ARABIAN NIGHTS
December 15, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until January 30, 2010
MAGIC, mystery and murder run through this high-concept adaptation of the ancient middle-Eastern tales, staged as a festive offering by the RSC.
Festive? Er, not exactly. By the interval, we’ve had a dead body quartered in front of our eyes, then magically reassembled in an illusionist’s trick. In the second half, there are ghouls, ghosts and even a spot of cannibalism to keep the kiddies entertained.
All of which explains why the rating for this imaginatively staged production comes complete with a significant health warning: children may well be seriously disturbed by what’s on offer.
The darkness of tone damagingly undermines the whole show, raising the important question of who this is actually aimed at. As a piece of theatre, it’s clever, colourful and meticulously crafted. As a bit of seasonal frivolity, it’s way over the top.
Director Dominic Cooke stages his own script, using the rather suspect device of having each character narrate their own particular lines and actions. At times, the result borders on a theatre-in-education style of drama by numbers as everyone tells us what they’re about to do, then acts it out for us in case we haven’t got the point: show and tell, rather than show not tell.
But Georgia McGuinness’s design is appropriately opulent and flowing, and the large disc of sand at the centre of the Courtyard stage is intelligently used to reinforce the action.
The performances are sound, with a particularly strong king from Silas Carson and a central thread provided by Ayesha Dharker as Shahrazad, the overall storyteller. It looks magnificent, has moments of breathtaking inventiveness – such as a crystal ball with a life of its own – and features a huge cast telling a wide variety of tales.
Just don’t take the little ones along expecting an Arabian night of merriment.
TWELFTH NIGHT
October 23, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until November 21, 2009
THE pedigree for this latest production of Shakespeare’s popular comedy is impeccable. Directed by the gifted Gregory Doran, it stars Richard Wilson as the pompous steward Malvolio and features The Vicar of Dibley’s James Fleet and telly veteran Richard McCabe among its supporting cast.
That the result should be so conventional and – dare one say it? – lacklustre is something of a mystery.
Placed in a vaguely Middle Eastern court, sumptuously dressed by designer Robert Jones, it’s highly traditional fare and remarkably understated for a director of Doran’s fertile imagination. The only really clever innovation is a wonderful box tree, flown in from on high for the three drunken conspirators to watch as Malvolio falls for their devious trick.
Curiously, it’s the star names that disappoint most. Maybe it’s to do with the expectation of Victor Meldrew as an outraged servant, or Hugo Horton as a foppish dandy, but the reality never quite lives up to the billing and it’s all a little… well, ordinary.
Elsewhere, there are some fine performances among the roles that are normally either tedious or tricky. Jo Stone-Fewings is a lyrical Duke Orsino, matched by a feisty Olivia in Alexandra Gilbreath, and the thankless parts of the separated twins, Viola and Sebastian, are given some real substance by Nancy Carroll and Sam Alexander.
For A-level students or first-timers, this is a sound, solid, safe introduction to the play, and does the RSC no discredit at all. For anyone hoping for greater things from the roll-call of talent, prepare to adjust your expectations.
THE DRUNKS/THE GRAIN STORE
September 24, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 1, 2009
AS the opening gambit in a huge, four-year project exploring theatre in the former Soviet Union, RSC artistic director Michael Boyd has commissioned two new plays from Russian writers to launch the whole Revolutions enterprise.
The Grain Store focuses on the effects of Stalin’s disastrous collectivisation policy in the early 1930s on a divided Ukrainian village. The Drunks takes as its theme the corruption at the heart of small-town Russian politics.
That neither manages to exploit such rich seams to move its audience at any emotional level is a significant failing.
Natal’ia Vorozhbit uses her grim historical backdrop to tell a pretty conventional doomed love story between party activist pauper Arsei (Tunji Kasim) and better-off farmer’s daughter Mokrina (Samantha Young). But neither character is rounded enough or sympathetic enough to support the scale of the epic catastrophe of starvation that engulfs their lives, and any potential power in their mutual destruction is lost.
There are some fine performances – among them John Mackay as the callous government representative presiding over the region and Forbes Masson as a good-hearted but misguided local grandee – and Michael Boyd’s own direction lends a sure-footed feel to the unfolding drama but, ironically, there’s not enough sustenance for a full-length, main stage production.
