MUCH ADO ABUT NOTHING at the Lyttelton, National Threatre - thin and crispy

Odd that in forty years of theatregoing at the National Theatre I have just seen only my fourth Shakespearean production at the Lyttelton - directors prefer the sweep of the Olivier or the intimate Cottesloe-as-was, Dorfman-as-is; the Lyttelton seems too 'contained' for the Bard.  Simon Russell Beale in HAMLET, Bill Bryden's A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM and Ian McKellen as RICHARD III can now be joined by Simon Godwin's lightweight MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Imagine a Mitchell Leisen-directed MUCH ADO Hollywood screwball comedy starring Frederic March and Carole Lombard as warring lovers Benedick and Beatrice then imagine a National Theatre stage adaptation of it... then imagine it transferring to the West End... then imagine seeing the second replacement cast.  That's the impression I was left with.

The last MUCH ADO I saw was the bizarre Old Vic production woefully directed by Mark Rylance and starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones - relive the horror here - so I enjoyed the Babycham fizz of this production - just not enough...  All it did was remind me of the wonderful Branagh / Thompson film and the 2008 delicious pairing of Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker at the Olivier - relive that here.

The setting is now Leonato's sprauncy Hotel Messina on the Riviera in the 1930s; in the rewrite, Leonato has lost a brother but gained a wife Antonia.  He still welcomes Don Pedro's batallion of soldiers which includes young Claudio who loves Leonato's daughter Hero, the militantly single Benedick and Don Pedro's illegitimate brother Don John, who is quietly seeking revenge on Claudio for gaining promotion instead of him.

Staying at the hotel already is Beatrice, Hero's cousin, who suffers no fools and had previously had a relationship with Benedick but now "There is a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them."  As the "merry war" resumes, the nasty Don John schemes to undo Claudio's love for Hero.

Something very odd happens midway through MUCH ADO: after Claudio is tricked into thinking Hero has been unfaithful to him and rebuffs her at the altar, a plot is developed to make him think Hero died through his actions and he has to publicly grieve for her before marrying a relative of hers.  Now we know it's a trick, the characters know it's a trick but every production I have seen suddenly switches from comedy to tragedy for this section of the play, with only the interminable "rude mechanicals" sub-plot of Dogberry and his night watchmen discovering the plot.  

Of course it is all eventually laughed off as - indeed - much ado about nothing but the questions always remain: if Claudio has already proved too quick to believe his intended is unfaithful why won't he do so again and if all it took to reunite Beatrice and Benedick was hearsay from others, how solid is their relationship?  Luckily no one has ever dared write a sequel so we will take Mr Shakespeare's word that they did, indeed, live happily ever after.

I just wish Simon Godwin has paused the relentlessly jolly production to have reflected the darker undertows of the capers but the National obviously wants a summer Shakespeare so a summer Shakespeare it shall have with a jazz band and choreographed company dancing to boot.

Anna Fleischele's palatial hotel set is impressive but ultimately all it does is sit there in the way while the costume design is colourful but also distracting: Beatrice's costumes also are very unbecoming on Katherine Parkinson's shortish stature.

John Heffernan is a charming Benedick but again doesn't really remain memorable while Katherine Parkinson again is a serviceable Beatrice but in a very studied ironical way...  it's a rare actress who makes no impression with Beatrice's glorious line "but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born."  As I said above, they felt like a replacement cast.

Of the supporting performers I liked the Antonia of Wendy Kweh whose anger at the supposed shaming of her daughter really woke up that scene, there was an intelligent Hero from Ionna Kimbrook and Rufus Wright's Leonato was impressibly quick to anger in the denunciation scene but that's about it.  Don't get me started on Claudio performing his lines like a footballer being inverviewed after a game or Margaret (the actress is making her first professional appearance after drama school) saying her lines like she was shouting them from the main stage at Glastonbury.

But Shakespeare was the star of the show, as is so often the case, with his 423 year-old words still making one laugh and sigh... and was there ever a better summation of a comedy than the lovely "...for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion".

xt Signior Benedick and
her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.

