Talking Shakespeare Yksi (One)

Outer images from last Christmas, inner images from 2020 prep

Member Benefits

Christmas is a-coming – a few purchases have now been made (mincemeat mixed, Christmas cake being “fed” monthly, a few gifts have been wrapped….) I’m allowing Christmas to infiltrate my life in November having, in the sixty previous years, banned all thoughts until December 1st but in this Covidacious year I take pleasure however and whenever I can. (Full disclosure: Sally still wears The Christmas Crown and is entirely responsible for the spicy aromas of fruity baking.) One advantage of having a Royal Shakespeare Company membership is being granted access to resources giving insights into the ongoing bottomless chasm of Shakespeare exploration. During both lockdowns a number of actors are giving interviews under the title Talking Shakespeare and that is just what they did. I’ll post about them all in due course, a few at a time….

Greg Doran intervewing Adjoa Andoh, Ray Fearon, Judi Dench and Alex Gilbreath

Adjoa Andoh and Ray Fearon

• Adjoa Andoh, known for Doctor Who and Casualty, is known to me especially for two stunning performances: as Ulysees in Troilus and Cressida and as an astonishing Richard II in an all-black, all-female production of Richard II at The Globe. Her interview ranged widely over all her Shakespearean roles but, most powerfully, about her personal life and commitment to community work.
• Ray Fearon revealed how he fell into acting by accident and started performing in amateur community projects. He was inspired when working as an extra in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money to (successfully) apply for Rose Bruford drama school. He worked at Liverpool Everyman and Manchester’s Royal Exchange before rising through the ranks at both the RSC and the National Theatre. His big breaks at the RSC came in a touring production of Romeo and Juliet and then (his third) Othello with the frisson of his Desdemona being played by his Juliet, Zoe Waites. He gave a moving account of his experience playing Pericles, a magnificent performance that stuck in my own mind when I saw it, and then talked about the sensational all-black Julius Caesar when he played a scarily dangerous Mark Antony.

Adjoa Andoh in Richard II and Troilus and Cressida, Ray Fearon in Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and Othello

Judi Dench and Alexandra Gilbreath

• Judi Dench revealed herself to be the trooper she is and went the furthest back in time to her childhood in York and her early appearances at the Old Vic before marking off virtually all of Shakespeare’s heroines in her 70-year career. She talked about some of her legendary performances with typical humility – and plenty of funny anecdotes – but came up to date with her recent stage work that I’ve been lucky enough to witness live, in Macbeth, The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merry Wives (musical) of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Winter’s Tale.
• Alexandra Gilbreath’s throaty tones have always drawn me in to her performances and she was enthusiastic and insightful about her major roles, all of which I saw in Stratford: Hermione (The Winter’s Tale), Juliet, Rosalind (As You Like It) Kate (The Taming of the Shrew), Olivia (Twelfth Night) and, alongside Judi Dench, in the musical version of Merry Wives.

Judi Dench in Macbeth, Merry Wives, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Alex Gilbreath in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Taming of the Shrew, The Winter's Tale

Back "from" the Future

Happy Birthday, the Unforgettable Rosie....

Selby’s Escapologist
One of my teaching chums had a birthday recently at the Steampunk-themed bar in Selby. Was there drink? Oh, yes there was. Were there spectacular chocolatey cakes? Why, certainly, my lord. And did you get out of the Back from the Future Escape Room? Maybe not…. but that’s not my fault. I’d already had a little fizz at that point. And my other excuse is that my previous two experiences of Locked-In games were accompanied by whippersnappers in their twenties and here I was stuck with geriatrics wearing Doc Brown wigs and bow ties…. Also, to be fair, I don’t think my brain cells are what they once were…. but many thanks to Rosie for a memorable Easter Monday. I think the other members of the party (Anarchy of the Seas and World of Wizardry) got more clues right but still weren’t fully freed….

World of Wizardry, Back from the Future, Anarchy of the Seas

Film costumes on Easter Sunday
A day out in north Lincolnshire had an awesome surprise in an unexpected place. I thought we were visiting a medieval hall but didn’t expect to see a display of costumes as worn by the stars in famed productions. See if you can identify in the collage below the costumes worn by Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth, Kristen Scott Thomas in The Darkest Hour, Emily Blunt in Young Victoria, Helena Bonham Carter in Suffragette, Daniel Craig in Moll Flanders, Sean Bean in the Sharpe series, Aiden Turner in Poldark, Robert Downey Junior in Restoration, and from Shakespeare in Love: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes and Judi Dench. Most thrilling for me was Kenneth Branagh’s battle costume from Henry V. The “Historical Hall of Fame” exhibition is on until September 2nd so if you’re anywhere near Gainsborough, have a gander.

Historical Hall of Fame film costumes at Gainsborough Old Hall

Gainsborough Old Hall
Built by the Burgh family in the 1400s, Gainsborough Old Hall turns out to be spectacular in itself, whether or not it happens to be housing an enticing costume exhibition. After the Burghs, only the Hickman and Bacon families inhabited it, so it retains a great number of original features despite at various times being a theatre, a meeting hall, a Masonic temple and a pub. The restoration work is sympathetic and the wooden-beamed Hall is a wonder to behold.

Audio-Guide
Audio-guides can be hit or miss but on the whole I think English Heritage are doing a great job with all the ones I’ve heard recently. The one here includes dramatised monologues bringing different rooms to life, for example the ghostly corridor in the East Range and some different important visitors: Richard III (gotta love him), Henry VIII (gotta hate him) and Katherine Howard (gotta take my hat off to her.)

Living History
Most memorable after the Great Hall is, in my view, the original medieval kitchen complete with immense chimneys and lively interpreters actively doing kitchen stuff in front of your eyes. And busy antechambers with resident pompous Clerk, giving a sense of how the house must have been teeming with social (argumentative and smelly) interactions. I much prefer, as I’ve blogged before, this rough-and-tumble imaginative and social view of history, rather than any dry rendition of documents.

