Recent Articles
Showing posts with label Arts Theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arts Theatre. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
- 0 Comments
Rating: 
Being a woman in Tudor Britain doesn't sound like much fun. You're surrounded by pompous, wealthy men in positions of immense power who seem to think it's their god-given right to belittle, demean and sexually harass you. Thank God we've moved on since then, right?
Being a woman in Tudor Britain doesn't sound like much fun. You're surrounded by pompous, wealthy men in positions of immense power who seem to think it's their god-given right to belittle, demean and sexually harass you. Thank God we've moved on since then, right?
Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's Six, a pop concert/musical starring Henry VIII's wives, would have been pretty great under any circumstances, but recasting their stories through a prism of contemporary misogyny and male entitlement slots neatly into the #MeToo movement. After all, what could be more relevant nowadays than the stories of women abused by a corpulent, bearded megalomaniac?
The tale of Henry VIII's many wives is familiar to every British schoolchild, generally summarised as: divorced, beheaded, died / divorced, beheaded, survived. Traditionally they're portrayed as mere planets orbiting the star of King Henry, their fortunes judged by their impact they had on the Crown and State. Six takes a different tack, the Queens indignant that they're just "one word in a stupid rhyme" and eager to define themselves as individuals.
From this grows the loose format of the night. Taking the form of a pop concert, the Queens vie with each other on who has had the most miserable life. Whether they ended their days under an executioner's axe (or in Anne's case, sword), wearing a penitent's sackcloth or of complications in childbirth each suffered various indignities courtesy of their mutual husband.
Things kick off with a bang as the Queens (Renee Lamb, Christina Modestou, Natalie Paris, Genesis Lynea, Aimie Atkinson and Izuka Hoyle) take the stage, dressed in pop contemporary costumes with subtle Tudor embellishments. Each Queen gets their moment in the spotlight to vie for the audience's sympathies, and each song aurally quotes (but doesn't quite parody) the styles of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, Beyonce et al.
My toes were tapping throughout this brief n' breezy 70 minute show - there honestly isn't anything close to a dud number here. However, if I had to pick the songs I thought were particularly smile-inducing, I'd have to go with Genesis Lynea's Anne of Cleves' number, who overcomes the humiliation of Henry's public disappointment that she doesn't match up to her 'profile pic' to go off and live in a castle doing her own thing. Lynea positively brims over with charisma, and her Cheshire Cat grin as she takes her own throne is infectious.
Also excellent is Aimie Atkinson's Catherine Howard, whose song is musically upbeat yet pretty damn depressing. Of all of Henry's wives she got a particularly bad deal, a 16-year-old married off to by this time obese, ulcer-ridden and possibly syphilitic 49-year-old man who lasted just 16 months as Queen before (quite understandably in my opinion) getting caught having an affair and quickly executed. Six portrays her as a typical teenager whose affections are manipulated by each man she encounters, each telling her they have a special connection as a way to get under her bodice. Atkinson gives a barnstormer of a performance, perceptibly sagging as the veil falls from her eyes.
I could go on, but you're just going to have to take my word that the rest are also top notch. At times, Six genuinely felt like a musical tailored to my specific tastes. I love female-fronted pop, a bit of a history geek (handily for this show I recently finished Peter Ackroyd's The History of England Vol 2: The Tudors) and I'm a huge fan of the BBC's Horrible Histories TV show, which Six is obviously influenced by.
Marlow and Moss are obviously a pair to keep an eye on, displaying enviable lyrical and melodic talent. Six quickly adds up to a genuinely exciting theatrical experience, assembling a seriously talented (and very well rehearsed) cast who're obviously enjoying themselves, note-perfect live musical accompaniment and a modest yet effective stage design. It feels as if everyone involved in this is going places - so check this out while you can.
Six is at the Arts Theatre on 22 January 2018 (though I'd bet it'll return soon enough). Details here.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
- 0 Comments
Ah Troma, my old friend. For a kid growing up in the 90s Troma Studios films were like crack: gross-out bonkers B-movies with a loveable punky aesthetic. Get hold of one of these videotapes and you felt like you were doing something illicit. I adored their trash classics, having particular soft spots for Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, Rabid Grannies, The Class of Nuke 'Em High and, my favourite, Tromeo and Juliet (in which Juliet is accidentally transformed into a hideous cow monster with a three-foot penis).
