My theatre year - 2010

It was a pretty good one as far as number of productions seen, as I managed to see 40 shows, after a bit of a slow start in the first few months of the year. I certainly seemed to see a wide variety in many different spaces, and some of the most exciting theatre I saw wasn’t in traditional theatres. It was also a year in which I finally achieved my ambition to complete the Shakespeare canon, so thank you to the Globe for performing Henry VIII.

So, in the best tradition of end of year reviews (which I’m a bit late with, as we’re into the new one), here are my highlights, and lowlights, of 2010.

My favourite Shakespeare production was undoubtedly the Globe’s Henry IV Part 1, which was a great ensemble performance, with a brilliant Falstaff from Roger Allam, bringing out the humour and the pathos of a character that, in lesser hands, can seem quite tedious, so that you wonder why Hal would bother with him.

My favourite musical production was Chess, which I thought was an excellent, and exceedingly camp, revival. I also enjoyed Spamalot, though more so on a second viewing, and that might have been partly because the cast were clearly having so much fun, in what was Marcus Brigstocke’s last week in the show.

My theatre ‘discovery’ of the year was Belt Up Theatre, who we first saw in The Tartuffe back in May, not knowing what we were letting ourselves in for. We then saw them in an Edinburgh attic, a York park, a library, and a pub restaurant, as well as in the Theatre Royal. I love them for their energy, their prolific output, and sheer enthusiasm for producing theatre. Yes, some of the shows can be a bit ragged at the edges, but that’s part of the fun, and all of them have been unmistakably ‘Belt Up’ in style. It’s a long time since I’ve found much in the theatre at York exciting, but they are a truly exciting company.

I also attended some of the NT Live cinema transmissions, seeing London Assurance, Complicite’s A Disappearing Number, and Hamlet. It’s a great idea to let people see these productions who would never otherwise get the chance, but it inevitably looses something, as you are watching what the camera selects for you, and the immediacy of live theatre is lost. I felt it worked best with the comedy, reasonably well for Hamlet, but not particularly well for Complicite.

As for low points, well, sadly, here I have to single out the RSC Antony and Cleopatra that we saw at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford. I think at the time I tried to see the best in it, though when you find yourself singling out Enobarbus for praise, you know you’re in trouble. The problem was in the casting of Cleopatra, and yes, she really was that bad. I longed to see what Katy Stephens, the understudy, would have done with the role. I will, however, excuse the RSC this aberration, as I’m really looking forward to seeing the new RST now that it’s complete.

As for 2011, well, I’m looking forward to Belt Up doing the Beggar’s Opera, which sounds like a perfect show for them, I’m also looking forward to visiting London, even though we have nothing booked at the moment, and to going to Stratford*. I may also finally get to New York, so it could finally be Broadway, baby. And if yesterday’s rumours prove true (and who knows), I would LOVE to see DT play Benedick.

*All this makes me realise that I need to get some theatre booked, the diary is empty!

The 37th Play

However you look at it, I've waited a long time to achieve this. All 37* Shakespeare plays, on stage, in professional productions**. My rules.

Some have been very difficult to achieve. Timon of Athens was a toughie, in more senses than one, as Will seemed to forget about an ending to that one. Titus Andronicus was ticked off four years ago at the Globe, and it was the Globe which came up trumps again for the final play, Henry VIII***. And, really, the finale one had to be either there, or Stratford, didn't it?

Even better was when we discovered that Dominic Rowan was to play Henry (clearly the days of ginger Henry's are over), as we (re-)discovered him in As You last Summer.

The last time Henry VIII was performed at the Globe, the cannon set the thatch alight and the theatre burned down. 'Risky', I commented, when we got to that bit in the performance.
As a spectacle it worked really well, with wonderful costumes, and really suited the Globe space. As a play, well, it's not one of Will's best, though some scenes and characters are very strong. Dense and unfamiliar, it took some concentration at the start until your ears adjusted to the words. It suffers from not having one main protagonist, and could do with more severe cutting than it had received in this production, as the second half of the second act did drag a bit. Henry doesn't have a great deal to do, apart from stand around in rather fabulous costumes (very fine calves, Dominic), and I can see why they kept this section in, as it's the bit that shows Henry as the just and wise king, but it did seem unneccessary.

