Julie Raby

Haunted (Manchester Royal Exchange, May 30th 2009)

Jack (Niall Buggy) and Gladys (Brenda Blethyn) have been married for many years, and one day while Gladys is at work, a young woman, Hazel (Beth Cooke) knocks on the door and Jack begins an obsession, which ends in tragedy for all three characters. Hazel is invited back, and when she visits, Jack gives her his wife’s most treasured possessions.

For those who know the stage at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, they will know that it is in the round. When the audience enters the auditorium, they are confronted with a small living room with a few chairs and a doll on a swing in the Berry’s flat. The sense of looking into an enclosed world is an important element in the viewing of Edna O’Brien’s Haunted. The set is part of the rawness of the theatre itself. You can see the actors entering and exiting and just make out through frosted screens the actors making their changes off stage. I felt that blurring between the fiction and reality is played out in the play itself.

At the beginning of the production, the two women, Hazel and Jack’s wife Gladys stand on a revolve which transports them round the edges of the living room as if they are images of ghosts set before Jack. The white wedding dress worn by one woman is contrasted with the white surgical gown and cap worn by the other. The figures feel like two visions of the same women and this sense of just not quite knowing something is there throughout the play. We are aware at the end of the play that this is a retrospective scene, but it sets up the feel of the production from the start.

It is never clear where, or when, the play takes place, though we are given some sense of the place and atmosphere through character’s dialogue. Edna O’Brien wrote in the programme, “I first conceived of a room not in the hub of the metropolis of London, but on the outskirts, on the fringes, that physical metier reflecting the life and aspirations of the three characters”. The characters talk about the being on the outskirts of London, but as the audience are only taken to the flat of the Berrys and the seaside with Jack and Hazel. The play deals with the texture and feel of possessions and about how relationships can be seen this way as well. Towards the end of the play, Gladys wears a stunning coat and dress set with a large rose pattern which make us think of the flowers in the garden that at times is projected onto the stage. Yes, there isn’t the smell of tomatoes just before they become ripe, but we feel it and understand why this is such an important image for Gladys at the end of the play. Tastes and smells are important such as the taste of Madeira wine. Gladys is always smart, wearing her heels and coming home from work at the doll factory looking unruffled, but as the audience underneath she is struggling to cope with pressures of life and work. Jack has a delight in language as well, repeating Hazel’s elocution verses like a child delighting in the challenge and sounds. There are constant references to Shakespeare especially Hamlet and Ophelia. It isn’t surprising that Hazel goes mad like Ophelia, maybe her confusion about her relationship with the father figure she clearly relates to.

It’s the emotional betrayal which is so shocking in this play, when it is Gladys who goes out to work, so Jack can stay at home. Jack had been with other women, so infidelity wasn’t new in this relationship. Jack pretends he has cancer, but he is the route of the emotional cancer in his relationships with his wife and the Hazel. Gladys feels that reading has no function if Jack can’t get a job. Her speech at the end of the play about the problems of dreaming shows her frustration with Jack as well as her anger. Brenda Blethyn makes this role work so well and uses her whole body to convey her emotion through the production. Her facial expressions, the way she stood conveys her broken heart and sense of betrayal when she gave her husband more chances. The end is just so sad. Is Hazel like the doll that overlooks the set throughout? Each doll made in Gladys’ factory has its own personality, determined by the way the eyelashes are stuck on. I think Gladys is also the doll who looks on and can’t really change things.

There are gasps from the audience when Gladys appears at the door towards the end of the play. In this play, there are elements of the farce genre. I discuss farce in my blog when I talked about Boeing Boeing. The fairground ride reflects the opening scene and at the end, rather than just going round and round and in and out like a stage farce where the boy does get his girl the lives of the characters are truly destroyed.

Reviews and Previews

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The Stage / Reviews / Haunted

May 31, 2009

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The RSC's Hamlet to be filmed

It is now official. The RSC production of Hamlet is to be filmed by the BBC and shown later this year on BBC 2. There had been a petition calling for the filming of the RSC’s 2008 production. The petition has reached nearly 8,000 signatures showing that the audience can have some influence on decisions.