This
a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and
her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA at the Olivier, NT: Nothing Left Remarkable...

In 1998 I saw Sean Mathias' woeful ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA at the Olivier Theatre starring an imperious Helen Mirren and an Eeyore-like performance from the late and not-always-great Alan Rickman.  Mirren, Samuel West as Octavius and Finbar Lynch as Enobarbus have lingered in the memory but everything else sucked donkeys.  The audience included actresses like Susannah York, Janet Suzman and Sian Phillips - possibly because it had meant to be the press night which got moved to later in the run - and an odd atmosphere hung over the stalls; probably those actresses thinking "Mirren you poor cow, being in this dog-show!"  And almost 20 years to the day later... here I am in the Olivier, seeing Tony and Cleo again...

The good news is that Simon Godwin's production is better than Matthias' but it is not without it's own sandtraps.  In the more Director-Theatre moments I counted off the already-hackneyed cliches of the modern dress Shakespeare productions du jour - the suited politico costumes for the powerful, the battles staged as machine-gun-rattling, hand-grenade-throwing close-hand combat as in Iraq, a video screen appearing to deliver rolling-news tv coverage of plot that usually happens offstage and the inevitable bulk-bought combat gear.  So far, so un-original.

Luckily Godwin has the powerful combination of Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo to power the three and a half hour production along.  Feinnes was very good as Antony, whose influence and power is dwindling due to his absence from Rome while lounging with Cleopatra in Egypt.  He captured perfectly the world-weary soldier who simply cannot be bothered with the power games of Octavius in Rome but who is dragged back into that world at the death of his neglected wife Fulvia.  First seen in a pair of baggy harem pants and a little pot belly, Fiennes captured the essence of a bored man without making him boring.  I hooted when Antony cracked opened a bottle of beer while talking to his retinue at the start of the play - was Godwin aware of Sid James doing that in CARRY ON CLEO as later referenced by The Smiths in SOME GIRLS ARE BIGGER THAN OTHERS?

There is a telling segment in the documentary THERE'S NOTHING LIKE A DAME where Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins talk about their experiences with ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA and Atkins points out that she has never met an actor who didn't complain about playing Antony: namely because only when they have committed to the role, they realize that it is in fact Cleopatra which is the better role and by then it's too late to back out.  She cites Alan Bates in particular as having told her that he disliked it - to which Mags slyly adds "That's because he wanted to play Cleopatra".

The quartet also reflect on the role with Atkins saying she turned the role down four times because she didn't have the courage to take it on and Plowright saying she did not do it when Jonathan Miller asked her to perform it at the National as most people would complain she only got it as she was married to Olivier.  Maggie Smith says she didn't have the courage to play it in the UK so went to Canada to play it away from critical eyes and Dench says she only agreed to do it after asking Peter Hall did he really want his Cleopatra to be a "menopausal dwarf".  Luckily Okonedo is not a dwarf and has the courage to take it on.

In truth she grew into the performance as the evening progressed: she first seemed too lightweight with her oddly-pitched voice to conquer the role - her 1970s Halston pantsuit also was an odd choice - but as we inched closer to the plateau of Act 5 where, with Antony dead, Cleopatra is the focal point of the play, Okonedo assumed the dominance needed and I felt I could not take my eyes off of her.  Our last Cleopatra was Eve Best at the Globe and she resolutely refused to grow in stature in the final scenes where Cleopatra creates and enters into her own legend: no such issues with Okonedo, who went out in an ice-cold blaze of passion.

There is fine work to be found in the supporting performances: particularly Fisayo Akinade as Eros who excelled in the scene where, rather than watch Antony die, he kills himself with Antony's sword.  Gloria Obianyo and Georgia Landers both impressed as Charmian and Iras, Cleopatra's maids who find their own niches in their Queen's legend.

