Review – Julius Caesar, RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 28th March 2023

Posted on March 29, 2023 by therealchrisparkle

Without making it sound like an end of the pier revue, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s summer season kicks off with Atri Banerjee’s production of Julius Caesar. Having started with The Tempest, it’s the second in a series of plays grouped under the theme of Power Shifts, and there’s no doubt that’s highly relevant in these tortuous political times that we’re all facing. I’ve no statistical proof of this, but I think if you got a bunch of Shakespeare devotees in a room together they’d agree that Julius Caesar is one of their favourite offerings from the Great Bard. It’s packed with exciting characters, memorable speeches, impactful incident and more deaths than you can shake a stick at. And it couldn’t be more suited to an examination of power shifting. So it’s a great shame to come away from a production regretting many of its directorial decisions and opportunities lost.

The production is so heavily stylised that it alienates you from the start. Six members of the Community Chorus come on stage, and you think they’re going to sing something passionate and portentous. Instead they give us some heavy breathing like they’re expelling the bad energy at the end of a Vinyasa Yoga session. The rest of the cast come on stage and start running around; after a while they form into a pack and give what I can only describe as an homage to the Michael Jackson Thriller routine. This leads into some chanting (naturally) and Mark Antony starts to howl like a wolf. It’s at this stage that you realise this production is not for purists. The trouble is, if you’ve already lost the goodwill of the crowd by this stage – and Mrs Chrisparkle had already decided that this wasn’t going to be for her – then you’ve got a big uphill struggle trying to get it back.

As you might expect from the Royal Shakespeare Company, there’s an abundance of female actors taking on the traditionally male roles and, despite the odd misplacement of a pronoun here or there, it never seems forced or inappropriate; in fact, it helps gain a new insight into some of the characters. The acting is also first-rate throughout, which really gives purpose to the production. The text is spoken clearly and with conviction; in fact there’s very little that you hear* in this production that doesn’t satisfy even the most pernickety Shakespeare fan. (*One exception, that I’ll return to later.)

No, the problem with the production is with what you see. A blank stage, with a distracting back projection that does little to set the scene. A mishmash of costumes that neither inform us of the status of the characters nor the era in which the play is set. There’s the return of what I think of as the RSC Clock – a ticking countdown that creates a two-minute pause after the death of Caesar – for no discernible reason whatsoever, other than to minimise its impact – and a twenty-minute countdown during the interval. It was the RSC Clock that contributed to the mess that was their Macbeth in 2018, and whilst it’s less damaging here, it’s still a pointless complication. Nothing looks sillier than when a clock ticks down to zero and nothing happens – as at the end of the interval, when at zero hour some people were still queueing for the loo, and it was probably another two minutes of staring at a stopped clock before the play resumed.

Despite a number of deaths, there are no dead bodies – think about that – nor are there are any weapons. Killings are mimed, and there’s lots of semi-balletic prancing around which certainly takes away from death’s sting, but unfortunately looks rather ludicrous. When Brutus kills herself by running onto Lucius’s outstretched hand, it resembles the kind of game you might have enjoyed in the school playground aged seven. And there’s the blood. Being Julius Caesar, there’s an awful lot of it. “Let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood,” says Brutus, “…and waving our red weapons o’er our heads, let’s all cry “Peace, freedom, and liberty!””

There’s a clue there – red. So why is the blood in this production black? And it’s not blood-like but a thick gooey gunge that gets on everyone’s hands and clothes; and, of course, with no weapons, Caesar is basically patted to death by messy hands, making the memorable “unkindest cut of all” reference redundant. It’s as though everyone is smeared with molasses; maybe Caesar was diabetic and was killed by a high blood sugar surge.

Let’s not forget the revolving cage of death. As more and more characters get despatched to heaven above, they start to populate a huge cube at the back of the stage. The more people who join them, the happier those already dead seem to be to greet old friends; and I must say, the silly childlike hello wave between Caesar and Brutus is cringeworthy. And the cage revolves; not by some magic stage technology but by two stagehands pushing it around like a broken-down car. Frankly, it’s inelegant and embarrassing.

You may not be surprised to see that the ghetto blaster makes a reappearance, so that Brutus can relax to the tune of Caetano Veloso’s song Nine Out of Ten. I know this because the programme told me. I’d never heard the song before and I’d never heard of Veloso, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar it’s contemporary of neither Roman times nor 1599. When aspects of a production only make sense to the audience after they’ve read a programme note explaining them, there’s something not quite right with the production. It’s a little like trying to wade through T S Eliot’s Waste Land and then turning to his notes in desperation. The programme also explains the reason for the RSC Clock; personally, I think it’s pretty tenuous. Banerjee describes the collaboration between the various cast members which led to the structure of the production as being “quite magical”; whereas to us it felt like it was a production that had been put together by committee. And what I can only describe as being far too clever-clever.

So let’s turn to those show-saving performances. Thalissa Teixeira is superb as Brutus. Noble, honourable (as Mark Antony will tell us) and with a vulnerable compassion that defines her dilemma of being an unwilling conspirator, she gets all the character’s nuances and conveys them with clarity and authority. There’s a terrific balance between her and Kelly Gough’s Cassius; Ms Gough gives us a volatile and excitable reading of the role, emphasising the character’s motivations and emotions with great clarity. And William Robinson is terrific as Mark Antony, slightly wet behind the ears, turning that “tide of man” with a brilliant performance of the Friends Romans Countrymen speech.

The other conspirators are all very well portrayed – Gina Isaac’s Decius Brutus is delightfully deceitful, Matthew Bulgo’s Casca splendidly reserved, and Katie Erich’s Caius Ligarius impressively earnest. Joshua Dunn makes a good job of Cinna the Poet’s untimely death, and there is some light comic relief from Jamal Ajala’s Lucius being made to run on and off the stage ad fatigatum – at least I think it was meant to be comic relief. Annabel Baldwin’s Soothsayer is turned out like they’d just got off the exercise bike at the gym, but nicely delivers their portentous lines with matter-of-fact clarity rather than with Up Pompeii-style wailing.

Nigel Barrett plays Caesar as an atypical military hero; you’d get the sense that he’d rely on his foot soldiers to win any battles, and he appears as a someone more likely to enter a dad dancing contest rather than being a feared General. It’s an interesting reading of the part – not one that I really attuned to, but you can’t win them all.

I was so looking forward to this production; but in the end I was so disappointed with it. To say this is a curate’s egg is to be kind to curates. Worth seeing for the acting, especially Ms Teixeira and Ms Gough’s verbal sparring and Mr Robinson’s oratory. As for the rest, I’ll draw a veil. Julius Caesar is playing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until 8^th April, and then goes on a nine date tour until June, to Canterbury, Truro, Bradford, Newcastle, Blackpool, Nottingham, Norwich, York and Salford.

Production photos by Marc Brenner

Two Disappointing For More!

Review – The Tempest, RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2nd February 2023

Posted on February 3, 2023 by therealchrisparkle

News of the shipwreck of the Sea Venture off the coast of Bermuda in 1609 is thought to have been the major impetus for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, one of only a couple of his plays that appear to be completely original. A few years before its first performance in 1611, there had been major floods in Wales, and those early audiences would have been well aware of the dangers that water – in all its forms – could create.

Elizabeth Freestone’s new production takes our new understanding of the problems of climate change as its impetus, and it’s an alignment that makes a lot of sense. Not only is there an admirable use of green sustainability in the construction of Tom Piper’s set, his costume design (with Natasha Ward) evokes all those worrying statistics about the amount of plastics in the sea, with the spirits of Rain, Sky and Earth partially clad in old carrier bags and plastic containers. Ferdinand litter picks the rubbish on the beach (he did kindly ask our section of the audience if we had any empties) – and this litter was genuinely collected from the beach at Weston-super-mare; you’ve got to respect the fact that the RSC are walking the walk on this one.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with The Tempest. It’s one of those plays where you’re familiar with the major characters, and the quotable lines, and even the main plot (there’s a tempest, an island, lots of shipwrecked people and a whole shebang of sorcery) but for me it always feels stodgy. There are a number of long speeches and protracted conversations that can make the whole thing get bogged down, and, considering it’s Shakespeare’s second shortest text (after Comedy of Errors), it can feel rather long. Above all, there is little of the usual expectation for some Shakespearean conflict, or suspense, or dramatic tension. So it’s vital to accentuate the magic to give the play its necessary dynamism.

