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| MORTE D'ARTHUR June 17, 2010 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until August 28, 2010 It’s one of the great cultural icons of our time, a masterpiece in historical fantasy and a towering example of theatrical imagination. And you can catch Spamalot on tour this autumn. Anyone who has ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail or its stage incarnation, Spamalot, is doomed to spend their evening at the Courtyard rocking with silent laughter at this new version of the Arthurian legend, adapted from Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th century original by Mike Poulton. All the classic comedy moments are there in some form: Tim the Enchanter, the Knights who say ‘Ni’, Requiem-chanting monks – there’s even a giant knight guarding a forest who’s defeated by… a shrubbery. It’s just the laughs that have been removed. It all has the feeling of a vast, sprawling epic (and at nearly four hours, the audience’s endurance is severely put to the test, let alone the actors’) in which every bell and whistle has been employed by both writer and director Gregory Doran to try to convey something of the scale and grandeur of the legend. Unfortunately, slow-motion fighting and a few flakes of snow do not a coup de theatre make, and Doran – who has in the past given us some of the most magical and extraordinary images to adorn this stage – is alarmingly wide of the mark with a succession of stagey, tricksy, frankly unimaginative devices in this rendering of the mythic tale. Poulton – himself a noted playwright and creator of fine dramatic adaptations – is partly to blame with a script that lurches nauseously quickly from episode to episode accompanied by some cod-middle English dialogue and no pauses for either meaning or depth. This inevitably contributes to the sense of the characters being mere ciphers, there simply to advance the narrative – which many do in a distinctly untheatrical fashion – rather than having their own story to show, not tell. Performances are mixed. Sam Troughton has weight as Arthur but is given nothing of any real substance to get his teeth into. Forbes Masson is an intriguing and interesting Merlin but he disappears from the story at the end of the first of three acts. Meanwhile, Launcelot – that supposed epitomy of chivalry and knightly heroism – is slight and weasely in the hands of Jonjo O’Neill, lying brazenly to escape punishment for loving the queen in a rather un-chivalric fashion. It’s all a rambling, colossal mess to the sounds of a percussion-heavy score that adds little to the drama. The only thing missing is a cow launched over the battlements. And to be honest, even that wouldn’t have surprised me much. ROMEO AND JULIET March 19, 2010 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until August 27, 2010 FLAMBOYANT director Rupert Goold, formerly of Northampton’s Royal & Derngate and now an associate at the RSC, is never one to shun the resources on offer. So his latest production of Romeo and Juliet in Stratford’s Courtyard Theatre is as lush, epic and spectacular as anyone could wish for. With a versatile, intelligently used set designed by Tom Scott and a sumptuous, eclectic music score from Adam Cox, he creates atmosphere, electricity and visual magic at almost every moment. But Goold’s direction is much more than simply a succession of grand set pieces: he’s a thoughtful, meticulous practitioner who exploits his own gifted understanding of the text to wring passionate, crafted performances from his actors. Chief among these – as can only be hoped in Romeo and Juliet – are his title characters. Mariah Gale is a touching, vulnerable Juliet, all gangly youth and wide-eyed innocent, while Sam Troughton gives a Romeo of fire, foolishness and fierce devotion. Most importantly, there’s a real chemistry between the two that has the eager audience rooting for them from the off. Elsewhere, Forbes Masson provides a strong, grounded Friar Laurence, Richard Katz’s Lord Capulet comes alive in his scene ordering Juliet to marry his choice of suitor, and Patrick Romer turns in a wonderful cameo playing the apothecary as a world-weary drug-dealer. I could have done without the way-over-the-top foppishness of Jonjo O’Neill’s camp Mercutio, or the deliberately perverse mixing of modern and medieval in the wardrobe department, and poor diction and lack of projection continue to riddle the current acting ensemble. But the pluses in this arresting production far outweigh the minuses, and the company has undoubtedly benefited from the Goold-en touch once more. KING LEAR March 3, 2010 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until August 26, 2010 ENSEMBLE playing has become the mantra for the current management of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Naturally, some are more ensemble than others. Which means that Greg Hicks, the darling of the present company, installed for upwards of two years, has already played Julius Caesar and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. Now he takes the title role in King Lear. There are two fundamental problems with this: he looks about 30 years too young and he sounds about 30 years too young. This may be because he’s about 30 years too young. But he’s also too lightweight in his stature and delivery to