HAMLET at the Globe - "To hold the mirror up to nature..."

Last week I found myself back in the dangerous corridors of Elsinore, this time via the bare stage of The Globe Theatre.  Yes folks, another week, another Globe visit...

So here I am again, seeing an actor taking on the challenge of Hamlet for the eleventh time - and who was following in the steps of Kenneth Branagh, Jeremy Northam, Ian Charleson,  Simon Russell Beale, Dan McSherry (indeed, who?), Jude Law, Rory Kinnear, Michael Sheen, Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott?  Michelle Terry, my first female Hamlet - apart from seeing Frances de la Tour doing a scene at a charity event - and a major challenge for The Globe's new Artistic Director.

HAMLET is presented by the same 12 actors who also appeared in AS YOU LIKE IT and I think the comedy succeeded more than the tragedy.  The same two directors are credited but there is no sense of direction during the play: people come, people go, with no sense of escalating tension for either Hamlet or Claudius.  Hamlet goes to England, he comes back from England...  people drop like nine pins in the final scene but with no real sense of mortality or that this is the climax of the actual play.

The directors' blocking and positioning of the actors on the stage, as with AS YOU LIKE IT, suggested it was possibly all worked out in the rehearsal room and just dropped onto the stage as is; there was a lot of traffic on the stage but none of it seemed to make any sense or helped with the dodgy acoustics in the round auditorium.  It was all a bit infuriating.

As I said, this Elsinore had gone minimalist and appeared to have no furniture to speak of at all.. and don't start me on the costumes or lack of them.  I was not totally surprised to read in the programme that they have brought their own stuff in to act in.  That might explain the light blue floaty dressing gown that Gertrude - the Queen of Denmark remember - wears in the closet scene:  they were obviously having a sale on at Primark.

There actually was one concept that worked: the scene with the players and Hamlet's staging of "The Mousetrap" - that never fails to get a laugh - is usually a problematic one because you have to see the play twice: once in mime, then the players act it out.  It can really try one's patience when you just want to get on with the plot, and also it's a bugger to focus on because you are too busy concentrating on watching Hamlet watch Claudius watch the play to see his reaction to the player king being murdered.  Here the players did the dumb show to set up what they were going to act but then vanished into the audience and the play was not shown, just the reactions front and centre of Claudius, Gertrude and Hamlet; loud and ominous percussion was played behind our first-level back-row to suggest the play.- which was effective but a bit-heart-attack inducing.

The casting, as with AS YOU LIKE IT, was ethnic and gender blind and created as many problems as with the comedy.  Surely an idea behind gender-mix-up casting is to possibly give a new slant on the role in question but here that was not in evidence apart from possibly within Terry's performance.  There were some seriously under-powered performances: James Garnon as Claudius made no impression at all as Claudius - he seemed to just point his elaborate hair-style at people (think Cameron Diaz in THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY) while Catrin Aaron was colourless as Horatio and Helen Schlesinger played Gertrude as if she had come into a room and forgotten what she was looking for.

The main problem was with the tipsy-tarty casting of Bettrys Jones and Shubham Saraf as Laertes and Ophelia respectively - if they had switched roles it might have proved more interesting and allowed them to give better performances, but no: Saraf brought no insights to Ophelia - just a man in a dress - and James was as lightweight and as vaguely irritating as she was in AS YOU LIKE IT in yet another male role.  I have enjoyed her performances in previous productions but in these two plays she has proved that she is a lousy man.  Shubham Saraf did redeem himself briefly as a very characterful Osric.

The fine Jack Laskey was reduced to playing Fortenbras and the player who recites the Priam speech - but even he was defeated with being placed over at one side of the stage in that scene and his speech went for nothing.  But credit where credit is due: Colin Hurley was a dull Ghost but seized his laughs as the Gravedigger, Richard Katz was a suitably irritating Polonius - while missing any suggestion of threat in his relationship with Ophelia - while the indispensable Pearce Quigley and Nadia Nadarajah made a good Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Above all else, it was Michelle Terry's show; she played with a solid authority and spoke the lines with great intelligence - oh, and that speech?  She played it kneeling at the front of the stage, holding an audience member's hand and asking him "To be or not to be?" which was a very nice touch, it somehow personalized it, as if Hamlet was asking his opinion.  Sadly she was given no help with the absurdly ugly costumes she had to wear and ultimately, a lot of the production was not up to her level.