Brothers Mikhail and Vyacheslav Durnenkov, meanwhile, draw on absurdism, Python and even Tarantino in their utterly bizarre creation The Drunks, in which a wounded veteran of the Chechen wars returns to his home town to find everything has changed.
The battle between two local bigwigs to commandeer the veteran’s heroic credentials provides the basis for much anarchic, caricatured broad humour, and Brian Doherty and Darrell D’Silva make the most of their monstrous roles.
But it’s all too scattergun and slight – reinforced by some bewildering creative decisions from director Anthony Neilson – to rise above the level of an experimental, sub-Ionescu attempt at satire. Even the laughs are too inconsistent and unfunny to save the day, and at almost two hours with no interval, it starts to drag like a Russian winter’s night.
JULIUS CAESAR
May 26, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 2, 2009.
IT’S one of Shakespeare’s most political, conspiratorial and dynamic dramas, outlining an epic revolution that changed the course of an empire with a wave of bloody violence and retribution.
So it’s quite an achievement to make it seem tame and a little bit lacklustre.
RSC debutant Lucy Bailey – a director with an eye for imagery and spectacle – somehow manages to miss her mark with this production, staging every battle of words as a shouting contest and losing the intrigues of the scheming Roman senate in the process.
She’s not helped, either, by the normally ultra-reliable designer William Dudley, whose computer-generated back-projections of an angry mob or a city in flames become merely a source of irritation after a promising start. Costume designer Fotini Dimou also undermines the power of the Roman aristocracy by dressing them in a collection of bizarrely feminine outfits that wouldn’t look out of place in a support group of pre-op transsexuals.
Sight lines and inaudibility continue to be a problem in The Courtyard, and more than one punter failed to return after the interval, complaining of simply not being able to hear – an unforgivable failing in a company so dedicated to rendering Shakespeare accessible to all.
Among the performances, Sam Troughton makes a decent fist of Brutus, if looking more like a truculent school prefect than a world-shattering revolutionary. Oliver Ryan catches the eye in the minor role of co-conspirator Casca, while Darrell D’Silva’s Mark Antony is more thuggish schemer than noble statesman. Greg Hicks in the title role passively allows his tragedy to unfold around him – not unlike his toga, which almost caused a tragedy of its own as he mounted the senate steps and caught his foot in a dangling swathe. It was an all-too-rare heartstopping moment.
There’s no lack of ambition with this ensemble, which will be together for another two years. What’s missing so far is any sense of depth, of substance. Perhaps the bar was set so high with the recent Histories that the RSC has been trumped by its own magnificence. Here’s hoping the new young company can match the heights of its ambition and grow into itself over the next dozen or so productions together.
THE WINTER'S TALE
April 9, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 3, 2009.
IT feels like the start of another long endeavour for the RSC. After the phenomenal, and deserved, success of The Histories cycle across two years with the same ensemble, artistic director Michael Boyd is out to do it again.
This time, he’s assembled a huge company designed to stay together for two and a half years, performing 14 productions of classical and contemporary work. It’s just a shame the whole exciting project kicks off with a whimper, not a bang.
Directed by new RSC associate David Farr, this Winter’s Tale is aptly named: long, colourless and lacking warmth. It’s hard to pinpoint where the problems begin, but they end with a production that somehow appears to aim for all the right notes yet consistently just misses.
To be fair, it’s perfectly serviceable as a conventional, by rote example of Shakespeare for the sixth-former. The trouble is that the early years of Boyd’s tenure have set the bar so high that this no longer seems adequate for the RSC or The Courtyard.
Greg Hicks is a monochrome monarch, giving Leontes little in the way of light and shade. He appears mildly annoyed at the thought of his queen’s infidelity, stretching himself to rather upset over the death of his son.
Among the peasantry in Bohemia, where things should be comical, whimsical and a bit lairy, instead it’s all too pedestrian, relying on comedy accents and prosthetic willies to inject any sense of festivity. Even the witty rogue Autolycus – a charmless, seedy interpretation from Brian Doherty – fails to ignite an evening of drabness, underscored by some alarmingly droning, unhelpful music by Keith Clouston.
When the dramatic highlight comes in the form of some impressively collapsing bookcases, you know there’s something missing from the performances. And with two and a half years ahead, that’s a problem that warrants serious attention.
