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Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shakespeare. Show all posts
Friday, January 24, 2020
Friday, January 24, 2020
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Rating: 
Ten minutes into The Watermill Ensemble's Macbeth a member of the cast dislocated both knees and the play was stopped. I don't believe in curses, but... I mean, pretty spooky right?
Director Paul Hart appeared on stage to explain that ordinarily they'd have cancelled tonight's show. However, it just so happened that a former cast member, Emma Barclay, was in the audience. She stepped in at a moment's notice to play Lady MacDuff and though we were warned that tonight's show might be a bit rough around the edges, everything went off smoothly. So well done to her.
After a restart and a delay of about an hour, we get our teeth into the company's unique take on Macbeth. Though the plot sticks closely to the book, the setting is an urban contemporary warzone. The backdrop is a crumbling hotel, the characters dress in combat gear and have vicious knife fights. There are frequent live musical interstitials within scenes, with characters singing songs by The Rolling Stones, The XX and the Nine Inch Nails.
As is usual with these sorts of Shakespearian adaptations, the medieval language of Thanes, Kings and castles don't perfectly tesselate with the setting. However, it's easy on the eye, the costumes make the cast look cool and there's a sexy revolutionary chic to the whole thing. As usual, it's best to just go with it.
Billy Postlethwaite's Macbeth is easily the show's most striking feature, whose beard, straggly hair and beret give him a Che Guevara vibe. Postlethwaite is a hell of an actor, looming over the other cast members and with a combat veteran's build. His Macbeth is both regal and deadly: a man for whom you can believe murder is a viable way to solve a problem.
But a good Macbeth is nothing without his Lady Macbeth, and Emma Mcdonald is more than a match for her co-star. Dressed in form-fitting outfits, she slinks around the stage like a big cat pacing its cage in the zoo. The love and lust between the couple is palpable. They sinuously wrap themselves around one another, their intertwining limbs showing off their physical intimacy.
They're a great double-act and whenever they're on stage the show fizzes. And when they're not?
Well, there's a notable dull patch in the second half of the show when we head away from Cawdor and get into the murder of the Macduff family and the raising of an army against Macbeth. It's not that the performances are lacking, more this action pales into comparison with the psychosexual guilt of the Macbeths. Plus, while I'm familiar with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's dialogue, I don't know this part of the play so well, and the acoustics in the room aren't great for clarity.
I also don't the musical interludes add a great deal to the play. Pausing the narrative to sing a couple of bars of a rock or pop song feels like they don't have confidence in the play to sustain the audience's attention. On top of that, it's a stretch to figure out what relevance the songs' lyrics have to the show.
As an aside, this take on Macbeth doesn't even properly feature the Three Witches, one of my favourite bits of the play. Here they're played by the ensemble as more of a force of nature, but having this many characters inhabit them dilutes their power.
It leaves an uneven show that pulls in a couple of different directions at once. Billy Postlethwaite and Emma Mcdonald are worth the price of admission alone, but I wish the rest of it was a bit more focused.
Macbeth is at Wilton's Music Hall in a double bill with A Midsummer Night's Dream until 15th February. Tickets here.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Thursday, November 14, 2019
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Rating: 
Usually when a play makes you angry it's a bad thing. Not so with Excluded, which is performed by young people that the government doesn't give a shit about, who are demonised every single day in the media and who face an endless uphill battle against a class-stratified society designed to keep them at the bottom of the pile.
Fortunately for them (and us in the audience), there are companies like Intermission Youth Theatre, who offer a ten-month programme for "vulnerable young people" to build confidence and teach performance skills.
Intermission must have done a good job, because the last thing I'd describe this cast as is vulnerable. Instead, they fizz with energy like an antacid dropped into a glass of water. Even before the show begins there's a face-off in the lobby of the church, with two characters having a rap battle in the midst of the crowd.
The meat of the show takes place upstairs. The conceit is: what if Shakespeare's most famous characters were teenagers about to take their GCSEs in a deprived local school. So you get Hamlet (Oliver Knight) rubbing shoulders with Caesar (Alexander 'X' Lobo Morena) and Lady Macbeth (Stevanie Matthews), while Romeo (Ricardo P Lloyd) and Juliet (Destiny Tola Onisile) canoodle in the back.
