Talking Shakespeare Neljä (Four)

Dense, Juicy, Layered

David Oyelowo, speaking from Los Angeles, remembered a dusty (and intimidating) copy of Shakespeare’s plays in his family’s Islington council flat. He was later surprised to discover Kenneth Branagh’s film of Henry V was also written by Shakespeare, having watched it as a movie, not caring about the language. The real breakthrough for David, though, was seeing a live production at the National Theatre – the visceral production of Robert Lapage’s mudbath Midsummer Night’s Dream with Timothy Spall as Bottom. David started acting accidentally when he tried to impress a girl by joining a youth theatre and then standing in when another young actor couldn’t attend because of a tube strike. His Theatre Studies teacher, Jill Foster, encouraged him to consider acting as a profession and helped David audition (successfully) for LAMDA. His father fully expected him to “get it out of his system” when he was given small roles (seven lines in Antony and Cleopatra) at the Royal Shakespeare Company. But the bug had bitten and seeing someone like Mark Rylance in his fourth incarnation of Hamlet at The Globe deliver the language with “dexterity, musculariy and elasticity” further reinforced David’s conviction that Shakespeare is the “Everest of Acting… so dense, so juicy, so layered.” 

Greg Doran of the Royal Shakespeare Talking Shakespeare with David Oyelowo, Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen

Vulnerability and Frailty

He gave a very funny account of getting the role of Henry VI and loved “the journey” of his time on Michael Boyd’s production but became weary of the “pioneer” emphasis placed on him by the media wanting to interview him about being the first black actor at the RSC to play an English king. He detected a similarity between Dr Martin Luther King in the movie Selma and Henry VI where the abiding motivation for both characters, as he played them, was religious faith, leading to vulnerability and frailty. David felt that both MLK and Henry VI fully expected everyone around them to be imbued with the same values and were both destabilised when the. His other major Shakespeare role was playing Othello with Daniel Craig and Rachel Brosnahan (as Iago and Desdemona) in an intimate production in New York in 2015. Like Greg Doran, I hope he can be tempted away from Hollywood for more UK stage work in the future.

Selection of David Oyelowo roles: as Henry VI, Othello, Orlando in As You Like It and the movie Selma

Queen Helen

Helen Mirren is a multiple award winner: she has carried home an Oscar, a Tony and an Emmy and has famously played a line of queens: Queen Margaret in the Henry VI trilogy; and on TV and film: Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II. She also has the distinction of playing Cleopatra three times, first at the National Youth Theatre in 1963 and then later playing opposite Michael Gambon (1982) and Alan Rickman (1998) as her Antonys. I was lucky to see the 1982 Adrian Noble production (in The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon) and for me it became a benchmark production of how epic plays can be staged in small spaces. Helen’s early memories of working at the RSC include watching the generous Ian Richardson from the wings in Coriolanus.  She reminisced about working (warily) with the mercurial Nicol Williamson (on both stage and in the film Excalibur) and played Lady Anne, Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona and Ophelia to Alan Howard’s Hamlet. She also vividly recounted the touring production of Troilus and Cressida which many argued brought the play back into favour in modern times and she described working with Peter Brook in the legendary project Conference of the Birds which toured the Saharan regions of Africa in 1979.

Helen Mirren as Cleopatra (three times), Cressida, Prospera in The Tempest and Rosalind in As You Like It

Sir Ian ("You shall not pass....")

