I’ve added my thoughts on the RSC ensemble to the @ShakespeareBT – Shakespeare Birthplace Trust blog, Blogging Shakespeare. They’ve started an interesting debate about the current RSC ensemble. You can find it here: http://bit.ly/bcXLeR
What’s happening to my blog
Just to say that I have had a couple of important deadlines recently and the blog has been slightly neglected because of this. I’ve seen a lot of theatre recently, and would like to catch up with writing up my thoughts in the next few weeks.
Women Beware Women (National Theatre, 5th June 2010)
Marianne Elliott is a really thoughtful director who considers very carefully the aesthetic of a production. I felt that she has done a really good job with Middleton’s macabre Women Beware Women, and her choice of twentieth-century Italian costumes works very well. Central to the play is the game of chess between Leantio’s mother and Livia. The game becomes a metaphor for the way characters play each other. This production brings home the different sexual manipulations in the play For example, the virgin bride married below her status, the rape by the Duke, the incest between niece and uncle, and the older woman’s lust for a younger man. Lez Brotherson’s set brings out the contrast between the aristocracy and working classes, and at the end as it starts to revolve all the elements of the plot are brought together in a stunning finale. This worked particularly well on the large Olivier stage.
What I found really interesting about this play is that women are the revengers and I thought Harriet Walter is stylish and sinister as Livia. Lauren O’Neil as Bianco and Vanessa Kirby as Isabella were also very strong.
Reviews and Previews
Romeo and Juliet (The Courtyard Theatre, w/c 17th May 2010)
When I was in Stratford not so long ago, I was lucky to see two versions of this production. One with the understudy, Dyfan Dwyfor, playing Romeo and then again with Sam Troughton playing Romeo. In the first version, I saw a cautious Romeo, who was a little self conscious of himself as he found himself caught up in the violent renaissance world. In the second version, I saw a very different Romeo that easily slotted into this world.
The two central characters are really well played. Juliet (Mariah Gale) is rebellious, and when we meet her she is a bit of a moody teenager, swinging her glow stick with vigour as if this action is an act of defiance against her elders. In the first half of the play, I felt that Romeo plays at being in love. Troughton brings out this aspect so well, particularly in the balcony scene where is crouches in the centre vomitorium saying his lines as if acting as if he was still outside this play. On the night that I went, Troughton moved from the vomitorium to sit on the vacant seat next to me to speak his lines, and for me that emphasised the feeling that he was also an observer of the play, as well as a character in it.
Jonjo O’Neill’s Mercutio is a showman and the acting is totally over the top, which makes it a fantastic performance and for me one of the delights of the production. The dyed blonde hair is a nice touch. The audience really loved this performance and gasped when they realised that Mercutio was hurt and was about to die. Mercutio sometimes straddles the contemporary space that Romeo has come from enters Romeo’s dream/death world riding Romeo’s bicycle onto the stage.
It feels like death really does walk into this play. The ghost of Tybalt walks up to Juliet’s tomb. Lady Capulet (Christine Entwisle) is distraught by Tybalt’s death, but can pull herself together for the wedding. At the end Juliet screams when she is stabs herself.
There are very strong performances from Noma Dumezweni as the nurse and Forbes Masson as the priest as the adults who should protect the young people but let them down badly. Richard Katz is excellent as Juliet’s violent father. His performance is a lovely contrast to his great comic portrayal of Touchstone in As You Like It.
I felt that the current RSC production is exciting, energetic, and gripping. I think that this is probably the best production coming out of the current RSC ensemble, and that was a surprise for me, because I normally find the play a little tedious and though companies work hard at bringing out the tragedy it doesn’t always work for me. I felt that this was the ensemble working well together and is a real success.
http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/romeo-and-juliet/
Macbeth (Shakespeare's Globe, 8th May 2010)
On entering the Globe auditorium there are notices which state:
‘Please note that this is a gruesome production of a brutal play.’
The notices set the tone for the production, which is comic and gruesome at the same time. Hovering above the stage is a metal circle. Could this symbolise the crown (the golden round) that Macbeth coverts and is to be at the heart of his downfall?
Lucy Bailey has the ability to surprise in her approach to using the Globe space. I really liked the way the ravens descended from the netting in her production of Timon of Athens a couple of years ago. In that production the focus was on greed. For her production of Macbeth, Bailey has created a kind of hell, and the emphasis is on the ground and the under stage areas. The groundlings are covered with a black sheet with slits for their heads to poke through. The effect is of decapitated heads floating above the sheet. Those under the sheet squeal and howl as the actors move through them. This business can be alluring, as well as distracting, as the audience find themselves watching groundlings rather than the performance.
Smoke appears and pipes playing signal the start of the production. The witches taunt the audience, and bloodied heads appear and one of these is revealed to be the captain.
Like Lucy Bailey’s RSC Julius Caesar this production attempts to show death in its most brutal form such as the crack we hear when Cawdor is put to death and his neck broken. Dead bodies are swallowed by the earth as they are dumped down traps. There’s lots of blood, as we would expect from Lucy Bailey who makes us focus on the visceral, as well as the intellectual ideas. For example, Macbeth’s hands are covered in blood after the murder of Duncan and this is echoed in the black sheets which are shrouding the Globe pillars are tinged in red as if stained with the blood of the king. The corpse of Duncan is brought on stage like a child, but it is also like a piece of meat. The theme of the body as meat continues throughout the play as Banquo’s ghost appears out of the raw meat banquet in the banquet scene. Macbeth has blood on his hands from handling the bloodied meat, but we also see this as Banquo’s blood. It feels like the physical images are reflective of Macbeth’s psychological trauma.
This production oscillates between comedy and the macabre. This is partly achieved through the witches being on stage for most of the play, and their costumes echo that of the Globe ushers, as if they are directing the players through the play. The witches are on stage during Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy, and hand the dagger to Macbeth during his ‘Is this a dagger’ soliloquy. The grotesque porter haunts the production and, like the witches, is ever-present. In the closing scenes, Macbeth is alone with this man, and at the end of the play the porter is pushed to the floor which seemed to signal the end of Macbeth’s power. The witches grasp Macbeth and he is finally theirs.
Reviews and Previews
between the acts 