OTHELLO at Shakespeare's Globe: "Chaos is come again..."

So.. back to the Globe Theatre for a fourth time this year, which in itself is remarkable bearing in mind a year or so ago I was driven away from the place by the sheer ghastliness of Emma Rice's absurdly juvenile look-at-me, look-at-me caperings.  In the productions under new Artistic Director Michelle Terry there has been a focus primarily on the player and the words while stripping back the absurd trappings.  There has still been the odd clanging idiosyncratic choice - usually in the casting - but the productions, each in their own way, have been enjoyable, but Claire van Kampen's production of OTHELLO might just be the best of them all.

Van Kampen has been the Director of Music at the Globe since 1997 and has composed the scores for over 50 productions there. Mr. van Kampen is none other than Mark Rylance and they have worked together constantly, so it is no surprise that he is here cast as Iago, but any thoughts of obviousness are forgotten as he is wonderful in the role, Iago is the motor for the whole play and Rylance here is firing on all cylinders.

His Iago is all the better for being older than I have usually seen played: it makes his anger at Othello promoting the younger Cassio over him more understandable and, played by Rylance as a jovial 'uncle' of the battalion, makes it more understandable that all the characters would confide in him.  The production is taken at a fast pace so Rylance's quick emotional changes between concerned friend to conniving instigator are all the more exciting.  His performance was also full of delightful touches: his increasing insistence that Roderigo bring money when he follows Othello to Cyprus signposts the poor sap is going to be rinsed by Iago, and starting off the lie to Othello about Cassio and Desdemona in such a teasing yet apologetic way.

Although not matching Rylance, André Holland's Othello was very well performed, slowly and inexorably drawn into the quicksand of jealousy and doubt.  While not quite reaching the tragic heights of Othello's final moments it was still a fine portrayal which had solid roots in his first scene, where he established that Othello was by far the most worthy of husbands for Desdemona, his retelling of their courtship was very nicely played so the impression was of a performance that was thought-through from before he even set foot on stage.  He also speaks the verse excellently in his American accent.

He was well-matched with Jessica Warbeck's Desdemona; it is a bugger of a role and I have seen previous Desdemona's slip into insipidness by just over-doing the wide-eyed innocent but Warbeck reined this in and gave a good performance of a woman torn between love and bewilderment.  She was particularly affecting in her bedroom scene, singing the "Willow Song" while haunted by foreboding.

The three principles were surrounded by fine supporting performances: the always dependable William Chubb made an impression as Desdemona's distraught father Brabantio (a role he also played at the NT in Hytner's under-whelming production in 2013), Aaron Pierre's virile Cassio and Steffan Donnelly's duped Roderigo, for once not played as a silly-ass clown but as a young fish-out-of-his-depths.

Van Kampen's production also made me think of how the women all end badly: Desdemona and Emelia dead and Bianca - nicely played by Catherine Bailey - arrested for Cassio's attack. Sheila Atim's Emelia, the cynical wife of Iago who is Desdemona's attendant - was nearly done in by the costume designer's frocks: two pants-suits which were distracting for all the wrong reasons, particularly her first-act gold crushed velvet number which even Prince would have turned his nose up at.  However she gave a full-on fiery performance, particularly in her final speech which in these MeToo times rang clear: 

"Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,
All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.

 

Is Othello my favourite Shakespeare play?  It's certainly up there, thanks to no 'rude mechanicals' cluttering up the play with sub-plot, it's masterly construction and it's characters that come so vibrantly to life - and death - when played well.  Psychologically astute and emotionally wrenching, it is somehow wonderfully fitting that after the carnage that he is responsible for has happened, Iago - who until then has never stopped talking to the audience making us unwilling accomplices in his plot - says nothing.  He doesn't need to, the fun was in the plotting... he had no endgame, just revenge...

Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.

