle, repulsive yet strangely sympathetic.

Russell Beale is a magnificent Magician, beset by human frailties, leaving us at the close with a touchingly simple soliloquy, before Paul Englishby's music swells as if for the end titles.

We wouldn't wish every production to be so heavily reliant on special effects, but this Tempest – a sell-out in Stratford last year – is both an exploration of the possibilities, and a straightforward telling of the tale, suitable for novices and know-alls alike.

LOVE'S LABOURS WON

LOVE'S LABOURS WON
RSC/Chichester Festival Theatre

06.10.2016

This joyous double bill is revived here before touring to Manchester and coming into the West End.

Christopher Luscombe sets the two plays in a country house – Charlcote, a stone's throw from Stratford-on-Avon, just before and just after the Great War.

Love's Labour's Lost I reviewed in Stratford, but this time had the enormous pleasure of seeing them both on the same day.

Love's Labours Won may or may not have been an alternative title for Much Ado About Nothing. But the pairing works beautifully, especially since Edward Bennett and Lisa Dillon takes the leading couple in each play.

Like the LLL, LLW is quite heavily cut, which allows for Nigel Hess's gorgeous music [Harry Waller singing Sigh No More] and pacy progress through the complex plots.

Perhaps taking a hint from Biron's “twelve-month in a hospital”, the Big House is, at the start, commandeered for the wounded. And the war is never quite forgotten: Don John [Sam Alexander] is clearly a broken man, and poor old Dogberry [Nick Haverson, a wonderful Costard in the afternoon] is probably shell-shocked. He is left alone and weeping for a moment - “a fellow that hath had losses...”. But still manages to get more laughs than most from the clowning, especially a hilarious physical routine in the cramped prison.

Bennett has his share of pantomime too – not a dirty word, Luscombe made clear in his pre-show interview – eavesdropping on his deceivers from within the tall Christmas tree in Charlecote's imposing parlour.

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

LOVE'S LABOURS LOST

Royal Shakespeare Company at the RSC Theatre, Stratford on Avon

07.03.15

You may see a better acted, more entertaining Love's Labours, but surely not a more stylish one. The concept here – Edwardian England, a great country house, basking in the sun on the brink of war.

The house is Charlecote Park, scene of Shakespeare's youthful poaching, allegedly. It's also used for the RSC's companion piece, Love's Labours Won [Much Ado to you and me], set after the war, with Charlecote now a hospital for the wounded …

Christopher Luscombe's light-hearted production is full of delightful details. The “mad-cap lord” Berowne [Edward Bennett] begins his “three years fast” in the comfortably appointed library; it ends, prematurely, in mutual defeat up on the leads, Brideshead-fashion, in a brilliantly conceived scene. A strong cast, including Michelle Terry as a teasing Rosaline, and John Hodgkinson's Don Armado, at first Wilde-ly melancholic, then at the grand piano joining Peter McGovern's perky Moth in a bizarre duet So Well I Love Thee.

The Great War is just visible on the horizon – there are poppies by the fence, their petals raining down on Mars and Hector. This in the Nine Worthies sequence, ingeniously done by the “Navarre Players” as pastiche G&S.

THE SHOEMAKERS' HOLIDAY

THE SHOEMAKERS' HOLIDAY

Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre

06.03.15

While Shakespeare's company was staging Much Ado About Nothing at their new Globe, their rivals, the Admiral's Men, were packing the Rose across the way with this “city comedy”.

Very different entertainments. Dekker gives Londoners a play set in their own streets, with local references and characters. It's 'Allo 'Allo humour, with catch-phrases, funny foreigners and fart jokes.

The setting is a cavernous Romanesque church, with buttresses, beams, angels and demons, a rose window and chandeliers. Bells ring out around the Swan auditorium.

Phillip Breen's lively, lusty production promises “naught but mirth”, advertised in the prologue, deliciously done by the strolling players, fronted by their boy. But there are deeper, darker moments, notably when the French wars are foreshadowed at the close, and the company freezes as the lights fade.

An excellent company, led by David Troughton's Falstaffian Eyre, with Vivien Parry as his spouse. Their finest moment when they appear as two Holbeins, Henry and Elizabeth [and does her bum look big in that] after their elevation to Lord Mayor. Josh O'Connor is Rowland, who spends most of the play pretending, hilariously, to be Dutch. Daniel Boyd is the journeyman Ralph, conscripted for those same wars. And Jack Holden makes the most of the King, done here as a playful, boyishly affable chap.

Possibly Henry V, who may well have been playing the other face of the same wars over the road in the Wooden O ...

OPPENHEIMER

OPPENHEIMER

Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre

07.03.15

“I have it within me to murder every last soul on the planet — should I not be scared?”

J Robert Oppenheimer, the genius behind the bomb that annihilated cities and hastened the end of World War II.

Tom Morton-Smith's ambitious piece brings to the stage this complex character – his politics, his physics, his acadmeic career and his private life. A little too much, perhaps. But it's a compelling evening, with a huge cast peopling Oppenheimer's worlds in Angus Jackson's energetic, eloquent staging.

The ensemble is impeccable – young socialists raising funds for the war in Spain, the scientists scribbling equations on the chalk-board floor, the military watching the tests.

John Heffernan is a revelation as Oppenheimer, with his pipe and his shades, his epiphanies and his eureka moments. He treats us as his students, lecturing us sternly but sympathetically. [There's no dumbing down here, incidentally, Stoppard please note. The German is not translated.] He is a private man, enthusiastic and driven, only occasionally passionate in any extrovert way. Thomasin Rand is excellent as his wife, Kitty, damaged, frustrated and a failure as a parent. And the Serbers, friends and colleagues, are credibly characterised by Jamie Wilkes and Sandy Foster. General Groves, a military man through and through, the polar opposite of the laid-back boffins, is brilliantly done by William Gaminara.

