SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY: TEN BEST FEMALE SUPPORTING PERFORMANCES

Happy birthday to William Shakespeare... born 453 years ago (and died 401 years ago).

Eight years ago I compiled four Top Ten lists of my favourite Shakespeare performances - lead & supporting male and lead & supporting female.

Eight years is a long time in theatre-going so to celebrate the greatest playwright ever, here is my updated list of favourite actresses in key supporting roles; these are the ones that all new interpretations are judged against:

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS (in alphabetical order):

 SINEAD CUSACK (Paulina - 2009)

JUDI DENCH (Gertrude - 1989)

JUDI DENCH (Paulina - 2015)

DEBORAH FINDLAY (Paulina - 2001)

ALEXANDRA GILBREATH (Emilia - 2011)

 

 CLARE HIGGINS (Gertrude - 2010)

HELEN McCRORY (Olivia - 2002)

VANESSA REDGRAVE (Queen Margaret - 2016)

JULIET STEVENSON (Gertrude - 2017)

SOPHIE THOMPSON (Ophelia - 1988)

California Dreaming...

 

A few weeks ago we saw GOOD PEOPLE by David Lindsay-Abaire, a recent off-Broadway play about the echoes of the past catching up with a woman and last week we saw another recent off-Broadway play about, um, the past catching up with a woman.  I guess when it comes to American imports there are only seven stories.

The Old Vic has reconfigured it's auditorium for Jon Robin Baitz' OTHER DESERT CITIES so it is played in the round and it was great fun to sit in that familiar theatre but with a totally new viewing experience.

 

It was also a good choice for this play.  I suspect if the play had been presented within it's proscenium arch it might not have been too involving.

Baitz has had a career on both stage and small screen - he was the creator of the Sally Field TV series "Brothers and Sisters" - and towards the end of the play The Big Reveal had all the elements of a end-of-season cliffhanger.  For the most part I enjoyed it but, as with most plays that arrive here garlanded with awards and the praise of NY critics, the overall feeling is one of thinness.

The play takes place in the luxurious Palm Springs home of ex-actor Lyman Wyeth and his ex-scriptwriter wife Polly in 2003 against a backdrop of the first Iraqi war.  The Christmas family gathering includes daughter Brooke who has just flown in from her home in New York - immediate shorthand for 'rebellious daughter' - TV executive son Trip (oh those names) and Polly's outlandish sister Silda, who co-wrote with Polly in the 1960s and now spends most of her life checking in and out of rehab.

Brooke has not visited in six years as she has been struggling with depression while attempting a follow-up to her debut novel and she soon locks ideological horns with her Republican parents while Silda snipes from the sidelines.  Trip, who produces a courtroom reality tv series, is the voice for populism and just having a happy time.  Brooke has not arrived empty-handed however as she has brought the proofs for her new book: a family memoir that includes her older brother Henry, now dead after killing himself in a terrorist bomb plot.

 

Baitz' play has distinct echoes of Edward Albee's more enigmatic A DELICATE BALANCE - married, well-off couple are beset by the wife's alcoholic sister and their resentful daughter - but, while being a general state-of-the-nation play, his work mostly touches on the responsibility of the artist using their family as inspiration, the spiky relationships between siblings both old and young, and of course, the eternal push-pull atmosphere between parents and children.

As I said, Baitz delivers a plot twist towards the end which I felt reduced the play to a soap-opera but I guess it did set up a nicely poetic final scene for Martha Plimpton's Brooke.

What I enjoyed most about the production, which was directed with a good sense of pace by Lindsay Posner, was the three central female performances: Clare Higgins, Sinead Cusack and Martha Plimpton.

Clare Higgins played Silda with her usual hard-edged style but Baitz does not really give her a good meaty scene to let rip, this addicted sister was an oddly muted character for all the fireworks that were expected.  No such problems with Sinead Cusack who was excellent as the unapologeticly right-wing Polly, a mother who views her daughter as a total stranger - an addition to the Broadway cannon of unforgiving mothers.  Martha Plimpton has morphed from being a child star of the 1980s into an accomplished stage performer and, making her London stage debut as Brooke, she was always watchable and more than held her own against two of our most charismatic actresses.

 

The men had less chance to shine against these fine actresses but Peter Egan was less milquetoast than usual as the urbane father who cracks at the seeming betrayal of his daughter's family memoir and is the keeper of A Big Secret while Daniel Lapaine had good fun as Trip, exasperated by his warring relatives.

An enjoyable play with an excellent cast but one that seemed to choose a distinctly Hollywood ending.

