The Roaring Girl, by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, Royal Shakespeare Company (Swan Theatre)

Sex, deceit, cross-dressing, and class reversals. They sound like the ingredients of an exclusive Dalston warehouse party. They’re not. They’re the themes that underpin one of Jacobean theatre’s least appreciated genres: the city comedy. Everyone celebrates Shakespeare’s timeless romances and his contemporaries’ violent revenge tragedies but most people forget the knavish city comedies.

Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl is currently getting a rare revival at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s intimate Swan Theatre. Featuring a cross-section of contemporary urban characters, it is a pertinent insight into the struggles that continue to define city culture 400 years later.

It’s also incredibly radical. Led by a cross-dressing androgynous female lead, the play’s sexual politics and stinging satire of chauvinistic behavior would raise eyebrows in 2014. Imagine what they thought in 1611.

Wealthy Sebastian wants to marry humble Mary Fitz-Allard but his father Sir Sebastian doesn’t approve of the match. He begins to court the infamous Moll Cutpurse in order to lower his father’s expectations and ensure that he subsequently understands Mary's multiple virtues. Several interconnected sub-plots are weaved around a similar theme: rich men seek to cuckold working-men. The wives rebel and mock the follies of men. It could be an episode of a primetime ITV comedy.

Moll is an intriguing feminist figure. Eschewing marriage in favour of her mental health, she runs rings around the male characters and is frank in her criticism of the opposite sex. Lisa Dillon plays her as an east-end cockney rockstar who infatuates and terrifies men in equal measure.  

Director Jo Davies has relocated the action to late Victorian London with mixed results. Although the play’s resonate with Dickensian London, they are arguably more relevant today. Likewise, the play’s revolutionary notion of a man in trousers would have been interesting to see in a contemporary Jacobean staging. Victorian London provides a glamorous backdrop but doesn’t add much to the staging.

There are strong performances throughout the ensemble.  Most of the cast also appearing in The White Devil and Arden of Faversham at the Swan Theatre this season and this production is a testament to the RSC’s continued commitment to repertory theatre. 

Not everything in this bold and energetic production works. Some of the musical interludes and choreographed dance sequences feel awkward and desperate. Sometimes the cast and Davies are trying too hard to make the play entertaining. It’s like grimacing through an exuberantly told bad joke.

Overall, this is another example of the RSC’s bold programming under new artist director Gregory Doran. The company have been staging a bold mix of plays since moving into their new home in Stratford-upon-Avon. This ‘Roaring Girls’ season is highlighting some previously under-discussed issues in Jacobean society. With eye-catching revivals of Ben Jonson’s Volpone and Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday coming up next year, this is an exciting time for the RSC. Let’s hope it continues.

The White Devil, by John Webster, directed by Maria Aberg, at Royal Shakespeare Company (Swan Theatre)

Director Maria Aberg is gaining a reputation for radical and blood-thumping Shakespeare productions. Her bold stagings of As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and King John inspired debate and shook traditional views of Shakespeare.

Her version of The White Devil continues that trend.

Setting the play in a contemporary world somewhere between Nicholas Winding Refn’s stylish Drive and Paolo Sorrentino’s decadent The Great Beauty is a courageous move that creates a piercing backdrop for this proto-feminist play.

Webster harnessed his reputation as a blood-thirty playwright with this murderous plot that stretches the boundaries of the revenge tragedy genre. Local beauty Vittoria is unhappily married to lackluster Camillo.  Duke Bracciano is married to Isabella but consumed by lust for Vittoria. A plot masterminded by his servant (and Vittoria’s brother) Flaminio leads Vittoria and Bracciano into an adulterous relationship that tears their families apart.  Many bodies fall before the plot is resolved. It’s not a happy ending.

This production is part of the ‘Roaring Girls’ season at the RSC and the gender issues latent in the play are fully explored by Aberg and her solid company. At the start of both acts we watch Vittoria mournfully dress herself and construct her gendered identity.

Casting a woman as the scheming Flaminio is the production’s most audacious move. While it is not an entirely successful switch, it brings gender politics to the forefront of the production and raises questions about women’s enforced inactivity in a man’s world.

The RSC are on a roll at the moment. In the recent past their attempts at modern-dress revivals have been turgid or misplaced. This is spot-on. The ensemble are on excellent form throughout and this is one of the tightest groups in years. 

