WENDY AND PETER PAN
* * *
December 20, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Sunday, March 2, 2014
WITH a new title, the technological playground of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and all the resources the RSC can throw at a Christmas production, one might be entitled to expect something a little different from this rendition of JM Barrie’s fairytale.
In fact what you get is a thoroughly conventional, workmanlike production of Peter Pan. With a lot more money spent on it.
Director Jonathan Munby has gone for spectacle. With a grand, clever and versatile design by Colin Richmond and some bold theatrical devices – not to mention a cast of thousands – he rattles through the story from one breathless episode to the next, each as visually engaging and physically inventive as the last.
For many of the young theatregoers it’s a feast of wide-eyed magic, complete with pirate villains, scruffy boys and an outsize Essex Tinkerbell who’s more lairy than fairy.
But there’s something deeper to Barrie’s fable than this production is able to fathom. For all its parallels between the Darling children’s home and the fantasy world of Neverland, and for all its attempts to weave sadness among the adventures, the show never quite rises above its distinctly pantomime roots.
What’s lost is the emotional heart of the tale. The redemption of Mr and Mrs Darling from their grief, and the children’s resilience in the face of tragedy or danger, are too flimsily drawn in Ella Hickson’s flashy, brash, anachronistic adaptation, leaving only two-dimensional characters and painted-on pathos.
Many of the portrayals accentuate this flaw, from Guy Henry’s underplayed Captain Hook to Fiona Button’s all-too-eager Wendy. Jolyon Coy and Brodie Ross fare better as brothers John and Michael, while Sam Swann makes a fine Peter, divided between wanting to be brave and desperately needing a mother.
But the potential for sprinkling a little fairydust is too often missed and the results are far too long at nearly three hours for this to be anything more than a rather charming, expensively produced diversion.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
* * * *
November 13, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, November 30, 2013
ALL the heat, passion and volatility of the Mediterranean are viscerally summoned up in this captivating co-production between the RSC and two American companies, The Public Theater, New York, and Miami’s GableStage.
Combining some terrific actors from both sides of the Pond, the show is directed by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who himself spans the Atlantic with double careers as playwright and director. Avoiding the frequently exposed pitfalls of this kind of divided company, McCraney offers a cogent, crisp telling of Shakespeare’s story of the Roman general led astray by the beautiful queen of Egypt.
His vision – which appears to present the Romans as Napoleonic forces and the Egyptians as some kind of Caribbean culture, complete with calypso music – is perhaps obtuse, but it’s no less engaging for that. Tom Piper’s atmospheric design incorporates a pool of delicious water at the back that serves as everything from Cleopatra’s bath to the metaphorical setting for a crucial sea battle. It’s reinforced by some sultry lighting (Stephen Strawbridge) and evocative music (Michael Thurber) that are beautifully appropriate and enabling for the ten-strong cast.
Among the players themselves, there’s barely a foot wrong or an accent out of place. Particularly impressive are Samuel Collings as a brooding, brattish Octavius and the always watchable Chukwudi Iwuji as Enobarbus, nervy and electric as a kind of narrator-turned-voodoo shaman.
But the play hinges on the central eponymous pairing, and in this production there’s a fundamentally sound coupling in the shape of Jonathan Cake and Joaquina Kalukango. The latter’s youthful, vulnerable Cleopatra is as playful as a pussycat and as lethal as a lioness, and if she lacks a certain regal quality, it’s more than made up for with her vitality and vibrant presence.
Cake, meanwhile, is as grounded and meaty an actor as you could wish for in this toughest, manliest of roles, yet still manages to unpeel a flaky boyishness as Mark Antony’s soldierhood is stripped away to reveal the lovestruck child beneath. The range of his emotions and the brilliance of his delivery are a joy to behold, and the production would be worth seeing for this performance alone.
It’s on a strictly limited run in Stratford before transferring Stateside. It should be a hot ticket – in every sense of the word.
RICHARD II
* * * *
October 17, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, November 16, 2013, then transferring to the Barbican, London
RICHARD II is one of the Shakespeare plays I studied for English A-level. This is something of a double-edged sword: while I feel I know it pretty well, quoting surprising chunks of it, I also have a (probably unjustified) impression of it as dry, dusty and dull.
Gregory Doran’s new production at the RSC, starring David Tennant in the title role, aims to blow all that away. It’s big, expansive and spectacular and sets out to place its eponymous monarch in the context of his brief, flashy reign. To a large extent, Doran succeeds in making the play engaging, intriguing and full of texture.
Much of this is down to the casting of onetime Dr Who David Tennant in the title role. Tennant does flamboyant brilliantly. Reunited with the director of his terrific Hamlet, he’s given space to explore all the nuances of this complex character while vocally he ranges across the registers with ease and endless virtuosity.
At times, he’s effeminate and girlish – an attribute accentuated by an extraordinary long wig and a propensity for kissing boys. At others, he’s fiery and unstable, roaring at his enemies and commanding obedience. All of this Tennant masters impressively.
Elsewhere among the cast, Oliver Ford Davies and Michael Pennington offer reliable renditions of Richard’s elderly uncles, the Dukes of York and Lancaster respectively, while Oliver Rix again stands out as his young cousin Aumerle.
There’s atmosphere aplenty, too, thanks in no small part to an evocative set (Stephen Brimson Lewis) and some hauntingly performed music (Paul Englishby).
It may not have the overall power or stunning blockbuster quality of the Hamlet, but it’s a strong, sensitive production of a difficult play. It’s also the curtain-raiser for a six-year project to perform every one of the Bard’s plays in Stratford under the banner Shakespeare Nation. The omens look good.
CANDIDE
* * *
September 6, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, October 26, 2013
VOLTAIRE’S satirical tale of the optimist Candide, whose philosophy ebbs away as he learns about the horrors and misfortunes of the world, is given the Mark Ravenhill treatment in this vibrant, eclectic new production from the RSC.
That’s both a good and a bad thing, as Ravenhill’s brand of satire is rather more vicious than Voltaire’s 18th Century original, and his message much more in-yer-face.