There are two occasions when magic rules the Stratford stage. The first is in the extraordinary first scene – the shipwreck that Prospero has caused – where the unlucky passengers and crew are tossed, turned and terrorised at sea. It’s a truly exciting start to the show, stunningly realised and beautifully performed by everyone. The second is Ariel’s Act Three Scene Three appearance as a harpy, to frighten the living daylights out of Alonso, Sebastian and the others. The costume is fantastic – and I really liked the comic touch with Ariel’s next appearance still wearing the harpy’s claw, as though it was a quick change routine that didn’t change quickly enough. A tiny attention to detail, but it subtly reveals the artifice of the magic – very nicely done. So, is this production the stuff that dreams are made on?

Not entirely. Unfortunately, the problems of climate change detract from the magic. Magic is all about illusion, creating the appearance that the impossible is possible; it’s delight and wonderment, and, for want of a better word, pizzazz. Climate change is the opposite. It’s reality, it’s hardship, it’s a step towards oblivion. Magic takes something of a back seat in this production; and even when magical things happen, they’re brought back to earth by the harshness of real life – like the detritus in the spirits’ costumes.

Consequently, the success of this production comes strongly from the incredible cast, each of whom bring the magic that might otherwise be lacking. You’ve got to start with Alex Kingston as Prospero. This is the first time I’ve seen Ms Kingston live and she is a truly charismatic stage performer. The whole show lights up whenever she’s on stage, and she brings true humanity to the role. Prospero is the one controlling force in The Tempest; everything and everyone is in his/her thrall, and Alex Kingston shows how that is completely possible. Her reading and understanding of the text is superb, and she makes the most intractable of Shakespeare’s language readily comprehensible.

Jessica Rhodes is steadily working her way towards being one of our brightest young actors – she was superb in Chichester’s Doubt last year, and her performance as Miranda here is even better. She conveys the character’s young innocence and total amazement at the presence of other people superbly well. Having Prospero as her mother, rather than her father, creates perhaps less of a “hero-worship” for the parent and more of a true devoted affection; an enviable mother/daughter relationship indeed. She is perfectly matched by Joseph Payne’s Ferdinand, an innocent abroad with an instant attraction to Miranda, and, even though we know his father is a villain, you’d be hard pressed not to be moved by his heart warming reaction to discovering Alonso is still alive.

Heledd Gwynn is superb as Ariel; she has a naturally ethereal quality that makes the character’s flighty tricksiness even more believable. This was the first time I’ve seen an Ariel who really made me believe that their true goal was to attain their freedom. This is no Puck, who’s happy to do whatever Oberon wants unquestioningly; this is a character who constantly expects this is the last time they will have to do their master’s bidding, yet is thwarted time and again. Tommy Sim’aan’s Caliban, by contrast, is no savage and deformed slave, as Shakespeare would have had it – there’s nothing remotely inhuman about him, which brings him more on a par with his co-conspirators Stephano and Trinculo, but at the same time maybe brings us further away from the idea of magic. Nevertheless it’s a very strong and clear performance.

Simon Startin and Cath Whitefield have (for me, at least) an enormous uphill struggle to make Stephano and Trinculo watchable, as I personally find those characters’ scenes rather tedious. Mr Startin’s Stephano is a clearly a distant relation to Barry Humphries’ Sir Les Patterson; Ms Whitefield’s Trinculo is entertainingly quirky and clownish. Peter de Jersey is excellent as Alonso, as is Jamie Ballard’s Antonio; but in fact all the cast are superb – there isn’t a weak link in the chain.

All in all, a thought-provoking new production, with excellent performances. Rooted in our climate crisis as it is, the magic never really soars; but its environmental message is received loud and clear.

Production photos by Ikin Yum

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Richard III, RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1st July 2022

Posted on July 2, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

The Royal Shakespeare Company continues its trawl through the annals of the House of Plantagenet, specifically following on from the recent productions of Rebellion and Wars of the Roses, with this strikingly designed new production of Richard III, and a satisfying continuity of casting in many of the leading roles, including the welcome return of Arthur Hughes as King Richard, the first time a disabled actor has taken this part in the history of the Company.

Edward IV reigns as King of England, but Richard, Duke of Gloucester has other ideas. First, eliminate his kindly brother George, Duke of Clarence. Then marry Lady Anne, who had been previously married to Henry VI’s son Edward of Westminster, who died at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Edward IV dies naturally, but Richard can’t tolerate his son, the twelve year old Edward V, being king. He enlists the Duke of Buckingham to engineer his path to the throne, but when Buckingham refuses to kill Edward, he gets professional assassin Tyrell to do the deed instead. The young prince is murdered in the tower along with his brother. But it’s still not enough; and when Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, arrives with an army to claim the throne, it results in the Battle of Bosworth Field and we all know what happened there. (You don’t? You’ll have to see this play then.)

Shakespeare didn’t hold back from presenting Richard as the architect of a lot of blood and violence, and Gregory Doran’s production rings the changes by portraying these deaths in a wide range of styles, from the literally gory to the subtly suggested. It is perhaps curious that Shakespeare does not let us see the actual death of King Richard in battle: “Alarums. Enter King Richard and Richmond; and exeunt fighting. Retreat and flourish. Re-enter Richmond, Stanley bearing the crown, with divers other Lords, and Forces.” This gives a director carte blanche to finish Richard III off in whatever manner they wish, and Mr Doran has chosen to make it rather elegant and ethereal. Matt Daw’s inventive lighting design is used extensively to convey death, with maybe a quick flash of red light to depict one dispatch, or the visceral descent of vivid red seeping down the one feature of the set, a cenotaph-style tower, to suggest others. Death’s never far away in this play.

I know this isn’t a football match, but this production really is a game of two halves. Even with some judicious cutting, this is a long play, and the first Act takes us all the way from Shakespeare’s beginning to Act Four Scene One. The second Act begins with Richard’s coronation, Act Four Scene Two. As a result, we have more or less two hours before the interval, but then little more than an hour afterwards. Although there are obviously some highlights – the wannabe king’s pretence that he doesn’t seek the crown and is much happier with his virtuous Bible study is a sheer delight – the first Act has more than its fair share of longueurs. The second Act, however, is stuffed with theatrical magic and flies by. The exquisite grandeur of the Coronation. The knife-edge debate between Richard and Elizabeth regarding his plan to marry her daughter. The superb staging of the Ghosts that taunt Richard the night before Bosworth Field, and how they merge to become his ghostly horse for which he’d give his kingdom.

However, the overall vibe of the production is distinctly uneven. It veers from bloodthirsty tragedy to deep dark farce, and you can never quite pin down exactly what it is that Doran wants us to take away from it. On the one hand, for example, you have a very traditional presentation of the bereft Queen Margaret, Henry VI’s widow, with Minnie Gale giving a very accomplished portrayal of someone so destroyed by grief that they have lost all their senses. On the other hand, the two murderers almost descend to vaudeville with their interchanges and re-appear very tongue-in-cheek as the two godly clerics either side of Richard when’s he allegedly resisting being made king. Stephen Brimson Lewis’ set suggests the staging is purely of its actual era – the music, the costumes etc are all truly fifteenth century; but then you have a couple of anachronistic piece to camera moments from Richard and his rival Richmond just before the battle as if we were watching CNN.

