Best of 2010

Theatre: Shakespeare

1. Romeo and Juliet (RSC).

2. King Lear (RSC).

3. As You Like It (West Yorkshire Playhouse).

4. Measure for Measure (Almeida).

5. The Winter’s Tale (RSC/Roundhouse).

6. Henry IV part 2 (Globe).

7. Macbeth (Globe).

8. Antony and Cleopatra (RSC).

9. Antony and Cleopatra (Liverpool Playhouse).

10. Hamlet (The Crucible, Sheffield).

11. King Lear (Donmar).

12. Henry VIII (The Globe).

13. The Tempest (Old Vic).

14. As You Like It (Old Vic)

15. Macbeth (Belt Up/York Theatre Royal).

Theatre: Not Shakespeare

1. Jerusalem (Apollo).

2. After the Dance (National).

3. An Enemy of the People (Sheffield Crucible).

4. Women Beware Women (National).

5. London Assurance (National).

6. Enron (Theatre Royal, Newcastle)

7. The Habit of Art (National Theatre).

8. Corrie! (Lowry, Salford)

9. The Real Thing (Old Vic).

10. Canterbury Tales (West Yorkshire Playhouse/Northern Broadsides).

11. La Bete (Comedy Theatre).

12. Death of a Salesman (West Yorkshire Playhouse).

13. Three Sisters (Lyric, Hammersmith).

14. The Misanthrope (Comedy Theatre)

15. Beating Berlusconi. (York Theatre Royal).

  

Exhibitions

1. Gauguin (Tate Modern).

2. Van Gogh (Royal Academy).

3. Renaissance drawings (The British Museum).

4. The Book of the Dead (British Museum).

5. Venice. Canaletto and his rivals. (The National Gallery).

6. Sargent and the Sea (Royal Academy).

7. Rude Britannia (Tate Britain).

8. Summer Show (Royal Academy).

9. Beatles to Bowie (National Portrait Gallery).

10. Chris Ofili (Tate Britain).

  

Books

1. Andrea Levy The Long Song.

2. Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall.

3. AS Byatt – The Children’s Book.

4. Rose Tremain – Trespass.

5. Colm Toibin Brooklyn.

6. Ian McEwan  Solar.

7. Paul Magrs Diary of a Doctor Who Addict.

8. Tony Blair The Journey.

9. Kate Atkinson Started Early, Took My Dog.

10. Alexander McCall Smith The Double Comfort Safari Club.

TV

1. Coronation Street –  especially for Jack’s Death and the Live episode (ITV).

3. Ashes to Ashes (BBC1).

4. Doctor Who – The End of Time part 2 (BBC1).

5. Doctor Who – especially for the eleventh hour (BBC1).

6. Downton Abbey (ITV1)

7. I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here (ITV1).

8. Macbeth (BBC 4).

9. Luther (BBC1).

10. Silent Witness (BBC 1).

and my guilty pleasure of the year

Peter Kay at the Studio, Lowry (and again at the Manchester Evening News Arena).

Julie RabyLeave a comment

Romeo and Juliet again..(RSC at the Roundhouse, 4th December 2010)

It felt a little bit strange going into a theatre that looked like a theatre I had become very familiar with, but was slightly different.   In reconstructing  the Courtyard in the Roundhouse, the RSC have created a version of the Stratford theatre, rather than a replica theatre.  There’s no upper circle and the rusts and reds are transformed to blacks, resulting in the feeling of being in a black box.  The seats are not so comfortable, as they are clearly portable seating.  I was sat in the front row of the stalls and it felt that the stage was a little shorter and a little higher than the Courtyard thrust stage in Stratford.  Last time I saw this production, I was sat in the middle of the stalls in Newcastle, and it was great to be close to the performance again.  I feel that the proscenium arch has it advantages, but being near a thrust stage  is much more invigorating than sat far away from a proscenium arch stage.  Being right up on the edge of a performance is a fantastic experience and particularly for this production.  This time watching Romeo and Juliet, I felt that I was actually in the middle of the fight scene and the masked ball.  I was so close that Jonjo O’Neill’s Mercutio threw his money at me, and I was able to pick it up. For the first time when watching this production of Romeo and Juliet,  I noticed that Mariah Gale’s Juliet wiggles her toes just as Romeo is about to drink the poison.  He has his back to her and doesn’t see her doing this.  It’s as if a moment could change everything and if he had  turned round, the ending could have been so different.  As I was watching this time, I was thinking that Juliet was a bit like Hermione, and in the white wedding dress, she was  like a statue coming alive.  Instead of finding new life, she comes back to life only to brutally stab herself and die in an instant.

I will see this production again in the new theatre, and I am very interested in seeing

My Other Posts

http://betweentheacts.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/romeo-and-juliet-the-courtyard-theatre-wc-17th-may-2010/

http://betweentheacts.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/romeo-and-juliet-theatre-royal-newcastle-and-york/

Julie Raby1 Comment

Romeo and Juliet (The Courtyard Theatre, w/c 17th May 2010)

In the final episode of  the television series ‘Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes’, we learnt that everyone was dead after all.  Sam Tyler and Alex Drake had been catapulted back in time into a kind of purgatory which resembled an old-fashioned cop drama.  Gene Hunt had been shot dead as a young policeman on the beat on coronation day.  He couldn’t accept his death, so he set up a fictional world for other dead police officers who had issues that needed to be resolved before they entered The Railway Arms, which was a kind of gateway to heaven.  I felt that there was something of this Ashes to Ashes style lingering in the world of the dead in the current Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production of Romeo and Juliet.  Romeo is a tourist that finds himself caught up in his own story, and it is a story that plays out over and over again, always ending with Romeo’s suicide.   
 

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.

As the auditorium is opened up to the audience to enter, in the foyer we can hear monks chanting.  When the play is about to start, the audience are sat in a gloomy auditorium.  The set is black  with a rose window reflected onto the stage.  It feels like we are in a cathedral and the inner stage is a chapel lit by candles.  These black and amber contrasts work throughout the production and are stunning.  They are achieved through flowers, masks, and flames that flicker on the back of the stage at particular moments in the production.  The play begins with the entrance of a Museum Guide (Noma Dumezweni), who whilst looking rather stern-faced asks us to switch off our mobile phones. This framing device presents the theatre as a museum space and suggests that what we will see might be an exhibit in a museum. As the guide leaves the stage, Romeo enters with his camera and audio guide.  As he works through the difference language options,  he finally selects the English language facility and the prologue is played over the speakers.  As this is happening, the Capulets and Montagues emerge from the back of the stage  in slow motion and doused in smoke.  This filmic device is very effective and suddenly the play explodes onto the stage.  

 

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.

  
Further Information

http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/romeo-and-juliet/

 
Reviews and Previews
RSC Romeo and Juliet in The Guardian
RSC Romeo and Juliet in The Telegraph
The Evening Standard on the RSC Romeo and Juliet
The Stage on the RSC Romeo and Juliet
RSC Romeo and Juliet in The Independent
WOS RSC Romeo and Juliet

Julie Raby1 Comment