In fact, this is some distance away from being an adaptation of the French classic. Ravenhill takes it as a starting point, sending it up in a spoof opening scene, before dragging us forcefully across the centuries, throwing us into a violent present and back into the past again until we finally arrive in a dystopian near future. Here Candide has been cryogenically preserved by his old mentor, the scientist Dr Pangloss, and is revived to make some kind of sense of what mankind has done with the theory he once espoused.
If it all sounds a little ramshackle and scattergun, that’s because it is. But in his ranging, critical analysis of humanity’s faults and foibles, Ravenhill captures much of the spirit of insanity that colours not just our age but pretty much every age.
Under Lyndsey Turner’s direction – which unfortunately creates major problems with sightlines – the large and able cast brings a diverse character list to life, although most are dimensionally challenged, acting as ciphers to convey a single point of view.
Ian Redford’s Pangloss is more nuanced than most, while Steffan Rhodri has great fun with a smorgasbord of cameos. Katy Stephens is always watchable as the mother of a tragic teen whose desperation to get her story told targets much of today’s media madness.
It’s inventive, often very funny, but ultimately rather soulless and flat. What Voltaire would have made of it is anyone’s guess.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
* * * *
July 25, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Thursday, September 26, 2013
THANK goodness for that – a telling of one of the less frequently performed ‘problem plays’ that doesn’t inflict some kind of directorial conceit on Shakespeare’s text to make it somehow ‘work’.
All credit, then, to Nancy Meckler for giving us a clear, highly accessible and ultimately extremely enjoyable version of All’s Well, complete with audible actors, intelligible lines and a pacy unfolding of the complicated story.
Ostensibly in modern dress, the production’s design (Katrina Lindsay) also encompasses plenty of velvet frocks and stylised settings to create a world all its own, which works well in its favour – although the significance of a curious multi-purpose Perspex room rather escaped me. Composer Keith Clouston, meanwhile, employs a range of instruments from electric guitars to Arabian ouds, which add to the eclectic and effective mixture.
But it’s on stage that the best work is in evidence. Alex Waldmann continues to make an impressive impact in this RSC company as the young, volatile and changeable Bertram, whose enforced betrothal to the lower-class Helena meets with his fury. Waldmann is feisty and believable in the tricky role, and plays superbly off Joanna Horton’s touching, vulnerable Helena.
Jonathan Slinger is, for him, pretty restrained but consequently highly watchable as Bertram’s weaselly friend Parolles, while Greg Hicks exudes power and command, even at death’s door, as the King of France who unwittingly sets the whole complex deception in motion.
Perhaps the greatest complement I can offer is that it makes one wonder why the play is not performed more frequently. With this kind of clarity and confidence in the material, not to mention an accomplished acting company, there’s surely an audience to be found.
A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS
* * *
July 24, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Friday, October 25, 2013
THOMAS Middleton’s 1605 farce has been transposed to 1950s Soho in this updated, irreverent version playing energetically in The Swan. Sean Foley’s directorial decision works on some levels, shamelessly pointing up the seediness and colourfulness of both milieux.
But at the same time, the claims made for the play in its programme notes do not stand up to close scrutiny. Hailed as a satire on social and sexual conventions and the lust for money, in fact Middleton’s broad-brush coarseness feels more like Confessions of a Jacobean than anything more high-brow. It’s a bit like claiming Carry On Spying is a clever satire on the Cold War.
The comedy is so low – barely even single entendre – that Foley and his co-adapter Phil Porter actually feel the need to apologise for it, with one actor turning to the audience after a particularly feeble gag and announcing: “Thomas Middleton, 1605.” To give you some measure of the level, there’s a doddery old butler called, hilariously, Spunky.
To compensate for this lame, outdated humour, director Foley stuffs his production full of frenetic busyness, hoping to supplement the thin amusement value of the slightest of plots with some knockabout visual comedy.
In this he is well served by his large, energetic cast, who do all the ridiculous things asked of them – including, inexplicably, random singing – with cheery abandon, as if they’ve resigned themselves to it during rehearsals and are just going to make the best of it. John Hopkins in particular, as a lustful suitor tormented by his conscience, manages to emerge with some dignity, despite losing his trousers and letting off a fire extinguisher in lieu of sexual climax.
The jazzy nightclub vocals of singer Linda John-Pierre add some sultry atmosphere with a six-piece band, even though the songs themselves are an unnecessary distraction. And, in fairness, there were pockets of the audience who appeared to love the production.
If you like your comedy in the lowest-common-denominator vein, laced with smut, handjobs and knob gags, you know where to go. You have been warned.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
* * *
May 23, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, October 26, 2013
RAPE, mutilation, murder and cannibalism – Titus Andronicus is not one of Shakespeare’s more lighthearted plays. One of his earlier works, the brutal and violent tale of this Roman general’s battle with treachery and deceit is much more about the story than the poetry.
Indeed, Michael Fentiman’s new production for the RSC pays appropriate tribute to the likes of Quentin Tarantino as it glories in the bloodythirstiness of the Bard’s stage directions, including limb removal, throat-cutting and the serving up of two victims in a dinner-party pie.
Whenever there’s stage gore and excessive violence, it’s usually a mark of overpitching the action when giggles erupt in the audience, and it’s certainly the case here. It’s a fine balance, admittedly, but Fentiman and his designer Colin Richmond spare no opportunity to revel in the mire.
It’s a shame in many ways because there are things to commend the production, not least a fine performance from Matthew Needham as Titus’s noble son Lucius, left to clean up at the end of the play. Katy Stephens, too, looks great, although a little underpowered as Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose quest for vengeance on Titus drives the plot.
Stephen Boxer in the title role rather epitomises one of the problems with the verse speaking across much of the company: despite all the torments and terrors his character undergoes from the outset, there’s a fatal shortage of passion. Nobody seems to care very much about any of the horrors unfolding around them.
Now I realise it’s not possible to sustain heights of pain for the best part of three hours without it getting tedious, but this absence of passion starts to look deliberate and obtuse after a while.
As a play that’s not often done, it’s good to see a solid, uncontroversial production on the stage of The Swan. Some evidence of real emotion behind the action might have been even more effective.
