Theatre Compendium II: 'An Ideal Husband', 'Swan Lake' and 'Hamlet'

Another compendium of things what I saw in June, this time Oscar Wilde, the glory that is the Royal Ballet and 'Hamlet'.

'An Ideal Husband' at the Vaudeville Theatre

The Oscar Wilde season continues at the Vaudeville with 'An Ideal Husband'. It's always fun to see an Oscar Wilde play, especially when it's well produced like this season is, but we've sort of seen it before. It's another morality tale of the upper-class high-minded wife and the not so high-minded husband, the problems with their friends,  deep secret that must never be spoken of that somehow comes to light and the inevitable fall-out of that secret becoming known to a few more people.

There are, of course, all the shenanigans that need to take place to make the play enjoyable and make the audience laugh at (not with) the characters with Wilde's authors voice coming through loud and clear at times. He is rather forensic with his digs at Victorian 'society' and morality and I suspect he would've been more scathing if he thought he could get away with it.

I really liked this production and even laughed out loud a few points (a rarity for me) but two things spoiled it - the Foxes, Edward and Freddie. Fun as it was to have a real father and son play the father and son, I just have to wonder if they were the right father and son. Edward's been around forever and knows his stuff but his accent was so impenetrably posh that I couldn't always make out what he was saying. Freddie is the (relatively) new kid on the block and I've seen him on stage, on telly and on film and I've never really liked his performances. He seems to do a lot of floppy-haired camp but I've yet to see any real and convincing acting. And I'd include this play in that - it's quite a central role but he seemed so lightweight for it. And too young if he's supposed to be a school-friend of the husband of the title.

Frances Barber was excellent as the trouble-making minx Mrs Cheeverley even though her costumes went over the top - too far over the top with the red dress! I also really liked Faith Omole as the sister and love interest for Freddie Fox's character - she had a real presence and confidence on stage and I look forward to seeing her again.

All of this season of plays have been very well produced and I'm looking forward to the next one - 'The Importance of Being Earnest'.

'Swan Lake' at the Royal Opera House

I saw 'Swan Lake' danced by the Bolshoi Ballet a couple of years ago when the Bolshoi did a short summer season at the Royal Opera House. I wasn't all that taken with it  at the time but when it was announced that the Royal Ballet would dance a new production of 'Swan Lake' I was determined to see it. I'm so pleased that I did because it was magical and marvellous.

A beautiful princess is cursed my an evil magician to be a swan by day and a human by night. The evil magician masquerades as the court adviser to the Queen and he menaces the young prince with the Queen's decision that the prince must decide who to marry. Distraught, the prince runs into the forest, to the lake, and meets a beautiful princess who, in the morning turns back into a swan. Scenes build upon scenes until the prince falls for the Black Swan who looks exactly like the princess but is actually the daughter of the evil magician. Tragedy builds on tragedy and, ultimately, the princess takes her life since the curse cannot be lifted. A sad end to a magical tale.

This was a marvellous production with new choreography added by Liam Scarlett, the number of ballerinas on stage together (at one point there were 28 in white tutus) and the astonishing and athletic  dancing. This is a production I'll remember for a long time and hope it is repeated frequently. William Bracewell was our prince and Akane Takada was the swan princess - I was particularly impressed with Akane's transformations into swan when we could see her arms ripple to become wings, a sight not easily forgotten.

All in all, it was a stunning production with sets, lighting, dancing and the wonderful music all coming together to provide the magic. Thank you Royal Ballet, that production has set the standard for all future productions I see of 'Swan Lake'. Please come back soon.

'Hamlet' at Shakespeare's Globe

There seems to be a never-ending supply of productions of 'Hamlet' with big production seemingly every year. The latest version is at the Globe under the new leadership of Michelle Terry who also took the lead role playing 'Hamlet'. It's one of my favourite Shakespeare plays and is full of beautiful poetry and 'sayings' we all recognise. So no pressure there then.