 

It is somehow fitting that OTHELLO should play the Globe as it's creator, actor Sam Wanamaker played Iago opposite Paul Robeson's Othello in 1959 at Stratford-upon-Avon in a production directed by Tony Richardson.

It is a pleasure to be able to recommend productions at The Globe again and although OTHELLO is sold out until the end of it's run on October 13th, there is always the chance of returns sold 90 minutes before the show's 7.30pm start.

 

 

 

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW at the Globe Theatre - that sinking feeling...

Shakespeare's reputation has survived 500 years and despite the worst intentions of this production I hope he survives beyond that, but the poor Brummie takes a bit of a kicking with this profoundly irritating version of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

The Concept.  That thing that overshadows so many productions these days - it seems to take precedence over everything: clarity, casting, logic, all gets thrown out, just as long as everything is crammed and hacked to fit in the jelly mould of The Concept.  And the one for this production is a jaw-dropper...

The director Caroline Byrne's Concept is to set her TAMING OF THE SHREW in 1916 Dublin to celebrate this year's Easter Rising Centenary.  Constant Reader, I'll just leave that there so you can take it in.

I am sure some will argue it has a merit but I find it toe-curlingly "right on", a banal Dave Spart-style idea that offers no insights at all to the plot.  Byrne of course has the obligatory gender-shift in casting which leads to performances of no particular interest. 

Any casting that pushes an agenda - gender or race - reminds me of that spate of musicals that decided it was a wonderful idea to have the cast also play the musical instruments.  So who did you cast?  The best performer for the role or the one who wasn't particularly good but was a genius at the bassoon?

Again I wouldn't mind if Byrne gave us performances that lived in the memory for the right reasons but here they live in my mind's eye for their clanging amateurism.  The chief villain was a Petruchio whose idea of projection was simply to bellow his lines out at the top of his lungs.  It's comedy was laboured - there seemed to be a fixation with scratching crabs - and time and again I wondered why we were being presented with a Theatre In Education production.

I will grudgingly admit that there were possibilities of interest in Aiofe Duffin's Katherine and Genevieve Hulme-Beaman's Bianca.  Duffin in particular should be praised for stepping into the role at the last minute and she at times gave the impression of being a living person but was defeated by the overbearing Edward MacLiam as Petrouchio.  Genevieve Hulme-Beaman also gave signs of life by showing that Bianca wasn't the simpering innocent her suitors took her for but she too had to make her impression with the look-at-me, look-at-me clowning of her co-stars.

Well that's about it... I don't want to waste any more time on this bad production that so distrusted Shakespeare's text that it drops the last lines of the play to substitute a re-written version of the Irish song "The Parting Glass".  Time and again I wondered - if you want to do a play about the Dublin Easter Rising then write your own, don't bother trying to cram a Shakespeare play into that damned Concept jelly mould.

This is the first production I have seen in Emma Rice's Wonder season which launches her tenure as the Globe's Artistic Director.  Yes it made me wonder... but probably not in the way I was supposed to.  Meanwhile I look forward to future productions this year that could be inspired by this stupid Concept - THE HOMECOMING set on the Somme to mark that Centenary?  BEDROOM FARCE set during China's Cultural Revolution which started 50 years ago?

C'mon directors... don't let stupidity stand in your way...

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!

RICHARD II at the Globe Theatre - non-Cumberbatch Shakespeare

You would never know it from the press hype surrounding Benedict Cumberbatch's HAMLET but there is another vacillating royal in serious trouble on the London stage and we were lucky to see it last week.

RICHARD II is the latest production in the Globe Theatre's 2015 season based around the themes of Justice and Mercy, qualities that are singularly lacking in the story of the downfall of the vain, misguided Plantagenet King who learned too late that it's more important to be human than majestic.

Charles Edwards brought his upper-class panache to the role of Richard: by turns pampered, remote, haughty and witty, he sailed through the first act on an air of privilege, uncaring of the turmoil he was creating in his wake among his lords and barons, sure in his knowledge that as an anointed King he was impervious to complaint.

