A Twitter Encounter (and a few memories)

I’m relating how thrilling I found The Tartuffe to Corinne, and enthusing about how great it was to see a production that actually made you want to stand and cheer. We happen to be sitting at the Globe before the performance of Henry VIII at the time.

‘You need to see the Medea I saw at the Arcola last year, they’re brining it back. That was one of those.’

The conversation reminds me of something I read on Twitter a couple of days ago. ‘Did you see where Mark Shenton asked about theatrical productions which changed your life?’

‘Yes,…’ before Corinne could develop this much further, the chap seated directly in front of us turned.

‘I’m Mark Shenton’.

I have one of those slightly heart stopping moments. Well, we had been saying good things about him. We start chatting, and he asks what our theatrical ‘moments’ were. Of course, once asked, I can't come up with any one production, and just mutter, ‘oh, probably something at the RSC’, wishing I could be more specific.

Well, in hindsight, I can, so here goes. They are all RSC, they are all 1980’s, but they’ve remained in my memory whilst later performances have faded. Life changing, in that without my visits to the theatre in Stratford, moving to work, and live, in the West Midlands wouldn't have even been a consideration.

My first is Much Ado About Nothing, RST, 1982, Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack. It was my first visit to see a production in the main house, and I was utterly spellbound from start to finish. It was beautiful to look at, and the main performances just stunning. For a long time, all subsequent Benedick and Beatrice's were measured against that memory, and there are still things about it which I don’t think I’ve ever seen done better. I'd seen RSC productions on tour, but I think this was the one that made me utterly fall in love with Stratford, and the RSC, and feel that I needed to go there as often as I could.

My second is Les Liaisons Dangereuses at The Other Place in 1985. Again, a first visit, this time to TOP, when it was still a tin hut. An incredible cast, Alan Rickman, Lindsay Duncan, Juliet Stevenson, Fiona Shaw, Lesley Manville. At times I felt I was holding my breath for how the story would unfold. Looking back at my diary from the time, I described the experience as ‘like eavesdropping on the private intrigues between the protagonists’*. I’ve seen Les Liaisons a couple of times since, but I doubt any production will have the impact and power of that first production.

My third is The Fair Maid of the West in the Swan Theatre, 1986, it’s first season. An ensemble production of a not particularly great play but so full of energy and the sheer joy of life that it was another standing ovation show. It used the Swan space brilliantly taking the audience from shore, to shipboard, to pirate attack, to Morocco and back to Cornwall. Wonderful also because it was so unexpected. Again a great cast, Imelda Staunton, Sean Bean, Simon Russell Beale, Pete Postlethwaite. For many years it held the record of the show I’d seen the most, as I saw it 6 times.

There are many others which I’ve loved. Nicholas Nickleby, (the revival, not the original, as I wasn’t lucky enough to see that), The Plantagenet’s, through to The Glorious Moment of all the History plays. I know I’m incredibly lucky to have seen some of the great productions, and performances, of the past 25 years** but often it isn’t the individual performance which stays in the memory, it’s the company, the ensemble.

*which goes to show that I’ve been a diarist for a long time, and also a long term theatresnob
** which however you look at it is a pretty scary time span (and yes, I do know that it’s 28 years since 1982)