But you can't talk Troma without talking Toxie. First introduced in 1984's The Toxic Avenger, this environmentally conscious mutant superhero parody gave Troma a rare bona fide hit, launching a film franchise, a children's cartoon series (I had a Toxic Avenger action figure that palled around with my Ninja Turtles) and, in 2008, a stage musical written by Joe DiPietro and David Bryan (Bon Jovi's keyboardist).
Now Toxic Avenger The Musical has opened at the Arts Theatre, hot off for last year's production at the Southwark Playhouse, and it's pretty damn great. Hewing pretty closely to the original movie, we meet the twisted inhabitants of Tromaville, New Jersey, where glowing nuclear waste oozes from pipes, the tap water is flammable and the fish are deformed monstrosities. Dorky wimp Melvin (Mark Anderson) and his crush, blind librarian Sarah (Emma Salvo) scratch out a living in his nightmare. In an effort to impress Sarah, Melvin decides to fight the town's pollution, threatening to expose the Mayor's (Natalie Hope) corruption. Instead, she pays some hired goons to dunk him in mutagenic goo, but rather than kill him it merely transforms him into... The Toxic Avenger!
What follows is appropriately Troma-y descent into bad taste, full of gags that dare you to be offended, cranked-up sexuality, ludicrously broad stereotypes and Itchy and Scratchy-esque violence. As the director's note in the programme explains, the West End is a very safe place full of shows that, hoping to appeal to the widest possible audience, are desperate not to offend or challenge. The consequence is bland, safe sludgy theatre loaded with saccharine morals.
Toxic Avenger the Musical certainly isn't that. For example, there's a constant rain of jokes at the expense of a blind character that had me guiltily laughing. That air of 'should I be laughing at this' continues throughout the show - landing pretty much at same tone as the average episode of South Park. But this show gets away with it, partially because it's always 'punching up'.
Troma itself is an underdog movie studio and Toxie is an underdog superhero. The musical runs with this baton, painting itself as an underdog musical and repeatedly contrasting itself against its glossy West End neighbours. It trips itself up a little by being so musically, performatively and aesthetically solid, but by and large, the show still feels like a scrappy, homegrown passion project with a gleefully twisted sensibility. It is after all, rare to see a West End show in which the moral conclusion is that we should decapitate polluting industrialists, not to mention one in which a man's intestines are played like a guitar.
Anyway, it's easy to like a show with such a toe-tapping soundtrack - it's always a good sign when you can't get the songs out of your head the next day. Bryan's Bon Jovi heritage shines through in most of the numbers, ranging from 80s inspired hair metal to demented power ballads, all incredibly dense with lyrical gags.
The energetic cast also excels. Highlights are Natalie Hope's ultraslutty mayor, forever ready to tear her dress upon in a display of weaponised sexuality, Emma Salvo's hilarious commitment to stage blindness and impressive set of pipes, and the double act of Che Francis and Oscar Conlon-Morrey in a variety of supporting roles. But it's Mark Anderson's Toxie that'll stick in my mind - a winning combo of charisma and costume that perfectly brings the character to life.
By now you can probably tell that I enjoyed the hell out of this show. I often feel out of step when it comes to musical theatre - when other critics praise absolute guff like Braille Legacy or Titanic: The Musical (not a parody) I end up scratching my head - but this is my kinda night out. All hail Troma! All hail Toxie! May Toxic Avenger the Musical play long and loud!
Toxic Avenger the Musical is at the Arts Theatre until 3rd December.
Toxic Avenger the Musical is at the Arts Theatre until 3rd December.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
Thursday, January 26, 2017
- 0 Comments
Last night I felt like the loneliest man in the world. The only thing worse than being trapped watching something you hate is being trapped watching something you hate while all around you a happy crowd ripples with uproarious laughter. I felt like a right lemon, a sour little note in the midst of a peppy pop song, a zit on the face of a supermodel, the first blotches of mould on a nice piece of fruit.
Dirty Great Love Story is essentially a Richard Curtis romantic comedy performed in verse. If I had known this beforehand I would have run a mile - my loathing of this kind of shit is so profound that I've been quoted in Time Magazine. It's your typical boy meets girl, circumstances keep them apart while a bunch of wacky comedy sidekicks burble on, boy gets girl.