However when Richard II tires of the dispute between Henry of Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray and banishes them both abroad he sets off a chain of events which swiftly leads to disaster.  Caring little for the angry remonstrations of Bolingbroke's dying father John of Gaunt, Richard seizes his property and goods to pay for his war with the Irish and in doing so deprives Bolingbroke of his legacy.  The King returns from Ireland to discover that Bolingbroke has returned from exile and rallied an army while his own followers have vanished.

Up until this point Richard has been fairly unlikeable but his realisation that his destiny is now uncertain leads him through various stages of self-pitying anger, despair, and finally to a wisdom that is touching in it's resignation.  Up until the arrival back on English shores, the only moment of real poetry has been John of Gaunt's denunciation of Richard, brooding on what his reign has done to "This sceptre'd isle".  William Gaunt in the small but haunting role of John of Gaunt was excellent, using up the last of his energy to rain down anger on Richard's reign.

But with Richard's growing realisation of his inadequacy, Shakespeare ups the ante and Richard finds his poetic voice, in particular when he invites his admirers "let us sit upon the ground and talk about the death of kings".  Two excellent scenes follow where Richard and Bolingbroke confront each other, first at Flint Castle where Richard attempts to face down his enemy but eventually capitulates to fate and the following scene at Westminster Hall where Richard is called before the council to abdicate.

This magnificent confrontation - where vacillating Richard literally makes Bolingbroke pull the crown from his grasp and then ruminates on the transition from King to man - saw Edwards at his finest and indeed, his final scene was shot through with a noble pathos.

David Sturzaker also upped his game as Bolingbroke in his scenes with Edwards although he at times felt a bit lightweight to play such an important main role.  There was very good support from William Chubb as the honest Duke of York, Richard Katz as both the murderous Exton and the Queen's head gardener and Sarah Woodward as the Duchess of York.  However her major scene at the end where she begs Bolingbroke to spare the life of her traitorous son while her husband the Duke demands his son's death was played almost as slapstick and threw the tone off dramatically.

Overall, Simon Godwin's production was very enjoyable although some of the cast were a bit lightweight and the first act seemed to feature one too many scenes of the rebellious lords sweeping on to only sweep off again after a few minutes.  Despite this I enjoyed it more than the Kevin Spacey/Old Vic production from 2005.

Where the production did score well was with Paul Wills set of cracked and peeling shining gold paint.  As soon as I saw it I was reminded of the famous portrait of the ill-fated King in Westminster Abbey.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE: back to the beginning...

In 2004 I took an afternoon off working in the poster shop to have a theatrical adventure.  Although the Globe Southwark had been open for seven years I had never had the urge to go before I heard that Sophie Thompson was playing the virtuous Isabella opposite Mark Rylance as The Duke in John Dove's production of MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Despite an engaging performance from Sophie, I didn't feel any particular urge to go back to the theatre for another seven years!  But last year we had a good run of productions there which has continued this year so it was always going to be an interesting experience to return to MEASURE FOR MEASURE again.

This production was directed by departing Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole and seemed similar to the 2004 one in playing up the comedy and letting the dark heart of the play take a back seat.  Sadly it is not a play I warm to: it seems to be full of scenes which are full of exposition of what has happened offstage - it can get quite frustrating after a while.

The play also seems a trifle broken-backed.  Angelo appears quite a lot in the first half but then vanishes for most of the second half - we are told how the revenge on him is plotted and has come about which feels odd for such a dominant part.

Maybe I need to see a production that downplays the antics of the bawdy folk.  In Dromgoole's production all the emphasis was laid on the laughs and none on the disturbing ambiguous morality.  Maybe that is too difficult to do when you have to provide the obligatory song and jig at the end?