I will have to ponder where Michelle Terry sits in my pantheon of Hamlets, but I know that her interpretation did not move me as others have; it is possible for this to happen even within a shonky production - Andrew Scott is a good example - but here I suspect Terry was unwilling to out-shine the ensemble - she didn't even get a solo bow!  This strikes me as a rather false humility, after all, as the Globe's artistic director she nabbed the role for herself.  Despite all the failings of the production, I have to admit that I was pleased to have seen it and I still have high hopes for Michelle Terry's tenure.

AS YOU LIKE IT and THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN at the Globe - Back to the Bard...

Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer, by this daughter of Terry... well, for now anyway.  Like a Duke in a Shakespeare play I have been in exile from The Globe in Southwark since 2016, after being subjected to the childish Theatre-In-Education-style productions under that victim-card-playing creature Emma Rice, the personification of all that is ghastly with dumbed-down British Director Theatre where all is surface and hollow.  Her leaving was trumpeted as sexism on the part of the Globe Board, when in fact other issues were more pressing... like, where did all the volunteer staff go?

But now we have the fine actress Michelle Terry as the Globe's new Artistic Director and the first two performances have been great fun... yes, they have the now mandatory non-traditional casting but they were both played with such brio that it could be forgiven, unlike Rice's infantile look-at-me look-at-me revisionism.

For me AS YOU LIKE IT is an ironical title as I have never seen a production that I have liked!  Some have been good in parts but none have seized my imagination and proved truly memorable unlike other Shakespeare plays.  Terry has started her season with AS YOU LIKE IT and HAMLET performed by a rep company of 12 and I must say the cast was an area that was problematical for me.

Jack Laskey was a very good Rosalind, playing up the ambiguities when she disguises herself as Ganymede, but her two main onstage partners were a bit of a worry.  They will no doubt say that the gender balance was maintained by Bettrys Jones playing Orlando - but what's the point when she made absolutely no impact in the role?  Something that is unanswered in gender-blind casting is: which would an actress rather play - Rosalind or Orlando?  Why take roles from actresses only to reassign them to male roles that they cannot bring to life? 

Laskey's other stage partner proved more problematical - deaf actress Nadia Nadarajah is playing Celia, and while dramatically it worked to illustrate Celia's own marginalization within her father's court, when one's understanding of any particular scene is compromised by the fact that Celia's lines are rendered silently, what is the point?  I had honestly never realized how many lines Celia had until they were silently spoken.  I am all for Nadarajah being given her chance to work but "The play's the thing" and surely any casting choice that deliberately hinders the understanding of that play should be questioned.  I must admit I have wondered now we are in the tipsy-tarty world of gender and ethnic blind casting, which brave theatre director will choose a white actor for OTHELLO?  Not this tide.

Meanwhile back in the forest of Arden... there were excellent performances from Colin Hurley as a loud and leering Touchstone and, in the performance of the evening, Pearce Quigley brought his louche and whacked-out charm to Jaques, for once his mournful and cynical interjections ringing totally true; there was even a really nice touch when he concluded "The seven ages of man" speech by suddenly bursting into tears.

There are other charming performances lurking in the invisible forest too: Tanika Yearwood made a real impression with some quality singing as Amiens and took to the skies as Hymen,  Helen Schlesinger did some neat slight-of-hand swapping from the kindly exiled Duke to the usurping Duke by simply turning her frock-coat inside out, Shubham Saraf was a memorable Oliver - not often said - and James Garnon, not an actor I usually like - had great fun as a stroppy and sluttish Audrey.  It goes without saying that I liked Michelle Terry's supporting turn as Adam, Orlando's old courtier - as soon as she spoke her lines you knew she was a real Shakespearean.