The strongest characters are the Duke of Buckingham, Katherine, a fine and very moving performance from Kate Duchene, and Wolsley, a disappointing one from Ian McNeice, so much so that his fall from power went for nothing, and you never felt that he actually cared at all. In contrast, Katherine was electric in the trial scene. It was a production which also utilised the lesser characters well to add some humour, and to play off the Globe audience. As we've done before we had two seated tickets, and two groundling tickets so that we got two different expereinces of the performance.

And the sun shone. An excellent way to mark this milestone - and thanks, and many hugs to Corinne, Cat, and Dean who were there to celebrate it with me.

*Let's not talk about any additions to the canon, ok?

**So no conflations of the Henry VI's, and no, Kneehigh's Cymbeline does not count, given it met the Shakespeare play once in a bar

***There have been two other occasions when know I could have seen it, both in Stratford, in 1983 and 1996. It doesn't come round very often.

All the World's a Stage (or, the whirligig of time*)

We’d booked to see As You Like It at the Globe. I didn’t get there last year, so was determined to this year.

Before the performance, we’d come to the conclusion that they have a rather brilliant gift shop, and, according to Cat, very good chocolate brownies. I’d bought a rain cape, as the sky looked threatening, and then had a bit of a rant about the quotation on it**.

It was as we went in that I saw him on the piazza. I was almost sure, but not certain. I mean, it’s been years since I’ve seen him in the flesh, and he’s not exactly looking like himself in his currently most familiar role. When we went into the yard, I scanned around to see if I could see him. Cat must have wondered what I was on as I went on about how the wood had mellowed over the years, but I soon spotted him on the back row of one of the bays directly behind us. By this time I was pretty sure, for that profile is unmistakable, but I still sought Cat’s confirmation at the interval. Our first response was to Tweet this news!

I was only in the same theatre as Alan Rickman! Not only that, we were watching ‘As You’, which was the first play I ever saw him in. I’d been talking about that production earlier, as there was a photo from it in the programme. The Jaques on stage wasn’t a patch on his performance, the consensus being that this one was a bit sleazy.

At the end of the play we were out first, being groundlings, and were meeting Corinne. I rang her, knowing that she’d never forgive me if she missed him:

‘Where are you?’
‘By the river, near the gate’
‘You need to come towards the gate’
‘There’ll be a lot of people’
‘You need to come to the gate!’

By this time I was almost following him down the steps. Through the gate I spotted her, and dashed over, pointing him out as he headed in the other direction. There was a moment, a look, and an ‘oh my God!’

Later, I reflected in the weird theatrical circle which had brought us from that performance in Stratford all those years ago, to August 2009 at the Globe. For Alan was the start of my stage dooring. I’m not even sure I’d have done it without him (though I guess I’d have found another actor somewhere). I didn’t realise then what I was letting myself in for. I don’t think I’d change a bit of it though!

*Yes, wrong play, I know!
**According the Globe, ‘it falleth as the gentle rain from heaven’, according to all my texts, ‘it droppeth’. The Globe needs to find a quarto or an alternative text, or there may have to be words.

'The great Globe itself'

We’ve been sitting drinking wine in the Anchor* pub on Bankside, complaining about the misleading information on their menus, which proclaim the pub to be on the site of the ‘original’ Globe Theatre.

‘Hmmm, only of the Globe was really huge’
‘Maybe it had a very big yard’
‘Actually, sitting here, we’d probably be in a brothel, or a bear pit’

There’s a further issue about the plays proclaimed to be ‘first performed’ at the Globe. Henry V, Richard II, ok.
‘Romeo and Juliet?! I don’t think so!’

Coza decides she needs to take me past the real site of the Globe on the way back to the station. It is a couple of streets back from the river, and adjacent to the Rose Theatre.