Fortunately the production is blessed with some terrific performances, none more than Arthur Hughes as Richard. Because Mr Hughes genuinely has a physical disability, that frees him up from the arduousness of adopting a stoop or mimicking a hunchback, so visually it’s a much more convincing presentation than you’ve ever seen the character before. With ambition written through him like a stick of rock, he fair darts about the stage in his quest to Get Kingship Done, as the phrase might be today. He doesn’t care if we like him or not; he sees other people as either useful tools or mere obstructions and has no compunction about dismissively eliminating them – even his own wife. Mr Hughes is completely riveting throughout the play, his eyes calculating risks, his gestures mocking all those around him, his vocal delivery conveying that spoilt petulance of a man who can see no other outcome than his own preferment. It’s a wonderful performance.

Kirsty Bushell is also superb as Queen Elizabeth Woodville, controlling her own grief and behaviour with quiet suppression, as a perfect contrast to the brashness of the King, or the loud lamentation of Margaret. Claire Benedict has fantastic stage presence and natural authority as the Duchess of York, and Rosie Sheehy cuts exactly the right amount of fury and suffering as Lady Anne. Jamie Wilkes’ Buckingham is delightfully conspiratorial, punching the air with a very un-Shakespearean Yes! when Richard manipulates his way to the throne. Micah Balfour is excellent as the good-humoured, trusting Hastings, Nicholas Armfield is a suitably noble Earl of Richmond (he also has a terrific moment as the Bishop of Ely when King Richard commends his strawberries), and there’s great support from Matthew Duckett as Catesby and Simon Coates as Stanley.

In addition, Ben Hall absolutely captures Clarence’s innocence and shock at being fatally lied to, and Conor Glean and Joeravar Sangha are simply brilliant as the Murderers. And huge appreciation for our Boy Treble, whose vocal purity cut through the villainy like a sword of light; for our performance on Friday night, we think he was Lysander Newton, but I am sure all four taking the role are terrific.

Part gruesome drama, part black comedy; at times slow and cumbersome, at others jam-packed with incident. A bit like life, really. But it’s the many highlights that you remember and that you appreciate, and this production is certainly a convincing and memorable end to the Plantagenets. It continues at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre all the way through till 6^th August when it is joined with the new production of All’s Well That Ends Well, and then both continue until 8^th October.

Production photos by Ellie Kurttz

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Much Ado About Nothing, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 25th February 2022

Posted on February 28, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

You know how you wait two years for a bus and then three all come along at once? This is the fate of Much Ado About Nothing for 2022. Not only has it been chosen as the opening “Big Play” for the RSC at the beginning of the year, but there’s also a production by Simon Godwin coming at the National Theatre this summer and in September we’re seeing a production by Robert Hastie at the Crucible in Sheffield. But then it is an enduringly popular play and there’ll always be a demand for it.

Michael Balogun, who was originally cast as Benedick, withdrew from the play days before Press Night which has played a spot of havoc with the timings for its reviews. But if we have learned nothing else from the pandemic, it’s that the show must go on. And there’s no doubt about it, it’s a fascinating production. If you are a loyal reader of my random jottings, you’ll know that one of my watchwords is that I much prefer a brave failure to a lazy success. And this is one of those occasions. Yes, for the most part, this production fails to deliver on many levels. But, my word, does it put in a brave attempt to do so, and does it have a lot of fun getting there!

Set in some kind of futuristic otherworld, traditionally this play takes place in Messina, but this dramatis personae has been no nearer Italy than an outer space Pizza Express. This is a world of glowing orbs, fanciful fruits, swirly benches and magic blackboards. No extravagance is understated in the set or the costumes, with outrageous headdresses, topiaried hairdos, gold-emblazoned tabards, a Robocop-style constabulary and formal white wellies. Hero’s wedding dress resembles a huge butterfly, while Beatrice frequently reminds you that the spirit of Xena Warrior Princess is not dead. Facial make-up includes enough glitter, swirls and highlights to make Adam Ant look like a funeral director. Characters appear descending from the Flies or via a floral walkway. It’s as though Shakespeare has been taken over by The Magic Roundabout with Ermyntrude and Zebedee as the bickering lovers.

Done wrong, this could look cheap, tacky and ridiculous. But it’s a huge credit to Jemima Robinson’s set and Melissa Simon-Hartman’s costume design that it comes across as innovative, luxurious and aspirational. Imagine going on holiday to this futuristic playground – you’d be on a permanent high! Femi Temowo’s accompanying music is cleverly pitched, near-outrageous, and frequently off-putting; a kind of louche jazz that suggests a whole new notational language of music that we don’t recognise yet. You’d expect magic mushrooms in the saxophone and amphetamines in the keyboard, and it’s simply, thoroughly, delightfully and disconcertingly weird.

There are also some terrific performances, none more so than Akiya Henry’s irrepressible Beatrice, who gives us one hilariously cantankerous appearance after another, chockfull of inventive characterisations, impetuous mischief and some brilliant physical comic business. The best scene in the whole play is where, separately, both Benedick and Beatrice overhear how the other is apparently in love with them; and Ms Henry’s contortions to hide behind or blend in with the set’s outrageously stylised vegetation so she can’t be noticed is comedy genius. By comparison, Luke Wilson’s Benedick comes across as an unusually decent sort of chap, rather reasonable and sensible. As a result perhaps there aren’t quite as many fireworks set off in the interchanges between the two characters, but at least Benedick is a beacon of sobriety in an otherwise hippy-trippy world.

Ann Ogbomo is also outstanding as Don Pedra (minor quibble, but shouldn’t she be a Donna?) with tremendous stage presence and a gloriously authoritative voice that commands you listen and pay attention. Micah Balfour is also excellent as the manipulating Don John, and Taya Ming also impresses as a rather childlike and fragile Hero. Karen Henthorn plays the difficult role of Dogberry purely for laughs and gives us some excellent malapropisms.

Wasn’t it Shakespeare who said – and I think it was – the play’s the thing? And that, sadly, is where this production starts to fall apart. In his vision for the play, director Roy Alexander Weise has turned all his attention to the look of the thing, but not much thought has gone into its meaning. The futuristic otherworld is beautifully realised, but what light does it shed on, say, the motivations of Don John, or the common sense of Claudio, let alone whether Benedick and Beatrice have a future together? The bright façade of the production has seeped through to the plot, making almost all the characters much more lightweight and shallower. There’s little sense of the danger or tragedy that lurks beneath the surface because it’s all just a bit too nice and bland.

It also bumbles and stumbles along at a very slow pace, and at three-and-a-quarter hours feels way too long. The second half in particular gets very boring at times, and feels very stop-starty with the plot progression; you feel the occasional urge to mutter just get on with it, rather than stop for another bit of music and sombre standing around. Scene changes need to be more dynamic – Act One ends with a whimper rather than a bang and no one has a clue whether to applaud or not; the movement of the actors needs to be more decisive and meaningfull; in fact, the whole thing just needs to be a lot snappier.

Definitely a brave failure rather than a lazy success. I hope the RSC keeps the set and costumes and uses them to much more telling effect in another play. Much Ado About Nothing continues at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until 12^th March.

Production photos by Ikin Yum

Threesy Does It!

Review – The Magician’s Elephant, RSC at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 15th November 2021

Posted on November 16, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

I’d like to start this review with an old joke that was doing the rounds at school circa fifty years ago:

Question: What do you get when an elephant defecates (shorter words were used at the time) on a bell?

Answer: DUNG!

One of the most wonderful things about theatre is that different members of the same audience can watch the same show and have so completely different a reaction to it. The Magician’s Elephant opened a couple of weeks ago to a range of mixed reviews, from 2 stars to 4 stars. At last night’s performance quite a few people gave it a standing ovation. As we were leaving the theatre, we heard one woman say to her friend that she enjoyed it more than Matilda. On the other hand, as we left the auditorium for the interval break, we heard another woman say to her child, “well, they do say that the second act is better than the first…” Such a wide range of reactions, an experience you can only get in the theatre. And it was a complete joy to be back in the happy buzz of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for the first time since The Boy in the Dress almost exactly two years ago, before all that horrible pandemic interregnum.