There are two directors credited for the production but I was vaguely annoyed at how the blocking of the scenes seem to have been worked out in the rehearsal room rather than the stage so The Globe's dodgy acoustics were not addressed and more often than not lines were not heard by them not being addressed to the whole audience: when you are battling noisy crowds outside, incongruous emergency sirens and aircraft noise above you need all the help you can get by simply taking in all the sides of the stage.

But despite my issues with it, I enjoyed it a lot!  The sheer joy of playing to that audience on that stage came through loud and clear and I felt some of the delight that I got from seeing productions at the Globe before the Bitter Rice years.

Four days later we were back to our new-found favourite seating - the back row of the first tier as it has an all-important back to the purgatorial benches - to see my first-ever production of THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN, written circa 1613-14 which has the claim of being possibly the last play Shakespeare ever worked on, here in collaboration with John Fletcher, one of three dual plays, the others being HENRY VIII and the now-lost CARDENIO.

It has the distinct cut-and-shunt quality of a play that has been passed back and forth between two writers, each taking their favourite plotline in new directions before the tone shifts again and we are back on another plotline.  Singularly lacking in poetic flight, it gives you an idea of the plays which would have been quickly worked on and put on to feed the need for new plays in the new theatres of Jacobean London.

The rulers of Athens, Theseus and Hippolyta, declare war on the ruler of Thebes and vanquish the tyrant.  Theseus captures two of Thebes' finest fighters, the close friends Arcite and Palamon, and although he admires their courage and skills, he has to imprison them.  The two friends are happy they are together and do not fear imprisonment as long as they are together.  However this sworn devotion is broken when they both fall in love at first sight with the beautiful Athenian princes Emilia.

Arcite is released but is banished from Athens, he returns in disguise and after winning a wrestling match, becomes Emilia's bodyguard.  The jailer's daughter has fallen in love with Palamon and she releases him from his cell; he escapes into the Athenian woods with the lovesick daughter in pursuit but he ignores her which drives her mad.  Her madness however does not stop her joining in an exuberant Morris dance for Theseus and Hippolyta.

Palamon and Arcite meet again and despite the latter providing his friend with food and arms, they fight again. They are interrupted when the court discover them and Theseus demands them both executed.  However after Hippolyta and Emilia plea for mercy, he ordains that the friends fight in a public tournament with the winner marrying Emelia, the loser to be put to death.  Who will win the challenge, and who will ultimately win Emelia?

It has odd echoes of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM with lovers pursuing the unloving into the Athenian woods, a group of Athenian citizens rehearsing in the forest and the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta, while the jailer's daughter lovesick derangement reminds you of Ophelia in HAMLET - it feels like Shakespeare thinking "Oh I'll just chuck in one of my greatest hits..."  It is such a disjointed tale that I would think twice about seeing a straight version of it.

But here we have Barrie Rutter directing it, his first production since standing down from being Artistic Director of Northern Broadsides, the company he set up in 1992, and he gives us a rollicking, colourful, big-hearted version of the play which is totally winning.  He keeps the action moving around the Globe's stage and never lets the pace drop until the inevitable final jig.

He elicits unshowy, committed performances from his band of merrie players: Bryan Dick and Paul Stocker are good as the former friends, Francesca Mills is a delight as the jailer's daughter and there is fine support from Moyo Akandé as a Gorbals Hippolyta, Jude Akiwudike as Theseus and Jos Vantyler as the teacher leading the Morris dancers.  Ex-KINKY BOOTS star Matt Henry plays Theseus' right-hand man Pirithous so slightly that one suspects his MBE for services to theatre might have been bestowed somewhat prematurely, while Elloria Torchia's lightweight Emelia made you wonder what our Two Noble Kinsmen saw in her.

But these two quibbles aside, I thought Barrie Rutter - one of my original GUYS AND DOLLS heroes from the National Theatre in 1982 - triumphed with this production and shows that he has just the right populist touch needed for The Globe.  I hope it's not too long before he is back there.