This is a pulsating production of a rarely revived play. It is not only a spirited defense of director driven theatre but also a striking example of the invigorating works that Shakespeare’s contemporaries wrote. Long may the revivals and reinventions continue.

Julius Caesar, Globe Theatre, directed by Dominic Dromgoole

Julius Caesar was written for the communal and expansive interior of Shakespeare’s Globe. Dominic Dromgoole has enthusiastically channeled this in his latest production of the play at the Globe. The groundling space is utilized at every possible moment to reflect the bustling burgeoning democracy of Rome. The standing audience are employed as Roman citizens (without pay, unfortunately) and required to express favor of disfavor at the politicians who sprout wisdom in front of us at various intervals. It’s a canny device that satisfies the appetite for ‘a Globe experience’ but arguably distracts from what is otherwise a fairly lukewarm production of Shakespeare’s political masterpiece.

More so than any other play, Julius Caesar hinges around its array of complex characters.  With little in the way of action, the play’s first half is a web of speeches and counter-speeches, plots and counterplots, intrigue and counter-intrigue.

Senators Cassius and Brutus suspect Caesar of becoming too monarchical in Rome’s new democracy. By enlisting the support of other disgruntled senators, they conspire to murder their leader and install a new democracy in his place. His assassination, the ramifications, Mark Anthony’s response and the ensuing civil war dominate the second half.  It is one of Shakespeare’s great plays, a pertinent reminder of the perils of government. Why then does the play seem to fall flat in its natural home?

Despite flashes of rapport and some good set pieces, the acting is almost universally understated. This lack of passion is doubly arresting in a play that is dominated by passionate politicians. Luke Thompson has been curiously cast as Mark Anthony. His speech denouncing the conspiracy, which should be on the most rousing speeches in theatre, is a quiet piece that wouldn’t be out of place in an accountants’ lunchtime meeting. There is none of the passion, conviction, or rhetoric that would rouse a nation into civil war.

George Irving’s docile Julius Caesar is also miscast. Nothing about his hushed and laboring tones suggest a potentially tyrannical dictator. Barring excellent performances from Christopher Logan and Anthony Howell as Casca and Cassius respectively, the conspirators are also oddly impassive. Brutus in particular lacks the internal trauma that will lead him to murder his friend and leader.

The pacing is also tediously lackluster.  This three-hour production could easily have been performed in just over two-hours. The forward-drive that should characterize the play has been stripped away to leave a slow-moving plod through different vignettes on politics. Likewise the decision to place Caesar’s funeral before the interval dissipates the brutal energy that should fuel the second half.

This is a perfectly adequate production, but it whole-heartedly fails to capture the latent electric energy that should ignite this play. Why would revolutions be started over this?

King Lear, by William Shakespeare, National Theatre, directed by Sam Mendes

This should be a triumph. One of our greatest Shakespearean actors, playing one of the great Shakespearean roles, directed by a Hollywood heavyweight, joined by a stellar cast, at our National Theatre. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot as it turns out.

Simon Russell Beale and Sam Mendes have collaborated countless times over the last twenty years. From era-defining productions at the RSC and Donmar Warehouse, to globe-trotting modern productions with the Bridge Project, Mendes and Russell Beale have had such a remarkably fruitful creative partnership that it was recently the subject of a book.

King Lear is one of the greatest plays in the English canon, defining careers and reflecting nations in crisis. The tragedy is simple. Lear decides he is too old to continue as King of England, so asks his daughters to profess their love to him before he hands them their portion of his kingdom. Elder sisters Regan (Anna Maxwell-Martin) and Goneril (Kate Fleetwood) dutifully oblige with hagiographic praise for Lear. Youngest, and favored daughter, Cordelia refuses to oblige, leading to her exile. Lear is subsequently shunned by the two elder daughters, resulting in his madness and adventures on the heath.

Everything about this production screams Sam Mendes. From the overly elaborate set, to the huge cast, unnecessary props, and musical-esque scene changes. This is an inverted Charlie and the Chocolate Factory set in wartime. Ninety percent of it is totally unnecessary, adding nothing to the interpretation (is there one?), and merely distracting the audience from the central action and massively increasingly the running time (220 minutes, far, far too long). I am all for elaborate stage designs if they have a point, but this feels like Mendes has walked into the National’s vast prop storage warehouse and gone wild.