There had been rumours for some time and Oliver Ford Davies had let slip the possibility in an interview with The Telegraph back in April. Rumours were that the production would be filmed in June. This seemed like a real possibility because Tennant would have finished filming Doctor Who, Ford Davis would be about to embark on All’s Well That Ends Well, and Patrick Stewart would be at the Haymarket in Waiting For Godot. Tennant was quoted as saying that he was in talks about a film version. Anyway, it is all official. The Daily Mail was first as far as I can see to make the announcement and then the BBC followed with an official statement. Since then the RSC have issued a Press Release.

References

The news breaking in the Daily Mail…

Royal Shakespeare Compnay Official Press Release

BBC Announcement

What the Daily Telegraph had to say

May 29, 2009

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Nights at the Museum 2 (27 May 2009)

I really enjoyed Nights at the Museum 1, even though I thought that I wouldn’t. I’m not sure what I expected in going to the sequel. More of the same I suppose and that was it. However, it was more of the same and more and more so that the whole narrative was so tightly packed it was like wading though mud. In the first film, the story and characters were built up, but in the sequel I felt I was dive bombed straight into the story as if in one of the toy planes that feature in the film. All the old characters from the first film were brought back and then locked away. That meant that we were introduced to new characters, but there were just too many of them to really work. Was there any good moments? Well the cherubs/cupids were sweet and the thinker was more physical than cerebral, but for me that was it.

May 27, 2009

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Star Trek (13th May 2009)

In some of the posts I have been writing about time travel. In thinking about the aesthetic used to represent the seventies and in reviewing Doctor Who. This new version of Star Trek is not only about the future, it attempts to recreate the sixties. Women wear short dresses and men have rather questionable haircuts. The earth scenes look like they are set on a 1960’s university campus. The story is about time travel in it as well, so we have several layers of narrative in different time zones. The film is action packed and the recurring motif of Kirk clinging on as he dangles over a crevice makes us realise that even though Kirk is in danger he will always survive.

It’s a great film. Spock is the only character that looks like he did in the original and this is a good job because Leonard Nimoy makes a guest appearance.

The film was fun and action packed. It was humorous and entertaining. It seems to have set up the possibility of doing some sequel to this prequel!!!

May 14, 2009

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The Winter's Tale and As You Like It (RSC 7th, 8th and 9th May 2009)

On the cover of the programme for current RSC production of The Winter’s Tale , Greg Hicks (Leontes) stands in the middle of a winter landscape and glances down at an ‘old master’ painting depicting an idyllic classical landscape. The programme image suggests the pastoral world as an alternative to the world that Leontes inhabits. It also suggests an escape from the monochrome world where the road goes nowhere. The contrast between the masculine dominated sphere of the court is also contrasted in As You Like It with the exterior world of the Forest of Arden. In both plays this alternative world is inhabited by those that play god and goddesses, shepherds and shepherdesses, lovers and the loved – the winter world by those who play the brutal ruler. Yet, the alternative is still full of jealousies, thieves, wild animals, the threat of betrayal and a need to survive. In considering these two plays together it is possible to make meanings out of the viewing both productions now being performed at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford upon Avon.

I’m sure that when the RSC have decided to put As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale into the schedules together, they did so because there are clear parallels between of the themes and ideas in both plays.

The plays deal with a transition from court into a pastoral world. It is a movement from the interior to the exterior. The male rulers’ tirades destroy all around him. The family is split apart and the domestic work is transformed into a dystopia. Fathers and daughters are separated. Brothers are set against brothers with echoes of the ‘primal eldest’ curse also explored in Hamlet, but in these two plays there is forgiveness and reconciliation. It is forgiveness and reconciliation which makes these two plays and these productions of them so powerful.