December 15, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until January 30, 2010
MAGIC, mystery and murder run through this high-concept adaptation of the ancient middle-Eastern tales, staged as a festive offering by the RSC.
Festive? Er, not exactly. By the interval, we’ve had a dead body quartered in front of our eyes, then magically reassembled in an illusionist’s trick. In the second half, there are ghouls, ghosts and even a spot of cannibalism to keep the kiddies entertained.
All of which explains why the rating for this imaginatively staged production comes complete with a significant health warning: children may well be seriously disturbed by what’s on offer.
The darkness of tone damagingly undermines the whole show, raising the important question of who this is actually aimed at. As a piece of theatre, it’s clever, colourful and meticulously crafted. As a bit of seasonal frivolity, it’s way over the top.
Director Dominic Cooke stages his own script, using the rather suspect device of having each character narrate their own particular lines and actions. At times, the result borders on a theatre-in-education style of drama by numbers as everyone tells us what they’re about to do, then acts it out for us in case we haven’t got the point: show and tell, rather than show not tell.
But Georgia McGuinness’s design is appropriately opulent and flowing, and the large disc of sand at the centre of the Courtyard stage is intelligently used to reinforce the action.
The performances are sound, with a particularly strong king from Silas Carson and a central thread provided by Ayesha Dharker as Shahrazad, the overall storyteller. It looks magnificent, has moments of breathtaking inventiveness – such as a crystal ball with a life of its own – and features a huge cast telling a wide variety of tales.
Just don’t take the little ones along expecting an Arabian night of merriment.
TWELFTH NIGHT
October 23, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until November 21, 2009
THE pedigree for this latest production of Shakespeare’s popular comedy is impeccable. Directed by the gifted Gregory Doran, it stars Richard Wilson as the pompous steward Malvolio and features The Vicar of Dibley’s James Fleet and telly veteran Richard McCabe among its supporting cast.
That the result should be so conventional and – dare one say it? – lacklustre is something of a mystery.
Placed in a vaguely Middle Eastern court, sumptuously dressed by designer Robert Jones, it’s highly traditional fare and remarkably understated for a director of Doran’s fertile imagination. The only really clever innovation is a wonderful box tree, flown in from on high for the three drunken conspirators to watch as Malvolio falls for their devious trick.
Curiously, it’s the star names that disappoint most. Maybe it’s to do with the expectation of Victor Meldrew as an outraged servant, or Hugo Horton as a foppish dandy, but the reality never quite lives up to the billing and it’s all a little… well, ordinary.
Elsewhere, there are some fine performances among the roles that are normally either tedious or tricky. Jo Stone-Fewings is a lyrical Duke Orsino, matched by a feisty Olivia in Alexandra Gilbreath, and the thankless parts of the separated twins, Viola and Sebastian, are given some real substance by Nancy Carroll and Sam Alexander.
For A-level students or first-timers, this is a sound, solid, safe introduction to the play, and does the RSC no discredit at all. For anyone hoping for greater things from the roll-call of talent, prepare to adjust your expectations.
THE DRUNKS/THE GRAIN STORE
September 24, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 1, 2009
AS the opening gambit in a huge, four-year project exploring theatre in the former Soviet Union, RSC artistic director Michael Boyd has commissioned two new plays from Russian writers to launch the whole Revolutions enterprise.
The Grain Store focuses on the effects of Stalin’s disastrous collectivisation policy in the early 1930s on a divided Ukrainian village. The Drunks takes as its theme the corruption at the heart of small-town Russian politics.
That neither manages to exploit such rich seams to move its audience at any emotional level is a significant failing.
Natal’ia Vorozhbit uses her grim historical backdrop to tell a pretty conventional doomed love story between party activist pauper Arsei (Tunji Kasim) and better-off farmer’s daughter Mokrina (Samantha Young). But neither character is rounded enough or sympathetic enough to support the scale of the epic catastrophe of starvation that engulfs their lives, and any potential power in their mutual destruction is lost.
There are some fine performances – among them John Mackay as the callous government representative presiding over the region and Forbes Masson as a good-hearted but misguided local grandee – and Michael Boyd’s own direction lends a sure-footed feel to the unfolding drama but, ironically, there’s not enough sustenance for a full-length, main stage production.