AS YOU LIKE IT
* * * *
April 24, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, September 28, 2013
REGULAR readers will be aware that I am not generally over-fond of directorial “concepts” when producing Shakespeare. While I’m all in favour of bringing the plays to life in a new, relevant way for a modern audience, what tends to upset me is the mangling of a piece to fit some misguided, clever notion imposed on it by a trendy director out to make their mark.
The good news, with this new, Glastonbury-tinged production of As You Like It, is that Maria Aberg’s ideas all serve the play, rather than the other way round. It’s unashamedly modern in its costume, design and sensibilities, but the result is fresh, youthful and full of joy.
The opening is not promising – all dark corners, black and white outfits and oppressive, industrial music. But in the second half, when the confines of the wrestling pit have opened out to become the sylvian world of the Forest of Arden, the life breathes into the show, the pace quickens and the exuberance of the performers is allowed full rein.
It’s not perfect, by any means. Jaques is a particular conundrum, played almost as a second clown opposite the Max Wall-ish Touchstone, while some of the monotone verse-speaking is flat and uninspired. But at the heart of the production are three performances that defy the curmudgeons and lift this vibrantly above the run-of-the-mill.
As the aforementioned Touchstone, Nicolas Tennant is cheeky, smart-mouthed and not above a bit of smut, although his audience participation routine sat a little uncomfortably for my taste.
The real triumph is the pairing of Pippa Nixon and Alex Waldmann as the central lovers destined to find each other in the forest. Nixon continues to prove herself a fine Shakespearean actor, quick-witted and lively in her speech and performance, while Waldmann plays the wide-eyed innocent to perfection, half boyish whimsy and half angry, pouting teenager. Their performances complement each other delightfully and the chemistry they evoke is irresistible.
Some of the rustic comedy is less than scintillating, and the music grows intrusive and irritating after a while, but the pros far outweigh the cons in this life-affirming, vivacious show.
THE EMPRESS
* * * *
April 17, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, May 4, 2013
TANIKA Gupta’s new play for the RSC has an epic sweep to it. Framed around the little-known true tale of an Indian adviser to Queen Victoria, it crosses continents, tackles huge issues and carries a bittersweet love story in its wake.
Indeed, the scale of the project, overflowing the confines of The Swan, is sometimes too large, engulfing its many themes and characters in the sheer spectacle of the unfolding narrative. But, whatever its flaws, The Empress cannot be criticised for its ambition.
Director Emma Rice, known for her work with physical theatre company Kneehigh and her original, inventive perspective on storytelling, throws everything at this piece, from puppets and projection to sitars and even an underused tankful of water. The colours and sounds run riot in an effective evocation of the sub-continent in stark contrast to the stiff, grey Brits of the colonising motherland.
The interweaving of the innocent young lovers – a highly affecting Anneika Rose and Ray Panthaki – within the documented stories of the Queen’s favourite Abdul Karim and the first Indian MP Dadabhai Naoroji is both subtle and clever, allowing the pace to vary and never letting the interest flag.
For my taste, the persistent use of music is intrusive and unhelpful, combining Indian influences with solid tunes from Elgar and the English Hymnal in a way that was far too reminiscent of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’s treatment of Land of Hope and Glory. There are also definite weak links among the sizeable cast, which have the unfortunate effect of undermining the overall aims and scope of the production.
But it is certainly an illuminating piece of theatre, shedding light on one of the more peculiar aspects of that peculiar monarch, as well as presenting a rollicking adventure of grandeur and vividness.
HAMLET
March 26, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, September 28, 2013
COMPARISONS between productions are usually invidious and often unfair. But there’s probably a reason why the RSC have not staged a Hamlet for five years since David Tennant’s landmark version.
Now associate director David Farr steps up to offer the first one in the new main house, with Jonathan Slinger in the title role. Farr, for reasons that are never clear and frequently obstructive, sets the play in a ramshackle old gymnasium, with a fencing piste taped out on the floor and strip lights casting a grim, cold light.
There are unquestionably numerous references to fencing and swords in the text, but to extrapolate this into a directorial concept seems tenuous to say the least. A royal wedding reception in a dusty old gym is hardly appropriate, while Gertrude’s boudoir becomes simply ridiculous. Things pick up a little when the floor is ripped up for the gravedigger, but it’s yet another example of a play being forced to fit – or not – with a misguided concept.
Among the performances, there are solid turns from Greg Hicks and an underused Charlotte Cornwell as Claudius and Gertrude, while Alex Waldmann is a fine Horatio and Luke Norris a fiery Laertes. Pippa Nixon’s moving Ophelia is carefully considered and touching, but Robin Soans makes a slight and unaffecting Polonius, wasting the comic opportunities offered by the role.
As for Slinger, he suffers a number of disadvantages. He’s about fifteen years too old (although age has been no hindrance to plenty of other Hamlets), he’s ungainly and gawky in his movements, and his innate majesty is buried under a wilfully dumpy frame and awkward-looking fencing costume. However, he speaks the lines with real passion and finds interesting and enlightening perspectives to offer, which create a strong central focus for the otherwise disparate ideas going on.
Unusually for the RSC, the dim lighting and intrusive music are an irritating distraction rather than a useful supplement, and the overall impression is not so much the collapse of a prince in torment as the unravelling of a director’s vision.
A LIFE OF GALILEO
February 25, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, March 30, 2013
BERTOLT Brecht filtered through the lens of Mark Ravenhill has, some might argue, the makings of something rather peculiar. But in the hands of director Roxana Silbert, this new production of Brecht’s biographical study is both deeply fascinating and highly dramatic.
Ravenhill is the RSC’s writer in residence this year, and has turned out a translation which not only flows naturally in English but also captures all the machinations and complexities of the Florentine court in the early years of the 17th century.
Galileo, therefore, struggles with politics as he tries to persuade the world that the earth moves round the sun – as Copernicus had already hypothesised – and runs into opposition from the Holy Church of Rome and his own family.
Ian McDiarmid is in excellent form as the eponymous scientist, ranting and recanting in equal measure as he vents his frustration at the wilfully blind or simply stupid, whether they be his ecclesiastical supporters or his pious daughter. He’s accompanied by a little troupe of students, led by Matthew Aubrey as a Welsh-toned Andrea, who encourage him to publish then chastise him for recanting in the face of the Inquisition’s instruments of torture.