The Duke of Venice decides to experience for himself how amoral the city has become and disguises himself as a monk while handing the reins of power over to his deputy Angelo and his more understanding brother Escalus.  Angelo seizes his chance to crack down on all that affronts his puritanical morality, and in the midst of closing down the brothels, he also sentences to death Claudio who has committed the crime of sleeping with his fiancee Juliet.

Claudio gets word to his novice sister Isabella to intercede on his behalf but despite her impassioned pleas, Angelo refuses.  However Angelo is a typical politician - he preaches morality while being less than pure himself.  He had previously promised a woman, Mariana, that they would marry then dropped her when she proved less wealthy than he thought and now he tells Isabella that he will free Claudio - if Isabella will sleep with him.

Isabella wrestles with her conscience and she cannot give in to her brother's pleadings to sacrifice her virginity.  Angered by Angelo's draconian measures, the disguised Duke finds a plan to trap his deputy but time is running out...

I think it would certainly have helped had our Angelo dominated the production but Kurt Egyiawan's performance was as weighty as a gadfly which was a huge disappointment.  Mariah Gale's Isabella was steadfast but also lacked any inner fire to really make her claim centre-stage.

The performances that had any element in humour were the ones that seemed to connect more: there wasn't much ambiguity in Dominic Rowan's disguised Duke Vincentio but he found all the humour he could especially in the final scenes when he has to to reveal his two identities.  Brendan O'Hea was an outrageous Lucio, stalking around the stage like a camp ostrich, trying to inveigle himself in with the most powerful character.  The spirit of Kenneth Williams was abroad the night we went!

I very much liked Paul Rider's sympathetic Escalus as well as Trevor Fox's pugnacious Geordie Pompey, always ready to defend his amoral lifestyle.  There was an odd performance from Dean Nolan as Elbow the Constable who appears to be channeling James Cordon's 'look at me I'm fat' schtick and an insistent but not-very-successful Mistress Overdone from Petra Massey.  The production marked a first however - my first Globe stage bare arse courtesy of Dennis Herdman.

A problem play which was enjoyable enough but not totally delivering on what the play's real message is.  Oh well, on to the next one...

KING JOHN aka the Shakespeare megamix

There are a handful of Shakespeare plays I have yet to see - be it on stage, film or television.  And thanks to The Globe Theatre, there is now one less.

I had minimal knowledge of KING JOHN, I had read a synopsis of it a few years back and it sounded a bit of a hodge-podge and to be honest, I didn't expect to see it anytime soon.  But here we are, celebrating 800 years since the detested King John was made to sign the Magna Carta document by his rebellious barons and thanks to a co-production with Nottingham's Royal & Derngate Theatre, I can now finally say I have seen it!

It is even better to be able to say that James Dacre's production was hugely entertaining.  I am sure part of that was due to me discovering the play as I watched it but it is also down to some committed performances and Dacre's direction which swept through the play like a dose of salts.

It's rarely performed which is strange as there are a couple of cracking lead roles and a few excellent speeches.  Afterwards I wondered if the performers felt more able to barnstorm their roles because there is no accumulated 'baggage' attached to them? I certainly didn't have any previous memories of any of the roles so could enjoy them fresh.

It is considered to have been his 15th play, probably nestling between A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.  At times it almost felt like Shakespeare was doing his own megamix as he populated his play with a villainous King, an ambitious Queen, an out-for-himself bastard son who delights in his mischief, a sorrowing but vengeful mother, a courtier-turned-assassin - all characters who would turn up in other plays of his.

The oddest thing about the play is the abrupt ending - suddenly King John is dying, poisoned by a disgruntled monk.  I mean Will lad, what were you thinking?!  The really intriguing thing is that during King John's dying speech, he makes a passing reference to his troublesome lords being appeased - so probably the only thing that King John is remembered for nowadays is brushed aside!