As a rule of thumb, I much prefer a brave failure of a production to a lazy success. However, gentle reader, it would be wrong of me to say I enjoyed something, and saw value and merit in something when neither was true. Thus, with a sad heart, I must report a serious crime to you. It happened on the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre last night. It involved a waste of the audience’s time, the cast’s talent, the RSC’s resources and, above all, the unforgivable theatrical crime of creating an evening of sheer tedium. Yes, I’m afraid, The Magician’s Elephant is a bit of a stinker. Shame indeed, as Kate DiCamillo’s 2009 children’s novel of the same name sounds rather a hoot. An anarchically inventive story where a boy named Peter suspects his sister (whom his guardian has told him is dead) is still alive, and a fortune-teller foresees that an elephant will lead him to her. Lo and behold, at the opera house, a magician performs a trick that makes an elephant crash through the ceiling. Surely some coincidence? How and why did it happen? Will Peter be reunited with his sister? Did the Opera House have insurance?

From such inspirational lunacy Nancy Harris and Marc Teitler have distilled a book, music and lyrics totally lacking in spark, humour or emotion and have created a piece that’s as heavy and slow as a brigade of pachyderms. The constant repetition of lines within songs is abominable, and simply kills the show even before you consider any other aspects of it. As soon as one character comes up with a sentence, it gets pummelled to death by singing it again, and again, and again. (And again.) As the show went on, I tried my hardest to refrain from shouting out “noooo!” and “aaargh!” and “someone come up with another line!” at sequences like: “Follow the elephant, follow the elephant, follow the elephant, follow the elephant, follow the elephant, follow the elephant, follow the elephant, follow the elephant” which was closely followed by “don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant, don’t follow the elephant” ad nauseam. Bear in mind that at this stage of the show I don’t think we’d even seen the elephant yet – another problem of the show in that it’s all talk but precious little action.

If I had a pound for every time the injured Mme LaVaughn bemoaned “I was crushed by an elephant” to which the magician responded with “I only meant lilies”, I could charter a private jet to Bermuda. Well, not quite, but you get my drift. The repetitions throughout were so exasperatingly boring, it was though it had been written as a punishment; stay behind after school and write fifty times, I must not follow the elephant. To be fair, there is one good song, The Count who doesn’t Count, but it’s elongated beyond elasticity so that by the end the fun of it has been extinguished. But for the most part the songs are drab, dreary and forgettable.

Mother always said, if you can’t say something nice about someone, say nothing. Of course, as always, I will do my best to accentuate the good bits. This won’t take long. There is one very good performance by Jack Wolfe as Peter, who conveys a very real, wistful sense of loneliness, on a search for his missing sister to make his family complete again. He also has a great singing voice and an impish stage presence. I also enjoyed the performance of Miriam Nyarko as Adele, the feisty orphan with an inbuilt spirit of adventure/fantasist, possibly the only character who’s allowed to show a genuine sense of fun. Such a shame, then, that when the two are reunited as brother and sister (gasp! Who knew to look in the likeliest place to find her?) it’s a moment surprisingly devoid of emotion that registers no higher a reaction than an implied “oh, that’s nice”. Sam Harrison makes the best of the quirky Count Quintet and tries his damnedest to bring out as much humour as possible from his characterisation as a hen-pecked husband. Mark Meadows looks like he’s stepped out of another production as old soldier and Peter’s guardian Vilna Lutz, but that’s quite appropriate as the character is trapped in a post-war PTSD-style existence. It’s a shame that the production doesn’t integrate him more into the story.

And of course, there’s the elephant, who’s a technical treat and a slice of puppetry perfection; she looks pretty much like the genuine article and her trunk is carefully operated to cleverly express her thoughts. Sadly, the elephant only really has one thought, which is that she is sad and unwell and she wants to go home. Peter understands her plight and tells us that she is sad and unwell and wants to go home. In fact, he tells us several times. I think we understood it the first time, Peter. Sad and unwell and wants to go home? Yes. Sad and unwell and wants to go home.

Elsewhere some of the characterisations go rather awry. Forbes Masson’s cartoony Police Chief is all light and no shade – all Keystone Kop where we could have done with the occasional whiff of Bergerac. Amy Booth-Steel’s narrator should have been a conduit between the Stratford audience she constantly chats with and a distant land of magic, but instead came across as rather smug and self-important. For our performance the role of Countess Quintet, usually played by Summer Strallen, was played by Alison Arnopp as a virtual copy of Queen Elizabeth from Blackadder 2. The endless screechy petulance wasn’t remotely endearing or entertaining even as a pantomime villain. Marc Antolin, an actor I always admire and who can create genuine magic on stage with his clown and movement skills, seems sadly restrained in his role as police officer Leo, and you only occasionally get a glimpse of his true talent.

There are many underwhelming moments in this production; I choose only one to illustrate where it could have been so much better than it is. There’s a scene where Adele triumphantly gets to turn the tables on the wicked Count and Countess by strapping them down and hurling a bucket of elephant dung over them. It should be a moment where revenge is sweet and the baddies get their come-uppance. The dung should cover them and, much to their hilarious struggles to get away from it, they’re slopped with the stinky stuff. Everyone in the audience shrieks with disgusted delight. However. Instead, the Count and Countess, clearly no more strapped down than if a Christmas paper chain was securing them, get the bucket tipped over them to reveal it contains nothing more than a bit of few strands of grass or straw. It sits on the Countess’ lap and looks ridiculous. A true disappointment and an opportunity wasted.

A good Christmas show should be a thing of joy. What have the poor kids done to deserve this? Mrs Chrisparkle was itching to leave at the interval, which would have been a mistake for more than one reason. The interval lady was right, the second act is undoubtedly better than the first; for one thing, the plot actually progresses (whereas the first act is static and irrelevant) and there is some emotion (the first act is devoid of emotion). Regrettably, the emotion is pure schmaltz, but if you can somehow accept the tenet that the elephant is a symbol of a kinder, more wholesome society, then you might get something out of it. We couldn’t and didn’t. “Hate” is a strong reaction to a theatre production; I’ve only hated one other RSC show in the forty-five years since I first saw the company, and that was the recent Macbeth that became a prisoner to the misplaced vision of its director. But at least that had a vision, that you could disagree with. The Magician’s Elephant is rudderless, with a false sense of its own significance, and certainly of its own entertainment value. Couldn’t wait to leave.

Production photos by Manuel Harlan

One wonders why they bothered

Review – The Comedy of Errors, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Garden Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 20th July 2021

Posted on July 21, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

It’s not often that one feels bound to include the word joyous so early in a theatre review, but these are exceptional times, and no other word expresses the true delight everyone felt at being back at the Royal Shakespeare Company in their wonderful new garden theatre. It’s always a treat to enjoy this most accessible and light-hearted of Shakespeare’s plays, although, amongst the fun, director Phillip Breen has emphasised all its darker and more uncomfortable elements. The result is a cross between a traditional, riotous fun-and-frolic-type approach and an unusually close inspection of the discomfort and detachment experienced by its characters.

The RSC is to blame for my love of Comedy of Errors, having sat in the front row of the Aldwych Theatre in December 1977 agog at the magnificent production by Trevor Nunn, which remains the best production of a Shakespeare play I’ve ever seen (and – joy of joys – was recorded for posterity). The play adapts superbly to a summer outdoors setting – and the Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Theatre provides both extremely comfy seating and an extraordinarily clear view of the stage. You can be sure, by the way, that the RSC has adopted a strong Covid-secure protocol not only to look after its audience but also its cast and crew, with a longer than usual interval (vital to get visits to both the bar and the toilets done in ample time) and excellent attention to social distancing and hygiene requirements. The super-helpful and plentiful front of house staff did a tremendous job.

