King Lear

Old Vic

29 September 2013

Joss Ackland as Lear. 

Oddly humorous version of the great tragedy that was unfortunately maimed by its circumstances, but still managed to express some interesting points.

What with this and the geriatric lovers in the current Much Ado About Nothing, the Old Vic is aptly named. In a fit of naturalism that would have seemed insane even during that movement’s heyday a hundred years ago, we finally have a Lear who is significantly over 80, and a Gloucester who is about the same age.

This was a one-off reading of the text, not a full performance, to benefit the worthy Motor Neuron Disease Foundation, tackling a disease that usually afflicts people in their 60s. Quite a few of the cast appeared to be over 60 (I haven't checked).

So it seems appropriate to record a few observations about age, ungallant though that may be. Put simply, the actors nearing 90 experienced difficulties an order of magnitude greater than those nearing 70. The latter were roughly as energetic as those in their 20s, though I imagine doing a reading would help with that.

Thankfully they didn’t simply stand around reading the text. No less than Jonathan Miller directed them, though greater kudos must go to whomever cast this piece.

Given the restricted conditions, the casting took on enormous significance, and was masterful, with the exception of Lear and Gloucester. Even there, to the extent possible to disregard infirmity, the casting was strong.

Joss Ackland has an impressive voice, and has a sensitive response to the text, so that there were flashes of what might have been a great Lear had he only been a few years younger. As it was, the torrents of denunciation and rage that we associate with the King were broken up and the performance never really gripped attention as it must.

Which was not a fault only of age, but of the ‘reading’ approach. Every speech was broken by glances at the text. If a radio performance gives us the words clearly, at the expense of visual accompaniments, this was the reverse.

Of all Shakespeare, Lear benefits most from a stripped down production, as it haunts so much of modern drama, most obviously Beckett. What was curious about this production was the obvious humour Miller injected into it. Or perhaps it wasn’t intentional, but he must have known the comings and goings would generate laughs.

Even Edmund’s death, occurring offstage, raised a laugh, at a point when the tragedy is highest. This wasn’t as disruptive as you might imagine. Dark humour and tragedy are brought side-by-side in so much Shakespeare, but I haven’t noticed it working so well as here.

That said, casting Tony Robinson as the Fool was a mixed blessing. He is humorous without effort, and seemed fully on top of the role but he raised laughs from the indulgent audience at lines that either weren’t intended to be funny or were so obscure (as so much is in this drama) that I for one didn’t understand the joke.

There are so many great roles in this drama that there is not enough space to comment on everyone, though every cast member, even the bit parts, brought something interesting to their roles.

Aside from Lear himself, the other key role is Edgar, the man who will succeed him, though that wasn’t obvious in this production. The contrast between youth and age, though, can never have been more explicit, and this was fascinating in itself.

Tam Williams, in his underwear for around half his scenes, and in particular his scenes with the wheelchair-bound Ackland, could have been speaking Chinese and would still have made the greatest visual impression of youth and vitality. As it was, he handled the vocal side ably too, though true authority resides in Lear, whatever virtues Edgar has.

Everyone else was excellent. If only this had been a fully rehearsed production, it might even have overcome the central problem of old age.

To end on a high note, the drama still packed a terrible, awful punch in its final scene.

Much ado about nothing

Old Vic theatre

7 September - 30 November 2013

James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave an untypically  elderly Benedick and Beatrice.

When only Dogberry sparkles, a production of this comedy must be a failure, despite some interesting ideas. 

In the one brilliant idea in Mark Rylance’s production, the moment when Claudio accuses Hero of being a whore – on their wedding day, to maximise the pain, as Beatrice points out – the association with Othello is visually reinforced. Claudio, and his friends, are played entirely by black actors. Hero’s circle is white.

In both Othello and Much Ado, catastrophe results from sexual jealousy on absurdly weak grounds. If sense is restored in this comedy, in some ways that is actually less justifiable than in the tragedy.

What motivates Leonato’s horrifying response when he believes his daughter has deceived him? After she has witnessed these rages from her father and future husband, can Hero genuinely forgive and forget?

So “much ado”, even if it were about something, rather than nothing. This other great exploration of sexual jealousy is just as shocking as Othello, though the author stabilises us by adding the wonderful Dogberry and company at the key moment.

