Dvd/150: THE HOLLOW CROWN: HENRY V (Thea Sharrock, 2012)

The last in the the BBC Shakespeare series THE HOLLOW CROWN is HENRY V which also brings to an end the chain of events covered in the Henriad.

HENRY V takes up where HENRY IV ended and, although both had different directors, luckily the same actors play the same characters so there is a natural continuity between them.

Tom Hiddleston moves effortlessly from HENRY IV's carousing Prince Hal to the commanding HENRY V making it easy to understand his sudden bursts of rage as coming from him trying hard to stamp his authority.

Ben Power's fine adaptation does have some odd omissions: Henry's execution of the traitorous lords, the killing of the pages by the French which leads to Henry ordering the deaths of his prisoners, and the non-execution of Nym.

Thea Sharrock's subdued film is enlivened by performances by Julie Walters, Paul Ritter, John Hurt and Mélanie Thierry.

Shelf or charity shop?  Joining his fellow Kings on the shelf...

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?

 

Last week it was time for my second Terence Rattigan play in this, his centenary year. Following on from FLARE PATH, we now have his last play CAUSE CÉLEBRE, he died four months after it's premiere at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1977.The Rattigan revival was kicked off last year by the huge success of Thea Sharrock's production of his little-remembered second play AFTER THE DANCE at the Lyttleton and here she is reunited with her stage designer from that production Hildegard Bechtler to work their magic again - and they do.

Rattigan based his play on a 1935 murder trial that had haunted him. In 1934, in that febrile hothouse Bournemouth, 18 year old George Stoner answered an ad in the Daily Echo "Daily willing lad, 14-18, for house-work; Scout-trained preferred. Apply between 11-12, 8-9 at 5 Manor Road, Bournemouth". The ad was placed by retired architect Francis Rattenbury, 67 and his younger songwriter wife Alma, 39. Before long Alma and George were openly having an affair with Francis' tacit approval as he was not only impotent but a heavy drinker. Six months later, the police arrived in the early hours to find him with his head bashed in and Alma in a state of drunken hysteria.

Alma and George were put on trial for murder in an atmosphere of lurid press headlines that played up the "experienced woman - innocent lad" angle. In a sensational outcome George was found guilty but Alma was found not guilty. A few days later Alma took a train to Christchurch near Bournemouth, found a spot near the River Avon and, believing her lover soon to hang, stabbed herself to death.

The irony was that after a petition of 320,000 signatures, his sentence was commuted to Life. However, in 1942 he was released on early parole, joined the army and fought in WWII, and was even reported to have been seen in the audience at Her Majesty's seeing his 18 year old self be seduced by Glynis Johns as Alma. He died in 2000 aged 83 on the 65th anniversary of the murder.Rather than retell the sad story as is, Rattigan seeks to spotlight the atmosphere of sexual hypocrisy that the case was rife with by contrasting Alma's trial with the fictional story of Edith Davenport, a sexually-frigid, emotionally-cold woman whose own marriage is collapsing due to her husband's small affairs and her puritanical attempts at keeping her teenage son with her and away from the temptations of the world. Out of the blue she is summoned for jury duty - and to her horror, is made foreman of Alma's jury.

He neatly shows that while Mr. Davenport's dalliances for sexual gratification are seemingly understood and turned a blind-eye to by society, the same cannot be granted to Alma whose sexual frustration is seen as something abhorrent especially when her lover is a younger man, the poor boy preyed upon by a wicked woman. The fact of a woman being judged more for her morals rather than any perceived crime had been the case over ten years before with the tragic hanging of Edith Thompson and was certainly a factor twenty years later in the case of Ruth Ellis.Rattigan said he didn't have far to look for his inspiration for Edith as he based the emotionally-fraught scenes between her and her sexually curious son on the relationship between him and his mother. In a remarkably hard-edged performance, Niamh Cusack excelled as Edith, a woman who finds at the end of the play that the woman she despised but could not find guilty thanks to her own morality, could not live on because of her own morality.

She was complemented well by Simon Chandler as her husband John, exhausted by years of living by her rules and Lucy Robinson as her more gregarious sister Stella, mad with excitement about the latest gossip from the jury room.Rattigan has great fun with the legal scenes in showing the court-room cat & mouse games between the defense and prosecuting councils are merely the public jousting to revenge losses between them on the golf courses. Nicholas Jones is a stand-out as T.J. O'Connor, Alma's wily Defence Council who gambles constantly with his handling of her case.