The dramatic conflict between the army and the academics is effective, but like other themes and tropes, tends to be overdone. Much of the play seems familiar, too, perhaps deliberately so. The parable of the chess-game grains of rice, the blind men and the elephant.

The staging is simple – we have to imagine the ranch and almost everything else. The bombs, though, do make an appearance – a boy emerges from one to relate the horrific aftermath.

Projection is cleverly used [as with Curious Incident we were glad to be in the gods], and there's some great live music, including an interval entertainment featuring, for Kitty, that old Louis Jourdain number What's The Use Of Getting Sober [When You're Gonna Get Drunk Again].

The piece is not without its flaws. But the subject matter is so important, and this production so intelligent, that it should be on everyone's must-see list when it transfers to the Vaudeville for an eight-week run.

HENRY IV PART ONE

HENRY IV PART ONE

RSC Understudy run at the Barbican

18.12.2014
08.01.2015

Greg Doran's agreeably traditional Henry IV comes to the Barbican after its Stratford run; and this is a chance for the unsung understudies to take centre stage.

It's an opportunity they grasp eagerly, with both hands, and with some spectacular doubling. Robert Gilbert is a no-nonsense Hotspur as well as a lisping Rakehell, Elliot Barnes-Worrell [pictured here in his regular role] an endearing Ned Poins as well as Mortimer. And Leigh Quinn, who normally goes on merely as “Traveller”, gets to play the two wives – speaking and singing in Welsh – and the two boys, potboy Francis and Peto, the young Eastcheap lad sucking his liquorice stick. She is wonderfully watchable in all four guises.

Wearing the Obelix trousers as the “melancholy lion” Falstaff is Joshua Richards, who's usually his old mate Bardolph.

In an ironic twist of fate, the King himself is played, as usual, by Jasper Britton, his understudy being injured.

The production, redirected for this cast by Owen Horsley, is enjoyable without being particularly illuminating – there's a nice running gag about Quickly's “husband”, the weary procession of pressed men is a memorable image, and the “lofty instruments of war” are well suggested by a surround-sound experience – musical score by Paul Englishby.

In Part Two, Quinn is still very much to the fore, playing Peto and Falstaff's Page [scoffing a bag of nuts this time] as well as Lady Percy and the Groom in the last scene, spreading “More Rushes!” for the [somewhat depleted] royal pomp, Falstaff's sad undoing. She is also left alone on stage at the very end, in place of the epilogue, possibly a premonition of the fate of the boys and the luggage at Agincourt just a couple of years down the line …

The real Mistress Quickly [Paola Dionisotti] is on duty in Eastcheap [despite what the cast sheet claimed], and Elliot Barnes-Worrell is back again as Poins. Joshua Richards is the ageing fat knight - “blasted with antiquity” - excellent, with Jim Hooper's lovely Justice Shallow, in the elegiac Chimes at Midnight scene.

Simon Thorp is the ailing Henry IV this time, very good on the amnesia and the apoplexy, though Jasper Britton still gets to walk on, notably as a green-faced Mouldy, one of the Gloucestershire recruits, who all enjoyed themselves hugely on this understudy matinée.

THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE

RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford

29.11.2014

Straw bales, actors mingling with the audience, bunting and kitbags, VADs in the onstage band.

We start with that old cliché, the glorious summer of 1914, with cricket on the village green. But Phil Porter's wonderful family play, directed faultlessly by Erica Whyman, moves swiftly from pastoral to warfare – the cricketing metaphor, with the great scorer stage left, is well sustained both physically and dramatically.

At the heart of the drama is Bruce Bairnsfather. His wry cartoon sketches of life at the front are iconic – it's less well known that he was a local lad, working at the Shakespeare Theatre as a sparks for a time. Joseph Kloska makes him a quietly strong character, holding the show together with his love of “songs, sketches, boys dressing up ...”

An impressive ensemble plays the soldiers – on both sides of No Man's Land – as well as the nurses who provide some conflict of their own, rebelling against the harsh, old-fashioned matron.

We've seen a lot of the Great War on stage this year. This warm-hearted play pulls no punches about the grim reality, but still manages to be a hugely enjoyable seasonal treat.

THE WHITE DEVIL

THE WHITE DEVIL

RSC at the Swan, Stratford

29.11.2014

Whatever would Webster think ?

If he were writing now, would he be Tarantino or Orton ?

His violent revenge tragedy is dragged by director Maria Aberg into the 1970s, with disco dancing and a general air of unstylish loucheness for the “horror upon horror”.

This is part of the Roaring Girls season, so the most interesting character, Flaminio, is now female [Laura Elphinstone], somewhat overshadowing Kirsty Bushell's strong Vittoria, and generally behaving as if she were the White Devil of the title.

Good work from David Rintoul, by far the best verse speaker in a very mixed bunch, in a natty red blazer as the Cardinal.

Video, dance, pumping music, the cult of celebrity, give the show a very modern feel, somewhat at odds with the misogyny in the text, especially the reaction to adultery.

All of us who booked were sent a letter warning of the shocking immediacy consequent on the contemporary setting. Didn't come across in the event, in a confusing, ultimately unsatisfying production.

WOLF HALL / BRING UP THE BODIES

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 ...