Memorable Theatre Performances #7:
Clare Higgins as 'Stella Kowalski' in A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Mermaid, 1984)

"Sheila Gish's scenes with Clare Higgins as her sister Stella became the nexus of the evening, which, especially in the heart-wrenching closing scene, became, fascinatingly, a tragedy of two women." - Alan Strachan , Independant

"excellent support from Duncan Preston and a great Stella from a young Clare Higgins." - me, ChrisNThat blog

This week the time had come to go back to the bosom of the Bard, namely Nicholas Hytner's production of HAMLET at the Olivier Theatre.Right from the start, with the roar of a fighter plane and the appearance of Francisco, Bernardo and Marcellus in greatcoats carrying assault rifles, the production sets up a Denmark on a war footing while the second scene presents us with a West Wing-style court with Claudius giving his opening speech to a news camera team while security men and apparatchiks linger in the background.

Yes it's a very 21st Century Elsinore, well alluded to with little details like Hamlet and Laertes having to obtain Claudius' signature to leave the country with their passport as evidence and Polonious showing Ophelia surveillance photographs of her with Hamlet as well as planting a tape recorder in the book she carries in the 'Nunnery' speech scene.It was earlier in the day that I realised this would be my first HAMLET at the Olivier since seeing Ian Charleson - gulp - 21 years ago. I have blogged before that I doubt I will ever see a HAMLET to rival Ian's - his suffering from the AIDS virus which would claim him less than three months later gave his performance a power beyond the written word. Indeed once or twice I found myself moist-eyed remembering him, in particular the "We defy augury" speech which I will never hear bettered.

From his opening scene Rory Kinnear set off on an interesting course: pugnacious and sardonic, a hard-edged melancholia but with a very masculine gentleness in the soliloquies which he spoke beautifully so you almost felt you were hearing them a-new. His was not the most immediately winning of Hamlets but I warmed to his performance and this seals his place at the top-table of current stage actors. It also seemed to be more of a performance than a star turn so he certainly banished memories of Jude Law.The other big selling point of the show was to see Clare Higgins as Gertrude and she gave a memorable portrayal of a professional First Lady who grabs the nearest drink whenever she feels the attention is off her which, of course, sets up her incredulous refusal at Claudius' entreaty for her not to drink in the final scene. It was good that the modern dress choice of the production didn't mean they dropped the end of her speech about Ophelia's drowning - "her clothes spread wide, And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up" which was absurdly cut in Michael Grandage's production at the Wyndhams last year.

Oh and speaking of that production, sadly here again Gertrude has to suffer the indignity of having practically the smallest royal wardrobe! Mind you, she was spared the indignity of Penelope Wilton's cardigans, going instead for a tight-fitting sheath dress, occasional matching suit and tottering high heels. Sadly while she was being bounced from couch to couch in the closet scene the thought of Miss Piggy suddenly sprung to mind. Don't blame me Clare, blame Vicki Mortimer's costume and the hair-stylist.

Sadly for me, the biggest mis-step in the production was the Claudius of Patrick Malahide. I was looking forward to his interpretation but again, very early on I got the mental image of Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons" and nothing in his vocally thin performance could shift that.David Calder has also a bit of a let-down as Polonious (looking frighteningly like Charles Clarke!) - this is where the Grandage production triumphed in the great double-act of Kevin McNally and Ron Cook in these roles. However Calder was more effective as the Gravedigger. Giles Terera was also a lightweight Horatio - mind you, he was scuppered from the get-go by the awful idea of having him wear light brown hush-puppy boots.

I liked Ruth Negga's contemporary Ophelia very much although I'm not too sure of the directorial conceit of having her wheel a shopping trolley around in her mad scenes. It was however a nice touch to have her distribute her character's props badly wrapped-up as gifts to the others during the "Rosemary" scene instead of the usual straggly weeds.

Hytner has added a tiny silent scene after her final scene where Ophelia is snatched by two secret service men and bundled away. I am not sure if the idea of Claudius having Ophelia bumped off actually works - does he suspect her derangement would lead her to betray him? - but it was an interesting touch.

Alex Lanipekun's Laertes was easily swamped by whoever he was playing against but Jake Fairbrother was a very convincing Fortinbras - again sharing his obituary of Hamlet with an embedded tv news team.

It is a tribute to Hytner's direction that the three and a half hours running time slipped by unnoticed and he kept a grip of the narrative throughout. Vicki Mortimer's palatial boxed set swiftly changed from location to location with a particular emphasis on windows and hidden doors and Jon Clark's lighting design also deserves praise.