In a a role that only amounted to two bookend scenes, the consummate supporting actress Jenny Galloway still managed to shine as Alma's live-in companion Irene Riggs and Tommy McDonnell was a cocky and dangerous-to-know George in this, his professional stage debut. The echoes of AFTER THE DANCE were in the casting of Benedict Cumberbatch's father Timothy Carlton as the doomed Francis.
But the show was rightly dominated by Anne-Marie Duff's high-voltage performance as Alma. First seen playing with the gauche George by adopting a stolen-from-the-movies divinely decadent lady of the manor demeanor, the play's structure of flashback scenes had her moving from bring strained and drawn in court to be blindly hysterical while blindly drunk to being finally a shattered woman, her declared innocence a hollow victory. She was mesmerising.

The play's strangely amorphous quality where scenes move from place to place, forwards and back in time, betray it's origins as a 1975 radio play which starred Diana Dors as Alma (wow!) - both Rattigan's radio script and an initial stage version were edited together by the director Robin Midgeley with the ailing Rattigan re-writing when necessary. Thea Sharrock however keeps a firm grip on the narrative and the play is helped immeasurably by Hildegard Bechtler's set which opens up the whole of the Old Vic stage with walls constantly moving between scenes to provide new vistas with several hugely effective uses of the stage's depth. Again these visually arresting scenes emerge from the shadowy gloom of Bruno Poet's dreamlike stage lighting.When Rattigan wrote his play he left out some intriguing facts about the case: Alma was actually Canadian, having met George in 1923 while he lived and worked there as an architect of some renown Alma's first husband was killed in the Battle of the Somme and she volunteered to be a nurse in the French Red Cross where she was wounded twice in action and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Her second husband was a Pakenham so was distantly related to Lord Longford who later was such a supporter for the release of Myra Hindley.

When George's first wife refused him a divorce he harassed her mercilessly - stripping their home of furniture and turning off the power. He eventually moved Alma in and forced his wife to live on the first floor until she eventually agreed to a divorce and they were married in 1925. These actions were seen as in the Canadian newspapers as a shocking scandal. In 1929 they left Canada after his first wide died and his sons by that marriage disowned him. So his murder at the hands of Alma's lover 12 years later was headline news here and there.

The Rattenbury's youngest son John was evacuated to Canada in WWII and eventually, following in his father's footsteps, became an architect and joined Frank Lloyd Wright's practice helping with the design of the Guggenheim Museum amongst others.

Twice this week I have come away from the National Theatre pondering how hard it must be for artistic directors as to how to fill their schedules.

The Donmar or the Menier for example are looked upon as having a certain caché but with runs allotted to a month or so that means these theatres at best can stage only 12 productions a year - and what plays get chosen? Monetary demands mean that a healthy sprinkling of popular titles and playwrights crop up again and again... but what gets left behind? What falls through the cracks?

The reason for these musings is down to seeing two excellent revivals of little-known early plays by Terence Rattigan and Tennessee Williams currently playing to packed houses at the NT.

Think of a Rattigan that gets revived and you will probably have THE WINSLOW BOY, THE DEEP BLUE SEA or SEPARATE TABLES on your list. At the Lyttleton however, Thea Sharrock has directed a revival of Rattigan's second play AFTER THE DANCE which I saw with Owen, Sharon and Eamonn.It opened in June 1939 to good reviews and enthusiastic audiences who no doubt responded to not only the high drama onstage but Rattigan's capturing of the zeitgeist of the country as it approached an unavoidable war. However this very atmosphere also was the production's downfall and as the situation worsened the play ended it's run after 2 months, less than a month before war was declared.

Rattigan appears to have had mixed feelings about it in hindsight, not including it in his Collected Plays when first published, probably because of it's failing to achieve as big a box office success as his later plays. There is also a theory that he was haunted by using the possible suicide of a young lover as a plot device in the play but then he is accused of using the same incident 13 years later in THE DEEP BLUE SEA so it appears to have been a handy haunting.The years in between might have lost out but it is this year's gain as what Sharrock's production showcases is a beautifully-crafted three-act play which nails a moment in time perfectly while also providing 5 cracking parts for actors to shine in.

Surprisingly only now making his NT debut, Benedict Cumberbatch (God, that name) is paired with the always-watchable Nancy Carroll as David and Joan, an archetypal Golden Couple who now find themselves at the wrong end of the 1930s after 12 years of marriage and secretly realise that their excessive round of drinks, parties, larks and more drinks will not stand scrutiny in the gray light of a possible war in Europe.

