Othello - Review

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London

*

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Ola Ince

Ken Nwosu and Poppy Gilbert

With the action being set in 2023 London, this take on the Moor is more Moorgate than Venetian. And with most of the male characters being played as Metropolitan Police officers, Shakespeare’s dialogue has been liberally butchered too. Countless references to “Scotland Yard” and exclamations of “Guvnor!” make the evening feel like a badly written episode of The Sweeney that drags on for an excruciating 3 hours.

In trying to make this troubling tale of treachery, jealousy and racism accessible, director Ola Ince has cheapened the original. Mangling the Bard’s prose with contemporary slang not only disrespects the verse, it blunts its beauty. Shakespeare's early, subtle and nuanced and expressions of love are trampled by this treatment, leaving the plot hard to follow for those unfamiliar with the story. And while this may be the Wanamaker Playhouse with its famed candelabras, far too much of the play’s time is inexplicably wasted lighting, hoisting and snuffing out the flickering flames.

Struggling to break through the crackle of the police walkie-talkies punctuating the show, Ken Nwosu makes a decent attempt at the title role with a passionate performance. Equally Ralph Davis as Iago is appropriately villainous, and (what should be) the play’s final scene does prove surprisingly moving. Poppy Gilbert as Desdemona (or Desi as she’s frequently referred to in another act of textual carnage) saves her best for her swan song.

Ultimately this production is little more than a thinly-veiled attack on London's police force. While the Met may be a flawed institution for a variety of reasons, to clumsily denigrate it on the back of Shakespeare's verse is lazy politics and equally lazy theatre. Ince should try writing or directing an original piece to make his point about the cops. His corruption of Shakespeare's writing kills both the argument of the original, carefully crafted text as well as his more contemporary beef against the police. 

And of course, at the end, Othello gets tasered. Natch....

Runs until 13th April

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Hamlet - Review

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe, London

*

Written by William Shakespeare

Directed by Sean Holmes

George Fouracres

"Fuck you Fortinbras!", as uttered by Claudius, is but one of the early revisions to Hamlet that Sean Holmes subjects us to in this, the first production of the play to be performed in the candlelit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe. 

At least in 1994, when Disney offered up their take on Hamlet, they had the decency to re-name their version 'The Lion King'. The artistic team at the Globe lack such grace. Their interpretation of this finest of tragedies is sloppy in its revisions with text chopped and re-written, inappropriate songs and chants introduced and amidst a general demolition of the fourth wall, audience singalongs included too. Perhaps the Globe's team had taken Shakespeare's description of his audience to heart, the groundlings being "for the most part capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise". Either way, it is notable that no name is posted in the credits to take responsibility for this ghastly adaptation.

This Hamlet comes across as no-more than a big budget student production, a play more likely to have graced the Edinburgh Fringe, rather than one of the country's leading Shakespearean venues. At least at Edinburgh the tickets would have been considerably cheaper and the show would have been likely to have lasted little more than 1 hour, rather than the interminable 3+ hours on offer here.

Ultimately it is hard to say what is more troubling. The butchery to which Shakespeare's prose has been subject or the rapturous applause, standing ovation even, that the whooping audience bestowed upon the production. This reviewer is privileged to be familiar with the text, having seen the play on many occasions over the decades. On the night that this production was attended, the Playhouse was packed with at least two parties of of school students. What a betrayal that these young people are being exposed to, seeing Hamlet perhaps for the first time in their lives, performed at times as little more than a pantomime with so much of Shakespeare’s verse savaged.

This is cultural vandalism of which the Globe’s trustees should be ashamed. The one star rating is for George Fouracres' decent work in the title role and by John Lightbody as Polonius. The rest is silence.

Runs until 9th April

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Cymbeline - Review

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe, London


****


Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Sam Yates

Emily Barber and Eugene O'Hare

In that little wooden candlelit nest of magic and wonder that is the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Sam Yates directs a dreamy, fairytale-like Cymbeline.

Originally written to be performed across the river at the Blackfriars playhouse, (and now playing in that venue’s simulacrum) the play is a tragicomedy with heavy dark elements (jealousy, betrayal, poisoning, the list goes on) none of which appears to do much harm to this reassuring and family-friendly Globe production.

The clumsy villains all seem fatally destined to fail, the love between Emily Barber's Innogen and Jonjo O'Neill's Posthumus will clearly be blessed with a happy ending and the intricate Chinese box of the plot is solved in a jolly choral grand finale.

There is a beautiful simplicity to the Globe’s Playhouse, though one wonders if the surroundings, music and lighting could have dared to push the fantasy world further? They are faithful and faultless, if a touch plain and unmoving.

A better result is achieved with the costumes. Innogen’s trustworthy purity is manifest by her dress, simple and angelically light blue, contrasting with the Queen’s dark heart and her decorated dress.

The real strength of this Cymbeline is its cast’s ability to deliver Shakespeare’s language in a modern, contemporary way, that underlines the carefully crafted comedy in the text.

Barber’s performance is a high point, offering a lively representation of youth, love and beauty of heart. Pauline McLynn’s Queen succeeds as the fairytale evil stepmother (even her body language and hand gestures look mean and sly). And whilst Eugene O’Hare’s Iachimo looks more like a tombeur de femmes than a Machiavellian Iago, the audience seems to stay happily on his side!

Yates’ Cymbeline looks more like a blurred, funny reverie than a passionate, violent story, but given that it works and after all, “tis the season to be jolly”, it's well worth seeing.

Runs until 21st April 2016
Guest Reviewer: Simona Negretto
Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Julian Glover's Beowulf - Review

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe, London


*****

Adapted by Julian Glover from the translations by Michael Alexander and Edwin Morgan and from the Bristol Old Vic production directed by John David and John Elvery

Julian Glover

Beowulf is an Old English (possibly the oldest English) poem. Known to have been written in the tenth century, but with probable older origins, it's verses tell of a time of dragons, sea monsters, smoking swords and throughout it all wassail and riotous assembly in cavernous mead halls.

Julian Glover has been reciting the poem for nigh on thirty years, in a version that he has painstakingly laboured over. His editing of the verse has led to it being mainly recited in the contemporary idiom, with an occasional stanza of Old English and his helpful programme notes tell us of history having stressed that Beowulf "should not only be read to oneself, but spoken out loud". Thus it was, for two shows only last weekend, that Glover was to give his final performances of the poem in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. 

The venue was enchanting. Lit mainly by flickering candles (supplemented by a floodlit yellow wash) the Playhouse offers an elegant Elizabethan intimacy and that it was packed on a pleasant spring afternoon speaks much for Julian Glover's reputation.

Glover's delivery is the work of a master. Such is the actor's genius that even when speaking in the ancient tongue, typically unintelligible to a modern audience, his rhythm enhanced by a perfect emphasis on the text's alliterative strengths made even the most incomprehensible language seem crystal clear.

Using minimal props (a tankard, sword and throne, all used only occasionally) and dressed in simple, sober modern blacks, Glover's recital, through perfectly honed inflection and nuance, was a step back in time. For what must be nigh on millennia, folk have been entertained by talented raconteurs telling stories and this is precisely the ambience that Glover achieved. A man as at home performing in a Broadway musical as he is mastering Shakespeare, this wonderful actor held the crowd in the palm of his hand.

This review covered the matinee performance. Later that evening Glover's son Jamie, an accomplished actor himself, was to inherit his father's mantle by concluding the recital and carrying on its oral tradition. 

Today’s writers, directors and dramaturgs would do well to attend the future recitals of Glover Junior. Simply staged and beautifully performed, the purest of theatre does not get better than this.