Titus Andronicus - Review

Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Max Webster

Natey Jones takes a chainsaw to Simon Russell Beale's hand

It is a rare treat that sees a theatrical giant step up to the role of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's tragedy that boasts the Bard's highest body count. So it is that a one-handed Simon Russell Beale dons his chef’s apron to lead us through Max Webster’s modern take on the tale. Jet fighters roar overhead in the mise-en-scene suggesting that this is a turbulent Rome at war with the Goths and set is to become the arena for revenge -fuelled murder and mayhem.

Beale offers up one of the most sensitively nuanced takes on the noble general, delivering perfectly pitched pathos amidst the carnage, while also understanding the comedic themes that underscore the play. Late in the play, when his Titus greets Wendy Kweh’s Tamora masked up as the spirit of Revenge, Beale milks the moment exquisitely – we know the violence that is about to be unleashed and yet it is impossible not to grin at the charade being played out on stage. Beale equally imbues Titus’ tragic moments – notably manifest if his love for his grievously injured daughter Lavinia (Letty Thomas) – with a powerful emotional depth

Natey Jones’s Aaron is the production’s stand-out supporting performance. The energy in his evilness is palpable, with his Act 5 confessional monologue delivered as a hymn to barbarity. Jones inhabits the verse with a gripping excitement that makes for a rollercoaster ride of Shakespearean delight.

The evening’s other cracking performance is from Kweh who captures Tamora’s smouldering and insatiable sexuality with a fiercely brutal streak of the harshest cruelty. *SPOILER ALERT* In the final act, asTamora learns that the pasty that she is eating includes her sons' flesh, that Webster has her return for a second helping only underscores her fierce defiance.

There is exquisite pathos too from Letty Thomas whose Lavinia suffers the most unspeakable degradation.  For reasons not explained Titus’ brother Marcus Andronicus is gender-swapped to Marcia, played by Emma Fielding. In the scene in the woods that sees Lavinia discovered by her aunt uncle following her rape and mutilation, the scene's usual powerful tenderness seemed blunted in this iteration.   

There is a touch of Hollywood to Webster’s highly mechanised and stylised violence. Hooks descend from gantries and while the stabbings may all be suggested with murderer and victim often metres apart on stage, strobe lighting and gallons of stage-blood make for a gloriously horrific ambience. Matthew Herbert’s music that accompanies moments of carefully choreographed movement, adds to the evening’s compelling ghastliness. The blood flows so copiously in this production that the actors occasionally slip on the Swan’s sanguine soaked thrust. Audience members in the stalls’ front splash-zone seats are offered protective waterproofs, sparing them from soggy bottoms during the finale’s blood-soaked bake off.

A good Titus Andronicus should offer up an evening of entertaining violence that also draws out the story’s vicious misogyny and unspeakable cruelty. Simon Russell Beale serves up a mouth-watering performance.

Runs until 7th June

Photo credit: Max Brenner

Dr Faustus - Review

Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon


****


Written by Christopher Marlowe
Directed by Maria Aberg

Oliver Ryan

Much of what makes The RSC great is embodied in Maria Aberg’s Doctor Faustus, now playing in Stratford’s Swan Theatre. A classic Elizabethan text that is given an invigorating and challenging interpretation and presented in a display of top-notch stagecraft. For students of modern theatre, Aberg’s show should be compulsory viewing.

Dr Faustus’ pact with the Devil is legendary. Having amassed all human knowledge and keen to broaden his horizons yet further, Dr Faustus summons up Lucifer’s demon Mephistophilis. After some hard persuading a deal is struck, Faustus’ veins are cut open and a contract signed in his blood. He is to be given 24 years of superhuman immortal powers on earth, after which his soul will belong to the Devil in eternal damnation. As Faustus is presented with the 7 Deadly Sins and assorted amoral choices, Marlowe’s allegory is clear – that the temptation to evil lies within us all.

In a novel touch, two actors share the leading roles. They enter the stage identically clad and simultaneously strike a match each. He whose match burns out last leaves the stage, to return as Mephistophilis. On press night Oliver Ryan was to play the title role with the lean scot, Sandy Grierson shortly to return shirtless, in an immaculately tailored white suit and in a neat touch, with charred blackened bare feet.