Silbert’s energetic modern-dress production, full of colour and vibrancy, provides the perfect backdrop to the action, but there is plenty of thoughtful introspection to match the fire and fury of the public debates.
In reality, Brecht was writing about the scientists who developed the atomic bomb. The distance of decades has rather pushed that allegory into the background, but the power and significance of Galileo’s story in its own right is easily strong enough to carry this engrossing production.
THE WINTER’S TALE
January 30, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, February 23, 2013, then touring
THIS is director Lucy Bailey’s third production for the RSC. Her repeated trademarks are already in danger of becoming tedious. After a Julius Caesar typified by lots of shouting and some irritating video projections, last year we had an uninspired Taming of the Shrew in which everyone was seedily unpleasant and most were smoking gratuitously. Now, in Shakespeare’s lyrical, impenetrable study of destructive jealousy, Bailey brings all these together and bombards her audience with three full hours of it.
There is much besides the excessive on-stage smoking that is gratuitous. The bawdiness of the Bohemian peasantry adds nothing to the action and merely destroys any bucolic charm bestowed by the text. And the incessant, rather cheap-looking back projection from designer William Dudley rapidly changes from an innovative eye-catcher to an unnecessary distraction.
Bailey’s directorial style seems to consist of seeking out emotion purely by getting the actors to raise their voices, usually at the expense of the verse and intelligibility. She also has them grappling dangerously with each other and with the complex, overblown set, often ridiculously out of character, such as when the Bohemian king Polixenes smacks his son about for dallying with a shepherd’s daughter – hardly the actions of a regal father.
Worst of all, she has the jealous king Leontes so enraged at his queen’s imagined adultery that he punches her pregnant stomach. Shocking it may be, but it simply reduces him to the level of a snivelling wife-beater, and therefore devoid of any audience sympathy for the rest of the play.
In the face of all this, the cast struggle manfully. Jo Stone-Fewings as Leontes is despatched to the top of a very tall tower for much of the second half (how on earth the technical crew are going to tour this remains to be seen), and he broods and frets his way through the play looking like a petulant David Morrissey.
Tara Fitzgerald, as his wife Hermione, shines in the early court scene but is made to shout her defence at her trial and denied any real emotional opportunities at her final reappearance thanks to the clunky staging.
Elsewhere, Daniel Betts gives a controlled weight to the wise adviser Camillo, while Pearce Quigley’s eccentric Autolycus is very much a Marmite performance.
The show already appears to be doing well at the box office, but quite what the provinces will make of their latest RSC offering on tour is anybody’s guess.
BORIS GODUNOV
January 19, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, March 30, 2013
ONE of the enduring passions of outgoing RSC director Michael Boyd is Russia and its literature. So it’s only fitting that his swansong (in The Swan) should be a text by the father of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin.
Boris Godunov tells the story of a corrupt, scheming outsider who grabs the throne by nefarious means before coming to his own grisly end at the hands of another pretender. There are shades of Richard III and Macbeth about all this – shades which are exploited happily by Boyd in his pacy production – and the political resonance of the historical facts from around 1600 are thoroughly explored.
Thus we get everything from Rasputin-like monks plotting treachery to Stalinist crackdowns on popular mobs, with some very modern state security officials in black suits and sunglasses to bring the notion bang up to Putinesque date.
This mish-mash of time periods and styles, courtesy of designer Tom Piper, is sometimes confusing, but the narrative is always clear, bold and refreshingly plain in Adrian Mitchell’s adaptation – his last project before his death in 2008.
The clarity is wonderfully reinforced by a vibrant, committed cast, who relish every nuance of comedy, tragedy and all things in between. Lloyd Hutchinson is bombastic and bewildered in equal measure as the tyrant Boris, wracked with guilt at the child murder he instigated to get to where he is.
Gethin Anthony presents the young pretender Grigory as a fiery but flaky young man with rebellious blood and a scattergun approach to his ambition, and he’s both winning and powerful.
Joe Dixon and James Tucker offer a fine pairing as the wavering courtiers who first help Boris to the Tsar’s crown, then vacillate and weasel their way through his reign. And Patrick Romer throws in a beautifully judged portrait of the elderly monk whose efforts to record the crimes of the ruling classes frame the narrative.
Boyd’s hand is always evident, most notably in the carefully choreographed battle scenes, which are reminiscent of his RSC highlight the Histories. The relentless forward motion of the story never falters, and there’s excitement and intrigue galore along the way, assisted by John Woolf’s atmospheric music. In addition, there’s some exemplary voice work from the whole company, thanks to Alison Bomber, making every word intelligible and audible – which is not always the case.
THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO
January 19, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Thursday, March 28, 2013
IT’S been called the Chinese Hamlet and in terms of scale, theme and narrative energy, it’s easy to see why. Supposedly based on a grim period in Chinese history, some 25 centuries ago, the tale has been retold countless times and recrafted by successive authors and playwrights to subtly shift its message, both in its native country and, in the last two or three centuries, in the West as well.
Now poet James Fenton offers his take, courtesy of the RSC’s incoming artistic director Gregory Doran, who assumes directing duties for this epic, grandiose production.
The performances sweep from the heights of the corrupt imperial court to the humblest downtrodden peasants, and the momentum of the revenge tragedy rarely wavers as the wronged orphan returns in adulthood to wreak vengeance on the tyrants who destroyed his family.
Doran and his designer Niki Turner let their imaginations run riot with a stylised, yet constantly accessible and gripping production, played with passion and faithfulness by the large ensemble.
Fenton’s adaptation may feel awkward and linguistically clunky at times, but the cast never allow the words to get in the way of the story. In particularly fine form are Joe Dixon as the evil chief minister Tu’an Gu and Jake Fairbrother, all youthful innocence turned to astonished disbelief as the eponymous orphan. His transformation, on discovering his true identity, is painful and powerful, and he shares the emotional honours with Graham Turner as Cheng Ying, the peasant doctor entrusted with a huge secret that will demand the greatest of sacrifices.
It’s a vast, sprawling saga and visually sumptuous, and makes a fine introduction to Doran’s leadership. The company, artistically speaking, is in safe hands.