lift Lear above the realms of a loopy shouter, finding little of the depths of pathos and anguish necessary for this most arduous and complex of roles. And his wig’s terrible. He’s not aided much by his supporting company, either, who are uncomfortably ill at ease with Shakespeare’s extraordinary poetry and offer nowhere near enough light and shade to raise this production above the level of distinctly ordinary. Surely we have a right to expect more from the RSC? Notable exceptions include Geoffrey Freshwater as a touching, poignant Gloucester, much truer to the character of a failing old man than Hicks can manage, and the always reliable Katy Stephens, standing out among the three daughters as a steely, vampish Regan. Aside from a host of other undistinguished performances, the blame for this underwhelming offering lies squarely with its director, David Farr, who throws handfuls of meaningless gimmicks at the production with no clear understanding of what he’s trying to achieve. Or if there is, he’s managed to keep it successfully to himself. So we find wardrobe cast bizarrely adrift on the oceans of history, with costumes ranging from medieval cloaks to First World War infantry. Sets are similarly random, with overhead strip lights conflicting with hand-held gas lamps, while the storm on the heath seems to blight nobody but Lear himself: a single feeble shower falls unaccountably on him as the rest of the stage remains stubbornly unaffected. I so want to encourage and applaud the ensemble principle which, in its finest incarnations, can give us something as magnificent as the Histories cycle two years ago. Unfortunately, the underlying disappointment of this Lear casts a stark spotlight on all the flaws of the system while offering little in the way of compensation. ARABIAN NIGHTS December 15, 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until January 30, 2010 MAGIC, mystery and murder run through this high-concept adaptation of the ancient middle-Eastern tales, staged as a festive offering by the RSC. Festive? Er, not exactly. By the interval, we’ve had a dead body quartered in front of our eyes, then magically reassembled in an illusionist’s trick. In the second half, there are ghouls, ghosts and even a spot of cannibalism to keep the kiddies entertained. All of which explains why the rating for this imaginatively staged production comes complete with a significant health warning: children may well be seriously disturbed by what’s on offer. The darkness of tone damagingly undermines the whole show, raising the important question of who this is actually aimed at. As a piece of theatre, it’s clever, colourful and meticulously crafted. As a bit of seasonal frivolity, it’s way over the top. Director Dominic Cooke stages his own script, using the rather suspect device of having each character narrate their own particular lines and actions. At times, the result borders on a theatre-in-education style of drama by numbers as everyone tells us what they’re about to do, then acts it out for us in case we haven’t got the point: show and tell, rather than show not tell. But Georgia McGuinness’s design is appropriately opulent and flowing, and the large disc of sand at the centre of the Courtyard stage is intelligently used to reinforce the action. The performances are sound, with a particularly strong king from Silas Carson and a central thread provided by Ayesha Dharker as Shahrazad, the overall storyteller. It looks magnificent, has moments of breathtaking inventiveness – such as a crystal ball with a life of its own – and features a huge cast telling a wide variety of tales. Just don’t take the little ones along expecting an Arabian night of merriment. TWELFTH NIGHT October 23, 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until November 21, 2009 THE pedigree for this latest production of Shakespeare’s popular comedy is impeccable. Directed by the gifted Gregory Doran, it stars Richard Wilson as the pompous steward Malvolio and features The Vicar of Dibley’s James Fleet and telly veteran Richard McCabe among its supporting cast. That the result should be so conventional and – dare one say it? – lacklustre is something of a mystery. Placed in a vaguely Middle Eastern court, sumptuously dressed by designer Robert Jones, it’s highly traditional fare and remarkably understated for a director of Doran’s fertile imagination. The only really clever innovation is a wonderful box tree, flown in from on high for the three drunken conspirators to watch as Malvolio falls for their devious trick. Curiously, it’s the star names that disappoint most. Maybe it’s to do with the expectation of Victor Meldrew as an outraged servant, or Hugo Horton as a foppish dandy, but the reality never quite lives up to the billing and it’s all a little… well, ordinary. Elsewhere, there are some fine performances among the roles that are normally either tedious or tricky. Jo Stone-Fewings is a lyrical Duke Orsino, matched by a feisty Olivia in Alexandra Gilbreath, and the thankless parts of the separated twins, Viola and Sebastian, are given some real substance by Nancy Carroll and Sam Alexander. For A-level students or first-timers, this is a sound, solid, safe introduction to the play, and does the RSC no discredit at all. For anyone hoping for greater things from the roll-call of talent, prepare to adjust