It's not that I don't like romantic comedies, it's just that this particularly southern English brand of self-deprecating middle-class, vote-Tory-but-feel-guilty-about-it, ironic-sexism-but-you-know-they're-alright-lads-at-heart, 'in my thirties but I am still a child at heart oh wait my friends are having babies oh noooo' quasi-humour hits my soul like nails down a chalkboard. And so the night turned into a depressing smear of beery bantering lads (but with hidden depths, honest), sub 90s sitcom archetypes gurgling like plugholes about their sex lives and observational comedy that plumbs the adventurous depths of 'have you noticed there are a lot of fancy food shops in London'.
Not helping is that our star-crossed lovers are a needy little drip and a whiny alcoholic. He spends the entirety of the play wibbling over whether to tell her that he likes her, she (and I can hardly blame her for this) blithely ignores his affections right up until he grows a pair of balls in the final scene and confesses his feelings. She, incidentally, spends large portions of the play as a paralytically drunk amnesiac, a state of mind which made me increasingly envious.
Along the way there's a cavalcade of theoretically relatable misunderstandings like her puking on his cock or him hilariously looking as if he's committed sexual assault on one of her friends. I was actually rooting for their relationship, but only because it's more convenient to avoid these arseholes when they hang around in pairs.
Massaging salt into the wound is that our romantic hero constantly puts himself down about his looks and his body. This is entirely undermined by casting a guy that looks like this:
Fair play to Felix Scott, he's a hunky, good looking dude who clearly gets good value from his gym membership - but a shy, average-looking introverted geek he ain't. This makes for some very surreal moments, like when he gestures down at his six-pack and wails "what kind of woman would want this?"
I guess at least as far performances and stage design go, it's a competent production. No-one forgets their lines, the lighting activates on cue and the 90s indie soundtrack is alright. Ayesha Antoine is also difficult to criticise - after all, she's only following orders.
But enduring Dirty Great Love Story, made my skin want to crawl off its bones, slither off under the fire exit and into the night. If I had been sitting in an aisle seat I would have made tracks about twenty minutes in and made profuse apologies to the PR agency for wasting a comp ticket on me. But no, sat in the centre of the cramped stalls I was hemmed in on both sides. I tried my emergency fallback tactic of trying to fall asleep, but I was so annoyed by the play I couldn't dislodge my brain's power cord.
So I sat motionless and expressionless as an Easter Island statue, dispassionately noting both the gradual disintegration of my soul and a strange metallic taste filling my mouth. By the finale I felt diminished as a human being: alienated by the joy of the audience and increasingly paranoid that there is something very wrong with me. These grinning people can't all be morons, can they?
Well, if they're happy to glug down this saccharine bullshit...
Friday, December 4, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
- 0 Comments
"Hell is other people" rings very true in Madelaine Cunningham's Full Circle. Four A-listers of Greek mythology are trapped together: Medea, Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra and Phaedra. On their slender shoulders lie a litany of crimes that range from brutal murders, paedophilia, false accusations of rape - all the typical brutalities of ancient mythology. Almost all of these women died untimely and violent deaths - some of them by their own hand.
In death they're united for the first time, their colossal egos rubbing up against one another in an battle for dominance. They converse in probing manipulations, trying to get under each other's skin and craving escape from limbo. Their interrogations get to the heart of the various gender archetypes that the characters represent; warped reflections of the daughter, the maiden, the mother, and the wife.
This emotional crucible gives each of them the framework to deal with the enormity of their actions. Each travels through the classical stages of anger, denial etc before arriving at some kind of breakthrough. But can they ever escape the crushing guilt of their self-imposed hell?
Staged beneath a dangling wall of mirrors, lit by sickly bright neon and soundtracked by a combination of thumping dubstep remixes and the wistful voice of Lana Del Ray, Full Circle may be based on classical material, but its style is resolutely modern. Indeed, there's even a tinge of the strip club when you're immersed in coloured light and your bones are tickled by booming bass drops. This combo of ancient Greek morality and modern aesthetics goes a long way towards making these characters' tangled psychologies accessible to a modern audience.
At just over an hour long, Full Circle leaps into the deep end quickly, trusting its audience to keep up with four necessarily complex backstories. Unless you've got a surefire knowledge of Greek mythology, you're going to have difficulty keeping up. I'd consider myself pretty up on this stuff - but though I'm familiar with Helen of Troy and Medea's stories, I'm only mildly familiar with Clytemnestra and only know of Phaedra in passing.