The overall effect (and I'm going to shamelessly steal this from cast member Jaspreet Bance) is like an Avengers: Endgame of Shakespeare. All your favourites are here, and the odd combinations of characters really pop on stage. Throughout the play, there's a loose central narrative of rivalries within the classroom, combined with side stories that get under the skin of particular characters. The whole thing is held together by Miss Portia (Rebecca Soper), who is wholly and sadly believable as a teacher losing faith in the education system she represents.
The play is designed to give each actor a moment in the spotlight and damn do they each make the most of it. There isn't a weak link here, but I really enjoyed Oliver Knight's Hamlet (I would for sure watch him do the full play), Mark Akintimehin really nailed Shylock and Kashana Johnson's Iago was interestingly villainous without tipping over into caricature.
But, as good as this all is, it can't help but make you mad as hell. The very existence of a company like Intermission is proof that the education system is simply not working. Why should talented young performers like this have to rely on charity and luck to realise their skills? This is something that can and should be done in schools and paid for out of taxation. But fat chance of that happening under the current shower of bastards.
After the show concludes there's a very interesting Q&A with the cast. The most revealing question comes when a 12-year-old asks the cast if they have direct experience with knife crime. The responses come thick and fast: almost everybody either knows somebody who has been stabbed to death or committed murder themselves.
This is fucked. And don't buy the tabloid line that there is some inherent criminality or viciousness in these communities: these deaths are a direct result of government economic policy, with the effects of austerity neatly correlating with a rise in knife crime. So, y'know, next time someone tries defending the Tories just picture a bloody heap of dead kids who might otherwise be performing Shakespeare.
Ideally, I would have liked to be able to separate the politics from the performance and rate this dispassionately. This cast are not good because or in spite of their socioeconomic background, they're just good full stop. But when you leave the theatre after Excluded and almost immediately walk into the shadow of Harrods, where access to Father Christmas comes at £2000 a pop, you can't help but feel like something has gone very wrong in this country.
But hopefully not for much longer.
Excluded is at St Saviour's Church until 30 November 2019. Tickets here.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
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Reviewed by David James
Rating:
There are few lovelier places to spend a balmy summer's evening than the beautifully cultivated garden that is St Paul's Churchyard. Situated smack dab in the middle of the West End bustle, the venue is an oasis of greenery and peace (well, relatively speaking considering the neighbourhood) that has been a prime venue for outdoor theatre for many years.
The garden's many qualities were on display last night during Iris Theatre's promenade production of The Tempest. Taking place over a variety of outdoor stages (and later inside the Church itself) the show quickly envelops the audience in its outlandish, comic, yet also innately profound events.
Despite the promenade staging, Iris Theatre's production is by the book - less an interpretation of the text and more a translation with authenticity to the play's historical roots. What that basically means is that it includes all my favourite things about good Shakespeare: older actors booming out portentous speeches; the satisfying to-and-fro between the sacred and the profane that serves up dick and fart gags cheek alongside noble soliloquys about the nature of reality; and the surreal thrill of laughing along with a joke that's somehow still funny 400 years after it was written.
All this is performed by a cast that doesn't put a foot wrong. Jamie Newall's Prospero radiates intelligence and confidence, a man comfortable in his own skin happy to be the smartest guy in the room. In the closing scene, he gazes out at the audience and exclaims "O brave new world, that has such people in 't!" Given that Prospero is generally understood as an analogue for Shakespeare, Newall's piercing delivery makes the line feel like a message through the generations to us.
Similarly great are Paul Brendan and Reginald Evans' Trinculo and Stephano. The pair spend much of the play getting rat-arsed, blundering about the magical island like they're on a pub crawl. Both compliment the others sweaty, staggering elasticity - bringing a bit of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson's Bottom to the Bard of Avon.
Also great is Prince Plockey's Caliban, upon which the play finds a bit of political meat to chew. Caliban is essentially the archetypal 'monstrous' native (it's theorised his name is a reference to 'Cariban' - the term for indigenous Caribbean people in the 17th century). Though there's a long tradition of black actors taking the role, it's still a incredibly charged image when he's introduced in chains as Prospero's slave. Later, when Prospero says, "this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine" it also feels nervously, intentionally awkward.