Ian McKellen has had recent experience of remembering his distinguished acting career as part of his touring one-man show which raised considerable funds for small venues throughout the UK. (Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others and You.) With Greg Doran he shared early memories of seeing and loving theatre and getting involved in amateur and school productions. He always thought Shakespeare seemed fun and enjoyed travelling down from Bolton for school Shakespeare camps in Stratford-upon-Avon. He saw Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft and Charles Laughton in their prime (but also confessed to sleeping through Olivier’s Corialanus – it was a school trip, after all.) At Cambridge he joined the Marlowe Society and came under the influence of George Rylands who has mentored many of today’s great theatre directors as well as John Barton who persuaded young McKellen he could play the ancient Justice Shallow in Henry IV Part Two. He gave a moving account of working at Nottingham Playhouse with Tyrone Guthrie who gave McKellen confidence about becoming an actor and credits Maggie Smith with recommending him to Olivier to join the Old Vic. He was waspish about Franco Zefirelli and had insights into the impact of Olivier and of touring Shakespeare in the provinces and abroad with Prospect Theatre. I’ve seen many of his stage performances and been lucky to meet him both backstage after Waiting for Godot and at a UK showing of the film Gods and Monsters at Bradford’s Pictureville Cinema. Always gracious and always energetic, with a significant place in popular film history with his portrayals of Magneto and Gandalf, Sir Ian continues to be an astonishing creative force for good in the UK.

Ian McKellen as Romeo, Macbeth, Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (which I saw in Doncaster!), Coriolanus, Richard III, King Lear (twice) and Prospero in The Tempest at Leeds Playhouse

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

Lockdown Shakespeare

Clockwise from top left: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest - all currently on BBC iPlayer

April 23rd
Every year (from 23rd March which is my Mum’s birthday) I start to anticipate 23rd April – yes, St George’s day, but more profoundly for me, the day when Shakespeare died and the day when he was likely born (given that he was baptised on 26th April 1564 and the common practice in Elizabethan times was to baptise three days after the birth.) In the front room in my childhood home there was the family Bible, a set of encyclopedias and a Complete Works of William Shakespeare, complete with Fuseli plates. I never thought to ask my parents (and it is now too late) how Shakespeare got into our house. But the book proved, for me, a doorway to a surprising, inspiring, mind-bending landscape of love, friendship, murder, passion, betrayal, pride, violence, jealousy, redemption, tenderness and magic. Every story was told with memorable language, sometimes exquisite poetry, sometimes impenetrable jokes or confusing grammar; but, despite some difficult bits, on every page, certain words and phrases bounced out and tickled my fancy….  What a pleasure it has been to revisit some of the productions I’ve seen on the BBC iPlayer (Shakespeare in Quarantine) or as part of the NTLive YouTube broadcasts.

NT Live screenings of: Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra

Tolkien, Shakespeare, Others and You

Private audience with a theatrical knight

Legendary icon
It was hard to stop smiling in astonishment and wonder at the sight and sound of an almost-octogenarian’s tour de force one-man-show at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry tonight. I attended with my long-time Shakespeare buddy, Michael Thompson, who’d badgered the box office for returns and who’d not only got the triumphant call – “yes, we have two seats for you” – but, it turns out in a miraculous alignment of the stars, that one of the seats was sponsored by Sir Ian McKellen so we were invited backstage afterwards to hear the legendary knight throw out some extra choice anecdotes and bestow his iconic glory in a private audience. I’d seen him in a backstage environment before with a group of students during the second run of Waiting for Godot in London (see picture below.) I saw him in that play with two casts, playing opposite both Yorkshireman, Patrick Stewart and the late, great, Roger Rees, as well as superb supporting actors – as witnessed below with Ronald Pickup and Matthew Kelly.

Saw this production twice with two casts but one McKellen....

Over 80 venues across GB
Sir Ian McKellen’s stamina, memory, bravura acting techniques and vocal command are, live in the theatre, marvellous to behold. This particular show started as a one-off review and then expanded into an 80th birthday celebration of a tour of upwards of 80 venues across Great Britain. The profits from each performance are donated to local charities that are either drama or education or community based. The audience become the second character as he drags people onstage, invites shout-outs of answers and the names of Shakespeare plays. But more importantly he controls the audience mood as adeptly as any mind-altering wizard. The gossipy anecdotes are hilarious, the moving tales of his childhood and political activism draw us into a circle of quiet intimacy and his geographical range of acting experiences take us around the globe from Bolton to Yorkshire to the North-East to Nottingham to London to Stratford-upon-Avon, up mountains in New Zealand and to the throne room of Buckingham Palace. Wondrous!