* * *
December 20, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Sunday, March 2, 2014
WITH a new title, the technological playground of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and all the resources the RSC can throw at a Christmas production, one might be entitled to expect something a little different from this rendition of JM Barrie’s fairytale.
In fact what you get is a thoroughly conventional, workmanlike production of Peter Pan. With a lot more money spent on it.
Director Jonathan Munby has gone for spectacle. With a grand, clever and versatile design by Colin Richmond and some bold theatrical devices – not to mention a cast of thousands – he rattles through the story from one breathless episode to the next, each as visually engaging and physically inventive as the last.
For many of the young theatregoers it’s a feast of wide-eyed magic, complete with pirate villains, scruffy boys and an outsize Essex Tinkerbell who’s more lairy than fairy.
But there’s something deeper to Barrie’s fable than this production is able to fathom. For all its parallels between the Darling children’s home and the fantasy world of Neverland, and for all its attempts to weave sadness among the adventures, the show never quite rises above its distinctly pantomime roots.
What’s lost is the emotional heart of the tale. The redemption of Mr and Mrs Darling from their grief, and the children’s resilience in the face of tragedy or danger, are too flimsily drawn in Ella Hickson’s flashy, brash, anachronistic adaptation, leaving only two-dimensional characters and painted-on pathos.
Many of the portrayals accentuate this flaw, from Guy Henry’s underplayed Captain Hook to Fiona Button’s all-too-eager Wendy. Jolyon Coy and Brodie Ross fare better as brothers John and Michael, while Sam Swann makes a fine Peter, divided between wanting to be brave and desperately needing a mother.
But the potential for sprinkling a little fairydust is too often missed and the results are far too long at nearly three hours for this to be anything more than a rather charming, expensively produced diversion.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
* * * *
November 13, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, November 30, 2013
ALL the heat, passion and volatility of the Mediterranean are viscerally summoned up in this captivating co-production between the RSC and two American companies, The Public Theater, New York, and Miami’s GableStage.
Combining some terrific actors from both sides of the Pond, the show is directed by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who himself spans the Atlantic with double careers as playwright and director. Avoiding the frequently exposed pitfalls of this kind of divided company, McCraney offers a cogent, crisp telling of Shakespeare’s story of the Roman general led astray by the beautiful queen of Egypt.
His vision – which appears to present the Romans as Napoleonic forces and the Egyptians as some kind of Caribbean culture, complete with calypso music – is perhaps obtuse, but it’s no less engaging for that. Tom Piper’s atmospheric design incorporates a pool of delicious water at the back that serves as everything from Cleopatra’s bath to the metaphorical setting for a crucial sea battle. It’s reinforced by some sultry lighting (Stephen Strawbridge) and evocative music (Michael Thurber) that are beautifully appropriate and enabling for the ten-strong cast.
Among the players themselves, there’s barely a foot wrong or an accent out of place. Particularly impressive are Samuel Collings as a brooding, brattish Octavius and the always watchable Chukwudi Iwuji as Enobarbus, nervy and electric as a kind of narrator-turned-voodoo shaman.
But the play hinges on the central eponymous pairing, and in this production there’s a fundamentally sound coupling in the shape of Jonathan Cake and Joaquina Kalukango. The latter’s youthful, vulnerable Cleopatra is as playful as a pussycat and as lethal as a lioness, and if she lacks a certain regal quality, it’s more than made up for with her vitality and vibrant presence.
Cake, meanwhile, is as grounded and meaty an actor as you could wish for in this toughest, manliest of roles, yet still manages to unpeel a flaky boyishness as Mark Antony’s soldierhood is stripped away to reveal the lovestruck child beneath. The range of his emotions and the brilliance of his delivery are a joy to behold, and the production would be worth seeing for this performance alone.
It’s on a strictly limited run in Stratford before transferring Stateside. It should be a hot ticket – in every sense of the word.
RICHARD II
* * * *
October 17, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, November 16, 2013, then transferring to the Barbican, London
RICHARD II is one of the Shakespeare plays I studied for English A-level. This is something of a double-edged sword: while I feel I know it pretty well, quoting surprising chunks of it, I also have a (probably unjustified) impression of it as dry, dusty and dull.
Gregory Doran’s new production at the RSC, starring David Tennant in the title role, aims to blow all that away. It’s big, expansive and spectacular and sets out to place its eponymous monarch in the context of his brief, flashy reign. To a large extent, Doran succeeds in making the play engaging, intriguing and full of texture.
Much of this is down to the casting of onetime Dr Who David Tennant in the title role. Tennant does flamboyant brilliantly. Reunited with the director of his terrific Hamlet, he’s given space to explore all the nuances of this complex character while vocally he ranges across the registers with ease and endless virtuosity.
At times, he’s effeminate and girlish – an attribute accentuated by an extraordinary long wig and a propensity for kissing boys. At others, he’s fiery and unstable, roaring at his enemies and commanding obedience. All of this Tennant masters impressively.
Elsewhere among the cast, Oliver Ford Davies and Michael Pennington offer reliable renditions of Richard’s elderly uncles, the Dukes of York and Lancaster respectively, while Oliver Rix again stands out as his young cousin Aumerle.
There’s atmosphere aplenty, too, thanks in no small part to an evocative set (Stephen Brimson Lewis) and some hauntingly performed music (Paul Englishby).
It may not have the overall power or stunning blockbuster quality of the Hamlet, but it’s a strong, sensitive production of a difficult play. It’s also the curtain-raiser for a six-year project to perform every one of the Bard’s plays in Stratford under the banner Shakespeare Nation. The omens look good.
CANDIDE
* * *
September 6, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, October 26, 2013
VOLTAIRE’S satirical tale of the optimist Candide, whose philosophy ebbs away as he learns about the horrors and misfortunes of the world, is given the Mark Ravenhill treatment in this vibrant, eclectic new production from the RSC.
That’s both a good and a bad thing, as Ravenhill’s brand of satire is rather more vicious than Voltaire’s 18th Century original, and his message much more in-yer-face.
In fact, this is some distance away from being an adaptation of the French classic. Ravenhill takes it as a starting point, sending it up in a spoof opening scene, before dragging us forcefully across the centuries, throwing us into a violent present and back into the past again until we finally arrive in a dystopian near future. Here Candide has been cryogenically preserved by his old mentor, the scientist Dr Pangloss, and is revived to make some kind of sense of what mankind has done with the theory he once espoused.