Much has been written about the colonialism inherent in The Tempest, with Prospero as the European coloniser and Caliban and Ariel representing rebellious and servile members of the indigenous population. Iris Theatre's production doesn't tackle this head-on, but visually aligning Caliban's situation with the history of African slavery in the Caribbean gives a bit of bite to the production, underlined by Plockey's sincere, committed performance.
Anyhow, like I said nobody's bad here (and I have to give a shout-out to Joanne Thomson's super thirsty Miranda), but the undisputed star of the night is Charlotte Christensen's Ariel. She sings! She acts! She dances! She plays multiple instruments! If you'd have tossed a couple of eggs onto the stage she'd probably make a world-class souffle! Clad in a striking outfit that makes her look a bit like a Restoration-era David Bowie, she comes across as genuinely otherworldly - living up to her billing as an air spirit in temporary human form.
I'm not kidding when I say there is literally no moment in this production where Christensen isn't kicking ass - even when she's waiting in the wings she's observing proceedings with an unnerving curiosity. At one point in the show she transforms into a malevolent harpy to terrorise Caliban, Trinculo and Stephano - her costume is an elaborate feathered affair with gigantic wings and this, in combination with her iron grip on her body language, makes for a jaw-dropping visual.
By the time Prospero (and by extension Shakespeare himself) is bidding us farewell and asking us to release him through our applause, the sun had set, night was beginning to creep in and there was a chill in the breeze blowing through the shaded garden. High above the philosophical musings of the elderly sorcerer, bats were wheeling and circling, occasionally illuminated by the crimson tang of the stage lights. It was a moving sight to cap off a very memorable evening, cementing Iris Theatre's The Tempest as one of the most satisfying ways to spend an evening in London this summer.
The Tempest is at St Paul's Church until 28 July. Tickets here.
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
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Of all Shakespeare's plays, Othello could be the most appropriate to be performed by puppets. After all, the titular character is nudged and prodded into a bloodthirsty rage by the manipulative Iago and how better to convey this than having him shove his hand up the character's jacksy and whirl him about the stage? This is Otelo, an abbreviated reworking of Othello by 'Chile's leading puppetry company', Viajeinmóvil and part of CASA Latin American Theatre Festival 2017.
Kicking off somewhere around the middle of the original play, Otelo boils the action down to its skeleton. Nicole Espinoza and Jaime Lorca play Emilia and Iago, who puppeteer the disembodied heads of Othello, Desdemona and Cassius. The two performers intertwine around one another, providing limbs and bodies for their characters, modulating their voices depending on which character they are and navigating a rotating bed set.
At its best, Otelo achieves a neat unity of performance, aesthetic and atmosphere. The disembodied head of Othello has exaggerated features which are accentuated by strong lighting - you could swear its dispassionate features change depending on the emotion of the scene - in the beginning, he is loving, but by the end, he is monstrous and broken - and the plastic visage remains the exactly the same. It's a fierce, pop-infected visual style and when combined with large sheets of primary coloured fabric proceedings take on the faint aura of Dario Argento's giallo.
Espinoza and Lorca are fantastic performers. There's no great sleight of hand here - they remain visible behind their puppets at all times. Yet rather than distracting us, their presence helps convey the emotions the puppets lack. Lorca in particular delivers up a believably frayed Iago riddled with guilt, corruption and ambition - sweatily realising he's in over his head as his plans come to fruition.
Otelo largely achieves its aims and is undoubtedly a singular piece of theatre. However, no matter how appropriate the puppetry translation is to the themes of the play and no matter how skilled the puppeteering, I couldn't help but feel as if there was something lost in translation from the original work. It turns out that there are limits to what can be achieved with mannequin heads, exemplified through the blank, almost sex-doll-like visage of Desdemona, whom Otelo literally objectifies and reduces to a figure of fun. That led to the frequent giggles the play received from the audience whenever the puppetry inched into melodrama. The show bills itself as 'darkly funny', but the moments of surreal silliness puncture the passion of Othello.
In addition, the play is in Spanish. That's not a criticism, but it is one more barrier between the audience (well, me at least) and the poetry of the play. Surtitles are projected above the stage, but frustratingly the person in charge seemed to be having an off night. They'd freeze for a couple of minutes then quickly cycle through the lines until we'd catch up, or fall out of sync with what the two actors were actually doing.