You don’t need me to outline the story of the Comedy of Errors (but I will anyway). The states of Syracuse and Ephesus are on a war footing and Syracusan merchant Egeon is under arrest on penalty of death unless he can raise the thousand marks the law requires to save his life. Egeon has nothing to offer save his eloquence, but has no knowledge that one of his sons, and his son’s servant – and, indeed, his wife – have been living in Ephesus after they went missing in a sea disaster. Meanwhile his other son, (and other servant) turn up in Ephesus, looking for their brothers, and get mixed up in a comedy of mistaken identity – because they’re all identical twins. Plautus recognised a good joke when he saw one, didn’t he? I’m not breaking any spoilers when I tell you that Egeon doesn’t die.

Max Jones has created a simple but extremely effective set, with a tiled floor that recreates both cobbled streets and wealthy flooring, plus a back wall that parts in the middle to suggest the all-important abbey where the Syracusan Antipholus and Dromio take refuge. Dyfan Jones’ sound design is superb; in particular, the comic scene between A of S and D of S, about the countries embedded in the realms of Luce’s body, works incredibly well with the sound tricks played by the imaginary microphones. One reservation though; at times, the sound of the four beatboxing vocalists became slightly overpowering. More of them later.

It’s the off-beat moments where the production strays from the typical reading of the play that gives you pause for thought. Sound and visual effects emphasise the cruelty of the beatings that Dromio receives from Antipholus of S; we see it as an abusive relationship, like a dog who keeps coming back to its master out of natural devotion but knows it’s only minutes till he will flinch again. And when Antipholus of E is locked out of his own home, the cacophony of howling ridicule that comes from the crowd is enhanced as a mental paranoia that profoundly disturbs and menaces his brain. No pantomime this. The ending, too, is strangely cold; whereas normally you might expect the two Antipholuses to clap each other on the back in an ecstatic reunion, here they’re barely able to look each other in the eye – and the text backs this reading up. The two Dromios consent to leave hand in hand, so a more physical reunion is appropriate; but their long, silent hug becomes uncomfortable as you realise that this is all too much for one of them.

The plays has a hard core of four central characters – the Antipholuses and the Dromios – two additional essential characters – Adrianna and Luciana – and a wealth of lively side characters, who, for me, really made the night. Antony Bunsee’s Egeon is the pinnacle of enfeebled dignity, holding everyone’s attention with his powerful tale of woe, who causes Nicholas Prasad’s excellent Duke Solinus to show unusual compassion. The two characters make a stark visual comparison, with Egeon’s faded glory juxtaposed with Solinus’ smart claret and blue uniform – obviously a member of the West Ham United Light Infantry. Bringing Egeon’s story to a happy conclusion is a fantastic performance by Zoe Lambert as Aemilia, setting the bar for Aemilias of the future, with her hard-hitting no-nonsense Yorkshire bluff providing an excellent comic presence but a perfectly accurate reading of the character.

There’s an extremely funny and vivacious performance by Baker Mukasa as the perplexed goldsmith Angelo, trying to balance his debtor and creditor with beaming but unsuccessful interpersonal skills until the money just isn’t there; I loved Alfred Clay’s Doctor Pinch, portrayed as a yogic charlatan in posing gold lamé; and Toyin Alyedun-Alase’s wonderful Courtesan creates a very striking figure as an almost-dominatrix, alluring and threatening at the same time – you wouldn’t want to cross her. William Grint breathes new life into the character of the gangster second merchant with some fantastic physical comedy, and together with his bodyguard Dyfrig Morris, show how disability can be a positive force on stage. Riad Richie, Patrick Osborne and, audience’s favourite, Sarah Seggari, all bring terrific comic support to their variety of roles.

Guy Lewis captures all Antipholus of Syracuse’s fish out of water status, but very nicely combined with that slight arrogance that accompanies the seasoned tourist traveller. Wonderful use of pauses highlight his polite confusion, and there’s a brilliant bit of comic business with a hand sanitiser that unites the problems of today with an age-old issue to genuine guffaws. Rowan Polonski channels his inner Rik Mayall with a frenetic Antipholus of Ephesus, wrapped up in his public image and desperate not to get a bad camera angle. He provides another strong physical comedy performance which gets him into all sorts of torturous bodily positions.

Jonathan Broadbent’s Dromio of S comes across as one of those servants who pretty much think they’re as important as their master with a degree of detachment and seriousness that helps him escape most of the on-stage madness; perhaps unlike Greg Haiste’s Dromio of E, who throws himself more into the traditional mayhem and comic physicality. When the back wall opens up to allow the brothers all meeting, Mr Broadbent is sat on the back wall, way backstage, deliberately visible and disconcerted, wondering whether he should get up and join the rest of them. That final scene of the long uncomfortable hug cleverly shows the difference between the two personalities. Hedydd Dylan’s Adrianna successfully conveys the character’s frustrations and anger at her husband’s inexplicable behaviour, but I didn’t think she always revealed the warmth or humour that lays beneath the exasperated surface. Avita Jay, though, is excellent as the spirited yet strictly non-feminist Luciana, who avers that a man is master of his liberty and is shocked at what appears to be her brother-in-law’s inappropriate behaviour.

One major bugbear with this production though: the music. It’s a personal thing, and I absolutely accept how skilful it is, and that I may well be out of kilter with everyone else; but I really dislike constant bombardment with vocal shenanigans beatbox-style. And the trouble is that these musical interludes not only separate each scene, but that they also drown out some important text (poor Egeon’s big speech at the beginning is basically ruined by their disrespectful soundtrack) and all to no end. Not only does the music add nothing to our understanding of the story, but it also actively gets in the way of it. Oh – and I didn’t understand all the shopping bags everywhere either.

I admired this production for its boldness in exploring the darker side of the play, and for revealing some essential differences of character between the two sets of brothers. And it’s also studded with some brilliant supporting performances. Not perfect, but certainly entertaining, and a wonderful return to live theatre from this amazing company.

Production photos by Pete Le May

Four they’re jolly good fellows!

Review – Dream, immersive theatre of the future, from the Royal Shakespeare Company, 16th March 2021

Posted on March 17, 2021 by therealchrisparkle

Not a very catchy summary of a show, I must admit, but that’s the nearest I can get to describing the online experience that we enjoyed last night. When I was a kid, I had the double album “BBC 1922 – 1972” (I always was trendy) which commemorated the first fifty years of the Beeb, and featured dozens of fascinating and entertaining ancient recordings. One of the earliest was from Station 2MT (which would soon develop into the BBC), with one Captain Eckersley broadcasting from an ex-army hut in Writtle, Essex, with the words This is Two Emma Toc, Writtle testing, and enthusiasts around the country would twiddle the cat’s whisker on their new-fangled wireless machine and, miracle of miracles, Eckersley’s dulcet tones came into their living room out of nowhere. What a thrill that must have been.

This vague recollection (as I haven’t played that album for a good many years) came back into my head as we watched, and interacted with, the new online production, Dream, inspired (no surprise) by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with your host Puck, accompanied by four sprites, each of whom has their own special power to help you through the perils of an enchanted wood. The chief element that I took from the show was the unlimited potential that this new technology has for transforming the arts in the future.

The timing of this innovative approach to combine theatre with immersive technology couldn’t be more perfect. It’s almost exactly one year on from when I last set foot in a theatre, and, with the best will in the world, I – and I’m sure many others – still wrestle with a reticence about the safety of joining a real-life mid-pandemic (or even post-pandemic) audience in the coming months. So, if there is one thing the arts needs right now, it’s to find new ways of exploring online and virtual methods of getting drama into people’s homes.