So two productions in and I am won over to the Globe under Michelle Terry's leadership - we have HAMLET, LOVE'S LABOURS LOST (at the pretty but agonizingly painful-seated Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), and OTHELLO to go so I will keep you updated on the progress through the season.

As Michelle Terry quotes from HAMLET in her introduction to the season "Come, let's go together..."

Craps Theatre... .. .

. .. ...no Constant Reader, not crap theatre. Although I might revise that.  No, what I mean is... well, you just never know do you?  There you are, sitting in the theatre, the lights go down and you're off.  It's all a crapshoot.  What you *hope* for is that occurrence when cast and audience create a real alchemy - I have certainly been lucky enough to have had that true theatre experience happen - but I'm happy to settle for simply having an enjoyable time.

Now I will admit that I was in a mood when I arrived at the Adelphi Theatre to see THE BODYGUARD - bloody builders, bloody phone company, bloody bloody.  But surely if a show is good it will lift the spirits, whatever level it originally finds them at?

To be honest. THE BODYGUARD was a show I expected never to see.  I have never felt the urge to see the film as I am no Kevin Costner fan and I was no longer into Whitney Houston by the time it was released.  So there was no reason to see the show.  That was, until I heard that Beverley Knight was taking over the lead role.  Sigh, the things that woman has put me through e.g the BBC teach-a-celebrity-to-sing show.  But I am a fanboy so I really have no say in the matter.  So there I was, sitting in the 2nd row of the circle (at a reduced price I hasten to add)... and the lights went down...

 

OK, we all know the only reason it's there is to give the West End another jukebox musical - I mean they are so thin on the ground - and they don't even bother to hide it - every time there is a song the show stops dead.  The team behind this really need to understand that 'scene / song / scene / song' does not a musical make.

 

 

So not having seen the film I have to ask - is it as ropey as Alexander Dinelaris' book?  While watching it, I wondered whether he had set himself the challenge to make each scene work with as few words as possible.  He certainly succeeded.  I watched bemused as scene after scene consisted of actors coming together, saying a few lines... then walking off again.  No attempt at 'fleshing out', no time spent giving characters a context or history, no tension...  The director is Thea Sharrock who in the past has mined Terence Rattigan's plays - AFTER THE DANCE, CAUSE CELEBRE - for context and inner life but here she is more like a traffic policewoman, getting the traffic on and off the stage without too many snarl-ups.

 

A lot of time and effort has been spent making the big set-piece numbers so spectacular as to blind you from the baldness of the plot.  Flashing lights, ramped-up sound, raised platforms, video projections - but at the heart of the show, there is... no heart.  It's like a battery-operated toy with flashing lights, mechanical noises and heads that spin around but has too many sharp edges to hold too closely.  I will admit I liked watching Tim Hatley's sliding-panelled set give us any number of cinematic pans and sweeps.

 

In the middle of all this is Beverley Knight.  She's no actress but she is given nothing to work with by the various planks of wood she has to interact with onstage (Tristan Gemmill is from the B&Q school of performing art) and her character is thinly-drawn (diva whose heart thaws while in peril) but you know at any moment you're never far away from the real reason she is there - and when she sings, who cares about the bad acting surrounding her and joyless production she's in?  Because suddenly here is heart, here is passion, here is soul.  Beverley took ownership of songs that once belonged to she who said she would drown her children if they turned out like Madonna (!) and made them her own.  "I Have Nothing", "So Emotional", "All the Man I Need" and "I'm Every Woman" were Knightfied and made fresh and vital.  Of course there was always the threat of "that song", hanging over the night like Damocles' sword and just in case the audience didn't realise that this was the apogee of the evening, this thick-eared production has a couple of scrims dropped behind the performer with montages of 'moments' from the show projected on them - a sort of onstage pop video - which shows a shocking disbelief in said performer's ability to sell the song as a genuine emotional moment.  But Bev turned this absurd production choice into an irrelevance as she simply turned that song OUT.

 

Owen also pointed out that in RUN TO YOU, which is performed as a duet between Bev and Debbie Kurup as her resentful sister, there was a rather lop-sided example of someone who can sing a show tune and someone who can simply *sing*.