This is a brutal, bloody and above all desperately physical production with Ryan’s Faustus on stage virtually throughout the 1hr 45 one act play. Faustus paints a crude pentagram across the Swan’s black stage to summon the Devil, the bucket of whitewash slopping in his desperation. As the evening unfolds, so does the Doctor become more and more stained by the painted mess that he has created.

Mephistophilis summons up a nightmarish cohort of scholars to confront Faustus on his journey– black clad and hatted and almost suggesting an ensemble of bottle-dancing Jews – and it is in their movement that much of this show’s magic lies. Ayse Tashkiran choreographs his actors with an infernal ingenuity (that at other times hints at the zombies from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video), meanwhile up in the gods (natch) Jonathan Williams six-piece band deliver the classy yet disquieting dischord of Orlando Gough’s musical backdrop with a chilling resonance. The costuming and design (credit Naomi Dawson) is at once simple and grotesque, exemplified best perhaps by Natey Jones’ transvestite manifestation of the deadly sin Lechery. He’s all legs and frock, complete with outrageously kinky heels, though it is Ruth Everett’s Wrath, sporting a wig that’s half black and half white and which offers a troubling suggestion of anger stemming from a psychiatric disorder, which offers up another of this production’s perceptive yet brilliant conceits.

Sandy Grierson and the scholars

Ryan gives his soul to the role as he finds his all-knowing self so knowingly played by Grierson’s perpetually suave and sardonic emissary. It all makes for compelling, unsettling theatre.

Perhaps the most troubling image of all is that of Jade Croot’s Helen Of Troy. This child-woman, with a face that launched a thousand ships, provided by the Devil to satisfy Faustus’ lust, launches her gamine youthfulness at the Doctor. Their passion rises in a whirling embrace, until, spent, her prone body is lifeless in Faustus’ arms as he fast recognises his impending doom. Like much of the play, the moment is both beautiful and terrifying.

Runs in repertoire until 4th August

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks

Queen Anne - Review

Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon


****


Written by Helen Edmundson
Directed by Natalie Abrahami

Natascha McElhone and Emma Cunniffe

Commissioned by the RSC, Queen Anne is a new play by Helen Edmundson, directed by Natalie Abrahami in her debut season at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Little is known about Anne's 12 year reign and Edmundson creates an intricate, intriguing and intelligent portrait of the Queen. She also captures a poignant observation upon the friendship between Anne and   Sarah Churchill, later Duchess of Marlborough.

What emerges is a neatly written play that moves the audience from deep laughter to overwhelmed silence in the same scene. With its satirical ballads, its perfectly directed staging and, most of all, a witty and sharp text, Queen Anne shows a not-so-common ability to depict a credible and colourful image of the politics and human condition of the time.

Intriguingly, Edmundson also creates two of the fiercest female roles to have been seen on stage in some time. Her look at the development of Emma Cunniffe’s Anne and Natascha McElhone’s Sarah and of their friendship (and eventually of its end) is a moving and mesmerizing experience encompassing love, betrayal and sacrifice.

Cunniffe embodies suffering, both physical and emotional as her Anne is divided between her duties as Queen and her heart and feelings as friend, whilst McElhone's Sarah offers a bewitching crescendo of emotions.  

Jonathan Broadbent delivers a scheming Robert Harley, representing the emergent political world and providing a link between the Anne's court and the outside world of the Inns of Court, Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. 

The production's flamboyance – especially in the choral and satirical scenes – owes much to the creative vision of Movement Director Ann Yee.

Helen Edmundson has delivered a fascinating and gripping historical comment. Queen Anne proves to be a story that has needed to have been told and which demands to be seen.

Runs until 23rd January 2016

Guest reviewer: Simona Negretto

Photo Credits: Manuel Harlan

Tom Morton-Smith - Oppeheimer playwright - In Conversation

In rehearsal for Oppenheimer, director  Angus Jackson (l) and Tom Morton-Smith

Last month the RSC presented the world premiere of Oppenheimer, a new play by Tom Morton-Smith, in the Swan Theatre at Stratford upon Avon. (Click here to read my review of the play)

Looking at the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who during the Second World War led the Project Manhattan team that developed the USA's atomic bomb, Oppenheimer's subject matter is vast and complex, drawing in history, science, politics and morality. To the credit of all involved, Oppenheimer has opened to rave reviews.