As I said, the actors jumped feet first into their roles with no great actor's shadows to hide from.  Jo Stone-Fewings was a lip-smackingly nasty King John, relishing in his badness like a panto villain.  Alex Waldmann was a revelation as The Bastard, the illegitimate son of Richard The Lion Heart who starts the play as a cynical sod sharing his delight in his actions with the audience but by the end he has changed to a passionate fighter and ends with the rueful observation that England will not be undone by outside forces but from within:

This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.

Duking it out as the fighting regal mothers were Barbara Marten as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Tanya Moodie as Lady Constance.  Both has their opportunities to shine - Marten also played The Bastard's unapologetic mother - but Moodie was excellent as the disdainful Constance, fighting for her son's right to rule.  Her final scene where she mourns for her captured son was very powerful, it's a shame that her character doesn't appear again after that.

Also rising to the challenge were Giles Terera in the double role of Pembroke and Austria, Mark Meadows as the apologetic assassin Hubert, Joseph Marcell as the duplicitous Papal emissary and Laurence Belcher as the innocent Prince Arthur.

With Jonathan Fensom's fluttery Plantagenet designs and Orlando Gough's evocative score, this was a real surprise and another success for the Globe's Justice & Mercy season.  By the way, if you think the photographs are showing off the Globe stage as particularly Gothic it's because they were taken during the production's pre-Globe mini-tour of churches and cathedrals.

Coming out of the Globe Theatre and walking along the Thames chattering away about a Shakespeare play I had never seen before, I felt a sudden kinship with my fellow audience members who had done the same thing 419 years before.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE at Shakespeare's Globe

Yep, back again!  After years of ignoring the Globe Theatre - even Vanessa Redgrave as Prospero couldn't tempt me through the gates - I am on my second visit this year with several more to come in the summer!  But then this promised to be a memorable production wherever it was staged...

The Globe doesn't always go in for name-casting, preferring usually to cast actors who have worked there before but for Shakespeare's perennial but troublesome THE MERCHANT OF VENICE they have gone to the very top as Jonathan Pryce is giving us his Shylock in Jonathan Munby's new production - and he is not to be missed.

Let others argue about the rights and wrongs of the text - it is surely up to the director and actors to find a way through to make Shylock a believable and finally tragic figure.  It's very hard to find sympathy for any of the Venetian characters - even Portia is a crashing snob - whereas, although he is blindly foolish enough to walk into the trap set by the Christians for him at the climax of the play, it is Shylock who remains the character that it is the easiest to feel sorry for.

It's a play I have only twice on stage - Peter Hall's production in 1989 with Dustin Hoffman and Trevor Nunn's NT production ten years later with a magnificent central performance from Henry Goodman - but I have also seen the 1972 BBC TV version with Maggie Smith as Portia and Frank Finlay as Shylock as well as the 2004 film version with Al Pacino.

It's a play where usually Shylock is the star attraction and, unsurprisingly, Jonathan Pryce dazzles in the role.  Put-upon but proud, his money-lender is a wary, solitary figure whose brusque treatment of his daughter and servant sow the seeds for later troubles but his defiance at all attempts to mollify his seeking the completion of his bond with Antonio is understandable as Pryce also suggests the weariness of the oft-insulted outsider.  It also made a nice change to see an actor on the Globe stage whose delivery was not inaudible when faced away from you.   I must admit that as Pryce swept onto the stage during the play, it occurred to me that he had acted opposite three of my favorite women - Emma Thompson in CARRINGTON, Madonna in EVITA and with Vanessa Redgrave onstage in THE SEA GULL!  What a guy.

Munby has added a coda to the play to end it rightly with Shylock - here we witness his hitherto unseen forced baptism, ending the production on a sombre note as it was accompanied by the sorrowful Jessica singing a Hebrew lament as we watched her father's humiliation of being stripped of his religion.

Indeed the news that Pryce's daughter Phoebe was playing his onstage daughter had me raising a cynical eyebrow but she gave a spirited performance as Jessica, a role that usually feels lightweight, suggesting that her character's marriage into the Christian world might not be a happy ending after all.