 

I gave Beverley a standing ovation as her singing more than deserved it and it was delightful to see how genuinely happy she was to get such a thunderous response.  Of course then it was time for the by-now obligatory 'hidden track' and a quick costume change found Bev back onstage to give us I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY.  It's almost like the production team is saying "Yes we know the last 2 hours were a dozy excuse of a thriller, Let's Dance!"  That was never really in doubt.

 

But a West End film-to-stage jukebox musical is an obvious trap of snares... less so the National Theatre doing a history play by Christopher Marlowe.  Safe as houses you might have thought, but sadly for the much put-upon king EDWARD II he is also suffering from the DTs... Director Theatre. Owen wanted to see this being a big Marlowe fan and as it tied in nicely with pals Sharon & Eamonn going, tickets were booked.  I happened to see a review of it which made my heart sink but I kept an open mind as we swung open the all-too-familiar and strangely comforting doors to the Olivier stalls.  This one action can almost serve as an overture for what you are going to see... the first view of what the standing set is can either thrill, intrigue or sink the heart.  EDWARD II was the latter.  It does have a great poster though.

 

A throne with a long carpet horizontally placed in front of it (which was being hoovered when we arrived by a luckless ASM), a suspended gold curtain, a wooden shed-like affair behind the throne and then behind that... nothing. Strip lights illuminating racks of costumes and props piled up on tables.  I guess it was nice to see the back wall of the backstage area.  I guess. 

 

 

Then the penny dropped... ah! Although director Joe Hill-Gibbons was directing Christopher Marlowe's text he really wanted to be doing Bertolt Brecht's 1924 adaptation - and so it transpired with excessive use of alienation techniques such as using hand-held cameras to film scenes out of view of the audience which were shown on screens on either side of the stage - which of course also showed the ubiquitous scene announcements: THE EXECUTION OF GAVESTON, THE DEPOSITION OF THE KING, QUEEN ISABELLA HAS A BRAZILIAN WAX etc.

 

We also had an outbreak of gender confusion among the cast: actresses played Edward's brother Kent, the Earl of Pembroke and the young Prince of Wales.  But here's the thing: while Pembroke's gender was never mentioned (that I can recall), the Prince of Wales remained a boy in school uniform all the way through the 20 year span of the play - imagine Wee Jimmy Krankie in line for the throne - but Kent became the King's sister rather than his brother.  Why?  Did Penny Layden, Bettrys Jones or Kirsty Bushell bring anything unique to the roles that no male actor could?  No.  Kirsty Bushell, in fact, had difficulty walking in her high heels so a drag queen could easily have played that role if Hill-Gibbons was determined to have it played as a woman.

 

 

Time and again through this infuriating production I wanted to pull the director out from behind the throne, ANNIE HALL-like, to ask why he had done the latest in any number of bizarre directorial conceits, not because I dislike new ways of thinking but I do if they deliberately stand in the way of enjoying and understanding the piece.

• Why have the Hokey-Cokey played by the on-stage pianist at one moment?
• Why have so many scenes played out-of-sight of the audience and relayed to us on the screens?
• Why have the costume dept. design what looks like a heavy brocade cloak for Edward only to have it flutter with every movement - could you not have had a whip-round for some 50ps to weigh it's hem down?
• Why have the cast wear such ugly and obvious head mics?
• Why have such clunkers interpolated in the text like "He's an arsehole" and "I'll call you back" (the last one causing a huge unintended laugh in the audience)
• Why introduce Spencer and Baldock on film standing on the roof of the National Theatre which then sped up like something out of Benny Hill?

 

As I said, what was so infuriating was that these annoying tricks kept breaking the flow of what was a fast-paced and fascinating play, it certainly makes me want to read Marlowe's play.  What cannot be faulted were several of the central performances.