The catastrophe is almost impossible to ruin in the theatre, and this production conveys its power, thanks principally to a marvellous performance of Michael Elwyn as Leonato.

That Claudio is subsequently willing to marry practically anyone, so long as he can reduce his guilt over this catastrophe, provides the Shakespearean uneasiness over endings in marriage.

This is ingeniously signposted by the parallel betrothal of Beatrice and Benedick, and the boisterous expectation of infidelity. Given prior events and with Othello in our mind, theirs is a healthy attitude, though nihilistic, raising the question of quite why they decide to give in to each other.

New light is shone on this question by the production’s major innovation: having the bickering lovers played by James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, 82 and 76 respectively.

“The world must be peopled” is Benedick’s rejection of his sempiternal batchelorhood, but it can be peopled without marriage. Perhaps he is thinking of the effect being a bastard has on the villainous Don John. Here, given their considerable ages, Benedick’s argument is especially unconvincing.

Unfortunately neither actor is especially convincing in these roles, which are the glory of the drama. Redgrave has the stronger part, as usual with this author, and does more with it, but the prose is especially hard to bring off in the theatre, and much of their bickering was lost on me.

When actors fear Shakespeare’s now-archaic jokes are going to fall flat, they are tempted to broad physical comedy, and Rylance should have reined this in. There is a difference between two elderly actors rejecting the dignity we assume they must want, and actors of any age whatsoever behaving like buffoons to get a  laugh.

The setting is 1940s England, with Don Pedro and his team being African-American airmen stationed in a cosy English village. In fact, cosy is the word for at least the whole first half, which was so enervated I struggled to maintain any interest at all.

If after the interval things picked up, at no point did they fizz as needed in a witty comedy.

Sweet Bird of Youth

Old Vic theatre

2 July 2013

The trailer.

This theatrical witches brew cannot fail to make an impact, despite some low-wattage leads.

The bird of the title is not looks or charm or even hope, though this is what Chance fears he has lost, but rather imaginative power, which must be transfigured with maturity or we lose the vital sparks within us. Alexandra, while much older, retains her vitality, as established in the final scenes, whereas Chance has lost his, and so waits for the catastrophe, castration being a fairly obvious euphemism for his loss.

As often with Williams, the drama is weakened by a lack of inwardness: the characters are neither articulate nor interestingly inarticulate, so that the audience is no wider than the characters about their predicament.

His detailed stage directions, attempting to convey his characters' inner thoughts, are themselves a sign of insecurity, indicating similar frustrations to those of Henry James when he writing for the stage. If this seems crazy given Williams' obvious theatrical strengths, I think it does suggest that he feared something was missing from his characters, and that needed to be provided by the actors.

Thankfully the author's powerful theatrical quality, and in particular his very distinctive style, can make us overlook these weaknesses while in the theatre.

His works seem indestructible, and this one too. Marianne Elliott's production sensibly centres the action on Chance, and likewise the adaptation appears to remove some of Alexandra's lines. This also allows the repulsive political backdrop to come through forcefully, and Boss Finley's terrible speech becomes something of a dark highlight here.

It is hard for a Boss Finley not to steal the show, but it doesn't happen here. Owen Roe presents a quietly menacing figure that is all the more effective for being restrained.

Kim Cattral is the star name in the cast, but her Alexandra is a disappointment, an unsubtle portrayal. Seth Numrich's Chance is the central character, but although he looks good, and clearly understand the role, its charisma seems beyond him. The result is that his character is unlikeable, and while some of that risk is intrinsic to the part, we are told repeatedly that everyone once loved him.

These are small criticisms. The drama is effective, and if it doesn't bear deep reflection afterwards, these are the faults of the writer, not the creative team.

Kiss Me, Kate

Old Vic, 19 February 2013

I Hate Men,  Lilli-as-Kate's song from Kiss Me, Kate, sung by Patricia Morison in 1958.

From youtube.

An impressive production and cast makes the most of this musical, but cannot disguise its damaging indulgences.

The Taming of the Shrew is not the greatest example of Shakespeare’s genius. But it retains more life than Cole Porter’s work, which seems dated just 50 years after it was written. 

Admittedly, the English dramatist can seem disturbingly misogynistic in this work, but the key to countering that impression is that Kate is both superior to Petruccio and in love with him at first sight.  

On this view, it is the social imprisonment of women that the poet exposes, and one problem with updating the scenario as done here is that even in the 1930s women had much greater rights than in Tudor England. 

