Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2009 (20th June 2009)

making space

Breeze of the Morning, Cannonball Tree, Seychelles, Hillside from a Persian Rug, Lavender Border, The Rose…..I Wish My Garden Was really Like This

Baby and Butterfly, Crossing, The Sun Shone From a Different Place, Summer Breeze, Opposition

Lenin in Lehnstuhl, Pruning, St Bartholomew Exquisite Pain, Crucifixion and Mountain, Lung Cross Section……Inbetween,

– cats and dogs-


Predator, Black Dog at Tower Bridge, Nubia, Oscar, and a Winter Tiger.

Four Identical Shapes-

and after…
After Demascus, After the Rain,



Second Sight


I want it back, that feeling again

Reviews and Previews

The Guardian on the RA Summer Exhibition
Times RA Summer Show 2009 with DVD
Telegraph DVD of RA Summer Exhibition
Independent Review of the Summer Exhibition

Julie RabyLeave a comment

The Homecoming (York Theatre Royal, 17th June 2009)

I really find this play a difficult play to get to grips with. I am glad that I found it funny and strange and that I am still puzzled by the ending. Loved seeing the Theatre Royal production. Thought they did a great job. My memory was of the Peter Hall directed film before this. Now I think I will keep this in mind for some time. Thought the set worked well and the acting was wonderful. Mm pause for thought….

Previews and Reviews

The Homecoming, Press Report
The Homecoming – The Guardian Review
Preview: The Homecoming, York Theatre Royal, Ma…
The Homecoming – Nouse Report
The Stage review of The Homecoming
The Homecoming, Harold Pinter’s bleakly comic d…
The Homecoming in The Northern Echo
Interview: Pinter play that gives pause for tho…

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As You Like It (The Globe, 13th June 2009)

As I am reviewing lots of different productions of the same play, I thought I would make some comments on watching different versions of the same plays close together. Recently, two The Winter’s Tale and hopefully it’ll be the Jude Law Hamlet in a few weeks following hotly on from that Tennant Hamlet. Last year it was a Globe and RSC version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and this year it is the RSC version and The Globe productions of As You Like It. These productions follow the Tim Supple production at the Leicester Curve which Miching Malicho blogged about in March.

It is actually very exciting to see two productions of the same play very close together. For example, the Old Vic (Bridge Project) and RSC’s The Winter’s Tales are so very different presenting such different readings of the text. Actually seeing them together is makes you really think about the play and the different perspectives being presented rather than being persuaded to accept one creative team’s take on the play as the only reading.

As I watched As You Like It, I still had in mind the RSC version which I saw a few week’s ago. When the cast came on stage in formal dress, there was a clear link here, but from then on the productions were so different. The RSC’s version moves through time and ends up as a modern version; the Globe’s version stays very much in the Elizabethan/Jacobean contemporary setting. The Globe production doesn’t dwell on the darkness of the play, except for a moment when Oliver has clearly been tortured by Duke Frederick. It’s really good fun. Touchstone (Dominic Rowan) is clearly the fool in the court, but in the woods he is able to find his self away from the two women he flees the court with. The dance at the end brings four couples together and there is a sense of satisfaction that all is well though we know that Jacques has gone to live with Duke Frederick in the ‘abandoned cave’. When things might get desperate and Orlando threatens Duke Senior’s court to try and get food for Adam, his actions are undermined by Jacques who thrusts an apple onto the sword. We never think that Orlando was in danger when Oliver brings in the blood stained scarf and the only danger we are confronted with is a goat appearing out of the trap, who becomes the focus of some ‘he’s behind you’ moments.

The Globe stage had been extended for this production and, for me, there were some issues with viewpoints. We had supposedly good seats but when characters delivered speeches from the back of the Groundlings they were sometimes difficult to hear and we couldn’t be seen. I like this use of spaces, but as in any space, I feel that it is important to make sure that as many people in the audience can see and hear.