 

I liked Kyle Soller as the King's amour fou Piers Gaveston, even having to play the role as a 'rough trade' yob.  He certainly has great stage presence which he also showed in 2011 as The Gentleman Caller in the Young Vic's THE GLASS MENAGERIE (also directed by Hill-Gibbons).  He made a memorable first appearance as Gaveston returned from exile: sitting in the side raised stalls and slowly making his way to the stage, clambering over the railing and inching along the wall balancing on the handrail, declaiming all the time.  It's groaningly obvious to have him play Gaveston in his natural American accent - yes we GET he's an outsider because Marlowe has *actually* written it into the text.

 

Needless to say the gay aspect has been ramped up but this too does a disservice to the play as this is not why the lords rebel against the King, it's not Gaveston's sexuality that enrages them, it's because the King bestows titles on him despite his low-born status.  It's also obvious that Soller would also play Edward's killer Lightborn as it could be said that he as well as Gaveston were the death of the King.

 

I had just finished reading Helen Castor's excellent SHE-WOLVES on the early Queens of England, one of whom was Queen Isabella.  Vanessa Kirby was always interesting as the young French Queen, frustrated at being made to look foolish by Edward's preference for Gaveston and slowly turning monstrous in her revenge.  But she too was hampered by Hill-Gibbon's tricks.  In the first act she is dressed in a long satin gown; in the second act as the mistress of the King's usurper Mortimer, she is dressed like an extra from THE ONLY WAY IS ESSEX in leggings, a white baggy t-shirt and bulky fake-fur jacket.

 

In this year of the National's 50th anniversary, thoughts have turned to previous productions seen.  What one has got used to is a certain standard of performance in the supporting roles which wasn't particularly on display here.  Three stood out: Ben Addis as Baldock (giddy at the thought of being so close to power), Bettrys Jones who morphed from being his/her mother's silent shadow. refilling her glass or lighting her cigarettes, to an all-too-vocal new King eager to revenge his/her dead father, and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Mortimer, hiding his real ambition as he overthrows his King.

 

Despite all the directorial trappings going on around him, John Heffernan was a marvellous Edward.  He held the attention throughout, by turns humorous, angry, captivating, triumphant, doubting and finally all-too human, brought low by his own blindness to the bigger picture.  All these emotions were on display in the scene where he is expected to renounce his crown, which was all the more effecting for Hill-Gibbons stopping the wanky excesses.

 

 

His performance shines out from the cack-handedness of most of the production and, after seeing him in supporting performances up until now (THE LAST OF THE DUCHESS, SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER) this marks him out as a real star for the future.

 

I hope to see another production of the play - it has survived this long so I am sure Joe Hill-Gibbons won't kill it off.

  

“But what are kings, when regiment is gone,

But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?

 

The reason the David Laws story has intrigued me a little more than usual is probably down to seeing THE CRUCIBLE at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre last week - luckily when it was sunny - with it's underlying theme of "To thine own self be true".

The evening was a first for a couple of reasons as I had never seen a drama at Regents Park before, only Shakespeare comedies and musical revivals. I had also only ever seen the play in a 1980 BBC production - a memorable cast including Eric Porter, Daniel Massey, Denis Quilley and Peter Vaughn - and Nicholas Hytner's 1996 film with Daniel Day Lewis and a chilling Paul Scofield as Danforth.

It's a tricky play to pull off successfully with it's almost three hours of claustrophobic tension, the production needs to hold you in a vice grip which is equally difficult to do in a venue which has so many possible distractions. Arthur Miller never envisioned having to pitch his soberly savage work of the evil that men - and teenage girls - do against Mr. Whippy vans and speeding emergency vehicles. But while not a total success I think the production worked on most levels.The play of course is the thing. Arthur Miller wrote it in 1953 as a response to the anti-communist atmosphere that was cloaking America, first with the McCarthy trials in the early part of that decade and Miller was himself called to the later House Un-American Activities Commitee where he refused to name names. Mirroring this "scoundrel time" as Lilian Hellman called it, Miller found himself drawn to the 1692 Salem Witch-hunting case when twenty innocent people were executed on the evidence of some of the town's young schoolgirls.