I caught up with Morton-Smith for a brief conversation to understand a little more about bringing this compelling story to the stage. 

JB:         Tom, what drew you to write Oppenheimer?

TMS: I've been interested in writing a play about physics for quite some time, mostly because play writing should always be about writing what fascinates you. I developed a bit of a hobbyist kind of fascination with physics in my 20's and ended up reading lots of popular science books, and reading lots of history books on it, as well. When the RSC invited me to pitch to them the biggest idea I could think of, I thought, "Okay, let's go with a play about physics." There's not much bigger, than a play about Oppenheimer, and the building of the atom bomb.

JB:        Even before then, going back to school, was it science or arts for A Levels? 

TMS: I was all arts. I was never very good at maths or science at school. It just never excited me. My A-Levels were Media, Theatre, and English lit. I went to do drama and creative writing at drama university and then went to drama school afterwards. I've never been formally trained or interested in physics. I was very much coming at it from a lay person's point of view. 

So I was teaching myself the science aspect of it at the same time as I was learning about the biographies and the history. That was the easiest way for me into the science, to learn it through the people who were discovering it and talking about it.

Physics is so wonderful just in the way that it's talking about the tiny world, as well as talking about quanta and quantum and atoms and you're talking about the movements of the stars and the planets. It's so rich in metaphor. When you're talking about atoms falling apart and splitting, and energy being released, and you're reading about the scientists who discovered these things, you can't help but find the metaphors and the links between the science and the people, and what they're going through. And then, when you're talking about something like the Second World War, which split the world down the middle, it was just full of appropriate metaphors. 

JB:       I remember, as the play was coming to the end of its rehearsals and just before it previewed, that you tweeted saying how you wished you could telephone "the 2011 you" and tell you about how the play looks now on the Swan stage. What happened in 2011? Is that when you first pitched to the RSC? 

TMS: Yes, that was the first time. It's hard to make a living as a playwright. I've been working full time in retail (at Waterstones, the booksellers) for the last 10 years. Every point that I get in my career, where I'm just at a wobble, I'm trying to go, "Do I want to continue with this, or is it about time I start thinking about having a proper career, and a proper job?" Then you get a little seed of interest from somewhere that goes, "I guess I'll keep going for a bit longer." 

It was at that point that the RSC gave me the seed commission where they gave me a little bit of money, and said, "Go away and write the first draft of this play. Bring it back to us in a year, and we'll talk again then." At every point that I returned with a new draft of the play, it made it over that hurdle, so it built and built. I was convinced that at some point, they're just going to say, "Okay, that's great, but it's not for us," and then it would be dead in the water. Thankfully, that didn't happen. 

JB:         Have Waterstones celebrated your association with them?

TMS: I don't know. I never really told head office or anything. I always ordered in copies of my plays in the stage play section of the bookshop, and faced them out with a little recommendation.

JB:     One of the things that struck me as I said in my review, was seeing Oppenheimer, this character from history, albeit modern history, exposed in such detail on stage. Your work reminded me of what Peter Shaffer achieved in telling us all so much about Salieri in his play, Amadeus. What were the challenges that you encountered in writing Oppenheimer? 

TMS: The wealth of information that I needed to get across, in order to tell the story of Oppenheimer. You need to tell the history of Communism in America. You need to tell the major points of the start of the second World War, and how the Russians came to be involved, and you need to clearly explain where we were scientifically at the time, and what that science was. All the politics and the history and the science, trying to gauge how much your audience knows and how much you need to tell them. That was always quite tricky, and quite a balancing act. I'm a strong believer in not underestimating your audience, so the first 10, 15 minutes of the play, I just throw them in at the deep end and throw everything at them and unpack it later, hopefully.

JB:       The play has broadly received rave reviews. Tell me about what your reaction has been to the play’s reception. 