Nicholas Le Prevost as Lepidus and Hannah Morrish as Octavia gave good performances in rather disposable roles while Tunji Kasim as Octavius and Tim McMullan as Enobarbus gave disposable performances in good roles - McMullan's dreary delivery pissing away the glorious "the barge in which she sat" speech.

Hildegard Bechtler's set design was impressive for the Egyptian palace with it's expanse and sunken pools - just begging for someone to be pushed into - but went for dreary corporate design for Rome... yes, we get that Rome is about Power but for God's sake give us some bling.  I am not asking for recreations of the lavish Henry Irving Lyceum productions but spend some cash for God's sake!  Evie Gurney's costumes were also drably dull.

But Godwin - who is leaving the UK to become Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in the US - kept the pace going through-out and the three hours plus running time was unnoticeable.

Again, another ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA falls short of being a truly great production but there is enough there to encourage a visit to see Shakespeare's play about the end of an epoch and the beginning of a legend.  The production will be shown in cinemas as part of NT Live on 6th December, probably the only chance to see it as practically all performances are sold out.  However always bear in mind that day seats are always available to personal callers from 9.30am as well as the online Friday Rush scheme.

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.

The BEAUX' STRATAGEM at the Olivier Theatre: Love On The Run

In the early 1700s, Derry-born George Farquhar was one of the most successful comic playwrights, his writing reaching it's peak in 1706 with THE RECRUITING OFFICER and in 1707 with THE BEAUX' STRATAGEM.  Tragically, he was dead two months after the latter opened, aged only 30.

Farquhar always struggled financially - in 1703 he even married an older woman who had led him to believe was wealthy only to discover the reverse after the ceremony.  His friend, the Irish actor Robert Wilkes, visited him at the start of 1707 and found him again in penury and badly ill.  Wilks gave him money and suggested writing a play, the result was THE BEAUX' STRATAGEM, it's success being even more remarkable bearing in mind the condition it was written under.

I had never seen it before so was looking forward to the new production at the Olivier.  I ultimately found it a little too wearing for it's own good but Farquhar's imagination and sense of fun shine through.  Bearing in mind Farquhar's personal troubles, the main plot could not have been more relevant to him but equally topical to us 308 years later.

Two London friends Aimwell and Archer are in a jam.  They are down to their last £200 and have fled to the provinces to escape the shame of their near penury.  However they have a plan: they will tour provincial cities, in each new one swapping roles as master and servant, until they each find a wealthy woman to marry so they can return to London again and use her money to live on.

They arrive in Lichfield and quickly discover that up at 'the big house' lives wealthy (and unmarried) Dorinda along with her mother Lady Bountiful, her brother the dissolute Squire Sullen and her sister-in-law Kate.  Mrs Sullen is originally from London and is discovering her marriage to a boorish husband is an unhappy trap.

A glimpse of Aimwell at church gets Dorinda interested so Mrs Sullen invites 'servant' Archer to their house to find out who his master is.  They don't get much out of him but the visit results in an instant attraction between Kate and Archer.  Add into the mix the two Londoners being mistaken for highwaymen which leads to a real highwayman threatening them, a French officer held prisoner in the Londoner's Inn, an Irish priest in disguise as a French priest, a miserable servant and a swaggering barmaid and you have the makings of a 'romp'.

Farquahar's text has been re-jigged by playwright Patrick Marber to make it punchier and to also include several folk music moments.  Director Simon Godwin has ramped up the farcical runnings around but this is sadly to the detriment of the wordplay which is sometimes thrown away hurriedly to run up and down another flight of stairs.

What the production does get right is Lizzie Clachan's ingenious standing set which cleverly transforms from the tatty Lichfield Inn to the refined decorations to the country home of Lady Bountiful and the Sullens.  Michael Bruce's folky musical interludes are fun and usually include a musician popping up somewhere on the multi-level set, Archer's 'trifle' song in particular is annoyingly catchy!

The performances were mostly good but I found Pippa Bennett-Warner's Dorinda badly performed, her amateurish strangled twittering of the lines driving me to distraction.  It was all the more pronounced next to the delightful Mrs Sullen of Susannah Fielding.