We see a real transformation in characters and the journey they take in the Forest of Arden. Of course Rosalind (Naomi Frederick) becomes a boy, but other transformations are also highlighted in this production. For example, Celia (Laura Rogers) starts the play off dressed regally like Queen Elizabeth and becomes a bit like Miranda Richardson’s ‘whose Queen’ in the second series of Blackadder. She is clearly favoured by her father, and so when she runs away we feel that she has probably made the bravest decision of all the characters. Jack Lasky’s Orlando starts as an angry frustrated and bitter man, not knowing what to do in his brother’s house after their father’s death and becomes a passionate lover in the woods and his dance at the end was as if he was still in character and enjoying and feeling every move.

Rosalind presents the epilogue at the end of the play and lifts her dress to reveal her breeches to remind us that on the Globe stage it was the men who played the women and Rosalind would have been played by a boy actor. Earlier in the play, Orlando is pleasantly surprised at how much he is delighted by Gannymeade’s kiss and you felt that he would have been content if Rosalind continued to be Gannymeade.

The dance at the end of the Globe production is ‘feel good’ in spirit and the production is a ‘feel good’ production. In three months, I have seen the darkness of the play represented in Supple’s version, a sense of surrealism represented in Michael Boyd’s RSC production and the sense of a play that is an escape into the woods and from the restraints of the court (everyday life) at The Globe.

Previews and Reviews

The Stage / News / Shakespeare’s Globe announce…
Young cast lead Young Hearts season at Globe …
The Stage / News / Shakespeare’s Globe announce…
As You Like It, Globe (Independent Review)
Evening Standard Review of the Globe As You Like It
WOS review of As You Like It (Globe)
As You Like It, Globe
The Guardian review of As You Like It
The Globe As You Like It in the Financial Times
Young cast lead Young Hearts season at Globe …
As You Like It, Globe (Telegraph Review)

Julie RabyLeave a comment

The Winter's Tale (Old Vic, 6th June 2009)