Otelo is an interesting and well-performed dramatic experiment, albeit one that I don't think is wholly successful. Oodles of care and effort have gone into this and Viajeinmóvil are undoubtedly incredibly talented puppeteers, but just I don't think the meat of Othello translates that well into a 75-minute puppet show.
Otelo is at Southwark Playhouse until September 30. Tickets here.
Friday, April 7, 2017
Friday, April 7, 2017
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There's a strange forced jollity to The AC Group's Macbeth. Sure, the foreground is 'yer usual parade of ambition, violence, guilt and madness but in the background people strut around with instruments, strumming out jaunty tunes that at first seem at odds with the Thane of Glamis' bloody ascent to the throne of Scotland. They play as if they know everything is rotten, but maybe if they can just sustain the party long enough everything will work out okay.
It's an uneasy interpretation suited to our uneasy times. You sense that the servants and musicians of King Macbeth's court are fully aware that their new leader is lapsing into paranoid delusion, and are trying to figure out at what point they should abandon ship and save their own skins. I imagine this situation to be playing out in the White House right now.
Macbeth has always been one of the most accessible Shakespeare plays - the witches, scheming and bloody murders entertaining 2017 audiences as much as they did the groundlings of 1606. It's a narrative that can sustain a remarkable amount of streamlining and has at its core a juicy philosophical pondering on prophecy: did the Weird Sister's message to Macbeth spell out an unavoidable future or did they kick off a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Here we see a trimmed down, two hour production that whistles energetically through the narrative, produced with a obvious focus on emphasising physical movement and adding texture through live music. William Ross-Fawcett's Macbeth is an appropriately frayed, proud man who, nonetheless, finds himself on a murderous path and feels duty-bound to see it to its end. Amelia Clay's Lady Macbeth is a sleek, stylish creature - almost but not quite able to suppress her humanity and falling apart in effectively moving fashion. Both are deliver their lines in a Scottish accent- which you might think would be a given in 'the Scottish play', but in my experience is actually rather rare.
They both deliver competent, moving performances but for my money the best of the show comes in the supporting cast, each of whom plays multiple roles. Gabrielle Nellis-Pain, primarily playing Malcolm (but also a Witch and Macbeth's assassin), has a slightly hoarse throat, but makes it work for her: a strained voice is entirely appropriate given what these characters are going through. Nell Hardy as MacDuff (and another Witch) is a performance it's difficult to tear your eyes away from. Hardy was the best thing in Pandemonium Productions' Alice in Wonderland and Fear of the Dark, and her angular body language and striking physical presence communicate precisely as much as her dialogue does.
There's a clear drive for austerity in Thomas Attwood's direction and Reuben Speed's stage design. There's no scenery save for a couple of gauze sheets and hardly any props. This has mixed results. On one hand the existing architecture of the Brockley Jack's theatre quietly evokes a medieval hall in miniature - on the other (what I'm guessing is) a restricted budget saps impact from key moments.
So, swords and daggers are replaced with Stanley knives, which look too small on stage to properly intimidate. The final act swordfights eschew weapons completely, with the actors apparently instructed to do faux-martial arts. Though the actors commit to this, it's doesn't really look like the characters really want to kill one another. Similarly, it's a really small thing, but when MacDuff tosses what's supposed to be the severed head of Macbeth onto the stage it's clearly just a light ball of rags. I want the weight of the head to thump onto the stage - a grisly full stop to the chaos.
It leaves The AC Group's Macbeth as a compelling theatrical experience that never bores, yet teeters on the edge of real quality. A couple of nips and tucks - or simply better props - and this'd be a worthy mini Shakespeare. As it is it's 'merely' good.
Macbeth is at the Brockley Jack until 22 April. Tickets here.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Friday, November 11, 2016
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The Worst Was This feels like two plays have crashed headlong into one another. The resulting tangled wreckage is a strange beast: a gothic quasi-Elizabethan portmanteau of horror and historical intrigue that simmers in a cauldron of steampunk burlesque, homoerotic desire and self-referential commentary about the state of theatre.
Plotl A follows a young William Shakespeare (Ben Clifford) furtively passing off the plays of Christopher Marlowe (Robin Heller) as his own. After that famous Deptford bar fight Marlowe's considered dead, yet has secretly become a scarred recluse. Marlowe figures he can exploit Shakespeare's charisma and good looks to get his plays produced, and Shakespeare craves Marlowe's tutelage in order to become a better writer.