Explanation for this pic in paragraph below...

Tolkien, Shakespeare, T S Eliot, G M Hopkins and more
At the flick of an eyebrow he moved from a doddering, ancient Agatha Christie character to a gauche and youthful Romeo. He mugged mercilessly in pantomime mode as Widow Twankey and recalled the ignition of his passion for live acting when seeing a performance of Peter Pan. He gave us a preview of his forthcoming film performance as Gus, the Theatre Cat in T S Eliot’s and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats (directed by Tom Hooper and adapted by Lee Hall) and dextrously delivered Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry in the finale to the first half. Just when it seemed impossible to admire him more, out poured forth from the depth of his soul one of his party pieces, the famous speech from Sir Thomas More (probably the only example of Shakespeare’s own handwriting which I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog – click here) – the speech which appeals to our shared humanity in how we should treat refugees. A memorable moment at each performance was his reading from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the invitation onto stage of an audience member to wield Gandalf’s mighty sword, Glamdring. Above you can see my dear friend, Amy Lancelot (Creative Education Manager at Leeds Playhouse), receiving the polaroid outcome of just such an encounter at a later performance.

Some of Sir Ian McKellen's Film and TV roles

McKellen TV and Film performances that made an impact on me over the years
1970: Edward II in Edward II by Christopher Marlowe
1976: Macbeth in Macbeth by William Shakespeare
1981: DH Lawrence in Priest of Love by Harry T Moore adapted by Alan Plater
1982: Walter in Channel 4’s Walter by David Cook
1985: Sir Andrew Charleson in Plenty by David Hare
1989: John Profumo in Scandal by Michael Thomas
1995: Amos Starkadder in Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons adapted by     Malcolm Bradbury
1995: Richard III in Richard III by William Shakespeare
1998: James Whale in Gods and Monsters by Christopher Bram adapted by Bill   Condon
1998: Kurt Dussander in Apt Pupil by Stephen King adapted by Brandon Boyce
2000: Magneto (Eric Lensherr) in X-Men by Tom DeSanto & Bryan Singer (a role he   went on to play in X-Men 2, The Last Stand and Days of Future Past)
2001: Gandalf in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (a role he went on to   play in a further five films and numerous audio projects)
2006 “Sir Ian McKellen” in Extras, created by Ricky Gervais
2015: Sherlock Holmes in Mr Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, book by Mitch Cullin   adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
2015: Norman in The Dresser (with Anthony Hopkins)

A fraction of Sir Ian McKellen's stage appearances

McKellen Stage performances I have seen
1979: Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night and Andrei in Chekhov’s Three Sisters on   tour at Dewsbury Town Hall (September)
1988: Acting Shakespeare at Wakefield Theatre Royal (22nd May)
1989: Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon
1997: Captain Hook in Peter Pan at the National Theatre in London
1998: Dr Dorn in Chekhov’s The Seagull at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
1998: Garry Essendine in Coward’s Present Laughter at West Yorkshire Playhouse,   Leeds
1998: Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
2007: King Lear in Trevor Nunn’s production of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sorin   in Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon
2009: Estragon in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at Theatre Royal, Haymarket in   London
2017: King Lear in Jonathan Munby’s production of Shakespeare’s King Lear (in a   CinemaLive broadcast)

Easter 2019: the Ian McKellen bonus....

Summer's Lease

Alex's afternoon tea and Morris Dancers in Badby

The world’s mine oyster
I’ve written elsewhere (see here) about how some places that are not officially home can feel like home. And so it was that August’s end contained a family visit to collect me from my week of bachelor vice…. the vice of glutting…. glutting on productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and soaking up interesting views by leading academics and theatre-makers at the annual RSC summer school. My first attendance at this event was in 1986, the year The Swan theatre opened and, although I haven’t been every single year, I’ve been more often than not. 32 years ago I was one of the whippersnappers and now I blend in seamlessly with the silver-haired and reverend Shakespeare fanatics.