Fielding is an actress who I have not always liked before but here she sparkled, her high spirits and teasing sense of humour mitigated by her sadness in being trapped in a loveless marriage.  It was a role that Maggie Smith made a huge success in when the National Theatre was based at the Old Vic and while Fielding was not in that class, she captured well the tears behind the joy.

As Aimwell, Samuel Barnett seemed oddly muted but that could possibly be that he was playing opposite the human-Catherine-Wheel that was Geoffrey Streatfeild's Archer.  Fresh from his triumph as the outrageous Daniel in MY NIGHT WITH REG, Streatfeild was a sheer delight as Archer,a dynamo of physical energy, be it running up and down stairs, dancing, sliding across the stage and his delivery of his saucy lines was as frantic but paced well enough to get the best laughs.

He was complemented by fine supporting performances from Lloyd Hutchinson as Boniface the grubby landlord of the Inn, Amy Morgan as his feisty daughter Cherry and Richard Henders was needlingly nasty as the appropriately named Sullen.  But the best supporting performance was the always reliable Pearce Quigley as the depressed servant Scrub.  Pining for the capricious maid Gypsy and hating himself for it, Quigley was a comic delight.

On the whole I did enjoy the production which was shot through with good humour but finding space for Farquhar's plea for common sense in relationships as illustrated in the final scene when Sullen and Kate state their unhappiness with each other and both agree to go their separate ways.

Here is the trailer which includes the catchy trifle song!

MAN AND SUPERMAN / CLOSER: Love Is A Battlefield

It's odd how sometimes you can see two productions back-to-back and find particular themes that link them across the years - who would have thought that of George Bernard Shaw and Patrick Marber?

I booked to see MAN AND SUPERMAN because we recently saw Shaw's first success WIDOWERS HOUSES at the Orange Tree Theatre and also because I do like a theatrical challenge - the production runs for over 3 and a half hours!  It also gave us the chance to see Ralph Fiennes in the stonking lead role of Jack Tanner, a radical (and of course wealthy) writer who finds himself in the sights of the emancipated Ann Whitefield.

Tanner has no desire to be yoked to a woman in marriage - and believes fervently that a woman shouldn't want that either.  But he finds himself possibly ensnared when Ann's father dies and his will reveals that Ann's guardians are to be Tanner and her father's conventional older friend Roebuck Ramsden. 

Ann is being pursued by the lovesick Octavius whose sister Violet has caused outrage by announcing she is pregnant.  Violet, like Ann, is a young woman who is direct in her dealings with men and unbowed by her condition.  Tanner stands up for her right to give birth as it is woman's highest power but Violet dumbfounds them all by revealing that she is in fact married but refuses to tell them who it is!

Tanner challenges Ann to prove her independence by driving with him around Europe but is panicked when she accepts!  Octavius appears with his American friend Hector (who is Violet's secret husband) and Tanner is again floored when his plain-speaking cockney chauffeur 'Enry lets him in on something he hadn't realised - Ann is actually after Tanner.

Tanner flees to Europe to escape the pursuing Ann but driving through the Spanish Sierras he and 'Enry are captured by mountain-dwelling brigands.  Their leader Mendoza, however, is a poetic ex-Savoy hotel waiter and became an outcast when the woman he loved rejected him.  Well wouldn't you know?  It turns out that his beloved was none other than 'Enry's sister!  They settle down to sleep and Tanner, spun around by all these love affairs, dreams of being Don Juan in Hell.

The ensuing scene is the reason that MAN AND SUPERMAN has a wobbly history as it sometimes performed without this archetypal GBS scene as Don Juan debates with the Devil about man's inhumanity to man and the joys of Hell over the bland dreariness of Heaven.  I had been surprised how enjoyable the play had been up until then but this long scene of solid Shavian talk soon had me drifting off to watch the subtle, ever-changing video screen on Christopher Oram's set.