If it all sounds a little ramshackle and scattergun, that’s because it is. But in his ranging, critical analysis of humanity’s faults and foibles, Ravenhill captures much of the spirit of insanity that colours not just our age but pretty much every age.
Under Lyndsey Turner’s direction – which unfortunately creates major problems with sightlines – the large and able cast brings a diverse character list to life, although most are dimensionally challenged, acting as ciphers to convey a single point of view.
Ian Redford’s Pangloss is more nuanced than most, while Steffan Rhodri has great fun with a smorgasbord of cameos. Katy Stephens is always watchable as the mother of a tragic teen whose desperation to get her story told targets much of today’s media madness.
It’s inventive, often very funny, but ultimately rather soulless and flat. What Voltaire would have made of it is anyone’s guess.
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
* * * *
July 25, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Thursday, September 26, 2013
THANK goodness for that – a telling of one of the less frequently performed ‘problem plays’ that doesn’t inflict some kind of directorial conceit on Shakespeare’s text to make it somehow ‘work’.
All credit, then, to Nancy Meckler for giving us a clear, highly accessible and ultimately extremely enjoyable version of All’s Well, complete with audible actors, intelligible lines and a pacy unfolding of the complicated story.
Ostensibly in modern dress, the production’s design (Katrina Lindsay) also encompasses plenty of velvet frocks and stylised settings to create a world all its own, which works well in its favour – although the significance of a curious multi-purpose Perspex room rather escaped me. Composer Keith Clouston, meanwhile, employs a range of instruments from electric guitars to Arabian ouds, which add to the eclectic and effective mixture.
But it’s on stage that the best work is in evidence. Alex Waldmann continues to make an impressive impact in this RSC company as the young, volatile and changeable Bertram, whose enforced betrothal to the lower-class Helena meets with his fury. Waldmann is feisty and believable in the tricky role, and plays superbly off Joanna Horton’s touching, vulnerable Helena.
Jonathan Slinger is, for him, pretty restrained but consequently highly watchable as Bertram’s weaselly friend Parolles, while Greg Hicks exudes power and command, even at death’s door, as the King of France who unwittingly sets the whole complex deception in motion.
Perhaps the greatest complement I can offer is that it makes one wonder why the play is not performed more frequently. With this kind of clarity and confidence in the material, not to mention an accomplished acting company, there’s surely an audience to be found.
A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS
* * *
July 24, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Friday, October 25, 2013
THOMAS Middleton’s 1605 farce has been transposed to 1950s Soho in this updated, irreverent version playing energetically in The Swan. Sean Foley’s directorial decision works on some levels, shamelessly pointing up the seediness and colourfulness of both milieux.
But at the same time, the claims made for the play in its programme notes do not stand up to close scrutiny. Hailed as a satire on social and sexual conventions and the lust for money, in fact Middleton’s broad-brush coarseness feels more like Confessions of a Jacobean than anything more high-brow. It’s a bit like claiming Carry On Spying is a clever satire on the Cold War.
The comedy is so low – barely even single entendre – that Foley and his co-adapter Phil Porter actually feel the need to apologise for it, with one actor turning to the audience after a particularly feeble gag and announcing: “Thomas Middleton, 1605.” To give you some measure of the level, there’s a doddery old butler called, hilariously, Spunky.
To compensate for this lame, outdated humour, director Foley stuffs his production full of frenetic busyness, hoping to supplement the thin amusement value of the slightest of plots with some knockabout visual comedy.
In this he is well served by his large, energetic cast, who do all the ridiculous things asked of them – including, inexplicably, random singing – with cheery abandon, as if they’ve resigned themselves to it during rehearsals and are just going to make the best of it. John Hopkins in particular, as a lustful suitor tormented by his conscience, manages to emerge with some dignity, despite losing his trousers and letting off a fire extinguisher in lieu of sexual climax.
The jazzy nightclub vocals of singer Linda John-Pierre add some sultry atmosphere with a six-piece band, even though the songs themselves are an unnecessary distraction. And, in fairness, there were pockets of the audience who appeared to love the production.
If you like your comedy in the lowest-common-denominator vein, laced with smut, handjobs and knob gags, you know where to go. You have been warned.
TITUS ANDRONICUS
* * *
May 23, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, October 26, 2013
RAPE, mutilation, murder and cannibalism – Titus Andronicus is not one of Shakespeare’s more lighthearted plays. One of his earlier works, the brutal and violent tale of this Roman general’s battle with treachery and deceit is much more about the story than the poetry.
Indeed, Michael Fentiman’s new production for the RSC pays appropriate tribute to the likes of Quentin Tarantino as it glories in the bloodythirstiness of the Bard’s stage directions, including limb removal, throat-cutting and the serving up of two victims in a dinner-party pie.
Whenever there’s stage gore and excessive violence, it’s usually a mark of overpitching the action when giggles erupt in the audience, and it’s certainly the case here. It’s a fine balance, admittedly, but Fentiman and his designer Colin Richmond spare no opportunity to revel in the mire.
It’s a shame in many ways because there are things to commend the production, not least a fine performance from Matthew Needham as Titus’s noble son Lucius, left to clean up at the end of the play. Katy Stephens, too, looks great, although a little underpowered as Tamora, Queen of the Goths, whose quest for vengeance on Titus drives the plot.
Stephen Boxer in the title role rather epitomises one of the problems with the verse speaking across much of the company: despite all the torments and terrors his character undergoes from the outset, there’s a fatal shortage of passion. Nobody seems to care very much about any of the horrors unfolding around them.
Now I realise it’s not possible to sustain heights of pain for the best part of three hours without it getting tedious, but this absence of passion starts to look deliberate and obtuse after a while.
As a play that’s not often done, it’s good to see a solid, uncontroversial production on the stage of The Swan. Some evidence of real emotion behind the action might have been even more effective.
