The WINTER'S TALE at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

In April I will be seeing the Royal Ballet's production of THE WINTER'S TALE at Covent Garden.  It's nice to know that I will not have to speed read the synopsis before it starts as I am now a bit familiar with the story having seen it twice in four months!  First Kenneth Branagh's production at the Garrick before Christmas and now the new production at the Globe's Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Theatre.

As usual with the Wanamaker Playhouse, it's intimate space made the play more involving and allowed for a more subtle playing style from some of the actors.  Our 2nd tier seats were facing the stage so nothing was missed apart from when they lowered the six candle chandeliers above the stage so all you could mostly see was the actors legs.

However the biggest literal pain was the bench seating... it absolutely beggars belief that this theatre that opened only two years ago was built with such uncomfortable seating,  No doubt the Playhouse would say they were keeping to the Jacobean style of theatre. But then I am sure the Jacobean back stage area did not have showers and toilets.  Think on...

So, here I was again in the court of the King of Sicilia Leontes and his wife Hermione who have both enjoyed a lengthy visit from his childhood friend Polixenes, the King of Bohemia.  One night Leontes is overcome with an irrational jealousy and accuses Hermoine and Polixenes of adultery much to their astonishment which results in Hermione arrested and Polixenes fleeing with the courtier who Leontes sent to kill him. Despite the pleadings of Paulina on her behalf, Hermione is put on trial and is not allowed to see either her young son or the baby girl she has just given birth to. Leontes has sent word to the Oracle to judge Hermione's guilt but is angered when his messengers return with the news that the Oracle has declared his Queen is innocent.

As Leontes remonstrates against the Oracle's decision, word arrives that his young son has died and Hermione collapses with grief.  Leontes slowly realizes his jealousy was wrong and this is compounded when Paulina announces that Hermione is died.  Too late too for Antigonous, Paulina's husband, who had been told by Leontes to take his baby daughter to a far-off shore and lose her there.  Antigonus does this but is killed by a bear while carrying it out.  The baby girl is found by an old shepherd and his son who adopt her.

It all makes for a fast-paced and claustrophobic first act as Leontes irrational feelings bring disaster to his court.  Sadly the second act moves 16 years later and relocates the action to Bohemia and the lost daughter now named Perdita who has caught the eye of Prince Florizel, son of Polixenes.  No matter what production I see of this play, this is usually where I check out mentally: after the delicious sturm und drang of Leontes' festering jealousy, the bucolic hey-nonny-nonny of Perdita and Florizel's simpering allied to the extended laborious comedy of Autolycus the pickpocket stealing from the shepherds just goes on and on and on. And on.

Luckily it's Polixenes' turn to spit his royal dummy and forbids Florizel from marrying Perdita.  They high-tail it to Sicilia but are pursued by Polixenes who arrives just as they are presented to Leontes.  What follows s a scene of such staggering literary cheek that Shakespeare has the good grace to do it all offstage - Perdita's real identity is discovered, the shepherds are rewarded, and father and daughter are reunited... but Paulina still has an ace to play which gives the play it's famous denouement.

After the fussiness of Branagh's production, Michael Longhurst's production was refreshingly direct and concentrated, the Wanamaker's stage design was also the perfect setting for the reveal of Hermione's statue, its centre doors proving a natural grotto.  The candlelight was very effective as usual, especially after the death of Antigonus when the auditorium was plunged into complete darkness for a few moments before the shepherd's lanterns were seen.

After Branagh's rather showy Leontes, John Light was suitably moody and tormented which felt more of an ensemble performance as did Niamh Cusack's Paulina, suitably impassioned when she needed to be but not as barnstorming as Judi Dench or Deborah Findlay at the National Theatre in 2001.  For me the performance of the evening was Rachael Stirling's Hermione, a role usually played as a trembling twit but Stirling was marvelously resolute and strong.  Her playing of the final scene was also beautifully pitched and all the more moving for that.  Echoes of her mum Diana Rigg were very strong!

There was also good support from Dennis Herdman as the dim younger shepherd, and Steffan Donnelly & Tia Bannon as the young lovers Florizel and Perdita.  I had wondered aloud if Owen thought that there might be a jig at the end of the show and, sure enough, there was, a courtly pavane with waggly hands that added precious little to the show.  Along with the benches, the after-show dance is something the Wanamaker could possibly 86...

PERICLES aka Shakespeare's Round-The-Med Revue at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

This year saw quite a few visits to the Globe Theatre to see several of the productions under their Justice & Mercy season and, now that it's colder, we are booked to see their four late Shakespeare productions in their atmospheric Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

First off the rank was the departing Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole's production of PERICLES, a lesser Shakespeare which he co-wrote with the little-known George Wilkins.  It's disjointed feel is probably down to this partnership, scholars suspect that they split the play down the middle with Wilkins taking the first few acts and Shakespeare picking it up towards the end - which would explain why the play feels more involving towards the end but it's still not a play I would go out of my way for.