Like others in this opening season for Michelle Terry, casting is gender-blind so we have a female Hamlet and Horatio, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are half and half with a  deaf woman as part of the double-act and Ophelia is played by a man (of course) while her brother is played by a woman. None of this really matters since it's the quality of acting that draws you in to any production, not whether the actor is male or female. It was the same ensemble cast as I saw playing 'As You Like It' a month or so earlier and shared some of the same problems, particularly with Betrays Jones being largely unintelligible as Laertes throughout the play - you really really need to learn diction and how to project for a venue like the Globe.

The stage was sparse throughout and there was simple lighting as the evening drew in in the second half. I really like that approach since it's up to the actors to create the magic and make me see castle battlements that aren't really there and, y'know what? I saw pretty sturdy battlements. One of the things I really liked was seeing Hamlet dressed in white for most of the play - normally he's always in black and that gets so boring. Well done to whoever came up with that!

I've seen a number of Hamlets over the years, from Jude Law to Dominic Cumberbatch, Rory Kinnear and Andrew Scott - and my first Hamlet was Derek Jacobi way back in 1978. And you know what? With the possible exception of Mr Jacobi, I think Michelle Terry's Hamlet is the best I've seen. She really knows how to speak verse and she brought it to life by treating some lines as almost off-the-cuff quips rather than venerated lines of poetry. I was most impressed. Not everyone in the production was as excellent but she lifted the whole thing for me.

Another plus was Tanika Yearwood playing various parts, minor roles, but still there and influential. She had excellent diction and great projection, sending those words effortlessly to the back of the balcony and instantly appearing as a different character to the one she was just playing. I was most impressed.

The production wasn't perfect by any means but it's up there with the best for me, particularly Michelle Terry's Hamlet. She deserves flight of angels.

'The Merchant of Venice' at Shakespeare's Globe

The summer season at the Globe is really good this year. I've already seen an excellent production of 'Romeo & Juliet' and Friday night was the turn of 'The Merchant of Venice', another Shakespeare play I hadn't seen performed.  It had been raining on and off all day and was getting a bit chilly as we took our seats in the open air theatre but I was looking forward to seeing it for the first time. And then on came musicians and actors dressed for a masked ball to set the scene in old Venice.

There's a lot of storytelling going on in this play and the stories merge and become one as the play progresses. We've all heard of Shylock but it's not solely about Shylock. There's Bassanio who wants to marry Portia and Lorenzo who elopes with Jessica, Shylock's daughter who takes some of her father's riches as a dowery. In order to pursue his suit of Portia, Bassanio needs to borrow 3,000 ducats and he approaches his good older friend, the merchant Antonio who is short of cash but says Bassanio can use his name as surety for any loan he can find. And that's where Shylock comes in as the money-lender who agrees to a pound of flesh as the bond if the loan is not repaid. But he is pressured into this by Antonio's sneers about usury and charging interest on loans so Shylock waives interest in favour of a straight forward deal.

Through all the twists and turns of the play we get to know the characters, their strengths and weaknesses. As the plot goes forward it'sever winding and developing and taking new turns. Clearly, Bassanio must win Portia's hand but who would guess that he wouldn't recognise her later when she appears as the young male doctor of law in the court scene (I suspect that young Bassanio needs glasses). Jessica's eloping with Lorenzo doubles Shylock's determination to stick to the letter of the law and claim his pound of flesh when Antonio fails to deliver the cash on time, despite being offers more ducats by Bassanio. And who would guess that it's Portia, as the young doctor, who finds the solution to Antonio's dilemma and saves him at the last minute by a legal twist just as Shylock is about to extract his pound of flesh. There's a lot going on...

There's also a lot of very subtle and some not so subtle scenes of anti-semitism, something the play is famous for and this production brings out very powerfully. We have the good Antonio that everyone loves because such a nice and generous gentleman and yet as soon as he sees Shylock his demeanour totally changes into cold hate with vitriolic language and he even physically attacks Shylock by grabbing his throat. Why Shylock still agrees to loan Bassanio the money is a puzzlement after this treatment. Even the lovely lady Portia can't help but treat Jessica as a lowly person by handing her a wineglass to hold like a servant and slightly hesitates before including her in her kind words to Lorenzo. It's an oddity of the play really, since there were - according to the historical notes in the programme - only about 300 Jews in the country in Elizabethan times so the vast majority of the audience is unlikely to have met any Jews.