Plot B is a kind of ersatz Sweeney Todd. Mad pub landlord Agatha (Sarah Barron) is an amateur necromancer dead set on reanimating corpses. They're supplied by lunkhead Bones (Mark Jeary), who takes receipt of whatever's left over from Agatha's experiments and turns it into delicious food for all and sundry. Agatha enjoys her work (though is a little discouraged by her lack of success, while Bones is having an ethical dilemma about whether it's right to murder innocent people.
The two stories never meet, despite them taking place in the same building at the same time. This makes for some seriously disjointed drama, neither plot benefiting from constantly switching focus to see what the other one's up to.
It's clear that the Shakespeare/Marlowe story has had the most work put into it. Still, the whole 'did Shakespeare really write his own plays?' theorising is pretty played out, not to mention that the 'Marlovian' theory this play works on is pretty much discredited.
Then again, something not being true doesn't mean it can't be entertaining. Buuuuut, well, this ain't. Matte O'Brien's script is peppered with Shakespearian quotes and quasi iambic pentameter, but the references are unhappily crowbarred into place and the poetry is leaden (granted, much of that is intentional). There's just no real insight into either of the two playwrights or their work, just a vague command to 'feel' the emotions in a play rather than simply recite them.
(On a more personal bugbear: Christopher Marlowe is referred to throughout the play as 'Chris'. Call him 'Kit' dammit: a) it's actually what people called him and b) it sounds 100x cooler than 'Chris'.)
This leaves the necromantic publord to pick up the slack, which despite being simpler and broader, is much more fun. This is primarily down to Barron and Jeary, who ham it up as much as they can without descending into panto. This is where the majority of the laughs come (though the most amusing moment comes when a prop gets tangled in someone's costume), the two having genuine comic chemistry with each other and a willingness to go big.
The Worst Was This feels like a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen. There's just no detectable creative direction or vision, just competing ideas struggling for attention. Each plot strand would benefit from separation from the other, probably better off being staged as two separate plays than awkwardly mashed into one another.
On top of all that, it's a technically scrappy production, for example there's typos in the projected scene transitions (e.g "decrepid" for "decrepit"), not to mention an uninspiring set and iffy costuming. While I'm sure it was fun to Wild Goose Chase to devise and rehearse this, they seriously need a bit more discipline and attention to detail.
The Worst Was This isn't the worst, just not very good.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Monday, August 29, 2016
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There's something very 'off' about heading to Selfridges for a play. With its classical facade and Ionic columns the building is a literally a temple to luxury consumerism. Wealthy punters from around the world swarm around the counters like bees around flowers. Places like this (and their Harrods/Harvey Nicksy siblings) aren't for me, I neither want (nor can afford) anything they sell and the glassy-eyed, preeningly vain hubbub gives me a headache in about five minutes flat.
But hey, I'm all up for theatre in odd places, and if I have to descend into the throbbing belly of London luxury capitalism to see it then so be it. This Much Ado About Nothing is the inaugural production of Selfridges' 'reFASHIONed Theatre', located behind a nondescript door in the basement, near luggage and 'contemporary jewellery'. The show slots neatly into Selfridges' Shakespeare season, commemorating 400 years since his death with a variety of activities.
The freshly minted theatre proves to be a snazzy traverse construction of reflective black and plastic, punctuated by glowing columns and primary coloured underlighting. It's half catwalk, half nightclub - my pre-show impressions were that it was designed to allow the audience to admire the outfits of those sat opposite them as much as the play.
But the moment Faction Theatre's production begins, all the background frippery falls away and the audience settles into as surefooted a Shakespearian production as I've seen. The show is a pacy 90 minutes without interval, yet successfully condenses down the ur-romcom to its basic elements without losing coherency.
Plotwise, it's impressive how much Shakespeare managed to prefigure Richard Curtis and his ilk by a couple of centuries. You've got your classic mismatched cuties in Beatrice and Benedick, who immediately prove how perfect a couple they'd be by reacting to the other with instant disgust. On top of that are the mutant parody of starcrossed lovers, Claudio and Hero, a couple wrenched apart by a complex series of misunderstandings and minor betrayals. But this is no great war story or sober examination of the human condition - it's a frothy little comedy that ends, like all good romcoms should, with a bevvy of weddings and smiles and smooches all round.