That’s not to say that it is all bad. The opening scene is a fantastically grand and clear introduction to the play’s dynamics. The Gloucester subplot is well handled. Samuel Troughton plays the bastard Edmund with great energy, wit and intelligence. Likewise, Tom Brooke is suitably unnerving as his legitimate brother Edgar. Edmund’s soliloquys were undoubtedly the best moments of the production for me as they were the only moments when the play’s energy, intrigue, and brilliance were concentrated in one character.

The production and most of the actors seem completely overwhelmed by the Olivier auditorium. The voice work is horrible, beyond excruciating. Anna Maxwell-Martin and Kate Fleetwood are particularly guilty. Any attempt to project emotion comes out as a feline screech, not dissimilar to a teenager’s voice breaking. I’ve never heard such bad projection in a theatre before. There are also a number of odd and completely unjustified directorial decisions here (Lear murdering the fool???), which undermine the integrity of the production. Making leaps with a Shakespeare play are all well and good, but they have to gel. There is little coherency here.

Russell Beale is good as Lear, but he is lost in this production and one has to hope that he is given another opportunity to portray this character in a different theatre. The ending is particularly flat and confusing. One of the greatest scenes in English theatre, leaving six bodies lying on the stage, feels as dramatic and engaging as the conversations I overheard in the foyer. The play seems to just peter out, rather than reach the dramatic conclusion it should. I’ve never felt so neutral leaving a theatre, particularly Lear.

Shakespeare’s King Lear is a nihilistic and thought-provoking masterpiece that should shake you to the core. This is largely a waste of time, with a number of disparate elements that never come together. It could have been so much more.

Nothing does come from nothing.

Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Globe, Dir. Lucy Bailey

There’s a reason why Shakespeare’s first stab at a tragedy is so rarely performed. Its brutal, bloody, romp through umpteen murders, mutilations, and rapes lacks the tragic underpinnings that make Shakespeare’s other works eternal masterpieces. Shakespeare does gore in other plays, but it is balanced against wider mediations on life, death, and love. Titus Andronicus, arguably Shakespeare’s least popular work, is a gory tragedy with a hollow core. Or so the argument goes.

Lucy Bailey’s 2006 production is currently being revived at Shakespeare’s Globe. You are unlikely to see a better production of this troubled play in your life. Bailey has created a staggeringly intense and illuminating production that captures the full-force of the play’s nihilistic brutality, while also poking subtle fun at its farcical pomp. It’s a triumph that is unlikely to be repeated.

In Titus Andronicus blood breeds blood. Titus returns victorious from war with the Goths dragging their queen Tamora and her three sons with him. Titus subsequently sacrifices Tamora’s eldest son to avenge the deaths of his own sons during the war. Tamora and her remaining sons vow counter revenge. Rapes are performed, tongues are removed, hands are chopped off, and prisoners are hung.

Bailey has exploited this violence to the last drop of blood. There have been numerous reports of mass fainting throughout the production. Although I didn’t notice any one hit the deck, there were audible groans and perceptive squirms during some of the more grotesque moments. Following the hype, the gore seemed oddly sedate.

It’s not only the gore that is uncomfortable for the audience. Bailey has used the Globe’s space incredibly inventively, employing the audience as Romans, and repeatedly parading characters through the audience. It’s beautifully effective. Not only does it look fantastic, but it draws the audience into the play’s bloody horror.

Bailey has also created a production that fully explores the play’s sense of anarchy. Random murders occur throughout, people are unnecessarily molested, groundlings are haggled and abused. It is a world that has lost its moral core. In this Rome, there is no morality; there are no rules; there are no tragic underpinnings. That is arguably this production’s greatest virtue. It shines a new light on this once neglected play. Is this Elizabethan slasher flick actually making a subtler point about anarchy, Elizabethan society, and his contemporaries? Or are we trying to elevate Shakespeare again? Bailey’s production leaves these questions tantalizingly open.

 

As I walked out onto the Southbank I was glad to have escaped the play’s nihilism. That is the greatest praise I can heap on this production. The production creates a concentrated world that is uncomfortable to enter and intriguing to observe. It isn’t a great play, but it is a great production. More revivals please?

To July 13^th.