The court scene at the end of the play keeps you on the edge of your seat - obviously Antonio won't die or give up a pound of his flesh but how do we get there through the wtisting and turning arguments? This was performed very well indeed and you can almost see the inspiration strike as Portia hits upon the solution to save Antonio. And then the cruelty comes in by pushing and pushing against Shylock so he loses all the money but then also loses all his private wealth and house, to be left with nothing. Antonio declines his share of Shylock's wealth in favour of Shylock signing it over to Lorenzo and Jessica and provided Shylock converts to Christianity. What chance has Shylock?

The very final scene of resoltion with all the lovers present and the farce of the missing rings ends with Lorenzo and Jessica hearing of their bounty by inheriting wealth from Jessica's father, Shylock, and that should be end of the performance with their future secured. But this production goes one step further with Jessica on her knees wailing at the edge of the stage at the news of her father having to convert and a procession of churchmen in white robes coming on stage with Shylock to baptise him while chanting in Latin. There was a stillness and silence about this scene, with Shylock quietly moaning, almost as if in pain, with each cup of water covering his head as betrays his faith to keep his life. Powerful and shocking.

The staging is quite simple but very effective with a grille backdrop boxing in the centre of the stage for most of the play to represent Venice with sections opening as doors and windows. This changes with the addition of a gauzy silken curtain coming out from the sides to represent Portia's home in Belmont. Bits of furniture are carried out for some scenes, such as tables with elaborate boxes for Portia's suitors to choose (only one casket holds her portrait) and chairs for the final court scene.

The cast were excellent and, as you'd expect, Jonathan Pryce was a powerful Shylock with his real life daughter, Phoebe Pryce, playing his daughter Jessica in the play. She had a nice presence, wild and rebellious with her father and sweetly romantic with Lorenzo, her lover. David Sturzaker was great fun as Gratiano with his one-liners and comic gestures, just like any young man who thinks too much of himself. I also liked Rachel Pickup at Portia going through a whole range of emotions when dealing with her suitors and quietly confident playing the young doctor of law, especially that moment of inspiration when she announces that Shylock may have his his pound of flesh, but only the flesh. Dorothea Myer-Bennett was also great as Nerissa, Portia's hand-maiden with some great comic timing and sardonic looks. I'd also single out Stefan Adegbola as the daft servant Launcelot - can this be the same actor I saw in 'Widower's Houses' earlier this year? He was great fun and full of devil may care energy!

This play is a masterpiece of storytelling with some great set piece speeches ('The quality of mercy...') and this production is excellent. If you're in London (and it's not raining) then you could do a lot worse than head on down to the Globe to see it.

'Romeo & Juliet' at Shakespeare's Globe

If I'm smiling within a couple of minutes of a play starting then that must be a good sign. Is it the 500 year old language or the venue, or the packed theatre open to the elements with a chilly breeze, or the anticipation and need to see a play I've never seen performed? I don't know, but I was smiling and wanting this new production to be good - and it was!

This is one of the first productions in the Globe's 2015 season with the theme of 'Justice and Mercy' (last year focused on Shakespeare's Roman plays).  I'm seeing a few more productions over the summer including 'The Oresteia' by the up and coming playwright Aeschylus. No idea if he'll do well or not, but we'll see.

It's on tour around the country at the moment and the Globe is it's London stop. It's designed to fit almost anywhere and it was perfect for the Globe stage. The set was, essentially, a climbing frame to provide some height and a balcony (you've got to have a balcony for *that* scene) and the costumes were minimal, with (almost) everyone coming on in cream/white trousers and shirt and occasionally donning a coat or hat to show they were different characters. A small cast playing all the roles can be confusing sometimes and one of the cast played three different noblemen as well as a servant bumpkin!