There’s not much to see. The ground has been marked out, but the majority of the theatre site is buried beneath a listed Georgian building. I look at it. It’s not an impressive building. You’d think they could have sacrificed it for the history beneath the stones.

‘Just think what could be down there’
‘Cardenio…, or perhaps Love’s Labour’s Won!’

Just for a moment, my mind drifts. The sense of history as I stand here is almost overwhelming. This was the centre of Elizabethan Theatre, and I’m in the footsteps of Will perhaps more than I ever am in Stratford. Never mind that who knows what I’d be standing in! THIS is where it happened.

*A pub with an orderly queue at the bar. Tourists!

Meet the Author

We went along to see Liberty on the other night. Direct from Shakespeare’s Globe, it was as near as I’m going to get to there this year.

A new play by Glyn Maxwell, based on a novel by Anatole France (no, I’d never heard of him either), it’s the story of a sub-Robespierre revolutionary and his journey from idealist to supporter of the ‘Terror’. As a play, it was very ‘wordy’, but enjoyable, and there were some very strong performances, from Kirsty Besterman as an actress from the National (bet they had fun with that on the South Bank – it fell a bit flat in York!), and John Bett as an ex-Duke.

At the interval, we had a bit of a wager on who was for the chop. It’s a measure of it’s unpredictability in that we got it wrong in some cases. I was very disappointed with the size of the audience, but they did give the cast a warm reception. It’s only on for three days, so I’d expected a better turn out, but then I guess it’s quite a hard sell. I’m sure Flashdance, the Musical is doing much better business down the road at the Opera House.

Afterwards, rather than stay in the theatre bar, we went to the Lion and Lamb, which has recently opened. Corinne and I had tried to get in a few weeks ago, but couldn’t find a seat, but this time we found a separate room overlooking the street. Decorated with lanterns, and old prints, with huge wooden tables and pew like seats, we commented that we could still be in the play.

The next thing we saw was the actors entering the room, and sitting at the next table. From overheard comments, it seemed they felt at home too. We exchanged a few comments with them and returned to our conversation. A few minutes later, we heard the actors going ‘author, author’ when another man entered. No prizes for guessing who he was then (and no prizes for guessing that they wanted this to be noticed)!

He turned to us as asked what we thought of the play. It was one of those moments where you don’t quite know what to say. You can’t rave about it, but it was interesting, and had some good characters. The theatre snob in me paused for a moment. The others were less troubled by this and were complementary.

Turning to me, he asked ‘did you find it dense, and hard to follow?’

‘No, not at all – but then I do know quite a lot about the French Revolution*’

*Thanks to A level History all those years ago – so ‘quite a lot’ is perhaps a bit excessive.

A theatre's magic, isn't it?

Spoiler Alert - in case you haven't watched 'The Shakespeare Code' yet

And so, the Doctor met Shakespeare, and possibly for the first time met a human with an intellect to match his own. There were some lovely in jokes, but I have to admit the only one that made me laugh out loud was the allusion that Shakespeare was bi-sexual ’57 academics just punched the air’.

I was waiting for the quotes, you see. It was pretty obvious that the Doctor would give Shakespeare some of his best lines, and some of them felt shoehorned in, in an ‘ooh, aren’t we clever’ way. The bits I liked best were the less obvious references; the Doctor saying that a skull he found backstage looked like a Sycorax; a reference to ‘a winter’s tale and a ‘blasted heath’.

As Martha said, you should never meet your heroes, and certainly Dean Lennox Kelly wasn’t my idea of Shakespeare (I prefer the Joseph Fiennes version, in Shakespeare in Love), but then I have to acknowledge that the target audience here isn’t the Shakespeare snob*, but families, including all those kids who perceive Shakespeare as boring. Hence the Harry Potter references (but I did love the comment about Book 7). But why, oh why, with the whole works of the Bard at your disposal, did the final word that rid the world of the carrionites have to come from JK Rowling?

Bits I loved, DT pacing around the Globe Theatre, the bedroom scene, Love’s Labours Won (though, from the snippets we heard, it wasn’t one of his best!!), the theatrical jokes.