Brothers Mikhail and Vyacheslav Durnenkov, meanwhile, draw on absurdism, Python and even Tarantino in their utterly bizarre creation The Drunks, in which a wounded veteran of the Chechen wars returns to his home town to find everything has changed.
The battle between two local bigwigs to commandeer the veteran’s heroic credentials provides the basis for much anarchic, caricatured broad humour, and Brian Doherty and Darrell D’Silva make the most of their monstrous roles.
But it’s all too scattergun and slight – reinforced by some bewildering creative decisions from director Anthony Neilson – to rise above the level of an experimental, sub-Ionescu attempt at satire. Even the laughs are too inconsistent and unfunny to save the day, and at almost two hours with no interval, it starts to drag like a Russian winter’s night.
JULIUS CAESAR
May 26, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 2, 2009.
IT’S one of Shakespeare’s most political, conspiratorial and dynamic dramas, outlining an epic revolution that changed the course of an empire with a wave of bloody violence and retribution.
So it’s quite an achievement to make it seem tame and a little bit lacklustre.
RSC debutant Lucy Bailey – a director with an eye for imagery and spectacle – somehow manages to miss her mark with this production, staging every battle of words as a shouting contest and losing the intrigues of the scheming Roman senate in the process.
She’s not helped, either, by the normally ultra-reliable designer William Dudley, whose computer-generated back-projections of an angry mob or a city in flames become merely a source of irritation after a promising start. Costume designer Fotini Dimou also undermines the power of the Roman aristocracy by dressing them in a collection of bizarrely feminine outfits that wouldn’t look out of place in a support group of pre-op transsexuals.
Sight lines and inaudibility continue to be a problem in The Courtyard, and more than one punter failed to return after the interval, complaining of simply not being able to hear – an unforgivable failing in a company so dedicated to rendering Shakespeare accessible to all.
Among the performances, Sam Troughton makes a decent fist of Brutus, if looking more like a truculent school prefect than a world-shattering revolutionary. Oliver Ryan catches the eye in the minor role of co-conspirator Casca, while Darrell D’Silva’s Mark Antony is more thuggish schemer than noble statesman. Greg Hicks in the title role passively allows his tragedy to unfold around him – not unlike his toga, which almost caused a tragedy of its own as he mounted the senate steps and caught his foot in a dangling swathe. It was an all-too-rare heartstopping moment.
There’s no lack of ambition with this ensemble, which will be together for another two years. What’s missing so far is any sense of depth, of substance. Perhaps the bar was set so high with the recent Histories that the RSC has been trumped by its own magnificence. Here’s hoping the new young company can match the heights of its ambition and grow into itself over the next dozen or so productions together.
THE WINTER'S TALE
April 9, 2009
Royal Shakespeare Company, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until October 3, 2009.
IT feels like the start of another long endeavour for the RSC. After the phenomenal, and deserved, success of The Histories cycle across two years with the same ensemble, artistic director Michael Boyd is out to do it again.
This time, he’s assembled a huge company designed to stay together for two and a half years, performing 14 productions of classical and contemporary work. It’s just a shame the whole exciting project kicks off with a whimper, not a bang.
Directed by new RSC associate David Farr, this Winter’s Tale is aptly named: long, colourless and lacking warmth. It’s hard to pinpoint where the problems begin, but they end with a production that somehow appears to aim for all the right notes yet consistently just misses.
To be fair, it’s perfectly serviceable as a conventional, by rote example of Shakespeare for the sixth-former. The trouble is that the early years of Boyd’s tenure have set the bar so high that this no longer seems adequate for the RSC or The Courtyard.
Greg Hicks is a monochrome monarch, giving Leontes little in the way of light and shade. He appears mildly annoyed at the thought of his queen’s infidelity, stretching himself to rather upset over the death of his son.
Among the peasantry in Bohemia, where things should be comical, whimsical and a bit lairy, instead it’s all too pedestrian, relying on comedy accents and prosthetic willies to inject any sense of festivity. Even the witty rogue Autolycus – a charmless, seedy interpretation from Brian Doherty – fails to ignite an evening of drabness, underscored by some alarmingly droning, unhelpful music by Keith Clouston.
When the dramatic highlight comes in the form of some impressively collapsing bookcases, you know there’s something missing from the performances. And with two and a half years ahead, that’s a problem that warrants serious attention.
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