My own ignorance isn't the best basis for criticism, but even though the audience is given a leg-up with cheat-sheet programmes that list each woman's crimes it's easy to get lost in thicket of opinions and accusations that makes up the majority of the play.
Fortunately, a set of uniformly good performances mean that even if you occasionally have trouble following the argument, you remain emotionally engaged. The four actors, Lucy Avison, Madelaine Cunningham, Laura McKee and Sarah Sorenson, each display a clear understanding of what makes each character tick, following emotional threads right up unti the conclusion.
My highlight was Laura McKee's Helen, approaching her as a woman who's made a conscious decision to stop feeling so damn sorry for herself and turn a bit femme fatale. There's a deliciously predatorial quality to her that's surprising considering she's in the company of murderers and liars.
I enjoyed Full Circle; though it didn't knock me for six. Perhaps if I'd done my homework and boned up on the various bloody sagas that fuel the play I'd have been more on board. Still, you can't argue with straight-up, no frills, professional performances like these, or with the obvious enquiring intelligence that lies behind the dialogue.
A bit of a curate's egg, but at least an interesting one.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
- 0 Comments
"Vampire Hospital Waiting Room" is fun to say out loud: each syllable tripping off the tongue in pleasurably tongue-twisting manner. It's apparently even more fun to sing; the musical opening and closing with a perfectly enunciated, doom-laden repetition of the four surprisingly catchy words. By the end of the night you'll humming the tune as you step out into the night.
Set in an NHS hospital, the (extremely silly) plot revolves around Dr Bloom's (Joe McArdle) quest for vampiredom. A textbook mad scientist, he's become obsessed with being bitten by the 'vampire lord', thus gaining not just the ability to pull of a full-leather outfit, but also immortality. To this end he's been poring over dusty old tomes looking for omens that will herald the lord's arrival.
And he thinks tonight's the night! Unfortunately, threatening to spoil his excitement are a smattering of boring non-vampire patients. A soused rockabilly Scot (Martin MacLennan) s is soon joined by a polite priest (John Rushton) suffering an embarrassing case of the stab wounds, each querying the frazzled 'Sexy Nurse' (Abby Jackson) when, exactly, the doctor will be ready to treat them.
Things come to a head with the arrival of the comatose Artie (Craig Methven). A louche millionaire, he was driving around romancing his bubbly secretary (Imogen Brabant) when a wall came out of nowhere and rendered him insensate. Matters are complicated when his wife (Roz Ford) arrives, sinisterly rattling on about how horrible it would be if he died and all his lovely money would be inherited by her. More pertinently for Dr. Bloom - are those scratches on Artie's wrists a symbol of arcane power? Could this drooling vegetable secretly be his much-longed for Vampire Lord?
It's an understatement to say that the show doesn't take itself particularly seriously. At a svelte hour and fifteen minutes, Vampire Hospital Waiting Room doesn't muck about. Performed as if trying to beat the clock, the show delivers a high-energy shot of slapstick, scenery-chewing overacting, catchy tunes, groan-worthy puns and characters that're so archetypal most of them don't even have names.
The light-hearted breeziness pays off and you quickly understand why this went down so well at the Edinburgh Fringe. The lion's share of the success is down to the cast's comfort in performing with one another. For example, Joe McArdle's doctor goes off on some very strange performative tangents; constantly playing out some facial expression or vocal tic at the expense of whoever he's playing against - yet though his interactions are somewhat sadistic there's a cool camaraderie and trust visible at all times in the rest of the cast.
This loose improvisational style reaches its peak when Dr Bloom is 'testing' the comatose Artie to see if he's really a vampire - if he is then he shouldn't react to anything. As he's tickled with a sweaty rubber glove a smile appears on Craig Methven's face, soon followed by quivering shoulders and tears from his eyes as he does his level best not to react to anything that's happening to him. All too soon the audience is in stitches, his suppressed laughter infectious.
Though that's the high point, Vampire Hospital Waiting Room never truly puts a foot wrong. Sure there's gags that skim by sans-laughter, but the fun mood is maintained from start to finish, helped by a handful of toe-tapping songs - the best being Love is like a Car Crash (though Let's Put the Fun in Funeral isn't far behind). Each of these is built around repeated rhyming lyrical flourishes, most enjoyable when you're all but certain what the next line is going to be - but confounded.