The greatest hurdle any Shakespearian production must overcome is the language barrier. Whilst this is indisputably some of the greatest writing that English has ever produced, it's also incredibly dense and complex. The worst Shakespearian plays crash headlong into it; inexperienced (or untalented) casts tending to recite rather than perform. No such problems here - everything is fluid, clear and with a carefully pitched for humour. My litmus test of a successful Shakespeare comedy is whether audiences laugh at the 350 year old gags, and this passes with flying colours.
Much of this is down to the nicely tuned performances, the best of which stretch how broad you can play the roles. Most obviously excellent is Daniel Boyd's Benedick; every single inter-line vocal twiddle and fidget calculated to perfection. Boyd is possessed of an enviable innate funniness, winning over audiences almost instantly, drawing laughs with just about everything he does.
Alison O'Donnell's Beatrice is a great foil for him, establishing her character as someone who takes no shit from anyone. Beatrice is a tricky role to play; suffering from the old character problem of being most interesting when she's most abrasive. As she softens and admits her feelings for Benedick a lesser actor might lose character focus. Not O'Donnell, who maintains the snappy, headstrong and forthright core of the role right up to the curtain core.
Those are the best two, but no-one's slacking off here. This gaggle of energetic performances sweeps the audience up in a tornado. When you've seen as many shows (and specifically Shakespeare) as I have you can tell when an audience is engaged and when they're not: and everyone here, young and old, Shakespeare newbs and old hands were lapping this up.
The only real trip-up are the pre-recorded video performances of Meera Syal, Simon Callow and Rufus Hound. It's not impossible to incorporate performances like this into a show, but it's bloody difficult to make it look natural. In fact, the only time I've seen it truly work was to simulate an on-stage Skype call, which has its own slightly unnatural pauses and glitches. Here, it's stilted and awkward, painfully obvious that the characters are reacting to a television screen rather than people. It doesn't exactly help that Simon Callow is clearly reading his lines from just below the camera.
This unfortunateness aside; this Much Ado About Nothing is an impressively accessible slice of Shakespeare. It's entertaining, heartwarming and has a contemporary pop sheen, but doesn't lose sight of the complexity that powers this play's engine. I didn't know what to expect when picking through a makeup counter while trying to find a theatre, but I'm pleased to report that this is well worth braving the ravenous Oxford Street crowds for.
★★★★
Little Shop of Horrors is at The reFASHIONed Theatre, Selfridges until 24th September. Tickets here.
Friday, August 12, 2016
Friday, August 12, 2016
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The last few months of post Brexit British politics have been brutal. The Tories, tasting Cameron's blood in the water, got the knives out for their leadership contest. This, in typical Conservative Party fashion, was a clinical and swift orgy of political violence. Some (Gove, Osborne, Johnson) were unceremoniously dispatched - Theresa May triumphant. The words of Ian Holm's android in Alien, fascinated by the efficiency of the xenomorph killing machine, come to mind: "I admire its purity... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
The less said about the farcical Labour leadership coup the better.
This is just one example of the current climate of grasping, fevered ambition, making for the perfect time to stage Macbeth. Shakespeare's parable about power, morality and guilt has and will never be irrelevant, but right now its blade feels that much keener and hungrier for blood. After all, perhaps those scrabbling for a seat at the top table sense that time is running out.
The Prowl Theatre Company stage their Macbeth inside a black box upstairs in the Courtyard Theatre. In the summer heat it's a stygian, sweaty and claustrophobic environment, the square single-rowed seating practically forcing the audience into the action.
Darkness gives way to a spotlight that illuminates the three witches huddled in the corner. In a chorus of half-giggles and incoherent muttering they chalk out a pentagram on the floor and launch into their disconcerting pagan poetry. From then we're into a whipcrack quick 70 minute Macbeth. As the central couple descend into murderous realpolitik, the bodies hit the floor with increasing regularity until the curtain falls.
There's a lot to praise here, most obviously striking being Helen Kösem, Greta Wray and Bethan Johns' fantastic witches. All credit to Prowl Theatre, their Weird Sisters are about as weird as I've seen in any production. Wild of hair, with kohl smeared around the eyes and sporting dementedly twisted expressions, they spend their time on stage writhing around on the floor, enjoyably cackling their way through the dialogue and later mocking an amusingly miffed Macbeth.