RSC summer school and the 2018 Macbeth

Something Wicked This Way Comes
You need afternoon tea (thank you, Alex!) and the English/Moorish oddities of Morris Dancers tinkling their bells after such a marathon experience. After descending into the maelstrom of darkness that was a Time-dripping creepy Macbeth with Niamh Cusack, Christopher Eccleston, Edward Bennett, Luke Newberry, Michael Hodgson as Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Macduff, Malcolm and the Porter. After hearing challenging views about Macbeth and other plays and hearing from actors, including Alexandra Gilbreath who reflected on her previous performances and performed alternative versions of speeches.

2018 Romeo and Juliet to die for and Merry Wives of Windsor relocated to Essex

The Long and the Short of it
I thought Romeo and Juliet was a fine production, a believably youthful portrayal of the madness of early love (Karen Fishwick and Bally Gill) and performances by Andrew French and Ishia Bennison as Friar Lawrence and The Nurse that revealed their charismatic attractiveness but awful culpability in the tragedy that unfolds. The Merry Wives of Windsor was a different TOWIE kettle of fish – anchored by Ishia Bennison (again, as Mistress Quickly), Beth Cordingly, Rebecca Lacey and Jonathan Cullen as Mistress Ford, Mistress Page and Dr Caius but (happily for me) dominated by David Troughton’s Sir John Falstaff. There were more laughs than there probably should have been because of the skills of the actors (and the stunning Lez Brotherston’s set and costume designs) – but there will be other productions of this extraordinary play in years to come. A fitting quotation for both Romeo and Juliet and Merry Wives of Windsor is one of my favourite Shakespeare lines, a bit lost in the cartoon-world of this enjoyably shallow production:

O powerful Love, that in some respects makes a beast a man, in some other a man a beast.

Tamburlaine the Great, the play that unleashed Marlowe's mighty line

To be direct and honest is not safe
And so to Tamburlaine the Great, Marlowe’s two plays wrestled into one evening by ex-artistic director Michael Boyd with career-boosting performances by Jude Owusu and Rosy McEwan as Tamburlaine and Zenocrate. This was a hypnotic, careful, terrifying ensemble production with stunning music (James Jones) and evocative designs (Tom Piper with lighting by Colin Grenfell) and the whole cast should be applauded for their commitment to bringing the “scourge of the world” to full realisation. As if the RSC summer school glut of productions was not enough, I then indulged with Michael, my Shakespeare buddy, in a double-bill visit to Shakepeare’s Globe on London's South Bank to see strong productions of The Winter’s Tale and Othello. I’m often criticised for being too positive about life and always seeing the good in things – but although there were things I could carp about (certain lines, certain moments, certain perverse decisions) I always remember what it’s like to stage a production (in my 32 years of teaching) and try to appreciate at least what they were trying to do. (Hard to forgive the shit bear! in Winter’s Tale – but a pure revelation (to me) to have a black Michael Cassio in Othello. Mark Rylance, of course, was a devastatingly affable and disingenuous Iago – and I genuinely mourned the loss to the world at the death of André Holland’s Othello.

London's South Bank and Othello and The Winter's Tale

There is a world elsewhere

Productions during the 2017 summer school

70th anniversary of the summer school
I’ve just finished attending the 70th anniversary of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Summer School. There are some attendees who remember seeing Laurence Olivier and Vivian Leigh perform in Stratford in Titus Andronicus in 1955. Four years later delegates saw a season including Paul Robeson in Othello, Charles Laughton in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dame Edith Evans in both All’s Well That Ends Well and Coriolanus (the latter also with Olivier.) Imagine.

Faces of the RSC summer school 2017: Janet Suzman, Katy Stephens, Ray Fearon, Tony Byrne, Nia Gwynne, David Troughton, Erica Whyman, Chuk Iwuji, Dr Elizabeth Sandis, Miles Tandy, Penny Downie, Suzanne Burden, Michael Billington, Jacqui O'Hanlon, Dr Maria Evans, Matthew Tennyson, Prof Michael Dobson, Prof Russell Jackson, Gavin Fowler

31st anniversary for me….
My first summer school was in 1986, the year I married Sally, and the year The Swan theatre opened in Stratford-upon-Avon. I haven’t been every single year since then, but more years than not and, like with Shakespeare himself, there are surprises every year.