The trouble is the plot which piles on thinly plotted characters and absurd situations which mostly happen offstage but are relayed to the audience by the show's narrator Gower (the name of the author who wrote the story the play is based on) but who here is played by the ever-twinkling Sheila Reid.  Since her National Theatre days at the Old Vic under Olivier's direction, Reid has been giving constantly good performances but she can sometimes play cutesy and she does that here, almost distracting the audience from the melodramatic plot twists she tells us about.

Was there ever a more tiresome lead role than Pericles?  Up and down the Mediterranean coastline he wanders bringing chaos and misery wherever he goes... he arrives in Antioch to marry the King's daughter but discovers their secret incestuous relationship so he flees, pursued by the King's assassin, back to his home city of Tyre but the assassin turns up there so he is off again to Tarsus where he relieves the city of it's famine but, feeling unsafe, sets off again where he - and us - endure the first of two storms at sea...

One is reminded of Thelma Ritter's caustic line in ALL ABOUT EVE "Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at your rear end"!  One feels Pericles really needs his life set to a oh-why-me song a la Travis but he is washed up on the shores of Pentapolis where, with the King's eager help, he marries the princess Thaisa.  You would think that would make him stay in one place - but then he hears that the incestuous King and his daughter have been killed by a lightning bolt (they really don't write 'em like this anymore) and he journeys back to Tyre in safety.

But safety isn't Pericles' top quality and low and behold, another storm at sea happens just as Thaisa is giving birth - come on, you just KNOW she dies and is buried at sea where she is washed up at Ephesus and revived by a physician wherein she goes off to be a high priestess of Diana while Pericles leaves Marina, his baby girl, with the King and Queen of Tarsus while he wanders off again.  Pericles is not a good role model for single parenting as the Queen starts to develop a psychotic hatred for Marina for getting more acclaim than her own child.  So she hires an assassin...

Yes this *could* be where you came in but one starts to discern the occasional insight in the writing and you know that Shakespeare is on the scene. I can imagine him thinking "What has Wilkins done here?" and throws in a dollop of sex straight out of MEASURE FOR MEASURE when Marina is kidnapped by pirates and sold to a brothel.  Finally it gets going with a few decent laughs!!

What makes PERICLES worth the climb is how Shakespeare uses his part of the play to shift the play away from the dreary title character's perambulations and leads us more into explorations of fathers and daughters, magic, reconciliations, humorous supporting characters and a feeling of tragedy averted.  A prime example is Marina's reuniting with Pericles after so many years apart; only a year or so before Shakespeare had given us a similar scene in KING LEAR which ended in nihilist brutality, here all is forgiveness and harmony.

For all it's absurdity, Dominic Dromgoole certainly kept the action moving on the bare Wanamaker stage with Jonathan Fensom's spare design.  I had seen the play once before at the National Theatre in 1994 which was pretty irritating but I think this one will tide me over for a while.  A major problem with this production was the dull performance by James Garnon as the titular Prince of Tyre.  He's not an actor I particularly care for and his gurning delivery of his speeches failed to move.  Sadly it appears he is beloved at the Globe (so I presume he's cheap).

Much more eye-catching were Jessica Baglow as the tyrannically virginal Marina, Dennis Herdman as the randy pimp Bolt and Dorothea Myer-Bennett as both the put-upon Thaisa and the inexplicably murderous Queen Dionyza.

I am looking forward to seeing THE WINTER'S TALE, CYMBELINE and THE TEMPEST at the Wanamaker Playhouse in the coming months as they are all stronger plays than this Greek's Own adventure.  Oh and no thanks at all to former Globe artistic director Mark Rylance who occasionally kneed me in the back on the Playhouse's absurdly cramped backless seating.  You would also think someone so versed in the theatre would remove his hat in the auditorium too.

The ORESTEIA - the daddy of them all...

This year has seen us visiting the Globe Theatre a stonking five times - last year I finally got to like the space after four visits - but here we were at our sixth and last visit this year to the main stage (we have a couple of productions booked for the indoor Playhouse later in the year) and we went out on a biggie... the daddy of them all, Aeschylus' THE ORESTEIA.

THE ORESTEIA is the only existing trilogy from the ancient Greek theatre and pre-dates Sophocles' ANTIGONE, OEDIPUS THE KING and ELECTRA as well as MEDEA, THE TROJAN WOMEN, ANDROMACHE, HECUBA and THE BACCHAE by Euripedes.  It is known that THE ORESTEIA was presented with the first prize at the Dionysea festival in Athens when it was first performed in 458 b.c. and was his last great success as he was killed two years later, famously by a falling tortoise dropped by an eagle flying overhead - it's worthy of one of the tragedies!