Also of note is Joe Stuckey's excellent Banquo. Now Banquo, whose big character moment is sitting still and not saying anything, isn't the trickiest character in the Shakespeare canon. Yet Stuckey, who sits amongst the audience in the feast scene, brings a wonderful, sardonic quality to the role. Once dead, he behaves like a character who's read ahead a few pages in the script, confidently knowing that bloody retribution for his murder is just a couple of scenes ahead.
Sadly, Tom Durant-Pritchard and Sophie Spreadbury's central duo don't fare quite as well. Durant-Pritchard (also directing) certainly looks the part, and is helped by effective lighting that accentuates the gloominess of his features. Still, there's little sense that his decisions weigh heavily upon him and the subtle corruption that marks a great Macbeth isn't quite there. Spreadbury fares a little better with Lady Macbeth, her rendition of "out, damn spot" appropriately chilling. Still, she and Durant-Pritchard both suffer from the abbreviated runtime, their gradual descent into villainy told in vignettes rather than the gradients it needs a real emotional kick.
Squeezing this much Shakespeare into such a small space is worthy of praise - but the characters, if not the themes, suffer from the compression. Still, it's a production with an clear sense of its own aesthetics; strongly and striking lit; using alarmingly realistic-looking kitchen knives in place of swords; and knowing precisely when to deploy a bucket of the red stuff.
★★★
Macbeth is at the Courtyard Theatre until August 27th. Tickets here.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Extremely rotten. Gertrude is a nymphomaniac; Hamlet is a grinning idiot that'sbarely able to hold himself together; and Claudius can't help flashing his dick all over the place. And who the hell are the Duke of Meklenberg, Isola, Raguso and Cascan
Howard Barker's Gertrude - The Cry is pretty damn far from your RSC tights and jerkins. We open with the King of Denmark's murder: Gertrude screams "fuck me!" as she strips down, straddles the his dying body and gets vigorously banged. As the last spasms of life drain from her husband, Gertrude lets out an orgasmic cry that probably gave the swing class in the room below pause for thought.
The rest of the play sees (among other things) Gertrude trying to recreate this 'cry': her and Claudius' subsequent sexual adventures not quite living up to the potent combo of sex, death and immorality that blew her away in the opening. Essentially she's lost her mojo, and goes to some pretty desperate ends to recapture it.
Though the sex is cranked up to high levels, Barker's sinewy dialogue prevents things sliding into camp. Though tinged with Shakespearian-ish language, it's got a modern sheen and a sharp sense of the absurd. How can you not smile in delight at the sheer straightforwardness of Hamlet declaring, upon hearing his mother has birthed a smiling little sister, "who would not have smiled to have escaped the foetid dungeon of my mother's womb?". Stuff like this is less tinged with Freudian psychology than ripped straight from the good doctor's more lurid patient interviews.
Frankly, it's nice to see a play that really goes for it. Any notions of civility, tact and friendliness are quickly jettisoned in favour of a series of emotional crescendos that increase in volume until there's a pile of desecrated bodies in centre stage and the boundaries between each character have blurred so much they bleed into one another. Treating the classic work of British theatre with utter irreverence Barker is primarily concerned with forcing Shakespeare's characters into a blender and picking through the resulting bloody muck than straightforward storytelling.
I've got to admit, I lost the narrative thread a couple of times. As each character worked themselves up into histrionics, culminating in deeply bizarre behaviour I had to shrug and go with it. Still, while the characters transplanted straight from Hamlet are easy enough to follow, the new ones are somewhat more opaque. For example, I never could quite work out what Claudius and the King's Mum, Isola was after, apparently switching gears between cheerleading Gertrude's overt sexuality and worrying that her remaining son is about to fall victim to her vagina dentata.
Papering over these cracks is a fine set committed performances. Stephen Oswald is a eye-catching physical presence - the kind of gigantic beardy dude you can imagine on a medieval battlefield swinging an axe into somebody's face. His intimidating frame is cleverly underplayed in order to convey a character that's introverted and verbose, edgily waiting on the fringes of the action and never quite able to throatily participate in all the fucking.