Roman season
This year it’s all about Ancient Rome. So all four of Shakespeare’s Roman plays are being staged: Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Titus Andronicus at the moment and  Coriolanus later in the year. There is a spoof new play based on Plautus by Phil Porter, charmingly titled Vice Versa (or the Decline and Fall of General Braggadocio at the hands of his canny servant Dexter and Terence the Monkey) which can only be described as the love child of Carry On – Up Pompeii – Panto On Weed. Sitting between these offerings was a gay-focused version of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé with a male actor in the role of the dancing princess.

Decapitations, songs, stabbings, dances, neck-breakings, love scenes….
They say variety is the spice of life and the theatrical sights veered between grisly shocks and tender vignettes. All of the productions offered a new angle or fresh perspective on the characters or themes. Over it all soared the language of Shakespeare and Wilde (and the thumping doggerel of Phil Porter, acting like a satyr dance or bergomask to the season.) During the day lectures by people like the rigorous Dame Janet Suzman and the visionary Erica Whyman commented on the season, the plays, the RSC and the state of theatre and the world in 2017. As Coriolanus himself says, “There is a world elsewhere….” There were no overt attempts to make the plays relevant to today’s political upheavals but it was impossible to ignore the parallels and hear echoes of our current world. As Ben Jonson wrote in the First Folio,

“Soul of the Age!....
He was not of an age, but for all time!”

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Exhibition

All time and all places
As if to underline the Shakespeare Everywhere theme, a new exhibition at The Birthplace explores active involvement in Shakespeare in a group of Asian countries. To some Shakespeare is all about the overthrow of tyrants; to some he is the epitome of justice and mercy; to others he is the key to unlocking the freedom of the imagination and creativity. He is, to me, all these things and many more – a body of work, a fascinating point in history, an explosion of language and dramatic situations.

He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.

Shakespeare Imagery: to Bard or not to Bard....

When most I wink

Actual anniversary
Today is my Pearl Anniversary of being married to Sally on July 5th 1986. Thirty years, four houses, two daughters, and two careers later, we are celebrating by going out for a meal tonight. Over the weekend family and friends surrounded us but tonight we’ll be going it alone. Will we have enough to talk about after thirty years? I expect so.

Dud in the pit at Birmingham Hippodrome and afterwards in a Chinese restaurant

There are certain people….
People come and go in your life. Some are “little while” friends and some take root in unexpected ways. I met one such friend in 1979, before I’d met Sally, whose 1998 wedding in Italy I was honoured to attend (along with Sally, Emily and Harriet.) Dudley Phillips, for it is he, loves family, loves music, loves castles, loves reading, loves absurd humour, loves talking, loves listening, loves being quiet, loves eating, loves drinking, loves life – all loves I happily share. Our most recent meeting was prompted by his performance in the Colin Towns’ Mask Orchestra playing Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn music for David Bintley’s Shakespeare Suite for Birmingham Royal Ballet. Dud plays bass guitar thrummingly, dynamically and intricately, always supporting, always driving, always surprising.

Wink
The first piece, choreographed by Jessica Lang, was based on five Shakespeare’s sonnets read tenderly by Alfie Jones, taking as the starting point Sonnet 43 “When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see….” The sonnet can be paraphrased something like the following, and it is as good an expression of friendship as I know:

When I’m asleep, then I see clearly
For during the day I look at things I don’t care about
When I sleep I dream of you.
Your image brightens the darkness of sleep
You brighten the dark
You even brighten the day
Things seem clearer when I think of you.
Day seems like night until I see you
During the night it seems like day when I dream about you.