This play is storytelling of a most superior kind. At one point during the play I wondered what this would be like with the magnificent poetry of 'Julius Caesar', and yes, there is some wonderful lyrical verse in this play, but to me, it's the story that draws you in with 'Romeo & Juliet' not the poetry. It's the plotting and construction of the play, the drip feed of elements of the tale as it progresses, the twists and turns that keep you rapt even though we all know how it ends. And this production did just that - it built the story slowly, it grew the characters, it took us on a journey that ends in heartbreak and death. It was touching and wonderful and deserved the great applause at the end.

The play is set in a mere four days in Verona and opens with a fight between the houses of Capulet and Montague and, later, a masked ball at the Capulet's palace that Romeo and his friends gatecrash. It's there that he sees Juliet and falls in love and sneaks back later to woo her. They fall in love at first sight and are secretly married the following day. Later that day there's another quarrel between the houses and Tybalt kills Mercutio, a close friend of Romeo's so Romeo must fight and kill Tybalt, who is Juliet's favourite cousin. Uh oh, I hear you say. It gets more complicated from there on with Romeo banished and Juliet assigned to marry a Capulet ally. What can our lovers do?

I thought the cast were great, particularly Samuel Valentine (is that his real name?) as Romeo and Cassie Layton as Juliet, along with Steffan Donnelly as the rather camp and aggressive Mercutio (and other roles).  Samuel and Cassie worked well together as our star-crossed lovers with only one night of love before death. They were very believable as young people in love, exuberant and touching at the same time - a lot of that is in the play but the actors need to bring it out. They will remain my Romeo and Juliet until I see a better production - and it'll need to be pretty damn startling to overtake this production.

The whole cast worked really well together as an ensemble but I don't understand why they all had various levels of tattoo on their bodies (and a lot of upper body was exposed on the men for some reason in the first half - must've been chilly in the cold and rain!). Some of the quick changes got a bit complicated with an actor walking off stage, changing coats and appearing as a different character but, ultimately, it worked. It was also quite nice to have a small cast and see them change character and style so quickly. My one complaint was making the illiterate Capulet servant a Geordie (I shall have words!).

If you get the chance to see this production, either at The Globe or on tour then I'd urge you to go and marvel at the tale of our young lovers And shed a tear.

'Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins' at Shakespeare's Globe

This evening I was lucky enough to see Eileen's Atkins' last performance of her show about Ellen Terry at the new Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in Shakespeare's Globe (where else could it be?). Build with lovely light wood, an ornate stage and lit with chandeliers of candles (and a couple of spotlights) with a painted ceiling, it's a lovely new theatre and I hope Zoe Wanamaker likes it on behalf of her dad.

Ellen Terry was a Victorian actress and great interpreter of Shakespeare and she wrote lectures about Shakespeare with Sir Henry Irving. Eileen Atkins pulled these together along with stories from Ellen's life to give us one of her lectures, striding the stage and telling us how to play and interpret Shakespeare. To illustrate her points she played scenes from some of the plays, taking all parts herself. She picked some great lines to use, such as how an actress who looks the right age for Juliet clearly can't play it properly as it requires a mature actress at the peak of her powers. Obviously. Her rendition of Juliet's speech before swallowing the poison was wonderful and demonstrated that a more mature actress can, indeed, bring more to the role.

Eileen took us on a journey through some of the more interesting women in Shakespeare, recounting why they were important and were meant to be so by Shakespeare. Characters like Beatrice and Rosamund were obviously large physically while Ophelia was a little waif. I think my favourite segments were Cordelia from 'King Lear' with Lear asleep in bed so she can be bold without her shyness and Emelia from 'Othello' transforming from a minor, comic character to a storming valkyrie of vengence for her slain mistress. Yikes, there's a power in that there woman and I mean Eileen here.

It was a mighty treat to hear Eileen play Ellen and I can't help wonder how much of what was said really reflects Eileen's own views.  This was a marvellous one-woman performance in the perfect place for a lecture about Shakespeare. If Eileen does this again then I'll certainly be in the queue for tickets.