This is where the Audiences of the Future initiative comes in. It aims to examine and explore ways of combining immersive technologies as part of the audience experience in the fields of art, culture, heritage and entertainment. Thus Dream is not only an artistic work in its own right, but also a piece of research and development within this wider framework. Audiences log in on their laptops, phones and tablets to watch five actors perform live at the Guildhall in Portsmouth; for yes, these performances are all live, all that’s recorded are the musical contributions of the Philharmonia Orchestra and Nick Cave (yes, he of the Bad Seeds) as the Voice of the Forest. Prospective audience members have two alternatives for experiencing Dream; you can simply turn up and watch a show, live, for free, or for the princely sum of £10 you can upgrade to being an Audience Plus member. This makes you a virtual firefly, with the ability to influence the characters and action with the aid of your mouse.

You arrive at the Dream Lobby in advance of the show starting; that’s the place to pick up tips on how best to enjoy it and how to interact with it. When the show starts, EM Williams, who plays Puck with great charm and warmth, welcomes you in, and invites you to follow them through the forest for a magical adventure. The show is constructed so that you can get glimpses of both the backstage gubbins and the full product at the same time, which offers you a truly fascinating insight into how the whole thing works.

So let’s concentrate on the good things, because there are good things a-plenty. The technology is outstanding. Over 7,200 devices logged into yesterday evening’s show, and there was never a hint that the Internet wouldn’t be able to take the load. The picture and the sound were of the highest quality, as were the performances and choreography, because this show relies heavily on movement. The visual design of the forest was exciting and intriguing, colourful and intense; and the presentations of the characters themselves – the term avatar is being used, but I know nothing about gaming – are inventive and hugely creative. Puck appears as a disconnected collection of rocks, Moth is a free-fluttering floaty thing made of leaves, Mustardseed a moving bundle of branches, Peaseblossom an assembly of flowers, and Cobweb is a spooky eye emerging through cobwebs in a tree. The imagination behind and execution of these dreamlike beings are just superb.

Also really impressive is the use of a clever little piece of software called Gestrument, that creates perfect musical accompaniments to the movements of the characters, adding magic and colour to the presentation. The luscious, pre-recorded music, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, are three excerpts from a recording made just before Lockdown 1.0, composed and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. In fact, the whole production is a testament to collaboration between so many different companies and specialists, and it is an absolute credit to them that it has come to fruition so successfully.

It’s important to take this current production for what it is – a piece of research and development, one step in finding a way through the tricky troubled times of right now to find innovative answers for the future. As a result, it would be wrong to gloss over what didn’t work about the production. The interactivity, whereby you basically lob a few fireflies into the action to illuminate the way, is great in theory, and clearly lends support and direction to the cast. But it’s a damp squib to the audience, who only get a vague sense of where their firefly might have landed, in amongst a sea (wrong metaphor I know) of other firefly trails, all landing higgledy-piggledy in the forest. My fairy trajectories weren’t up to much anyway, but then I’ve never been much of a Pinball Wizard. If you’re going to invite the audience to influence the action (and indeed charge them for the pleasure), then the reward must be more obvious and more beneficial. The technology is brilliant, but that alone is not enough to give you a satisfactory audience experience. In addition, whilst it’s great to discover that it’s possible to create this work live, the live element didn’t as such offer any greater meaning or pleasure to the audience experience than if it had been recorded. But, of course, with different content, performing it live could be a whole new kettle of fish.

This is clearly the gateway to something more significant stretching into the future. It needs a much bigger brain than mine to grapple with all the possibilities that this technology offers, but anything that extends the reach of the theatre into the home can only be A Good Thing in my book. We’re only at the Writtle Testing stage right now, but, who knows, in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time… the ether’s the limit.

This Royal Shakespeare Company co-production is a collaboration with the Manchester International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast and the Philharmonia Orchestra, and offers performances at different times to suit different time zones and continues to play until 20^th March. For more information, click here!

Production photos by Stuart Martin for the RSC

Review – The Whip, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 11th February 2020

Posted on February 12, 2020 by therealchrisparkle

Odd title, The Whip. The first thing it brought to my mind was that implement with which you punish horses, or people, into painful submission. The second thing was a walnut-topped chocolatey confection, which sadly was very wide of the mark. The prime relevance of the title refers to its main character, Alexander Boyd, Chief Whip of the Whig Party in 1833, when this play is set. And of course, a political Whip is named after that aforementioned instrument of torture, as they whip the other MPs into the subservient position of what the party leaders want.

A quick pre-show flick through the programme shamed me into recognising my own ignorance when it comes to the history of slavery – and, as far this play is concerned, how Parliament – eventually – brought about its abolition in Britain. I had no idea, for example, that there was a 26-year gap between passing the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act and the Slavery Abolition Act. Nor that after abolition, the Government introduced a period of “apprenticeship” for the former slaves – where in fact they carried on precisely the same work, on virtually the same conditions; today we call them interns (just joking, or am I?) The only real difference is that the Slave Owners had been recompensed handsomely for loss of stock. These apprenticeships continued for a further five years. And I certainly didn’t know that the sums paid to the Slave Owners amounted to 40% of the national budget, and the necessary borrowing to account for this didn’t get paid off until – wait for it – 2015.

It’s clear that Juliet Gilkes Romero’s new play is not only an exposé of those miserable years but also reflects parallels to Britain today. It’s emphatically not an allegory of Brexit; if it’s meant to be, it does a poor job. But there are elements that go to show that nothing is new in the world of British politics. A major project, with popular support, takes many years to be implemented. As a result of the final negotiations, a few prominent MPs and other businessmen become extraordinarily rich, whilst the country’s coffers are plundered. It takes ages for the country to regain its feet financially, the whole process creates a starting point for further political upheavals. On second thoughts, perhaps it is an allegory of Brexit.

We meet Boyd, who has befriended and adopted a younger runaway slave, Edmund, and groomed him to greatness with the possibility of a Parliamentary career. Boyd’s a good man, a principled man, with his heart in the right place; but also a practical man, who knows you have to walk before you can run. We see him in the House of Commons, surrounded by a noisy rabble and a Speaker whose pronouncements are delivered exactly like John Bercow, and he stands out as thoroughly respectable. He engages a feisty young woman, Horatia, as his cook/maid, not only because she stands up for herself, but also because her daughter was killed in a cotton-mill accident, and he feels like she is the kind of person who should be given a second chance. Also involved is the eloquent and respected ex-slave Mercy Pryce, who addresses the crowds at Speakers’ Corner, and who works with Boyd to influence thought and opinion. Whilst Mercy strives towards justice for slaves and Horatia demands votes for women, just how much will Society sit back and let all that change simply happen? And will Edmund achieve the greatness that Boyd expects of him?

Given that this is a fascinating time of history, with some remarkable people working hard to put right an inestimable wrong, which still has consequences for the world today, I was disappointed at how pedestrian and dull the first Act, in particular, turns out to be. It’s very wordy and turgid; it moves slowly and with a strange sense of worthiness. It lacks dramatic tension and that special magic. Maybe this is because the play has been constructed as a kind of Greek Tragedy; with four characters designated as The Furies, the classical deities of vengeance. There’s a scene later in the play when Boyd goes to the Commons and is beset by the Furies who bump into him and accost him and prevent him from achieving his goals. And, frankly, it looks ridiculous. Particularly as, for the most part, the Furies act as scene shifters and general gophers. It’s the Furies who, Chorus-like, wind up the story by addressing the audience directly with details of how the national debt from paying the Slave Owners wasn’t in the clear until 2015. But unlike a Greek Tragedy, we don’t have some cataclysmic ending or a deus ex machina to draw a line under the whole proceedings. The mix of contemporary political drama and stylised Greek tragedy didn’t sit well and I’m afraid I couldn’t take the Furies seriously.