Dudley Phillips on bass and Wink

A group of ten dancers twisted, turned and lifted through pairs, trios and groups expressing heartbreak, joy, loss, love and anger. A raw violin dominated the music by Jacob Ciupinski, aching with longing, longing with ache.
The Moor’s Pavane
José Limón’s riff on Othello was less abstract and set to stately music by Purcell. The four dancers representing Othello, Desdemona, Iago and Emilia presented a palpable sense of abusive love, smothering emotions and violent outbursts. The contrast between the regular pulse of the music and the discordant actions and reactions between the four performers was deeply disturbing.

The Moor's Pavane

The Shakespeare Suite
The final piece, the highlight, David Bintley’s The Shakespeare Suite, with Dudley’s bass playing, surprised and delighted with sassy variations on Shakespeare plays: a virtuoso Hamlet, a punky Taming of the Shrew, a quirky Richard III, a gothic Macbeth, a comically lusty Midsummer Night’s Dream, a troubling Othello and a lyrical Romeo and Juliet. Each pairing (Kate/Petruchio, Richard III/Lady Anne, Macbeth/Lady Macbeth, Titania/Bottom, Othello/Desdemona and Romeo/Juliet) was scored with a different mood and strangely captured the essence of the whole play without any words at all. Hamlet leapt alone but was surrounded by the other dancers in more abstract outfits symbolising different aspects of his personality (or so I thought….) The designs were startlingly bold (Costumes: Jasper Conran; Lighting: Peter Teigan and Steven Scott.) The Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn music was sexy, strutting, prowling and funny – switching and purring, changing and swinging as the pairings paraded. One of the best things I’ve seen (and heard) this year!

Loyal, Dependable, Non-judgemental, Honest, Open-hearted
A couple of lines that neatly capture my thoughts about Shakespeare (and Dudley….):

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end. (from Sonnet 30)

Two households both alike in dignity

Plays at the Garrick: Meera Syal, Lily James, Richard Madden, Sophie McShera, Derek Jacobi

La dolce vita to Funeral sangue Mafia

Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh have fashioned a swift-paced Romeo and Juliet at the Garrick Theatre in London. Though the production begins in a holiday piazza with full skirts, sharp suits, sunglasses and the easy consumption of espresso and grappa in the Verona sunshine, by the time the play descends into the claustrophobic chambers of bedroom and tomb we know the Mafiosi on stage need serious family therapy. Michael Rouse’s incandescent Capulet, a bullying neurotic Mafia boss, shockingly straddles his daughter’s shuddering body as he threatens to give her to “my friend Paris.”  The overall atmosphere moves from chaotic street to silent tomb, from La Dolce Vita to Funeral sangue Mafia (The sweet life to Mafia Blood Funeral.)

Outstretched hands mirror the lovers' journey

The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love

Both Lily James and Richard Madden have good theatrical credentials (Lily as Desdemona in Othello at Sheffield Crucible and Richard in Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses at the Royal Shakespeare Company.) They also have star pulling-power following Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones and Cinderella and they are credible as the “pair of star-cross’d lovers.” Richard Madden’s Romeo is an Andrex-puppy “dish-clout” (as the Nurse calls him) whose hormones are firmly located in his well-pressed trousers. He needs a job to distract him but is happy to mooch about and sponge off the elderly Mercutio (Derek Jacobi.) Being drawn casually into a fatal relationship is entirely in keeping with this Romeo’s laissez-faire approach to living until his inner male rage explodes on “I am Fortune’s fool” as he suddenly and devastatingly realises the mess he has made of his short callow life.

Lily James as Desdemona, Richard Madden as Callum and both in Cinderella

O God! I have an ill-divining soul.

It is easy to understand why Romeo falls for this Juliet. Lily James squirms with awkwardness when listening to advice, stamps her foot when trying to exert herself and allows us to witness her intimacy and vulnerability when she anticipates Romeo’s arrival on their nuptial night. She cartwheels, she swigs from a bottle of bubbly, she is giddy with excitement at the thought of escaping the clutches of her oppressive parents. This Juliet becomes horribly determined but equally fearful as she makes her dreadful decisions with Friar Laurence (first) and, finally, all alone when she has been abandoned by her protectors.