Independently wealthy, David is drinking himself into an early grave while half-heartedly writing a biography of a little-known Balkan hero. Joan fills in her time by being the effortlessly chic hub of a circle of feckless, equally-sensation-craving group of drinking friends. She also chooses to ignore her husband's frequent but non-threatening flings with pretty young things for to mind would of course be a crashing bore.

They also share their large London flat with John (Adrian Scarborough) one of their drinking friends who has become an unofficial lodger and spends his time happily lying on the couch singing for his supper by keeping them amused with his cutting quips about all and sundry. Also sharing the flat is David's cash-strapped cousin who he 'employs' to type up the occasional page of his never-ending book and the couple are friendly with his fiancee Helen (Faye Castelow) who is a frequent visitor.

Of course what soon becomes apparent is that Helen is besotted with David, determined to lead him to the right road of Great Writing and Sobriety through her devotion. She manages to get her doctor brother to examine David and he is confronted with the fact that he is in the early stages of Cirrhosis. David's vanity cannot withstand Helen's passionate declarations and eventually confesses that he has fallen for her too and knows with her help he can lead a Life With Meaning.Helen then becomes that most dreaded creature, one who knows that everyone will be happier if they all know the plain truth. She confronts Joan on the afternoon of a huge party being held at the flat and tells her plainly that Joan's marriage is over as David now loves her.

Joan responds just as Helen and David expect, calm and excepting of the ways of the world, however the reality is witnessed by an appalled John who finds Joan, broken and in despair. The party goes ahead but events take a shattering turn from which their lives are changed just as the approaching war will change their world forever.

Thea Sharrock's direction is a model of empathy and clarity, her handling of characters who could easily be looked upon as irritating and distancing are instead presented to us with an immediacy and sympathy that is rare among today's directors. Both Scarborough and Castelow appeared last year on the same stage in Rupert Goold's take on J.B. Priestley's TIME AND THE CONWAYS in which the characters were treated as mere caricature. Here Sharrock is unafraid of allowing her characters to have an inner emotional life which resonates strongly.

She has elicited strong performances from her cast, namely from Cumberbatch, Carroll and Scarborough, all of whom know exactly how to balance the brittle, knowing banter of the opening scenes with the raw emotional hurt that all the stylish wit is a carapace for.

Nancy Carroll was quite breathtaking as Joan, her early scenes suggesting the unforced, confidant glamour of Kay Hammond but shattering that image with her lonely devastation at the news of her husband wanting to end their life together.

Cumberbatch fitted almost seamlessly into the role of David, he even resembled any number of tall, ramrod-backed, English leading men like Michael Rennie or David Farrar. However like Carroll he also found layers of emotion within David which while not making him sympathetic, did make his choices understandable.

My friend Sharon asked me afterwards if I thought Adrian Scarborough was a possible future Knight of the theatre and his performance here suggested it's possibly only a matter of his getting a tiny step up to some good lead parts. Again he gave a subtle and nuanced performance as John, scathingly funny with the timing of death but able to suggest the anger, fear and loneliness of a man all to aware of the superficiality of his place in life.
Faye Castelow was fine as the frighteningly single-minded Helen although even Rattigan would have been alarmed by her Cut Glaws Eckcent which could have been slightly toned down. In a fine supporting cast special mention must be made for yet another exquisite performance by Jenny Galloway as Miss Potter, the no-nonsense, Widdecombe-esque copy typist that David finally employs.

A special word of praise for Hildegard Bechtler's deliciously sprawling set design for David and Joan's apartment and ravishing costumes, especially for Nancy Carroll. In particular, I really liked the subtle changes that turned the set from the casually elegant, lived-in home of the first two acts to the cold and empty haunted space of the third. Mark Henderson's lighting also was beautifully used to enhance the play.Next year is Rattigan's centenary and it is being marked with not only a retrospective at the National Film Theatre of films and tv plays based on his many works - PLEASE let them show the 1955 film of THE DEEP BLUE SEA starring Vivien Leigh - but a tribute at Chichester (where he has never gone out of fashion) and yet another screen remake of THE DEEP BLUE SEA but directed by Terence Davies which sounds quite exciting. So roll on next year!

In the meantime get yourself to the National Theatre to see AFTER THE DANCE.