TMS: It's one of those weird things. Until you put it in front of a paying audience, you don't really know what you've got. Before then, everyone's saying: "It's great. It's going really well. It's really exciting." Then you’re sat in the Swan when the lights go down, John Heffernan walks on and then you're stuck in that room with 450 paying members of the public for the next three hours.

From that first moment, when they laugh at one of my gags, that's a bit of a relief. By the end, the responses that I've gotten from the audiences and the way they've been applauding and the way that they've been so attentive, certainly toward the end of the second half, where it starts getting darker and more uncompromising, on most nights you can hear a pin drop. I saw every preview night. It was an amazing feeling, to be in that room, when everyone is so attentive. 

JB:      Grant Olding's music adds a further dimension to the play. How closely did you work with Grant as the music was coming together? 

TMS: When we started putting together the creative team, they put me and Angus Jackson, the director, together first. We did some workshops and I had written the songs included in the play into the script. When we got to the point where we were putting together the creative teams for the production, we got Robert Innes Hopkins, the designer, and Scott Ambler, the choreographer, lighting and sound, and of course, Grant, as well. That's when we started pulling people together.

I didn't meet Grant until the very first day of rehearsals. We had a bit of a chat, and he kept popping in to the rehearsals as we were going, and he would keep sending over bits of music that he had written. If it worked for what we wanted, then we'd keep it. If it wasn't quite right, Angus would say, "Actually, can you do something a bit more like this?" It was great just to occasionally get an email through, during our lunch break. "Oh, Grant sent some more music. Let's listen to it.” If it was an underscoring for a speech or for a scene, we'd start using it in rehearsal. The music became very knitted into the rehearsal process.

JB:       It struck me that the play would translate well to the screen. Is that something that was (or is) ever in your mind?

TMS: Some bits would. I don't think all of it would. The direct address stuff and the more poetic elements wouldn't transfer directly onto screen. It's always tricky when you're writing a play that requires lots of short themes, that you don't want it to seem filmic. The language is of a heightened level, that would actually seem a bit odd on film. 

If I was to ever consider turning it into TV or film, it would maintain its overall structure, but for a different media. 

JB:         What next for you? 

TMS: I don't know, really. I've got several projects I've been working on, off and on, for the last couple of years, that I've got some interest in. I'm just trying to wait and see which one of those will run first. Writing this play has taken up so much of my life the last few years, it will be quite refreshing to turn my brain on to something else. 

JB:     Tom, thank you very much indeed and congratulations again on Oppenheimer.

To read my review of the play, click here.

Oppenheimer continues at The Swan theatre until 7th March 2015

Swan Lake

Swan Theatre, High Wycombe

*****

Composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreographed by Matthew Bourne

The corps de ballet in Swan Lake 

Matthew Bourne has just announced that his emotionally charged, audacious Swan Lake has become the longest running ballet, both in the West End and on Broadway. His reinvention of the Bolshoi’s 19th Century iconic beautiful swans famously replaces traditional ‘beautiful’ female corps de ballet with strong, edgy and irascible male creatures. He says ‘…The strength, beauty and enormous wingspan of these creatures suggests to the musculature of a male dancer more readily than a ballerina in her white tutu…’ and indeed his choreography, the swans bouncing with long ‘necks’, perfectly portrays the graceful birds.

Chris Trenfield as the spell-binding Swan / psychopathic alter ego leather clad Stranger and Simon Williams as a Prince whose journey of self-discovery is both painful and joyous both dance and acte with such emotion and power that the standing ovation for the company started immediately they re-appeared after the final chords had sounded: the Prince dead on his huge bed, his mother too late feeling something for her son whilst above we see the Dead Swan, killed by his swans, carrying his dead Prince to eternity. Dramatic stuff indeed and incredibly emotional.

The 14 corps de ballet male Swans themselves are indispensable and remarkable. Strong, fluid, humorous yet menacing and ultimately cruel and lethal. The 4 baby cygnets take their moment also, witty, nervous, clumsy and fun!

Along the way, Bourne’s stylish company bring character, comedy, precision, mime and wit as palace servants, royal officials, asylum nurses and society’s finest; parodying romantic ballet with ornate costumes as butterflies, flowers, woodcutters and insects. Madelaine Brennan is elegance personified as the ice-cold Queen. Carrie Johnson exacted every ounce of comedy as a delightful out-of-her-depth flighty, dim girlfriend/wannabe wag.