Susan and she were of an age

Marisa Berenson’s damaged Lady Capulet haunts the play as if recovering from an unspeakable addiction (from her thuggish husband, maybe?) It is clear that Lily James’s Juliet has been fed more than milk by Meera Syal’s feisty, funny, flirty Nurse; their joie de vivre and reckless outbursts have rubbed off on each other. But the Nurse in this production has taken the surrogate mother role to unhealthy extremes and in the early scenes eggs on Juliet in the direction of her deadly decisions. The joyful bantering between the Nurse and Juliet gives way to Juliet’s shock when the Nurse advises her to marry Tom Hanson's openhearted Paris. Meera Syal’s grief in the tomb when confronted with her own culpability is believably affecting. As the play ended there was a sense that the Capulet parents (and Montague senior) were mourning for the sake of onlookers but that the Nurse, in her own private grief, had lost her own baby Susan all over again. A very different performance to Meera's Beatrice in Iqbal Khan's 2012 production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Branagh, Jacobi, Madden, Colgrave Hirst, Syal, James

These hot days is the mad blood stirring

Samuel Valentine plays an unusually young Friar Laurence but his ginger youthfulness makes complete sense of the attempts he makes to unite the two families through the “alliance” of Romeo and Juliet; an older, wiser priest might not have been so reckless. An emphatic Benvolio by Jack Colgrave Hirst also fits well into the softly macho world that contrasts with the lurking Mafiosi represented by the older generation. Once a military cad, now a waspish dandy, Derek Jacobi creates a totally fresh (for me) Mercutio. He is like an Italian Maurice Chevalier, picking up the cheques for his young male entourage, who, it seems to me, remind him of the young soldiers he knew and lost – and still dreams of – on battlefields of yore. Jacobi’s Mercutio comes from a pre-Mafia generation who had sacrificed their youthful dreams “cutting foreign throats” and surviving “breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades.” Mercutio delivers the Queen Mab set-piece as if it were a post-traumatic stress dream. The shocking death of an older, frailer Mercutio seems more accidental than it often does, a turn-of-a-sixpence moment on a tragically boiling hot day. The logic of what follows therefore made more sense to me, with each death worth more as the tragedy unfolds; sometimes Mercutio’s death is the climax of a production but here, in Jacobi’s experienced portrayal, it becomes the unexpected first step in an inevitable narrative. 

The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head

The overall production values are slick and professional with sensitive underscoring by Patrick Doyle and a strong supporting cast (a leonine Tybalt by Ansu Kabia and an appealingly bonkers Peter by Kathryn Wilder.) Like the design of The Winter’s Tale (which I blogged about last November) the designs here are beautiful with Howard Hudson’s lighting transforming Christopher Oram’s lightly-monumental pillars and abstract walls in flexible environments, convincingly indoor and outdoor, both claustrophobic and expansive.

Past Romeos clockwise: Leonardo di Caprio, Paapa Essiedu, Leonard Whiting, Freddy Fox, Douglas Booth, Richard Beymer (as Tony in West Side Story), Patrick Ryecart and Leslie Howard
Past Juliets clockwise: Claire Danes, Daisy Whalley, Olivia Hussey, Morfydd Clark, Hailee Steinfeld, Natalie Wood (as Maria in West Side Story), Rebecca Saire and Norma Shearer

What light through yonder window breaks?

Romeo and Juliet will no doubt be staged again and again in years to come but this version was an inventively-directed and compelling production in a atmospherically-designed world. The cast gave plenty of fresh line readings with moving and attractive performances.

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

"Come Crush A Cup Of Wine"

First and Second Elizabethan Ages - "Tavern Brawls"

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking*

(* Cassio from Shakespeare’s Othello)
In my previous blog I sung the praises of BritWit extraordinaire, Adrian Smith, enthusiastic oenophile. It was easy to celebrate the wine-tasting experience by recalling Shakespeare quotations about drinking, given his plays are riddled with references to quaffing. Alcohol is everywhere. I’ve known plenty of people in my life who struggled (and struggle) to moderate drinking. And I’ve never been one to preach since I’ve got my own over-eating disorders and addictions. Modern society is rife with the tussle to control consumption, whether of material goods or of addictive food and drugs.