Perhaps the main problem with the play – which is a brave problem and therefore to be admired – is that it is simply too ambitious, trying to tie up too many ideas, and trying to make too many associations, so that it stretches itself without resolving anything. Whilst it spends a long time establishing the characterisations of the protagonists, the story doesn’t progress much, and everything feels ponderous and cumbersome – like that really irritating table that descends and ascends throughout the whole evening as a centrepiece for many of the scenes. Never has a simple piece of furniture-shifting monopolised your sightline so much as to get in the way of telling a story.

Fortunately, there are some very good performances that just about pull you through the long three hours of this show. The double-act, if you could call them that, of Debbie Korley as Mercy Pryce and Katherine Pearce as Horatia Poskitt, provide most of the energy of the play. Ms Pearce impresses with her spiky retorts and generally bullish behaviour so that the stage brightens up when she comes on. Ms Korley’s measured and dignified performance completely challenges your preconceptions about how an ex-slave would behave.

Richard Clothier’s Boyd is also full of dignity – until he’s brought low by duplicitous colleagues – and he gives a great portrayal of a flawed, but good man in the most trying of circumstances. He also has an extraordinarily rich voice that demands your attention. John Cummins’ Cornelius Hyde Villiers is a nasty piece of work, in politics for all the wrong, self-seeking reasons, but creates a very believable person out of what otherwise could be merely a pantomime baddie. David Birrell plays Lord Maybourne, the Home Secretary, as very comfortably pompous and manipulating, a man who is naturally your (indeed, anyone’s) superior. And Tom McCall’s Bradshaw Cooper is a very credible portrayal of a difficult, tetchy, driven politician, the type we’d all like to punch on the nose.

We didn’t understand why Nicholas Gerard-Martin’s Purnell was portrayed as such a terrified, jittery idiot; and what I suspect was meant to be a largely comic scene, where he is primed for his Select Committee appearance, felt to me a bit embarrassing. And Corey Montague-Sholay’s Edmund was so refined, so reserved, so delicate and private, that I feel we never really got to know him.

I’ll be honest with you – Mrs Chrisparkle slept through at least half of the first Act and a quarter of the Second Act, which does indeed prove one thing; in waking hours, the second Act is twice as entertaining as the first. However, being bored in the theatre is the ultimate drama crime, and I can’t help but think that a play with this riveting source material and timeless relevance should have delivered a hugely greater impact. However, I always say I prefer a brave failure to a lazy success, and, given the quality of some of the performances, I have to add an extra star to what I feel this show otherwise deserves. The Whip continues in repertory at the Swan Theatre until 21^st March.

Production photos by Steve Tanner

Three-sy does it!

Review – The Boy in the Dress, RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 27th November 2019

Posted on November 29, 2019 by therealchrisparkle

Hotly awaited comes this brand-new musical to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre with a pedigree as long as a dachshund. David Walliams’ book (his first) has been adapted for the stage by Mark Ravenhill (of Shopping and F***ing fame), with music and lyrics by Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers. Directed by RSC Supremo Gregory Doran, heading the cast is the inimitable and versatile Rufus Hound, with a fabulous (and I do not use the word lightly) set by Robert Jones and a delicious-sounding band led by Alan Williams. All well and good so far!

And indeed, it’s all well and good for the most part. I’ve not read Mr Walliams’ book but a quick flick at a synopsis suggests that the musical is very true to the original and is a story with its heart fixed firmly in the right place. 12-year-old Dennis is the top scorer in the school football team, but his life has been shattered by his mum walking out on the family home and leaving him with just his dad and older brother John. Whilst Dad sits around indulging in comfort food and John is out doing his own thing, there’s a big mum-shaped hole in Dennis’ life. Dad has burned all the photos of her, save one that was accidentally rescued by Dennis, where she’s wearing that yellow dress that he always associates with her. One day, whilst buying this week’s Shoot! magazine in Raj’s corner shop, Dennis spies an edition of Vogue with a beautiful yellow dress on the cover and he can’t resist buying it. Hoping to gain the attention of the most desirable girl in the school Lisa James, Dennis allows her to dress him up in her new fashion creation, an orange sequined dress; and he loves it. But how will this go down with his friends, family and headmaster? You’ll have to watch it to find out!

In these days where schoolchildren are being taught (quite rightly, imho) that there should be No Outsiders, and society seems to be getting less and less tolerant, this feels like a timely addition to the debate about the human condition. I’m sure there are more plays that examine what it’s like to be a cross-dresser, but this is the first I can remember since Robert Morley and John Wells’ A Picture of Innocence back in 1978, and certainly the first involving a child. Its message of acceptance is simple and clear; it doesn’t erroneously conflate it with homosexuality, and beware of anyone who doesn’t accept you as you are, because they’re likely to be hypocrites. I always guessed that a certain someone would have a guilty secret; I was right.

At its best, this is an irresistibly charming production, with some great flashes of humour, both spoken and physical. The prancing arrival of the posh boys’ football team has you hooting with derision. When Lisa James peeks through Dennis’ bedroom window and he asks how she got there, the hilarious simplicity of the answer almost stops the show. Then there are some great set pieces of music and dance; the Disco Symphony sequence, for instance, is brilliantly staged and the audience raises the roof in response. The football matches are represented with some fantastic footballography, creating a balletic effect out of the beautiful game. And its impishly sudden ending is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a musical.

So it’s a smash-hit, right? Well, no, not quite. I really wanted to love this show from my toes to my fingertips but there were elements that for me let it down. The show wavers between being played very straight and serious in some parts and as pure pantomime in others. The lump-in-the-throat provoking If I Don’t Cry, where Dennis explores his reaction to his mum’s departure, and A House Without a Mum, where the whole family comes to terms with their new status, are full of heartfelt emotion and true humanity. On the other hand, all the scenes with the ebullient shopkeeper Raj, or Darvesh’s outrageous mother, or Mr Hawtrey’s A Life of Discipline number, are pure pantomime, and the balance between the two sometimes feels a little uneasy. Of course, sometimes we have up days, sometimes down, and having a variety of styles reflects that. It’s just that the heartfelt sequences work so well and the pantomime sequences don’t always achieve that.

The story is great, and the tunes are perfectly agreeable. However, some of those lyrics – oh, good Lord. I appreciate that the show is designed to appeal to children – the suggested age for David Walliams’ book is 8- to 12-year-olds. But that doesn’t mean the words have to be dumbed down. For example: the chorus of the Headmaster’s song, I Hate Kids, blandly goes (if I remember rightly), “I hate kids, I hate kids, I really really really hate kids”. Doesn’t give us great character insight, does it? Particularly as in other scenes the headmaster is happy to declaim “Degenerate!” whenever he sees Dennis, which is a rather sophisticated word. Many of the songs throughout the show are sadly littered with inane and uninspired lyrics, and opportunities for more telling words are sacrificed in the quest for a rhyming couplet – learning/learned, turning/turned comes to mind.

And then there’s the character of Raj. It panders to every Asian shopkeeper racial stereotype under the sun, and I felt sorry for Irvine Iqbal being asked to gurn his way through a sequence of embarrassing musical clichés which wouldn’t have made the first draft of a Goodness Gracious Me sketch. Not giving too much away, I hope, but when he donned his sari I truly wanted to look away. That really didn’t work for me at all. And whilst I enjoyed Natasha Lewis’ performance as Darvesh’s Mum (she does have the best line in the show after all), it seemed clear that the adult Asians are portrayed as outrageous/grotesque figures of fun whilst most of the adult Caucasians are portrayed as ordinary, recognisable human beings. If you want to see lovable Asians on stage without patronising them, can I recommend a revival of the excellent Bend it like Beckham?