your expectations. THE DRUNKS/THE GRAIN STORE September 24, 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 1, 2009 AS the opening gambit in a huge, four-year project exploring theatre in the former Soviet Union, RSC artistic director Michael Boyd has commissioned two new plays from Russian writers to launch the whole Revolutions enterprise. The Grain Store focuses on the effects of Stalin’s disastrous collectivisation policy in the early 1930s on a divided Ukrainian village. The Drunks takes as its theme the corruption at the heart of small-town Russian politics. That neither manages to exploit such rich seams to move its audience at any emotional level is a significant failing. Natal’ia Vorozhbit uses her grim historical backdrop to tell a pretty conventional doomed love story between party activist pauper Arsei (Tunji Kasim) and better-off farmer’s daughter Mokrina (Samantha Young). But neither character is rounded enough or sympathetic enough to support the scale of the epic catastrophe of starvation that engulfs their lives, and any potential power in their mutual destruction is lost. There are some fine performances – among them John Mackay as the callous government representative presiding over the region and Forbes Masson as a good-hearted but misguided local grandee – and Michael Boyd’s own direction lends a sure-footed feel to the unfolding drama but, ironically, there’s not enough sustenance for a full-length, main stage production. Brothers Mikhail and Vyacheslav Durnenkov, meanwhile, draw on absurdism, Python and even Tarantino in their utterly bizarre creation The Drunks, in which a wounded veteran of the Chechen wars returns to his home town to find everything has changed. The battle between two local bigwigs to commandeer the veteran’s heroic credentials provides the basis for much anarchic, caricatured broad humour, and Brian Doherty and Darrell D’Silva make the most of their monstrous roles. But it’s all too scattergun and slight – reinforced by some bewildering creative decisions from director Anthony Neilson – to rise above the level of an experimental, sub-Ionescu attempt at satire. Even the laughs are too inconsistent and unfunny to save the day, and at almost two hours with no interval, it starts to drag like a Russian winter’s night. JULIUS CAESAR May 26, 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 2, 2009. IT’S one of Shakespeare’s most political, conspiratorial and dynamic dramas, outlining an epic revolution that changed the course of an empire with a wave of bloody violence and retribution. So it’s quite an achievement to make it seem tame and a little bit lacklustre. RSC debutant Lucy Bailey – a director with an eye for imagery and spectacle – somehow manages to miss her mark with this production, staging every battle of words as a shouting contest and losing the intrigues of the scheming Roman senate in the process. She’s not helped, either, by the normally ultra-reliable designer William Dudley, whose computer-generated back-projections of an angry mob or a city in flames become merely a source of irritation after a promising start. Costume designer Fotini Dimou also undermines the power of the Roman aristocracy by dressing them in a collection of bizarrely feminine outfits that wouldn’t look out of place in a support group of pre-op transsexuals. Sight lines and inaudibility continue to be a problem in The Courtyard, and more than one punter failed to return after the interval, complaining of simply not being able to hear – an unforgivable failing in a company so dedicated to rendering Shakespeare accessible to all. Among the performances, Sam Troughton makes a decent fist of Brutus, if looking more like a truculent school prefect than a world-shattering revolutionary. Oliver Ryan catches the eye in the minor role of co-conspirator Casca, while Darrell D’Silva’s Mark Antony is more thuggish schemer than noble statesman. Greg Hicks in the title role passively allows his tragedy to unfold around him – not unlike his toga, which almost caused a tragedy of its own as he mounted the senate steps and caught his foot in a dangling swathe. It was an all-too-rare heartstopping moment. There’s no lack of ambition with this ensemble, which will be together for another two years. What’s missing so far is any sense of depth, of substance. Perhaps the bar was set so high with the recent Histories that the RSC has been trumped by its own magnificence. Here’s hoping the new young company can match the heights of its ambition and grow into itself over the next dozen or so productions together. THE WINTER'S TALE April 9, 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 3, 2009. IT feels like the start of another long endeavour for the RSC. After the phenomenal, and deserved, success of The Histories cycle across two years with the same ensemble, artistic director Michael Boyd is out to do it again. This time, he’s assembled a huge company designed to stay together for two and a half years, performing 14 productions of classical and contemporary work. It’s just a shame the whole exciting project kicks off with a whimper, not a bang. Directed by new RSC associate David Farr, this Winter’s Tale is aptly named: long, colourless and lacking warmth. It’s hard to pinpoint where the problems begin, but they end with a production that somehow appears to aim