It would make sense, with an ensemble company working together for two years, to explore some of the links between the two plays in the two productions. However, this is not necessarily the case, because the ensemble has been split into two companies to work on the two plays and have different directors – Michael Boyd for As You Like It and David Farr for The Winter’s Tale. So while in some cases the audience, who are often likely to visit both, may make their own links between the two productions there are differences in creative decisions and approaches as well.

Both sets give the impression of timeless worlds that could be anywhere (like the set of Twelfth Night in the Theatre Royal, York production see earlier blog entry). The sets represent the disintegration of society and at points reflect the state of characters’ minds. As the plays progress the structures they inhabit start to fall apart. The Winter’s Tale opens in the library, and the audience is reminded of learning and wisdom, which should be about being rationale and common sense. The play starts with a formal dinner party, but as the relationships between the characters break down the set falls apart as the play progresses. There is a surprise which Miching Malicho won’t spoil in this blog. There is a similar effect as the set transforms through As You Like it, and the Court of Duke Frederick (Sandy Neilson) feels clinical and cold. When the audience enter the Courtyard Theatre they are faced with a tiled backdrop and stage floor The cast entering doing a formal dance in stiff Elizabethan costumes. As As You Like It progresses the set opens up as the characters open up their minds and traps in the floor and the tiles in the back of the set open. In The Winter’s Tale the traps and flies are used to great effect particularly in the second half.

Corin (Geoffrey Freshwater) skinning his rabbit on stage as the audience return from the interval break is a reminder of the violence and brutality that is present in the two plays. Hermione (Kelly Hunter) stands with her dress stained by the blood of birth as she is accused by husband in the trial scene. Servants enter Duke Frederick’s court with blood on their faces, clearly beaten for hiding the departure e of Celia and Rosalind. The Duke keeps a wrestler so he can inflict pain on others and the fight between Charles (David Carr) and Orlando (JonJo O’Neill) is a savage affair.

The response of characters to this abuse is not always passive. Herminoe is angry as she defends herself in her trial and Paulina (Noma Dumezweni) shows fury at the way the queen has been treated. There is so much humanity in the plays to counteract the turbulence. In As You Like It, Orlando will look after the old servant Adam (Peter Shorey) at all costs, protecting him like a child. He enters the stage carrying him just as Jacques finishes the ‘Seven ages of Man’ speech becoming a visual reminder of age. In The Winter’s Tale, Hermione is really content in her pregnancy and she delights in her young son as he tells his ‘sad tale for winter’. There is a strong bond between Rosalind (Katy Stephens) and Celia (Mariah Gale). Rosalind transforms herself into a boy by stripping off the formality represented by the black dress and letting her hair down. The thinly drawn moustache seems to emphasise her femininity and reminds us that she is just playing a man and is a woman. She is the one that leads in the woods, and draws Celia around in the handcart supporting her cousin. Touchstone maakes us laugh as he takes Celia’s place in the cart to be dragged off stage via the traverse by an unknowing Rosalind.

After all, As You Like It is a comedy and though a tragedy in the first part The Winter’s Tale becomes a comedy in the second part. Orlando has wooed Rosalind with the verses strewn across the audience and on the roads outside the theatre. The audience have been invited to write more as part of a RSC competition. They are invited into the marriage feast at the end of As You Like It as ribbons are presented to audience members. The production has moved through time and we are now up to date. In The Winter’s Tale the marriage of Perdita and Florizel bring young love back to the decaying court of Sicilia.

Hermione’s statue is ashen white bathed in light. On her face are the lines of time and as she comes back to life it feels as if she thaws and melts into her human form. it is a very moving scene watched by the audience through the eyes of the mesmerized courtiers and royal family on stage.

Both RSC productions take the audience through space and time. As time passes and the performances develop, the structure of the theatre will change on the move to Newcastle in the autumn, so I would be interested to see how these two productions will mature and transform as the ensemble get to know each other better and maybe utilise the connections between the two plays even further.

Production Details

Production Details for As You Like It

Production Details for The Winter’s Tale

Production Photographs

As You Like It (On theRSC’s Facebook Site)

The Winter’s Tale (On the RSC’s Facebook Site)

Reviews and Previews

As You Like It