Nights out that didn't end so well....

Thou'rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink*

(* Sir Toby Belch from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)
I know I drank too much beer and lager as a teenager and sometimes also at university. Some weekends now definitely involve way too much wine, but the fact is that “crushing a cup of wine” (as the Capulet servant invites Romeo to do) is a very sociable and enjoyable thing to do. Throughout history and literature, wine (and beer) have been constant presences in British life.

Come, I will go drink with you*

(* Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff)
I included an image of the gloriously ignominious and indisputably English Falstaff at the end of the last blog. He only appeared in three of Shakespeare’s plays and his death is described in a fourth. (Falstaff appears in Henry IV Parts One and Two as well as in The Merry Wives of Windsor and his death is described by Mistress Quickly in Henry V.) Falstaff certainly dominates Shakespearean images of drinking.

Paola Dionisotti as Mistress Quickly and Antony Sher as Falstaff

The loyal Mistress Quickly even subscribes drink to improving his health and temper, though, alas, she recognizes he has had too much in Henry IV Part Two:

MISTRESS QUICKLY (to Falstaff): I' faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire; and your colour, I warrant you, is as red as any rose, in good truth, la! But, i' faith, you have drunk too much canaries; and that's a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say 'What's this?'

Judi Dench as Mistress Quickly and Simon Callow as Falstaff

Drink a health to me*

(* Petruchio from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew)
There are many “feasts” in Shakespeare that involve wine (Romeo and Juliet springs to mind) but there are a few key scenes where the drinking starts in a light-hearted way but leads to horrible consequences for one or more of the characters. Timon’s guests eat and drink to financial disaster in Timon of Athens. Trinculo and Stephano get Caliban blind drunk in The Tempest.  Lepidus is the butt of the Romans’ jokes in Antony and Cleopatra’s drinking scene, though it marks a deeper humiliation for Octavius too.

Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, Othello and Timon of Athens

I'll drink no more than will do me good*

(* Mistress Quickly in Henry IV Part Two)
Did the actor who first played Octavius in Antony and Cleopatra also play Cassio in Othello since that scene’s drunken military orgy, orchestrated by Iago, portrays a similarity between what happens to Octavius and the downfall of Cassio – a man desperate to fit in with “the lads” who then drinks too much and suffers later. Did Shakespeare get carried away once too often in the taverns of Stratford and London? Did drink pay a large part in the accidental death/murder/assassination/skirmish in Deptford that ended Kit Marlowe’s life? The scenes in Antony and Cleopatra and Othello are such vivid lad-drinking scenes that Shakespeare must have experienced out-of-control drunkenness in Elizabethan and Jacobean England.

The death of Christopher Marlowe - "a Great Reckoning in a Little Room"

These clothes are good enough to drink in*

(* Sir Toby Belch from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night)
Falstaff’s nearest rival for Top Drunk in Shakespeare’s work is Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Toby utters the immortal line to the Puritan Malvolio who tries to stop the drunken revelry:

TOBY BELCH (to Malvolio): Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

The old reprobate, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Nigth

There is no doubt the audience are on Toby Belch’s side at this point in the play, even though the sound of drunks when you are trying to get to sleep can be disturbing. As with every theme he covered, Shakespeare presents two sides to the human condition – “good company, good wine, good welcome/Can make good people” is the belief of Guildford in Henry VIII. Cassio in Othello has another perspective on alcohol: “O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!”

Drinking Philosophy 

by Terry Pratchett’s Death and Albert:

Death: "THERE ARE BETTER THINGS IN THE WORLD THAN ALCOHOL, ALBERT."
Albert: "Oh, yes, sir. But alcohol sort of compensates for not getting them.”

Death and Terry Pratchett and an idyllic view of drinking....