Simply put, Vampire Hospital Waiting Room is a damn good time. The cast are charismatic and possessed of admirable comic timing, the music is jauntily written and the plot lands on just the right side of barmy. Theatrically it's more of an amuse-bouche than a main course, but nonetheless extremely satisfying.
★★★★
Vampire Hospital Waiting Room is at the Arts Theatre until 21 November 2015. Tickets here.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Saturday, November 3, 2012
- 0 Comments
I consider myself relatively up to speed on Shakespeare. I enjoyed studying him in school and since then I've been to see traditional performances at the Globe and in Stratford-upon-Avon. I've also attended quite a few interpretations of Shakespeare here and there around London, most recently Henry V at The Old Red Lion. Aside from this I've seen a number of filmed versions of Shakespeare, most of which I thoroughly enjoyed. So, when I saw this double bill, I felt pretty confident that I'd at least know what was going on.
The two plays were Kath Perry's 'Shakespeare's Queens', and Sarah Fernandez Reyes 'The Madness of King Lear'. Both of them attempt to tackle the bard from unusual directions, taking his work apart and putting it back together in new configurations and seeing what you come up with.
The concept for 'Shakespeare's Queens' is a good one. Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots are engaged in furious debate in the afterlife over whose style of ruling is better. Elizabeth's philosophy is that a monarch should be wedded to her country and should not surrender power to any prospective husband, while Mary argues that a woman should concentrate on producing heirs. To settle this dispute they summon the spirit of Shakespeare as both consider him an expert on what makes a good Queen. From there the play proceeds through the plays of Shakespeare, examining his fictional and historical Queens and arguing about what their merits or failures were.
This immediately brought to mind the BBC's wonderful show 'Horrible Histories'. Both this and the play take an irreverent but "100% accu-rat" look at different historical events and characters. The trick there is to take these stuffy people, known only through paintings and dusty books, and show them as real people through a comic lens. This play attempted to do much the same thing, with mixed results.
Perhaps this is more a failure on my part, but when it comes to Shakespeare I need about a ten minute 'settling in' period before I can properly get my head around the language. Once my brain has retuned itself I'll be fine, but until then I have to spend more time concentrating on what people are saying or who they are, rather than why they are doing things. This play never really gives you the opportunity to settle into the rhythms or get a handle on these characters. I was fine when it came to scenes from, for example, 'Hamlet', 'Anthony and Cleopatra' or 'A Midsummer Nights Dream', but when it comes to something a bit more obscure like 'Cymbeline' or 'Henry VIII' I found it very hard to follow what was going on.
The constant shifting of characters makes the central performances a bit choppy. Shakespeare, as played by Patrick Trumper is very entertaining to watch, and his visible swelling up with pride when he learns that nearly all children study his plays is surprisingly moving. He's also quickly able to slide into various roles, effectively switching from his upbeat Shakespeare into, for example, a guilt-ridden and shocked Macbeth.
 |
| Kath Perry, Patrick Trumper and Rachel Ferris |
The two Queens are a bit more loose in their Shakespearian acting. I suppose there's inevitably a double layered effect to their performances. This is their argument, and when we see them playing Shakespearian Queens, they are in effect playing them through the lens of Elizabeth I or Mary Queen of Scots. This makes sense, but tends to drain the scenes of some of their import. Rachel Ferris maybe incorporates a touch too much of her Mary into the Shakespeare, and this affects the tone of some of the more serious excerpts. Her counterpart, Kath Perry, manages to maintain this balance much more effectively.
One of my main criticisms of this performance was oddly enough absolutely nothing to do with what was going on on the stage, but with the audience. Towards the back of the room, a mobile phone loudly went off FIVE times. If someone's mobile phone goes off in a play, my first reaction is a quiet pity. I've thankfully never had it happen to me, but all it takes is one moment of carelessness and suddenly everyone in the theatre is grumbling at you. I imagine it makes you feel like a total piece of shit. I'm sure one day there'll be a time where I forget, and I'll be that arsehole. But five times?! What the hell is going on? It pretty much ruined the whole atmosphere of the play, each time it went off was worse than the one before. I think it would have been arguably better to stop the play and kick the person out of the theatre rather than grimly work your way through it. One of the actors worked it into the play; saying "beheading, the punishment for those who don't switch off their phones". It got the biggest laugh in the play.