Aeschylus had been a successful soldier before his playwright years and it was as a soldier that he was memorialised but his work was so highly prized that his were the only plays that were allowed to be re-staged in following festivals - it was the rule that plays were only to be staged once.

Down the years the plays have inspired all great tragedies with their mixture of cracking revenge plots - where would today's soaps be without the revenge storylines? - and memorable, vibrant characters: proud but doomed Agamemnon, calculating Clytemnestra, tragic Cassandra, conniving Aegisthus, driven Orestes and distraught Electra.  There is another production currently running with the absurd adline: "Part The Godfather, Part Breaking Bad" - you could equally cite Hamlet and/or Game of Thrones... they all flow from The Oresteia - and apart from Hamlet, it still has the power to wipe the floor with all successors.

I have seen the trilogy twice: the legendary Peter Hall production at the National Theatre which staged them in masks and with an all-male cast and the more director-theatre version directed by Katie Mitchell in 1999.  Adele Thomas' production mixes various styles of dress and imagery and uses a new translation by Rory Mullarkey.  Despite the odd bit of clunky business - and an out-of-nowhere finale - I enjoyed it very much.

Of the three plays I enjoyed the first, AGAMEMNON the best as it is the perfect revenge drama with Clytemnestra proving to be one of the great women's roles in drama.  Mullarkey's plain-English text speeds the action along with edge-of-the-seat tension: a watchman finally sees a far-distant beacon burning - the sign he has gone without sleep to see which lets him know that the Trojan War is over and King Agamemnon is returning home.  The chorus of dejected Greeks cannot believe their ears that the ten-year war is finally over but get confirmation from a weary soldier herald.

Queen Clytemnestra makes frequent appearances from the House of Atreus to scornfully mock the chorus for their doubts and to alert us that Agamemnon has a deadlier foe at home.  Ten years before, to implore the gods for a fair wind for his ships to sail to Troy, Agamemnon killed his daughter Iphegenia in sacrifice... and Clytemnestra wants her revenge.

The second play THE LIBATION-BEARERS finds their son Orestes returning back to his home after years away and finds his sister Electra in misery at their father's death and together they plan to revenge their father's murder - so often during this play one is reminded of HAMLET.

The final play, THE KINDLY ONES, brings the action full-circle with Clytemnestra's ghost awakening the Furies to chase Orestes forever to avenge the matricide.  He travels to Athens to be judged by the goddess Athena as to whether he is guilty or not.  And so the courtroom drama was born too...

As I said Rory Mullarkey's adaptation was direct and unambiguous which worked well and certainly made plain the thoughts that will never date - the weary herald's rebuking the chorus for their glorying in Greece's triumph of Troy when all he wants is to return to his home which is also mirrored in Agamemnon's statement that the time for attributing blame in the run-up to war will be decided at a future time - Chilcott anyone?  However there was a lack of poetry in his text which was probably highlighted by my previous experience of the trilogy's previous rough-hewn adapters, poets Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes.

As I said Adele Hughes' production was uncluttered and spare, concentrating all the action on the word and the character speaking it - only at the end did it all go a bit up the Atreus.  Now we know that the Globe always ends it's productions however body-strewn with a dance - as in Shakespeare's day - and THE ORESTEIA when first staged would have been followed with a fourth play, a Satyr play poking fun at the blood and guts that had gone before - but it was still a shock when just after Athena - in full golden disco frock - turned the Furies from avenging creatures into the sacred, beneficent guardians of Athens - brassy music started playing and all the cast got happy-clappy around a large golden phallus with a blacked-up tubby and small Pan running around!

Despite this nerve-jangling coda, I would urge you to experience this production and to also applaud the performances of George Irving as Agamemnon, Naana Agyei-Ampadu as the distraught Cassandra - the only drawback is Thomas has most of her speech sung which throws the rhythm of the scene - Dennis Herdman's war-weary herald and Joel MacCormack's vengeful Orestes - he didn't even let an upstage exploding brazier put him off his stride!

The performance of the night was Katy Stephens' marvellous Clytemnestra.  Some with long memories may remember I used her as my e-mail address for a long time - such a 2YK tribute - so you can probably guess that she is truly one of my favourite characters in theatre. Sarcastic, proud, lustful and intent on enacting her revenge - it is a mighty role and Katy Stephens was magnetic, you simply could not watch anyone else when she was onstage - and not just because of her a-line Bridget Riley formal!

By the way, the onstage golden phallus at the end reminded me of one of my favourite Coral Browne stories: she went to Peter Brook's 1967 modern-dress version of OEDIPUS for the National Theatre when at the Old Vic.  After Irene Worth stabbed herself and John Gielgud blinded himself, onstage suddenly appeared a huge golden phallus while the cast danced into the auditorium while a jazz band played "Yes We Have No Bananas".  Browne eyed the giant knob and turned to her companion saying "Well, nobody *I* know!"

Now... what a Clytemnestra Coral would have been!