‘O call back yesterday, bid time return’
The line is above the stage as you take your seats. It’s a line from Richard II and not The Winter’s Tale as you might expect when you’ve come to see The Winter’s Tale. The scene in front of the audience is a very domestic scene. The family meal is set out, in contrast to the formal banquet that was set out in David Farr’s RSC production. The production doesn’t start with the two courtiers, but with Mamillius (Morven Christie) and his sad tale for winter. This makes us feel that we are now witnessing the imaginings of the small child rather than we are eavesdropping on the private business of the court through the conversation of the courtiers. The table returns for the sheep shearing feast later in the play.
There have been really mixed reviews of this production, and I can’t really see why some of the critics had some issues with it. I felt that the production made some really brave creative decisions and Simon Russell Beale, as Leontes, was just stunning. He can convey so much through his expression and gesture (like Brenda Blethyn in my review of Haunted). It was clear from the start that Leontes has suspicions and that his jealousy was not sudden. This was conveyed by his expression as Russell stood between Hermione (Rebecca Hall) and Polixenes (Josh Hamilton) when he asks Hermione to entreat Polixenes to stay. The result of this was that he did not hesitate around going into his ‘Too hot, Too hot’ speech stressing the consonant’s with confidence that he is being proved right.
In this production, there are moments when Rusell Beale’s Leontes waivers in his jealousy as if this is not an illness with no way out at the time as Antony Sher played the role in 1999. In this production it feels like Leontes is responsible for his behaviour and can change at any moment. It is often questioned why Paulina give Leontes the baby. She is a woman after all and why would she betray her queen by putting the child at risk. In this production Sinead Cusack’s Paulina give Leontes the baby and he cradles the child looks at it and for a brief period it feels like Paulina has done exactly the right thing until Leontes places the child on the chair and then snaps back into his rage. Paulina is really believable in the production and the fact she is seen entering with cases makes her entrance so far into the events so plausible. She’s been away and has come back to find the Court in disarray.
Leontes shows real affection for his son as well, which makes the death of Mamillius so painful and shocks him into realising that he has got things so wrong. I think that Mendes may have taken something from the 1999 Doran production in placing Mamillius in the chair and doubling the Perdita and Mamillius roles.
Simon Russell Beale delivers his soliloquies at the front of the stage, the lights go down and there is music in the background to indicate the sinister aspects of the speeches. The soliloquies are not heard by anyone else on stage, so he can go back to speak to his son and the speeches, as in some productions, do not disturb the son. In the trial scene, Hermione starts to read her speech from a script that has been prepared for her, but as she finds her own words and speaks passionately in her self defence. The oracle as a quill pen writing on its own didn’t work at all, this is an unintentional comic moments in the ‘tragic’ part of the play.
It’s clearly a pantomine bear that enters to eat poor Antigonous (Dakin Matthews) and it is at this moment the tone of the production changes in tone. Richard Easton’s old shepherd become Time and move us on sixteen years, because when we returned from the interval we were clearly in a different world. In a recent interview for radio 4’s Front Row, Simon Russell Beale said that the firs part of the play was set in Britain and the second in America to deal with the company’s different accents. This worked extremely well and we were transported to a hoedown. Ethan Hawke hammed it up so much as Autolcycus. He was extremely funny. At one point he resembles Johnny Depp as put on his disguise in order to attend the sheep shearing feast. When Perdita comes back as a sixteen year old to the Sicilian court, both Leontes and Paulina look at her face as if they recognise her. in this court looking like your parents has been important so this has to be the most obvious sign that there will be a happy ending.
Reviews and Previews
The Stage review of The Cherry Orchard at the Old Vic
Sam Mendes Interview
The Stage review of The Winter’s Tale at the Old Vic
Theatre preview: The Bridge Project, London S…
The New Straits Times Online…….
Telegraph- The Winter’s Tale and The Cherry orchard
Sam Mendes on the Bridge Project (BBC Interview)
The Cherry Orchard/The Winter’s Tale
Alexis Soloski: Beware of the bear – the dilemm…
WOS Review of The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale
Sam Mendes and Kevin Spacey: The Bridge Project…
Cherry Orchard/The Winter’s Tale
Guardian review of Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale
The Time review of The Winter’s Tale and Cherry Orchard
Article on The Winter’s Tale/The Cherry Orchard (The Times)
Official London – The Cherry Orchard
Official London – The Winter’s Tale
Simon Russell Beale on his love of books – Time…
Sam Mendes and Kevin Spacey: The Bridge Project…

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Richard Long Exhibition (Tate Britain, 6th June 2009)

The Richard Long Exhibition, ‘Heaven and Earth’ explores the patterning and textures of landscape. We are asked to think about whether Long ‘creates a work in the landscape or out of it’. The patterns on maps which outline his walks are works in the landscape, but where he has created sculpture with stones and twigs this must be out of the landscape. The work in/out of the landscape is not the only work that Long creates. There are also the photographs of the landscapes he produces to share which are also works in their own right. There is a question for me to whether Long is creating the work in the landscape himself or is just contributing to a culmination of different works, both natural and human made. Long’s projects aren’t necessarily collaborative but there must be a sense that Long is just one contributor to the work as it is seen.

Sometimes the work looks out of place in the landscape and at other times it merges into the landscape. The installations in the Tate Gallery itself look at odds with their surroundings in comparison to the photographs of the works from across the world.

The themeing of the exhibition was interesting but I lost the chronological development of Long’s work. This mattered for me, because I kept thinking did Long continue to do the same things over a period of time and I was interested in the journey. The exhibition is more earth than heaven. It made me think about the use of space. The landscapes which Long works are vast and the sense of these has to be conveyed by an exhibition which encloses all the different work in an internal space.

Reviews and Previews

Richard Long in The Telegraph
Richard Long Exhibition (Independent)
Times on Richard Long
Richard Long moves heaven and earth at Tate Britain
Richard Long takes art for a walk at Tate Britain
Richard Long Exhibition (Evening Standard)

Catalogue

Wallis, Clarrie. (2009) Richard Long: Heaven and Earth. Tate Publishing

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