Things I wanted – more of Shakespeare’s actual words, DT to stand on that stage and speak them, Martha to actually snog Shakespeare – well, you wouldn’t wouldn’t you, just to say you’d done it?!

*Which I am, I freely admit it

This Wooden 'O'

Now, you know that if I have one hero above all others, it’s Will Shakespeare. I adore his plays; the words, the language, the poetry, the characterisation and the sheer theatricality of it all (and I firmly believe that anyone who doesn’t believe that the plays were written by a man of the theatre doesn’t know what they are talking about). Many of them I’ve seen numerous times (I think I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen Hamlet) but others come round very infrequently so I was thrilled to see that the Globe production of Titus Andronicus coincided with when we would be in London, to bring me one step closer to my goal of seeing all 37 plays on stage*

The Globe is an amazing theatrical space. When it was first mooted, I suppose I had my fears, like many others, that it would become a venue for ‘heritage’ Shakespeare, but it hasn’t, primarily, I think, because of the choice of artistic directors, firstly in Mark Rylance**, and now in Dominic Dromgoole, for whom it’s early days, but for whom I have high hopes. The productions that you see at the Globe, are, of course, nothing like a production in Shakespeare’s time – for one thing, we arrived at the theatre via the Millenium Bridge over the Thames, rather than through the crowded milieu of London life, surrounded by alehouses, brothels and bear baiting pits, and the theatre is a reconstruction with modern facilities, restaurants, cafes etc. But it is often said that in Shakespeare's time you went to ‘hear’ a play, and there are times, particularly if you are a ‘groundling’ and you can’t see something very clearly, that that is exactly what you do. The language washes over and around you. It’s a theatre where you really feel that the performance is a shared experience between actor and audience, which is both exhilarating, and occasionally scary.

I’ve been to the Globe twice before, but this was the best production I’ve seen, as it really used the space and brought out the horror, and the dark humour in the story. There is a point when your eyes have been assaulted by so much that is unbearable that, like Titus in the play, you can do nothing but laugh. The production is still previewing, but I thought there were some excellent performances, from Douglas Hodge as Titus, Geraldine Alexander as Tamora, Shaun Parkes as Aaron, and Laura Rees as Lavinia. In reading the play, I’ve felt that the part of Lavinia is unplayable – after all, the poor girl has her hands cut off and her tongue cut out pretty early on – but Rees’s performance was heartbreaking, particularly in contrast with her innocent and virtuous character in the early scenes.

We’d decided to share seats and standing tickets, sitting for one half, and standing for the other, and that worked really well, giving two different perspectives on the performance. For seeing everything that is going on, it’s better to have a seat (and it’s drier, if it rains), but for feeling part of the performance, you have to be a ‘groundling’ – there were bits when the actors were appealing to the ‘people of Rome’ and I really did want to shout up. We were continually moving around, to make room for the wheeled platforms that were moved around the space with the actors on, and sometimes they were literally playing over our heads.

It’s an early play, and one that has been rarely revived (you do need a strong stomach!), and whilst it certainly has it’s rough edges, some of the language is beautiful. I loved the fact that you could see the beginnings of later characters in these characters. Aaron is so clearly a prototype Iago and Tamora has strong echoes of Lady Macbeth.

It was also wonderful to be able to respond to the play as a first time viewer, by which I mean I could let the power of the performances and of the language carry me along, bringing out an emotional response to the story that it’s often difficult for me to have with Shakespeare. I had no pre-conceptions of how characters should be portrayed, as it’s not a play that I’ve studied (sometimes I’ve had ‘issues’ with productions simply because the director doesn’t see the character the way that I do – it’s the ‘Hamlet in pyjamas’ syndrome again), and seeing it has sent me back to the text, and to reading about other productions and that has to be a good thing.

Trouble is, I’m greedy for Shakespeare – I now want more.

* I now only have Henry VIII to go. If anyone hears of a production, please let me know.

**I do have ‘issues’ with some of Mark Rylance’s performances, but that’s mainly to do with his ‘Hamlet in pyjamas’ at the RSC. I don’t have issues with his stewardship of the Globe