As good as Pryce was, luckily this was not a top-heavy star vehicle as Munby's production is also full of other fine performances.  Another noted actor's daughter, Rachel Pickup, was very good as an imperious Portia who gave as good as she got from Pryce in the trial scene and smoothly played the 'quality of mercy' speech so it sprung out of the character and did not have the pointed playing alerting us to This Is A Famous Speech.  She was well-partnered by Dorothea Myer-Bennett (how's that for a handle?) as a tart Nerissa.

The women actually came off best in this production as I felt Dominic Mafham's Antonio and Daniel Lapaine's Bassanio could have been a bit more weighty but there was scene-stealing performances from Stefan Adegbola's rowdy Launcelot Gobbo - even pulling two groundlings onstage to help demonstrate a quandry - and David Sturzaker as jack-the-lad Gratiano.  Nerissa will her work cut out for her getting married to him!

Equally impressive - and seizing their individual scenes like a Hatton Garden robber - were Scott Karim and Christopher Logan as, respectively, the Princes of Morocco and Aragon, Portia's unlucky suitors.  They were a hoot.

There were excellent contributions from Mike Britton's set and costume design as well as Jules Maxwell's evocative music while Jonathan Munby's direction balanced the play's serious and light-hearted moments well while also highlighting aspects of the characters I had not noticed before. 

It is one of the best Shakespeare productions I have seen in a while and if you cannot catch one of it's last performances the good news is that it was being filmed on the night I went so hopefully it will be available for future viewing.

ROMEO AND JULIET at The Globe

On Monday we made our way through the Bankside Bank Holiday crowds to visit the Globe Theatre for the first time this year - believe me, there will be a few blogs from there this season!  Odd as up until last year it was a theatre I was not keen on but with several involving 2014 productions (TITUS ANDRONICUS, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, JULIUS CAESAR) this year we are going Globe crazy.

My two previous visits to productions of Shakespeare's tale of star-cross'd lovers have left me rather unsatisfied - the most recent being the underwhelming National Theatre one in 2000 which was only memorable for Chiwetel Ejiofor's Romeo.  Neither was a patch on Baz Luhrmann's wonderful updated 1996 film with it's charismatic pairing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

Although I was apprehensive that the Globe's production is a touring version with a cast of only 8 actors it actually proved to be a good production that certainly concentrated the mind for the "two hours traffic" of the stage.

Being the Globe needless to say the production was bookended with a song and dance routine, this time a frantic Eastern European-style tune.  I know it's all part of the roister-doistering Globe ethos but it's a bit jarring after the big death scene at the end.

As I said it's only a cast of 8 so there is a lot of doubling-up - almost comically so at one point when Matt Doherty as Tybalt walks upstage, slings on a robe and is back as Paris!  Maybe one more actor would have given the rest of the cast at least a chance to catch their breath.

Luckily Samuel Valentine's Romeo and Cassie Layton's Juliet don't get to double up - that really would be daft!  I really liked Cassie Layton's performance, she spoke the verse with great passion and made the most of her soliloquies, Valentine (ha!) was suitably trouble-tossed as our ginger Romeo but couldn't quite match Layton in the desperate passion stakes.

The stand-out supporting performance was Sarah Higgins as the Nurse, played with a broad Scottish accent, who stole every scene she was in with brio.  Also making an impression was the louche tattooed Mercutio of Steffan Donnelly (sadly his Queen Mab speech was nearly drowned out by a circling helicopter!) and the muscular Tybalt, clueless servant Peter and impassioned Paris of Matt Doherty.

Dominic Dromgoole (in his last season as Artistic Director) and Tim Hoare's direction focuses the action well with a stripped down production acted in and around a tall trestle platform and gives us a ROMEO AND JULIET which grips and moves in equal measure.

As I said the production is touring around the UK until August so it is well worth checking the website to see if it's coming near you.