But the crown jewel is undoubtedly Izabella Urbanowicz' Gertrude. She was the best thing in February's similarly bard-screwing Hamlet Peckham and never fails to impress her. She plays Gertrude like a caged animal, lashing out from under a shock of tangled hair with a scorched earth approach to sexuality. There's something irresistibly sickly about the way her Gertrude sluts it up - her eyes flashing with a serpentine seductiveness. Whenever she's on stage you can't take your eyes off her and while it's difficult to become emotionally involved in her story, Urbanowicz provides a sexual razzledazzle that it's impossible to deny.
There's been a refreshing dialling up of intensity in the theatre of late. Edward Bond's Dea served up a symphony of sexual violence, Christie in Love charted the sewers of men's minds and now Gertrude - The Cry takes us to the outer limits of female sexuality.
Granted, the play is written and directed by men, but whoever's behind it, and despite some narrative confusingness, and despite it being a bum-numbing 2 hours without an interval, it's mega-refreshing to see anything with such fuck-you verve, determined to demolish the walls of politeness and decorum.
Granted, the play is written and directed by men, but whoever's behind it, and despite some narrative confusingness, and despite it being a bum-numbing 2 hours without an interval, it's mega-refreshing to see anything with such fuck-you verve, determined to demolish the walls of politeness and decorum.
★★★
Gertrude - The Cry is at Theatre N16 until 30 June. Tickets here.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Friday, April 15, 2016
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Shakespeare's tragedies are still tragic. His histories are still historical. His comedies? Well, let's be diplomatic and say that, these days, they're not exactly "ha-ha" funny. Obviously they're jampacked full of transcendent writing and imagery, but the actual gags generally don't generally get modern audiences rolling in the aisles.
Perhaps we're just not getting the allusions that amused Elizabethan audiences? Maybe Shakespeare's dick and fart jokes are a bit too cryptic? Possibly it's as simple as the Bard being held in such high reverence that audiences are too intimidated to laugh out loud.
Enter Thick as Thieves' Twelfth Night. The tale of cross-dressing calamity and compounded confusion has proved to be one of Shakespeare's most enduring comedies. It's not quite in the public consciousness as much as Hamlet/Romeo & Juliet/Macbeth, but it's a fine farce that I've enjoyed a couple of times over the years.
But I've never laughed this much, and this loudly.
Thick as Thieves ably manage the tricky alchemical combo of delivering Shakespearian dialogue naturally while at the same time being incredibly silly. With a cast of just four (Nicky Diss, Thomas Judd, Madi MacMahon and Oliver Lavery) taking on thirteen roles (not to mention doing all their own lighting and music cues), the show is a dizzying whirlwind of characters dashing on and off stage and frantic costume changes. It looks chaotic, but must actually be a finely oiled performance machine rehearsed within an inch of its life.
Last year I saw the same company sprint through The Tempest. I deeply enjoyed that, the production feeling as if it was blowing away the cobwebs of stuffy Shakespearian adaptations I'd seen. This follows suit, perhaps besting it with more consistently ridiculousness.
The company obviously relishes the language, taking a particular pleasure picking through the more grandiloquent vocabulary in the play. All impress, though I quickly developed a particular appreciation of Thomas Judd's delivery, calculated to mine every molecule of humour from the play. There's a Rizla's difference between the rest of them; each finding hundreds of tiny characterful moments in this rich soil.
On top of that, the four are superlative physical comedians. Despite shuffling characters like a magician with a deck of cards, it's easy to tell who's who. Partly this is because of simple and striking costuming, but mainly because of their body language and facial expressions. Particularly impressive was Nicky Diss' switching between the drunk and bawdy Sir Toby and earnestly awkward Viola. In a great touch, as the scenes eventually call for more than four people on stage, members of the audience are pressganged into service in supporting roles (though the timid should be reassured that this only involves sitting silently while wearing a silly hat).
My only real criticism is that the actual plot becomes a teensy bit hard to follow. Obscured by the rapid character and costume changes, there's a focus on making the audience giggle rather than clear narrative. Knowing Thick as Thieves style I'd figured this might happen, so boned up on the plot before I went. Thank god I had, because even with my revision I still lost the thread a couple of times.
That aside, Thick as Thieves breathes fresh life into the text. These plays can sometimes feel calcified - yet in these eight capable hands they fizz with energy and straight-up gut bustin' laughs. Whether you're a scholar or a total newbie, this is Shakespeare worth seeing.
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