Despite these not insubstantial issues, there’s no doubt that the show is immensely enjoyable, largely down to a fantastic performance from a gifted cast. For press night, the role of Dennis was played by Toby Mocrei, and he was exceptional. Full of authority, a face that conveys innocence, cheekiness, sadness and that wonderful feeling when you get the attention of the most attractive girl in the school, plus the voice of an angel (yes, Messrs Williams and Chambers aren’t the only ones who can use a cliché), the audience as one rose to give him a most deserved standing ovation at the earliest opportunity. Dennis is a dream role for a child actor and Toby was the star of the night. There are four actors playing Dennis, as there are for the role of Darvesh; ours was Ethan Dattani, also full of confidence, plaintively and affectionately reassuring Dennis that his cross-dressing didn’t make a shred of difference to their friendship in a rather emotional little scene. He also very nicely batted away his mother’s embarrassing pitchside kisses.

As one of three actors playing Lisa James, Tabitha Knowles is another supremely confident young performer; her Lisa creates a strong bond with Dennis, whom she proudly displays in the shops and at school as though he were her extravagant new pet. She also has a great singing voice, nice comic timing and a very engaging persona. And Alfie Jukes’ John is a nicely underplayed Neanderthal dumb-nut, who’ll do anything for a Magnum. I hardly recognised Rufus Hound as Dad, an unhappy, down-at-heel man who doesn’t need any further complications in his life and is insufficiently in tune with his feminine side to come close to understanding Dennis’ fondness for dresses – at first. But when he opens his heart and accepts his son, I swear a bit of grit must have got in my eye and I had to activate my tear duct.

Elsewhere there’s an effective pantomime-villain performance from Forbes Masson as Mr Hawtrey, strictly one-dimensional and played for laughs, and a nicely loopy performance from Charlotte Wakefield as the useless French teacher Miss Windsor. And I loved Ben Thompson’s very human operation of Oddbod, the dog who farts when he gets excited. There’s one lovely moment when he lets one rip and then looks accusingly at the audience as if to ask, “come on, which of you did that?”

I wanted this to be a great show; I guess I’ll have to make do with it being a very good show. But I’m sure it’s going to be a terrific hit with Christmas families and school parties. It’s playing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until 8^th March 2020, but I’m sure that’s not the last we’ll see of sharp-shooting Dennis and his shimmying gown. And, on press night at least, the evening belonged to young Master Mocrei.

Production photos by Manuel Harlan.

Review – King John, Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 26th September 2019

Posted on September 27, 2019 by therealchrisparkle

King John is one of Shakespeare’s more rarely performed plays, and what a pity that is, because it’s full of fascinating characters, splendid speeches, dramatic gruesomeness and the odd bit of humour. So when the opportunity comes around to share it with a whole new audience, it shouldn’t be wasted. I’ve never sided with the purists when it comes to Shakespeare – he’s big and strong enough to look after himself, and if a production comes along that takes liberties – to the extent that it doesn’t work – then you can always console yourself with the fact that another production will come along soon enough.

I must confess though, Eleanor Rhode’s mid-20^th century, gender-swapping, vital scene-removing, and altogether flippant production really tested my patience. If it hadn’t been for the excellence of the performances – which were almost universally perfect – and also for the superbly recreated costumes (take a bow Max Johns) – I would have been darn tempted to leave at halftime. To be fair, that would have been an error on my part, as the show considerably calms down after the interval, as the quest to get to the finishing line trims down most of the excesses.

The mood is set with a 60s pop opening soundtrack, and the sight of King John’s very long breakfast table, equipped with two 60s telephones, a posh transistor radio, and a bit of toast. Enter King, in jim-jams and crown, gulping down a hangover cure after what was presumably a heavy night; not that there’s any reason to believe that John was a drinker – we don’t see him touch a drop for the rest of the play. I think it’s an attempt to show that he’s a bit of a lad. A quick moment of comic business follows, with an unanswered phone which – I presume – is to suggest that the King is always in demand. If that’s the case, why don’t phones reappear in the rest of the production? Actually they do; in one moment of appallingly anachronistic and hackneyed comedy, when the papal legate enters the stage and does the internationally recognised “call me” signal to a member of the audience, forgetting that in the sixties we didn’t have mobiles. It’s this kind of inconsistency that reveals how poorly thought through is the whole directorial vision of the production.

Usually, gender-swapping roles has the benefit of seeing a well-known text through fresh eyes; but when the play is not so well-known, and when so many other liberties have been taken with the original, messing with the gender of the character can cause some confusion. Another confession; in this instance, I found the fact that a man was played by a woman jarred. If it had been a more serious, traditional production, it probably would have worked – but this is a production that errs on the side of the ludicrous. Don’t get me wrong; as King John, Rosie Sheehy is a fine actor with great presence, excellent clarity of diction, and a deft knack of conveying mood swings. But she’s definitely playing King John and not Queen Jean – he’s referred to as a man throughout the play – but Ms Sheehy wears women’s attire – including a stunning gold coronation dress (another bow for the designer). She’s not giving us a male impersonation performance; we’re not watching Vesta Tilley here.

So why a female performer in the role? If the answer is, she was the best person available for the job, then I can understand that. True, it does allow for a moment of dramatic irony where the king cuddles up to Hubert in a semi-sexual way, implying that if he kills Arthur, he/she will make it worth his while; you must decide if that liberty with the script is acceptable or not. Otherwise, it tends to distort the relationships between the characters. Queen Elinor and John, for example, have a power-bond which looks and feels very different between mother and son instead of mother and daughter. Don’t forget this is a tragedy – even though at times it felt more like a pantomime. King John as Principal Boy, Philip the Bastard as Simple Simon and Cardinal Pandulph as the Wicked Witch. For the most part, I couldn’t take it seriously.

Take, for instance, those group comedy dance entrances, when the English or the French court appear on stage to a groovy soundtrack and attitudinal dance moves – they reminded me of the finale sequence in that highly successful production of Boeing Boeing about ten years ago; or the boxing scene, which I believe was meant to represent the siege of Angiers, but was much more reminiscent of Monty Python than Shakespeare; I would not have been remotely surprised for the Dauphin to have threatened “I wave my private parts in your general direction”. The food fight at the wedding, though beautifully choreographed, was reminiscent not so much of a ghastly family get-together but more of a comedy routine with Charlie Cairoli and his clowns – 60s pantomime through and through. Best performance by a Pastry Item in a Shakespeare play goes to the bit of cake that ends up in the King of France’s crown.

But even when they’d cleared away all the jokey excesses of the first two hours, in the height of battle between the English and French forces, they fought…on two revolving trestle tables. I was so distracted by watching the wheels go around, checking to see if they fell off the stage, that I completely forgot to pay attention to the actors. And then – of all scenes to cut – they remove the scene where Arthur dies and is discovered by Pembroke and Salisbury. Instead, the dead Arthur reappears all bloodied and zombie-like a couple of times, presumably as a ghost, and you’re left to your own devices as to how he came a-cropper.

The few moments when the production did soar for me were when the direction took a back seat and the text shone through. The pleading by Hubert (should be the First Citizen, but we’ll let that pass) that Blanche and the Dauphin should marry to end the warring between England and France, and the subsequent reactions by the two forcibly engaged young people was a breath of fresh air. The scene where Hubert is required to murder Arthur, but doesn’t, is electric with tension. But sadly these tremendous moments were few and far between.

Along with a great performance by Rosie Sheehy as King John, I was extremely impressed by Michael Abubakar as the cocksure Philip the Bastard, sweet-talking his way into the affections of the crown; Bridgitta Roy as the superior Queen Elinor and a beautifully pitched performance by Tom McCall as the torn Hubert, agonising over the balance of between serving the King and retaining his own humanity. Katherine Pearce went down a storm and was clearly the audience’s favourite as the papal legate Cardinal Pandulph, although whenever I watched her all I could see was Patricia Routledge playing Victoria Wood’s creation Kitty from about 1984.

I’m not a Shakespeare purist – but there are limits. You can see the threads of a few directorial ideas, but they’re not followed through, and, despite some panache-filled performances, by trying to create a comedy out of a tragedy, it succeeds at neither. This one wasn’t for me. This production continues in repertoire at the Swan Theatre until 21 March 2020 and will be broadcast in cinemas on 29^th April 2020.