But even without the constant chirruping of the mobile phone this wasn't a very successful play. The worst part is that the argument never reaches a conclusion. The characters leave the stage bickering in exactly the same way as when they entered. It's arguable that character development isn't the point here, but even so we spend a solid hour with the same three people and the fact that the central argument never even comes close to being conclusively settled (despite the fact that Elizabeth is clearly right) is a bit frustrating. So a mixed bag all told.
At the midway point I noticed a lot of people leaving the theatre. An ominous sign, and one that put me in mind of rats leaving a sinking ship. I was a bit peeved; the first half wasn't that bad. Still, a nagging through lingered in the back of my mind. In a double-bill like this you want to put your strongest material first so people actually come back. If the first half wasn't even that great, then what does that bode for the second half?
As it turns out my instincts were correct. 'The Madness of King Lear' was a colossal mess. It tells the story of 'King Lear' through contemporary dance and abstract movement. If that sentence doesn't set off alarm bells, then I don't know what will. Now, I frequently go and see some pretty weird and incomprehensible stuff so it's not that I have a disliking of experimental theatre or performance art, but this was just a big fat mess.
But first I'd like to absolve the two central performers of much of the blame for this. Both Lucas R. Tsolakian (the Fool) and the brilliantly named Leofric Kingsford-Smith (King Lear) give it their all, but they're trapped in something so half-baked that it's unsalvageable, no matter how great a performer you are. Rather than drawing me into the tragedy and misery of Lear they instead made me feel entirely sympathetic towards them as they try and make the best of a bad situation.
 |
| Lucas R. Tsolakian and Leofric Kingsford-Smith |
I should point out that 'King Lear' is one of the 'big' Shakespeare plays that I'm not especially familiar with. I know the basic plot outline, but I've never seen a production or adaptation in it. My foreknowledge of the play consisted of knowing that it was about a King dividing his estate between his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia and the tragedy that this decision results in. I knew that pretty everyone winds up dead at the end (hey, it is Shakespeare after all), and that at some point someone gets their eyes gouged out.
So an adaptation that dispenses with every scene not involving Lear and the fool made it literally impossible for me to follow what was going on. But even if I'm lost narratively then maybe I can still consider it in a straightforwardly aesthetic way? I guess I can just enjoy the dancing and the music, right?
Well, I didn't have much a problem with the dancing, but the impression I got was that the person in charge hit 'shuffle' on their iPod and decided it from there. Look, you're unlikely to find as big a fan of 'Koyaanisqatsi' as me. If I had to pick a favourite film of all time, it'd most likely be that. In a month or so I'm actually going to see a new rearrangement of this score played to a screening of the film at the Barbican. Here its been relegated to vague mood music, prostituted out in service of something awful, with the horrible consequence that I think it's actually made me like it a little bit less than I did before I went in! When hear 'Pruitt-Igoe' I want to visualise a housing project collapsing, not some bearded guy screaming and someone rolling around in front of him!
 |
| Pictured: some bearded guy screaming and someone rolling around in front of him. |
But far more egregious than even this is the storm sequence. The soundtrack? 'Du Hast' by Rammstein! 'DU HAST'?! Are you fucking kidding me? That song was played out by the time it was on the Matrix soundtrack in 1999! So I'm sitting there, watching two guys gamely staggering around a stage to a strobe light while this was on. It was deeply embarrassing for all concerned. I was half tempted when the scene ended to start clapping as if the play was over in the hope that others would join in and the performers would recognise it as an opportunity to get the hell out of there.
It was around this point that two things started happening. One was that there was a few barely suppressed giggles, especially when for no apparent reason the Fool started singing a mournful song in Italian for some reason. The second was that people started to leave. Neither of these are indications of a rousing success. I found myself desperately wishing that it'd be over and as if in sympathy with my mind, my belly started angrily rumbling. After what felt like an age it finally ended to what can only be described as polite applause.
So a mixed night. The first half was by far the best, but was ruined by an inconsiderate git with a mobile phone. The second half felt almost like a revenge on us for this transgression. The whole thing made me hanker for some more traditional Shakespeare. The best adaptations I've seen are the ones that take liberties with the staging and setting, and stick fairly closely to the text, something neither of these pieces did. I don't think it was a wasted night, but frequently it felt like a tedious, boring and silly one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
