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.

West Side Story

Sadler's Wells theatre

12 September 2013

The trailer, which gives some idea of the drama's vitality, and wetness. From here.

Authentic, youthful production captures the impact of the astonishing original, but 55 years on, there is room for improvement.

The first thing to note about this revival is that it is taking place at Sadler’s Wells rather than say English National Opera. And that is appropriate, because although composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim contribute significantly to the effect of this work, the words and music are rather less important than Jerome Robbin’s choreography.

Which isn’t to say that the words and music aren’t effective – some of the finest songs in the Broadway canon, and Bernstein produced a masterpiece in his dance music, which captures youthful energy and brashness as no other music does.

But this drama is weaker than its parts, and relies more on the dancing to maintain interest than the music, the lyrics or the text itself. The first part feels overlong, and is required to cover too much ground, right up to two murders, which feels at least as tragic as Tony’s death at the end of the second part.

In the second part, the marvellous comic number Gee, Officer Krupke does not operate in the Shakespearean manner of diffusing tension but rather seems crassly inappropriate, especially as these are not ‘low characters’ irrelevant to the main plot but the Jets, who have been involved in a murder earlier that night. Sophisticated rhymes seem wildly inappropriate.

Some of the most serious dramatic weaknesses could be salvaged in a less reverential production: the dated slang, or the painfully chic Somewhere dream sequence. The final procession, hinting at reconciliation, should be ditched. In Romeo and Juliet hope is spoken, not shown, thus leaving it open to justified doubt after so many deaths.

The visuals are the absolute highlight of this near-masterpiece, and have dated the least, except in the trivial sense that Robbins’ moves have been widely imitated. Overall, the work is part of the US invention of the teenager throughout the 1950s, and strikes me as the greatest description of teenage energy and futility we have.

Someday, somewhere, somebody will update the setting, remove the sogginess and produce a version that properly respects what is great about the piece. Until then, if we must have dusty museum performances that undermine the original freshness, let them be as good as this one.

As usual with music theatre, there is one vital caveat: the unnecessary amplification. It seemed to me that even the energetic dancers could probably project clearly without it, so good were they, and so the amplification does harm by effectively generalising their voices and preventing an unmediated understanding of who on stage in singing.

But the singing was fine, the accents authentic (so vital, I think, in US music theatre) and there was the pep so vital in the key numbers such as America, while A Boy Like That was as urgent and distressing as it ought to be.

It is rare to experience Broadway music theatre in London rather than an anglicised approximation. The difference is important, and this is the real thing.

Rodin Project

Sadler's Wells, 29 October 2012

Erebus, a film of parts of the Rodin Project (available online at the space) 

Interesting ideas and arresting images, some of them loosely Rodin-related, but stretched too thinly over a full evening of dance.

What might it mean for a dance work to be inspired by the work of a great sculptor? Statues are still and silent, dance is fluid and musical. Neither artform employs language, so that communication is direct to the spectator, though this needn’t mean that everything is communicated immediately.

The principal way in which Russell Maliphant (choreographer) and Michael Hulls (lighting designer) have been influenced by Rodin is in the way light falls on the human body, and the suggestiveness of shadows. They succeed in making Rodin seem as if he were trying to capture the light on dancers, rather than the other way round – linking him with the sculpted dancers of Degas.

Although this is an impressive achievement, I didn’t feel it was worth exploring over a full evening. Maliphant and his team make other allusions to Rodin but these seem spurious, such as some neoclassical cavorting, or some musical resonances with Massenet; but while these ideas are contemporary with Rodin, they are very separate from his cragged nobility.

Thankfully these superfluous touches do not dominate, and the work as a whole seems self-contained and might as well refer to anyone else with as much justification as Rodin.

The highlight of Maliphant’s scuttling choreography is a scene involving two men and a wall. The low points are anything involving women. On the one hand, this suggests the weakness of the ensembles, where everyone seems to be doing something similar, though not identically, but in any case nothing is very memorable. On the other, when the women are on their own, the result is sickly. This may reflect Rodin’s women accurately, but it can’t have been a good idea to display the sculptor’s weaknesses. 

Among the dancers, all heroic, Dickson Mbi deserves special mention for a solo scene that came closest to giving the impression that one of Rodin’s sculptures had come to life. Somehow, popping combined with angular poses conveys Rodin in movement. It was astonishing.