for all the right notes yet consistently just misses. To be fair, it’s perfectly serviceable as a conventional, by rote example of Shakespeare for the sixth-former. The trouble is that the early years of Boyd’s tenure have set the bar so high that this no longer seems adequate for the RSC or The Courtyard. Greg Hicks is a monochrome monarch, giving Leontes little in the way of light and shade. He appears mildly annoyed at the thought of his queen’s infidelity, stretching himself to rather upset over the death of his son. Among the peasantry in Bohemia, where things should be comical, whimsical and a bit lairy, instead it’s all too pedestrian, relying on comedy accents and prosthetic willies to inject any sense of festivity. Even the witty rogue Autolycus – a charmless, seedy interpretation from Brian Doherty – fails to ignite an evening of drabness, underscored by some alarmingly droning, unhelpful music by Keith Clouston. When the dramatic highlight comes in the form of some impressively collapsing bookcases, you know there’s something missing from the performances. And with two and a half years ahead, that’s a problem that warrants serious attention. LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST October 8, 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until November 15, 2008. ALL the fuss at Stratford this season has been about David Tennant’s Hamlet. But there’s another production in which the current Time Lord is making an appearance, and it couldn’t be more different. Love’s Labour’s Lost is one of the less-performed of the Shakespeare canon, and the reason is generally considered to be that it is wordy, heavily dependent on Elizabethan gags that don’t easily translate, and actually not all that funny. Gregory Doran’s beautiful new production for the RSC makes serious inroads into many of these accusations and, if not wholly successful, has a damned good stab at making it a worthwhile exercise. As with Doran’s other shows for the company this year – the Dream and Hamlet – it looks fabulous, with elegant lighting by Tim Mitchell and a set by Francis O’Connor that is dominated by an extraordinary tree. It is also complemented by a wonderful score from Paul Englishby, full of subtlety and playfulness and a delight to sit back and enjoy. Among the performers, there are some issues with audibility, although most of the ensemble manage to derive a degree of sense and meaning from the sometimes obscure wordplay. For an actor, having a genuine star talent like David Tennant lead the company must be something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there’s the joy of watching him work and the acclaim by association his performances seem to bring. On the other, everybody else is inevitably in his shadow to some degree. So although the part of Berowne is just one of eight young people working through their complicated oaths and emotions, the production is unquestionably Tennant’s. In a bizarre inversion of Hamlet – which was very much an ensemble triumph, in spite of the hype – Love’s Labour’s Lost becomes an exhibition of Tennant’s supreme comedy and skilful command of the stage. It may not have the pulling power of his Hamlet, but it’s a production well worth a viewing. HAMLET August 5, 2008 Royal Shakespeare Company, The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until November 15, 2008. THERE'S been a huge debate in certain circles about the merits of allowing an actor with TV celebrity status to play Shakespeare's greatest role with the country's leading Shakespearean company. Forget all that nonsense. Not only is David Tennant an actor with a considerable classical track record and some major roles behind him, the fact is that this magnificent modern-dress production is so much more than a vehicle for his talents. But let's deal with the title role first. Tennant gives us a thoroughly thought-out Hamlet with some superb nuances and flashes of brilliance about his feigned madness. Never descending into tricksiness, there's a brave honesty and openness about the performance that singles him out as one of the greats of his generation, with every word crystal clear and every subtlety explored. While there's the odd inevitable hint of the Time Lord – the baseball trainers and occasional pained stare are straight from Gallifrey – this landmark Hamlet is never anything less than a truly great Dane. But there's more. Lots more. The entire, stunningly presented production, designed by Robert Jones, is the ultimate responsibility of director Gregory Doran, who is quietly but quickly becoming the RSC's greatest asset. On the heels of a magical Midsummer Night's Dream, he conjures up a believable, majestic Danish court and makes it work triumphantly in his modern staging – no mean feat with this obstinately awkward play. There are peerless performances too from the utterly reliable Patrick Stewart and Penny Downie as Claudius and Gertrude, while Oliver Ford Davies and John Woodvine are reassuringly delightful as Polonius and the Player King. Elsewhere, there is strong acting support throughout the company and some evocative musical underscoring by composer Paul Englishby. All the talk may be of Dr Who, but in a production that borders on a masterpiece, there's plenty more meat to get your teeth into. | |
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