Shakespeare, The Rest of the World, and Jacobean Gore: 2012 in Theatre

With the Olympics descending on London in the coming months, twenty twelve is going to be a chaotic and exciting year across the capital. With the Globe to Globe festival kicking off the World Shakespeare Festival in late April, and the Cultural Olympiad promising a range of foreign language shows, 2012 is going to be a fantastic year for everything Shakespeare, Jacobean, and foreign language. Below is a list of some of the things I'm most excited about.

Globe to Globe Festival, Shakespeare's Globe, April to June
In an unprecedented move, Shakespeare's Globe will be staging 38 Shakespeare plays over 6 weeks in 38 different languages. It promises to be a fantastic event, with everything from a Chinese Richard III, to a Hebrew production of The Merchant of Venice, and a British Sign Language production of Love's Labour's Lost, there is an unrivaled selection of treasures to be explored in this once in a lifetime opportunity to see some of the most exciting and diverse theatre makers in the world. Don't miss this.

Other Blessed Plots will be blogging from every single one of these productions. Come back here in April for opinions on, and discussions of, all of those productions.
In April we'll be providing a preview guide to this unique festival.
Don't miss it.

World Shakespeare Festival, Venues across the country, April to September

If the Globe to Globe festival wasn't enough, this larger festival promises a wider range of productions across the country, with British based companies, and international companies providing new productions in London, Stratford, and Edinburgh. There are too many highlight to mention individually, but Dmitry Krymov's intriguing Russian production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It) at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre should be worth catching, with The National Theatre of Wales site specific production of Coriolan/us somewhere in Wales could be a spectacular addition to the already fine repertoire that the company has established. Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad sounds interesting too, while the RSC's What Country Friends is This? season at the Roundhouse sounds promising with its stellar ensemble.

The Master and Margarita, Complicite, Barbican, March to April

Twenty Eleven was a quiet year for Complicite after the spoils of Twenty Ten, but this new adaptation of Bulgakov's classic satire of Soviet Russia and modern politics certainly wets the appetite for future spoils. Featuring an ensemble of established Complicitie actors, along with the usual mix of video, sound, and beautifully choreographed sequences, this is a production not to be missed. Their operatic production of Bulgakov's shorter Dog' Heart at the ENO in 2010 was one of the most thrilling productions I've ever seen, while the mind blowing Disappearing Number changed my understanding of maths and theatre forever. 

Tis' A Pity She's A Whore, Cheek By Jowl, Babrican

Judging by early reports coming out of Paris, Declan Donellean and his illustrious colleagues at Cheek By Jowl have once again woven their magic on John Ford's Jacobean tragedy. Featuring a bright, young, and  talented cast led by the up and coming Lydia Wilson as Annabella, this modern take on Ford's tragedy follows hot on the heels of the highly acclaimed productions of The Tempest, Macbeth, and Troilus and Cressida that have graced the Barbican's awkward stage over the past few years. 

The Changeling, Young Vic, January to February 

Joe Hill-Gibbons follows his highly acclaimed productions of The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Glass Menagerie with this new take of Middleton and Rowley's brutal Jacobean tragedy. Presented in the intimate Maria, with a potentially scintillating cast led by Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Jessica Raine, and a set by Ultz (the man responsible for the multi-award winning Jerusalem set ) this will probably be a total sell out by the time you read this. Do whatever you can to get a ticket. 

The Duchess of Malfi, Young Vic, March to June

Another Jacobean tragedy finds its way onto a London stage this spring. Directed by Jamie Lloyd, who was practically Michael Grandage's right hand man at the Donmar Warehouse, and featuring a cast led by Eve Best (who played a fiesty Beatrice in the Globe's joyous summer revival of Much Ado About Nothing), this should be well worth a visit. Expect gore. Lots of gore. 

Twelfth Night/ Richard III, Shakespeare's Globe, July to October

Capping off a remarkable year for the Bankside venue, former artistic director Mark Rylance makes a triumphant return to the Globe in one of the most anticipated performances of the year. Directed by long term collaborator Tim Carroll, Rylance will tackle Richard III, a character you would expect him to excel in, and revive his his acclaimed Olivier award winning turn as Olivia in Twelfth Night. Expect tickets to be like gold dust by the summer so book early to avoid disappointment. 

Hamlet, Young Vic, London

Shakespeare productions don't come much more anticipated than this. The most famous play in the canon, a world class lead (in the A-List Michael Sheen), and an acclaimed director responsible for one of the most astonishing productions of the last decade (Ian Rickson, the man who directed the superb ensemble in Jerusalem). If that wasn't enough to wet the appetite, the production takes place at London's Young Vic, one of the smaller, more diverse, and, thankfully, cheaper West End Theatres.