Thankfully the book by Bella and Sam Spewack retains some of the sense that women choose beneath them. It also retains the bard’s healthy disrespect for mere plausibility. And so it is a relatively effective abridgement of the Shrew. 

But the contemporary framing device, far from making Shakespeare ‘relevant’, is fairly weak. Quarrelling actors are just too cute. As we know everyone on stage is acting at one or two removes, the distancing effect is distracting rather than enlightening (post-modernism avant la letter?) 

Worse, sometimes the implausibility is stretched too far by the updated setting. Not only is there no doubt that Lilli will return to Fred, but in the event it is so implausibly sentimental that even Trevor Nunn cannot direct the scene to make it effective.

Some of Porter’s lyrics, and most of his tunes, keep things deftly afloat.

Even here, there are problems, and I found them the worst problems in the piece. It is easier to forgive some tuneful additions that don’t advance the plot, such as Too Darn Hot; the real sins are the indulgent rhymes of Brush Up on Your Shakespeare and Bianca.  

The cast is great, and mostly manage to sound from the US even if they aren’t (though I prefer actors in their natural accents).  

A seemingly endless supply of enthusiastic, energetic and talented singing actors can be found for London musicals, and as usual everyone was very good. Perhaps some authentic yankee pep might have been necessary to lift the drama out of its doldrums. Only Adam Garcia, in a relatively unimportant role, seemed to possess this quality.  

Special mention should go to Hannah Waddingham’s versatile voice. Her I Hate Men was the lasting highlight in a lively but unaffecting evening.

Hedda Gabler

Old Vic, 11 September 2012

 

 

A misleading frills and fiddles trailer

 

A shattering experience, both in the theatre and on reflection afterwards. This is always my experience of Ibsen.

 

Partly, this is due to technique. He is the supreme exponent of the ‘well made’ five act drama, so popular in the nineteenth century, in which a stove as a piece of scenery in Act One will surely play a more significant role in Act Four, as indeed it does here, with Hedda burning her former lover’s masterpiece, a destruction shockingly equated with burning his child by Thea Elvsted.

 

But it is also due to his choice of subject. He brings the heroic, the sense that these events are portentous, that they matter, into the drawing room.

 

Previous dramatists had represented the fate of nations across the stage. Ibsen applied the same approach to the fate of individuals in situations we can all identify with. The amazing thing is that this works.

 

After we have learned to dislike her, Hedda reveals that her malice and arrogance arise from something terrifying, deep within herself – something that Judge Brack, to whom she has confessed, ascribes to feminine caprice.

 

This short dialogue , partly elaborated by Friel in his translation, is magnificent; Hedda’s repulsive pettiness is a response to feeling trapped and inadequate to life. Brack’s conventional hedonism is exposed when he is unable to comprehend her problem.

 

Hedda’s annihilating impulses are consequently first directed at her former lover and his mistress, then more successfully towards herself and her unborn child.

 

Are these impulses justified, given her sensibility and predicament? We’re drawn to her (or ought to be) even as we contrast her with her only serious rival in the drama, idealistic, single-minded Thea Elvsted.

 

It is one of Ibsen’s ironies that Hedda is the one described as ‘determined’, when she – and we, if we have eyes and ears – fully realise that the word better describes Thea. Hedda has a stronger sense of the futility of action, and so vacillates, Hamlet-like, until her final, dreadful aesthetically-charged suicide. Thea survives, and will resurrect her child, the ‘beautiful’ last masterpiece of their shared lover.

 

This final ambiguous situation is marvellously accentuated in Anna Mackmin’s production, entirely impressive apart from one now common misjudgement.Humour is now jarringly played up in Ibsen as much as in the past it was drearily played down, and I wonder if the pendulum will eventually stabilise.

 

As an aside, I’m massively relieved that the production was neutral on the proto-feminist aspects of Hedda’s situation – why try to relegate this universal drama to a museum piece?

 

I thought the standout performance was Fenella Woolgar’s Thea. In body language and voice, she absolutely convinced me that she was focussed to the point of hysteria. Sheridan Smith was impressive in the title role, although she was too convincing at its supposedly ‘capricious’ aspect, then almost remedied that through her silent horror when fully realising her situation in the final act.

 

The supporting cast were faultless. Let’s hope we get to see more of this neglected master.