AS YOU LIKE IT
* * * *
April 24, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, September 28, 2013
REGULAR readers will be aware that I am not generally over-fond of directorial “concepts” when producing Shakespeare. While I’m all in favour of bringing the plays to life in a new, relevant way for a modern audience, what tends to upset me is the mangling of a piece to fit some misguided, clever notion imposed on it by a trendy director out to make their mark.
The good news, with this new, Glastonbury-tinged production of As You Like It, is that Maria Aberg’s ideas all serve the play, rather than the other way round. It’s unashamedly modern in its costume, design and sensibilities, but the result is fresh, youthful and full of joy.
The opening is not promising – all dark corners, black and white outfits and oppressive, industrial music. But in the second half, when the confines of the wrestling pit have opened out to become the sylvian world of the Forest of Arden, the life breathes into the show, the pace quickens and the exuberance of the performers is allowed full rein.
It’s not perfect, by any means. Jaques is a particular conundrum, played almost as a second clown opposite the Max Wall-ish Touchstone, while some of the monotone verse-speaking is flat and uninspired. But at the heart of the production are three performances that defy the curmudgeons and lift this vibrantly above the run-of-the-mill.
As the aforementioned Touchstone, Nicolas Tennant is cheeky, smart-mouthed and not above a bit of smut, although his audience participation routine sat a little uncomfortably for my taste.
The real triumph is the pairing of Pippa Nixon and Alex Waldmann as the central lovers destined to find each other in the forest. Nixon continues to prove herself a fine Shakespearean actor, quick-witted and lively in her speech and performance, while Waldmann plays the wide-eyed innocent to perfection, half boyish whimsy and half angry, pouting teenager. Their performances complement each other delightfully and the chemistry they evoke is irresistible.
Some of the rustic comedy is less than scintillating, and the music grows intrusive and irritating after a while, but the pros far outweigh the cons in this life-affirming, vivacious show.
THE EMPRESS
* * * *
April 17, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, May 4, 2013
TANIKA Gupta’s new play for the RSC has an epic sweep to it. Framed around the little-known true tale of an Indian adviser to Queen Victoria, it crosses continents, tackles huge issues and carries a bittersweet love story in its wake.
Indeed, the scale of the project, overflowing the confines of The Swan, is sometimes too large, engulfing its many themes and characters in the sheer spectacle of the unfolding narrative. But, whatever its flaws, The Empress cannot be criticised for its ambition.
Director Emma Rice, known for her work with physical theatre company Kneehigh and her original, inventive perspective on storytelling, throws everything at this piece, from puppets and projection to sitars and even an underused tankful of water. The colours and sounds run riot in an effective evocation of the sub-continent in stark contrast to the stiff, grey Brits of the colonising motherland.
The interweaving of the innocent young lovers – a highly affecting Anneika Rose and Ray Panthaki – within the documented stories of the Queen’s favourite Abdul Karim and the first Indian MP Dadabhai Naoroji is both subtle and clever, allowing the pace to vary and never letting the interest flag.
For my taste, the persistent use of music is intrusive and unhelpful, combining Indian influences with solid tunes from Elgar and the English Hymnal in a way that was far too reminiscent of It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’s treatment of Land of Hope and Glory. There are also definite weak links among the sizeable cast, which have the unfortunate effect of undermining the overall aims and scope of the production.
But it is certainly an illuminating piece of theatre, shedding light on one of the more peculiar aspects of that peculiar monarch, as well as presenting a rollicking adventure of grandeur and vividness.
HAMLET
March 26, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, September 28, 2013
COMPARISONS between productions are usually invidious and often unfair. But there’s probably a reason why the RSC have not staged a Hamlet for five years since David Tennant’s landmark version.
Now associate director David Farr steps up to offer the first one in the new main house, with Jonathan Slinger in the title role. Farr, for reasons that are never clear and frequently obstructive, sets the play in a ramshackle old gymnasium, with a fencing piste taped out on the floor and strip lights casting a grim, cold light.
There are unquestionably numerous references to fencing and swords in the text, but to extrapolate this into a directorial concept seems tenuous to say the least. A royal wedding reception in a dusty old gym is hardly appropriate, while Gertrude’s boudoir becomes simply ridiculous. Things pick up a little when the floor is ripped up for the gravedigger, but it’s yet another example of a play being forced to fit – or not – with a misguided concept.
Among the performances, there are solid turns from Greg Hicks and an underused Charlotte Cornwell as Claudius and Gertrude, while Alex Waldmann is a fine Horatio and Luke Norris a fiery Laertes. Pippa Nixon’s moving Ophelia is carefully considered and touching, but Robin Soans makes a slight and unaffecting Polonius, wasting the comic opportunities offered by the role.
As for Slinger, he suffers a number of disadvantages. He’s about fifteen years too old (although age has been no hindrance to plenty of other Hamlets), he’s ungainly and gawky in his movements, and his innate majesty is buried under a wilfully dumpy frame and awkward-looking fencing costume. However, he speaks the lines with real passion and finds interesting and enlightening perspectives to offer, which create a strong central focus for the otherwise disparate ideas going on.
Unusually for the RSC, the dim lighting and intrusive music are an irritating distraction rather than a useful supplement, and the overall impression is not so much the collapse of a prince in torment as the unravelling of a director’s vision.
A LIFE OF GALILEO
February 25, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, March 30, 2013
BERTOLT Brecht filtered through the lens of Mark Ravenhill has, some might argue, the makings of something rather peculiar. But in the hands of director Roxana Silbert, this new production of Brecht’s biographical study is both deeply fascinating and highly dramatic.
Ravenhill is the RSC’s writer in residence this year, and has turned out a translation which not only flows naturally in English but also captures all the machinations and complexities of the Florentine court in the early years of the 17th century.
Galileo, therefore, struggles with politics as he tries to persuade the world that the earth moves round the sun – as Copernicus had already hypothesised – and runs into opposition from the Holy Church of Rome and his own family.
Ian McDiarmid is in excellent form as the eponymous scientist, ranting and recanting in equal measure as he vents his frustration at the wilfully blind or simply stupid, whether they be his ecclesiastical supporters or his pious daughter. He’s accompanied by a little troupe of students, led by Matthew Aubrey as a Welsh-toned Andrea, who encourage him to publish then chastise him for recanting in the face of the Inquisition’s instruments of torture.