See what death is doing

RIP: Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, Victoria Wood, George Michael, Anton Yelchin, David Bowie, Alan Rickman

So many deaths

2016 has been notable for the large number of “celebrity deaths.” It could simply be a coincidence that the people who first became internationally famous through mass media outlets are reaching that stage of life: Fidel Castro, Ronnie Corbett, Harper Lee and Peter Vaughan all had long and fulfilling lives so their passing seems fitting. Some, though, seem untimely: Caroline Aherne, Prince and, in just the last few days, Carrie Fisher (followed within 24 hours by her mother who had been ill for some time.)

RIP: Sir Terry Wogan, Paul Daniels, Carla Lane, Harper Lee, Peter Shaffer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Caroline Aherne, Barry Hines, Prince, Gene Wilder, Robert Vaughn, Muhammad Ali

Life goes on

The only absolute certainty of life is Death. Everything else is random genetics, choice, negotiation, compromise, luck and manipulation. Death, however, no matter what other choices we make or cards we are dealt by nature, comes to us all. And the human race carries on. Striving, mostly thriving, aspiring and living in the shadow of the certainty of death. The tinsel time of year heightens feelings about grief as we go about celebrating, eating, drinking, reflecting on the past and planning the future. The following exchange in The Winter’s Tale always strikes a chord for me, although the promised “recovery” is hard won. Hard won.

PAULINA:     This news is mortal to the queen: look down
                    And see what death is doing.

LEONTES:                                             Take her hence:
                    Her heart is but overcharged. She will recover.

Judi Dench as Paulina in The Winter's Tale - Judi is currently thriving and working still, but has an acting style that, in my opinion, gives you birth, life and death, strength and vulnerability, comedy and tragedy - all combined in a poignant and appealing personality.

Small acts of kindness

Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh, Miranda Raison in The Winter's Tale

Paulina in The Winter’s Tale

Last weekend I saw The Winter’s Tale at the Garrick Theatre in London (to be broadcast this evening in cinemas.) The character of Paulina is one of the most extraordinary in literature and I wanted to see the show live because one of my favourite actors, Judi Dench, is currently playing the role. Paulina behaves without regard to her own safety, life or convenience – and Judi Dench catches her sense of humour, her courage, her loyalty and, when needed, her blazing anger. It is hard to behave with absolute conviction the whole time. Most of us (me certainly) regularly compromise, regularly miss opportunities, regularly see both sides of an argument.

Forgiveness

The end of The Winter’s Tale is suffused with redemption and forgiveness (like those other great Late Romances of Shakespeare, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Two Noble Kinsmen and The Tempest.) Hard-won lessons are learned, families learn to forgive and the future, though potentially painful, is a bit more hopeful. We are all in charge of our own reactions and responses to everything that happens. It astonishes me when suffering family members forgive terrorists and murderers who have slain their loved ones. In doing so, though, they are controlling their own futures, so I can appreciate why they choose forgiveness rather than revenge. I don’t know if I could.

Even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you

Khalil Gibran’s quotation above is from a lengthier one on “Love.” The idea is well-known – if you love someone you open yourself to being hurt. Why does anyone do it? Victor Hugo in Les Miserables promoted “small acts of kindness” as one of the keys to happiness:

You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness. We pardon to the extent that we love. Love is knowing that even when you are alone, you will never be lonely again. A great happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. Loved for ourselves. And even loved in spite of ourselves.

Book illustrations, stage and film versions of Les Miserables

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts....

In George Eliot’s Middlemarch Dorothea is the heroine that, like Paulina in Winter’s Tale, is a model for our time. Do one good thing. Then another. Then another.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling that there was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better….
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

How many small acts of kindness have we had done for us in our lives? Who did them? How many small acts of kindness can we do tomorrow?

Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea in the BBC version of Middlemarch

Yorkshire Day - Home from t'South

Father-daughter road trip

Just got back from a trip with Emily around five counties: Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. I will blog about why and where exactly we went in the future. In the meantime it is good to be back in time for Yorkshire Day. Good to breathe the northern air again.

Yorkshire Day

Yorkshire Day is of course entirely made up – like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Secretary’s Day – but it had noble origins in 1975 as a protest against local government reorganisation and the date was picked to remember:

• the Emancipation of Slaves anniversary spearheaded by William Wilberforce, MP for Hull and
• the Battle of Minden, an Anglo-German victory over the French  in 1759, which was already celebrated with the wearing of roses by army regiments, including the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (now the Light Infantry) who, of course, chose white roses to wear
  

Chance to promote stereotypes

A bit of research shows that tabloids often use Yorkshire Day as a chance to promote flat-cap-wearing, ferret-down-the-trousers, muddy-welly Farmer curmudgeon stereotypes of Yorkshire folk. Karl Young in The Metro cites Size, Tea, Pride, Olympians, Culture and Passion as reasons to celebrate coming from Yorkshire. It’s as good a list as any, as long as Culture embraces History as well as the Arts; and Passion and Pride includes the Moors and the Dales and the Rivers and the Crags.

Nicola Adams, Sir Ben Kingsley, Jessica Ennis-Hill, JB Priestley,
Amy Johnson, Alan Bennett, David Hockney, Judi Dench,
Scary Spice (Mel B), Sean Bean, Katherine Brunt and Danielle Hazell (cricketers), Henry Moore,
Dame Janet Baker, Geoffrey Boycott, Betty Boothroyd, Michael Parkinson,
Barbara Hepworth, Corrine Bailey Rae, James Martin, Brontë sisters  

Long live Yorkshire Pride!