The award winning set and design by Lez Brotherston is huge and grandiose, enhanced by stunning costumes (so much attention to detail in gloves, accessories, glitz and makeup) and Rick Fisher’s lighting.

Swan Lake is the world’s most frequently performed ballet but who would have imagined this production’s tremendous achievement when first performed in London 19 years ago? Judging by the first night full house standing ovation at the Wycombe Swan, it looks set to run for decades more!

Runs until 17th May 2014, then tours.

Titus Andronicus

Swan Theatre, Straford Upon Avon

*****

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Michael Fentiman



Stephen Boxer and Rose Reynolds

If the RSC’s Titus Andronicus were a DVD (which it damn well should be, but that’s another story) it would sport an 18 certificate, with the warning “contains scenes of extreme gore and violence”. This production actually deserves a further rubric: “contains scenes of outstanding acting and visionary design”.

Michael Fentiman’s production messes with our mind as costume and design take us on a Back To The Future ride, blurring the 1950s and Saturninus’ gorgeous pinstripe suit, with the downright medieaval as Tamora dons wolfskin: head, teeth and all, to portray Revenge. This review will not outline the plot – a synopsis can be found on the RSC website (link below) and to describe too much of how this freakish story is told, would only spoil.

Stephen Boxer as Titus is masterful. He conveys the nobility of a decorated and battle hardened General, who notwithstanding his love for his family, puts duty above all. When his loyalty to Rome is abused by the new Emperor and his wife, Boxer’s interpretation of that snub gives an added dimension to the plot. His final scene that bears more than a nod to kitchen queen Fanny Craddock, is a Tarantino inspired episode of Come Dine With Me.

Tamora, the Goth Queen, is a smoulderingly lustful display from Katy Stephens. Rarely is a Shakespearean MILF so wickedly portrayed, and Stephens’ performance does not disappoint. By contrast, Rose Reynold’s Lavinia brings a fragile fragrance to the production. Her character’s arc takes her from fair, prized beauty to violated mute victim, almost Cordelia like in the tragic fondness that evolves between her and father Titus. It is hard to believe this is Reynolds’ debut season at the RSC and she remains a talent to look out for.

John Hopkin’s Saturninus is a leader who claims his authority solely based on heredity. His subtle portrayal of a nice-but-dim man, in charge of a powerful empire, has chilling echoes of a world where even today a dictator’s son can take over from his late father.

Jonny Weldon and Perry Millward as Chiron and Demetrius are feral, hoody-wearing scum, who ride BMX bikes onto the stage in another chilling comment on the world today. Their offstage acts of rape and violence are so abhorrent that when we witness their being slaughtered, the revenge is so satisfying that one could cheer. Their on-stage deaths are as brutal as their crimes and these two young actors, also company debutants, deserve a nod for the physical extremes of their performances, being suspended above the stage, upside down by their ankles, for what seems like an excruciating eternity





Katy Stephens bites off more than she can chew



The final treat of the night (though all the cast excel, to a person) is Kevin Harvey’s wickedly evil Aaron. A Scouser with a massive presence and a beautifully weighted voice to match. That I was reminded of the Narrator in Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers during his monologues, should only be taken as a compliment ( Did you hear the story of Tamora’s twins…..?)

Fentiman makes a classy impression with this his first production for the RSC and he has well exploited the design genius of Colin Richmond and the trickery of illusionist Richard Pinner. Titus Andronicus is a play typically produced on the fringe with a shoestring budget and relying on no more than good acting, inexpensive props and gallons of stage blood. So to see in this version the RSC invest expensive world-class technology into making the show soar, is an absolute treat for theatregoer and practitioner alike.

The only preparation for seeing this play is a tolerance of extreme gore. If you can stand the sight of blood, then travel to Stratford and enjoy this fine collection of individual and company performances. At times funny, often tragic and downright bloody brilliant.

Read my feature on Titus Andronicus and interview with director Michael Fentiman here.

Runs in repertory to 26 October 2013