However, I approached this popular theatre on Waterloo's Cut with a mixed feeling of trepidation and perplexity. Most, if not all, of the accounts I'd heard of the production had been universally negative, if not down right hostile, with reports filtering through to me that it was an incomprehensible romp through a Hamlet come One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, come PJ Harvey gig, with few redeeming features.

Ian Rickson's Hamlet is one of the most baffling English language Shakespeare productions you are ever likely to see, and every moment of it's three and a half hour race through this famous play will live with me for a long, long time. That doesn't mean they were good. They were just memorable. Very memorable.

Rickson has decided to set the Elsinore court within a mental institute. This makes sense, to an extent. Hamlet is a play about madness, about the descent to madness, and about inaction and imprisonment. This theme is driven into us when we are taken on a "pre-show journey" through the backstage passages behind the main auditorium. As we walk though the corridors we see various patients, locked in their routine, playing squash, or scurrying down passages. We eventually find ourselves on the Young Vic stage, with king Hamlet's coffin proudly on stage at the front of the auditorium, just as it was in Thomas Ostermeiers' recent production.

This theme is accentuated throughout the production, to the point that it strangles the play, refusing Shakespeare's great masterpiece a space to breathe and say anything new to us. Elsinore most definitely is a prison here, with a large factory like door regularly enclosing the characters in this space, while guards and wardens keep a constant eye on  the patients inside. Key moments of the play are played in incredibly unusual ways. Court scenes appear as sub-alcoholics anonymous meetings, while Hamlet channels his father's spirit in order to underline his own madness.

This is all incredibly interesting because it gives us a brand new approach to Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece. However, it suffocates the play and makes less and less sense as the production roles on. Who is Claudius? What is his role in the institute? Is Gertrude an ex-patient? Is Polonius a patient or a doctor? Why is Claudius referred to as a king? Why are Fortinbras's forces attacking this mental institute? Is the whole production a figment of Hamlet's imagination? These kind of questions are fascinating to discuss in the bar afterwards, but they make it almost impossible to get anything out of the production except perplexity.

There were, however, some moments of pure beauty in this production. The first ghost scene, where the theatre is plunged into pitch darkness, with the ghost glimpsed above the stage, is heart racing, while the final segment, where Michael Sheen appears dressed as Fortinbras after Hamlet's death and the slaughter of the entire court, is breath taking, an excellent coups de théâtre, that almost redeemed the hitherto gaping holes in the production. Sheen's performance is also unbearably moving in places. It was one of the most real Hamlet's I've ever seen, and it was impossible to not be drawn to his courage, charisma, wit, and melancholic inactivity.

I can't in anyway knock what Rickson has decided to do. It was a courageous decision, that could so nearly have worked, but it was undermined by a commitment to the text. While European directors can rip Shakespeare and make it homogeneous by extreme cutting and new translations, it is impossible to do this in English if you still refer to Claudius as 'king' when he is clearly not a king. I think this production would have been more successful if Rickson had been more brutal, rather than less brutal. In places, this was a surprisingly faithful production, despite the extreme directorial decisions, and it confused the whole production. In order to do something new to Shakespeare, you have to go the whole hog, rather than going halfway and then backing away from something more controversial. It's  shame, because I think this could have been a truly fantastic production, but instead it became muddled and half baked, desperate to jump in the deep end, but stuck with one foot dipped into the pool.

In November 2010 I saw Rickson interview Thomas Ostermeier at the Goethe Institute in West London. Rickson interviewed Ostermeier about his radical production, and expressed clear admiration for Ostermeier's radical Hamlet. However, the gulf between both director's productions could not be further. Where Ostermeier's Hamlet succeeded because it put two fingers up to Shakespeare purists and didn't give a damn, Rickson shook his fist but then kissed us on the cheek. In the next twelve months I'd like to see an English director take a Shakespeare play and do something radical. Hamlet is a difficult case because we still talk about Sheen's Hamlet, or Law's Hamlet, or Olivier's Hamlet, rather than letting the play take it's place above the star.

Until an English director drops their belligerent addiction to the myth of Shakespeare, we won't see a radical production in English,

Programme: £2. Not  much info, just pictures and cast lists.

Running Time: A bum numbing three hours and thirty minutes