Silbert’s energetic modern-dress production, full of colour and vibrancy, provides the perfect backdrop to the action, but there is plenty of thoughtful introspection to match the fire and fury of the public debates.
In reality, Brecht was writing about the scientists who developed the atomic bomb. The distance of decades has rather pushed that allegory into the background, but the power and significance of Galileo’s story in its own right is easily strong enough to carry this engrossing production.
THE WINTER’S TALE
January 30, 2013
RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until Saturday, February 23, 2013, then touring
THIS is director Lucy Bailey’s third production for the RSC. Her repeated trademarks are already in danger of becoming tedious. After a Julius Caesar typified by lots of shouting and some irritating video projections, last year we had an uninspired Taming of the Shrew in which everyone was seedily unpleasant and most were smoking gratuitously. Now, in Shakespeare’s lyrical, impenetrable study of destructive jealousy, Bailey brings all these together and bombards her audience with three full hours of it.
There is much besides the excessive on-stage smoking that is gratuitous. The bawdiness of the Bohemian peasantry adds nothing to the action and merely destroys any bucolic charm bestowed by the text. And the incessant, rather cheap-looking back projection from designer William Dudley rapidly changes from an innovative eye-catcher to an unnecessary distraction.
Bailey’s directorial style seems to consist of seeking out emotion purely by getting the actors to raise their voices, usually at the expense of the verse and intelligibility. She also has them grappling dangerously with each other and with the complex, overblown set, often ridiculously out of character, such as when the Bohemian king Polixenes smacks his son about for dallying with a shepherd’s daughter – hardly the actions of a regal father.
Worst of all, she has the jealous king Leontes so enraged at his queen’s imagined adultery that he punches her pregnant stomach. Shocking it may be, but it simply reduces him to the level of a snivelling wife-beater, and therefore devoid of any audience sympathy for the rest of the play.
In the face of all this, the cast struggle manfully. Jo Stone-Fewings as Leontes is despatched to the top of a very tall tower for much of the second half (how on earth the technical crew are going to tour this remains to be seen), and he broods and frets his way through the play looking like a petulant David Morrissey.
Tara Fitzgerald, as his wife Hermione, shines in the early court scene but is made to shout her defence at her trial and denied any real emotional opportunities at her final reappearance thanks to the clunky staging.
Elsewhere, Daniel Betts gives a controlled weight to the wise adviser Camillo, while Pearce Quigley’s eccentric Autolycus is very much a Marmite performance.
The show already appears to be doing well at the box office, but quite what the provinces will make of their latest RSC offering on tour is anybody’s guess.
BORIS GODUNOV
January 19, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday, March 30, 2013
ONE of the enduring passions of outgoing RSC director Michael Boyd is Russia and its literature. So it’s only fitting that his swansong (in The Swan) should be a text by the father of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin.
Boris Godunov tells the story of a corrupt, scheming outsider who grabs the throne by nefarious means before coming to his own grisly end at the hands of another pretender. There are shades of Richard III and Macbeth about all this – shades which are exploited happily by Boyd in his pacy production – and the political resonance of the historical facts from around 1600 are thoroughly explored.
Thus we get everything from Rasputin-like monks plotting treachery to Stalinist crackdowns on popular mobs, with some very modern state security officials in black suits and sunglasses to bring the notion bang up to Putinesque date.
This mish-mash of time periods and styles, courtesy of designer Tom Piper, is sometimes confusing, but the narrative is always clear, bold and refreshingly plain in Adrian Mitchell’s adaptation – his last project before his death in 2008.
The clarity is wonderfully reinforced by a vibrant, committed cast, who relish every nuance of comedy, tragedy and all things in between. Lloyd Hutchinson is bombastic and bewildered in equal measure as the tyrant Boris, wracked with guilt at the child murder he instigated to get to where he is.
Gethin Anthony presents the young pretender Grigory as a fiery but flaky young man with rebellious blood and a scattergun approach to his ambition, and he’s both winning and powerful.
Joe Dixon and James Tucker offer a fine pairing as the wavering courtiers who first help Boris to the Tsar’s crown, then vacillate and weasel their way through his reign. And Patrick Romer throws in a beautifully judged portrait of the elderly monk whose efforts to record the crimes of the ruling classes frame the narrative.
Boyd’s hand is always evident, most notably in the carefully choreographed battle scenes, which are reminiscent of his RSC highlight the Histories. The relentless forward motion of the story never falters, and there’s excitement and intrigue galore along the way, assisted by John Woolf’s atmospheric music. In addition, there’s some exemplary voice work from the whole company, thanks to Alison Bomber, making every word intelligible and audible – which is not always the case.
THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO
January 19, 2013
RSC, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until Thursday, March 28, 2013
IT’S been called the Chinese Hamlet and in terms of scale, theme and narrative energy, it’s easy to see why. Supposedly based on a grim period in Chinese history, some 25 centuries ago, the tale has been retold countless times and recrafted by successive authors and playwrights to subtly shift its message, both in its native country and, in the last two or three centuries, in the West as well.
Now poet James Fenton offers his take, courtesy of the RSC’s incoming artistic director Gregory Doran, who assumes directing duties for this epic, grandiose production.
The performances sweep from the heights of the corrupt imperial court to the humblest downtrodden peasants, and the momentum of the revenge tragedy rarely wavers as the wronged orphan returns in adulthood to wreak vengeance on the tyrants who destroyed his family.
Doran and his designer Niki Turner let their imaginations run riot with a stylised, yet constantly accessible and gripping production, played with passion and faithfulness by the large ensemble.
Fenton’s adaptation may feel awkward and linguistically clunky at times, but the cast never allow the words to get in the way of the story. In particularly fine form are Joe Dixon as the evil chief minister Tu’an Gu and Jake Fairbrother, all youthful innocence turned to astonished disbelief as the eponymous orphan. His transformation, on discovering his true identity, is painful and powerful, and he shares the emotional honours with Graham Turner as Cheng Ying, the peasant doctor entrusted with a huge secret that will demand the greatest of sacrifices.
It’s a vast, sprawling saga and visually sumptuous, and makes a fine introduction to Doran’s leadership. The company, artistically speaking, is in safe hands.
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