Eventually we return to the plot when Tanner and 'Enery are 'rescued' from the brigands by his pursuing friends but Tanner 'saves' Mendoza and his cohorts by telling the police that they were acting as his guides.  All the threads of the character's storylines are tied up in an Andalusian garden and Jack, finally worn down by the slyly predatory Ann, capitulates to married life although stating it will be on his terms.  Dream on Jack!

Ralph Fiennes gave a hugely enjoyable performance - made even more funny because he seemed to be channelling Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in RISING DAMP which makes perfect sense for the role!  It's the best I have seen him on stage and makes one realise how much he is missed there.

Fiennes' excellence is sadly not matched by Idira Varma as Ann.  She certainly had the character's intelligence but lacked that quintessential quicksilver spark to make her Ann interesting.  Faye Castelow's spirited Violet showed all the individuality and tartness that Varma lacked.

There were fine supporting performances from Nicholas Le Prevost as the disapproving Roebuck Ramsden, Ferdinand Kingsley as lovelorn Octavius and Elliot Barnes-Worrell as the cocky cockney 'Enry Straker.  Tim McMullan is not an actor I usually like but here his fruitiness suited the heartbroken brigand Mendoza and the lushly urbane Devil.

Simon Godwin also directed the 3 and a half hour STRANGE INTERLUDE at the Lyttelton and it shared MAN AND SUPERMAN's speed of pace but although enjoyable, it ultimately felt that was down to the performances and not what Godwin had actually contributed.  Christopher Oram's arresting design of traditional sets against a video wall was handy to look at when Shaw's dialogue overwhelmed one.

With Jack Tanner's futile attempts to keep love at arm's length still fresh in my mind, it was interesting to then see the revival of Patrick Marber's CLOSER at the Donmar.

Marber's savage drama/comedy features two men - Dan a writer, Larry a doctor - and two women - Anna a photographer, Alice a sometime exotic dancer - who are all desperate for love but who are also desperately bad at staying in love.

I saw the original National Theatre production in 1997 (and the 2004 film version) so was curious to see how well it stood up 18 years later.  It was with some relief that I found still a fascinating, tantalising, brilliantly cruel play about the way you can hurt the ones you feel are closest to you.

Perfectly suited to the intimacy of the Donmar, you hung on the four characters every words, almost flinching at the emotional brutality inflicted.  It is definitely a play written by a man as Larry and Dan tend to get the bravura lines and the showier business - in particular the scene where they encounter each other in an Internet chat room and Dan toys with Larry while pretending to be Anna.

The women are more problematical; the roles feel somewhat lightweight compared to the men and, in particular, the character of Alice maddeningly feels like the young Marber's wank fantasy stuck in a naturalistic setting.  Alice is unknowable, an enigma to be solved by her lovers, but also a tantalising creature of habit, but also an innocent nymphet - it's like Marber is working through his own version of Wedekind's LULU.  The only resolution he can find for her is to have her die - a very Victorian end for such a modern girl - and in the play's coup de grace it is revealed that even her name wasn't real.  She is less a character, more a collection of pin-up girls.

As such I felt Rachel Redford was the weakest member of the cast as she didn't have the personality to distract from the character's flimsiness but I liked Oliver Chris as Dan, the personable young writer whose charming demeanour covers a shallow user of people.

The two more interesting characters were wonderfully played by Rufus Sewell as Larry and Nancy Carroll as Anna.  Sewell was a revelation, burning up the stage with a kinetic energy, emotions flickering across his face within seconds of each other while his eruptions of spiteful, lethal anger were great to watch.  Nancy Carroll brought her remarkable quality of attentive stillness to Anna, a woman who seems to be forever anticipating the next inevitable disappointment.  She proved again how exceptional an actress she is.

David Leveaux's direction caught every nuance of Marber's deftly-woven script, balancing the humour and the drama to great effect.  Bunny Christie's ingenious set had a cool East London, minimalist vibe hugely helped by Hugh Vanstone's lighting.

Two excellent revivals showing the possibility and impossibility of love.