What should be dated polemic, in the hands of Miller, becomes a play which feels as contemporary as the day it was written. Time and again we have seen a situation when what is unreal and unseen is more important that what is real and provable, as long as there is a small group of people whipping up hatred and blame based on a handy believe system, THE CRUCIBLE will be timely.Miller based his play around the real people in the case with a little dramatic seasoning to give the terrible occurrences a believable basis. In the hardline Puritanical community of Salem, as misogynistic as it is pious, the schoolgirls have to think fast when they are caught dancing in the woods at night so their ringleader Abigail Williams declares they were made to commune with the Devil through the spells of a black slave Tituba.

When brutally questioned by her owner and his fellow menfolk she agrees that she was made by the Devil to do his work - as were the people whose names she saw written in The Devil's Book. Soon the girls are caught up in the frenzy of the moment and scream out names of older women and men who they say send their spirits to torment them at night. Abigail seizes her moment for revenge by naming Elizabeth, the wife of farmer John Proctor with whom Abigail had an adulterous liaison when she worked as their servant but who was thrown out when Elizabeth found out about their affair.
Slowly we watch a small community lose it's collective mind, where to question the madness means that you yourself are a suspect and every moment of possible salvation evaporates as their world spins even more off into a place where every denial is an obvious admission of guilt and recriminations can hide grudges and petty dislikes.

Jon Bausor's bare stage is shaped like a New England house so the horizontal doors and windows serve as trapdoors for the cast or props to pop out of is quite effective as it suggests the secrets the town hides and Paul Keogan's subtle lighting cues matched the fading light perfectly.Timothy Sheader's direction was steady and sure but I found the idea of having the girl accusers sitting around the stage who reacted as one to certain things said on the stage to be a bit of a misfire - also there is a bizarre idea to have them moved in a rigid choreographed movement during the scene changes and during the scenes where the girls have hysterical attacks of alleged possession, they came across as Puritan MTV dance routines rather than as violent eruptions of scary hysteria. It was during these scenes when the girls are gripped with this collective hysteria that the production's lack of claustrophobia was most noticeable.

The cast are uniformly fine apart from the central performance by Patrick O'Kane.

As usual he turned in a performance of unnecessary showy intensity - I once read a great slighting review of a Christopher Walken performance that said he acted with all the concentrated intensity of a drag queen who had his wig pulled off. Now I think of that every time I see O'Kane onstage - his final scene which should be Proctor's catharsis was so all over the place due to his over-emoting.

Luckily the rest of the cast were all fine and indeed was a cast worthy of any of the best stages at the NT or west end - Christopher Fulford was fine as Reverend Parris who uses the hysteria of the girls to gain a place in the important male power structure of Salem, Alexandra Mathie made Ann Putnam an all too-recognizable figure of provincial snobbery and venal prejudice, Philip Cumbus was equally effective as Reverand Hale the only authority figure who eventually realises what is really being perpetrated while the forces of good were well played by Susan Engel and Patrick Godfrey as the tragic real life figures of Rebecca Nurse and Giles Corey.

Emma Cunniffe was very fine as Elizabeth Proctor, a woman whose sense of duty leads her to not only inadvertently condemn her husband in the court's eyes but to make her realise that it had stifled their life together. It was just a shame her final scene was thrown off-balance by the showboating O'Kane.

Emily Taafe was fine as Abigail Williams, the catalyst for the madness but the performance of Bettrys Jones as Mary Warren was a marvel. She made Mary stand out from the other girls with a sly wit but also by suggesting not only the loneliness of an orphan in a society ruled by the family but also her defiance at facing her co-accusers in court and attempting to clear the name of her employers. Her terror was palpable when she in turn is accused by them and her final capitulation was heartbreaking.

However the performance of the evening was from Oliver Ford Davies, in towering form as Deputy-Governer Danforth. He dominated the trial scene with his flinty determination that the letter of the law be adhered to - even as those letters were being twisted to suit the meaning he gave them. It was a truly frightening representation of power which ultimately is what the play is about - the perverting of justice and the truth by those who should be it's custodians.

Although the production had the flaws mentioned, it has stayed with me and has now made me keen to see the play again.