Issue 08 - 2006
Prompt Corner 
Can You Hear Me At The Front?
The problem with the Bard, as Stanley Wells pointed out in his keynote speech to the conference which was one of the agreeable side-shows to the Craiova Shakespeare Festival, is that he sets very high standards. "Before you put something of your own in his place," he warned, "make sure that you have something worthwhile to say." Not every production in the festival took this wise advice.
By the time I arrived, there had already been two presentations of Twelfth Night, by Decían Donnellan with a Russian company, and by Silviu Purcarete with the resident Craiova troupe whose reputation he made with a succession of stunning classic adaptations over the last decade and more. London will have the chance to judge the Donnellan when it arrives at the Barbican - I have to say that when I saw it in Moscow I found it a pale shadow of his earlier rough theatre version for Cheek By Jowl - while the Purcarete hada rather lukewarm reception when it appeared in Bath last month.
Butoh
So my first production was one that delightfully exemplified the Wells problem, a Winter's Tale from the Ryutopia company, based in a regional theatre in the north of Japan and directed by Yoshihiro Kurita. This was the third in their series of "Noh Shakespeares", although the convention seemed more butoh as a group of silent, chalk-faced acolytes accompanied the proceedings. Centre stage was occupied by kimono-clad figures representing the main players as the separation and reunion of Leontes and Hermione, the love story of Perdita and Florizel were played out, often against a backdrop of white petals falling as snow. Apart from this echo of Ninagawa, Kurita offered a style triumph very much his own, with his beautifully disciplined actors moving throughout with a rare grace. Almost all of Shakespeare's comedy had been ruthlessly excised, with no sign of Autolycus, or the young shepherd and his girlfriends; in its place was a coherent world of mythic, Japanese intensity.
Plank
Coherence becomes something of a yardstick by which to judge the efforts of other directors in the festival. The Ukrainian Sergei Masloboyshchykov certainly lacked it in the confusing Midsummer Night's Dream he staged with a group of Hungarian actors from Gyula. It wasn't too difficult to imagine that the pregnant lady on roller skates who glided around the opening scene before giving birth to a moon might be Diana, but when the new-bom globe became what appeared to be the disputed Indian boy things got more complicated, not helped by some strange doubling and trebling that gave us the same actor as Philostrate, Puck and Quince, while Oberon and Titania appeared as bespectacled stage-hands. The strangest doubling of all finally tumed Bottom and Snug (the latter a glorious red-maned lion in the final Pyramus And Thisbe) into Theseus and Hippolyta, leaving us to guess who the previous actors playing the royal couple might be. Liberal lashings of period songs from the Deller Consort, not to mention quite a lot of Benjamin Britten in the soundtrack, did nothing to rescue this curious reading.
The very next night came a totally different Dream, that of Oskaras Korsunovas and his Vilnius company. When I first saw them four or five years ago the actors were not long out of the academy class where the production had been first devised, starting (I would guess) as a simple series of exercises around the question "What can you improvise with a door-sized plank of wood?" The amazingly inventive answers are still there, with the added finesse of some years' professional experience, so that the company now offers a really polished, energetic and crowd-pleasing performance. Yet for all its slickness, its chosen homogenous visual style means that we miss some of the multi-levelled magic Shakespeare's very varied characters impart, and the concluding scene, with no Pyramus And Thisbe, leaves a curious, aching gap in the proceedings.
Of course it is impossible to hold rigidly to the sacred completeness of the text - even the most faithful Stratford revival is likely to have its cuts. The young Greek director Yannis Paraskevopoulos had some clever solutions to this problem in his production of Romeo And Juliet for the resident company. Much of the Capulet/Montague feud was telescoped into balletic, West Side Story fight scenes, and the final tomb scene was almost entirely mimed. But between these extremes, Mercutio was allowed space for a highly theatrical account of his Queen Mab speech, and the balcony scene was played out in full. What marked out the whole production was the ingenuity with which the director built from the text rather than fighting against it: little touches like a nymphomaniac Lady Capulet who had to be practically scraped off Paris showed the joys of permissible, text-based invention; and that balcony scene began with Juliet in front of the lighting box at the back of the theatre, her excited shadow playing on Romeo as he stood at the farthest point of the stage. When the lovers meet, it is in the very middle of the audience. Not surprisingly, perhaps, for a production in the home theatre, the lighting design was the most complex - and the most exciting - of the whole festival, while simple props like chairs and a table were most imaginatively used.
Coma
A major disappointment was the Cymbeline given by Bucharest's prestigious Odeon Theatre, directed by the usually reliable Laszlo Bocsardi. It is perhaps the most difficult of the late romances, and it rapidly became clear that Bocsardi had no idea what to do with it. Initially subjecting the actors to some of the worst costumes I have ever seen, his long, long production gradually subsided into a kind of dramatic and scenographic coma, leaving the many discoveries of the final act to take place in front of what looked like a dinner-jacketed group of Masons on a quiet night.
In happy contrast, Alexander Hausvater, back from Canada, took a far less experienced company of German-speaking actors from the theatre in Timisoara and delivered a fast-paced and totally convincing account of the same play. He used his most professional actor as a master of the revels, driving the action along as a more than usually fit Cymbeline and a rather effete Jupiter. An energetic chorus, mostly female, supplied all the minor roles. Clarity of design, marred only by one or two unnecessary excrescences, gave great strength to the production, which was played in traverse in Craiova's studio space. Like Paraskevopoulos, Hausvater used mime to elide some of the text's longueurs, but was not afraid to give the verse its head. He gave us Shakespeare's Cymbeline.
Punch and Judy
How then to approach the Noord Nederlands Toneel from Groningen, who brought us a comic, Punch and Judy Macbeth on a brightly coloured puppet theatre stage? In the theatre where Purcarete created his Ubu Roi with scenes from Macbeth, this was bold indeed. Every fibre of my purist body resists this travesty, yet I have to admit that apart from some naïve, undergraduate attempts to give medieval Scotland some contemporary "relevance", the bones of the tragedy still stand out clearly. Lady Macbeth in particular, a rouged and ringleted Dutch doll, keeps most of her powerful lines, and her Monty Python husband delivers a surprisingly straight lament on her death. Best of all, the witches are a sinister bunch of corn dollies who can conjure up an unending line of future kings, all looking like the bobble hat (don't ask) that plays Fleance. And yet, and yet... Macbeth as entertainment? Let me simply take it as one more bizarre opportunity in a vivid and crowded week to ask what Shakespeare brings to us, and what we bring to him. As for the Serbian Measure For Measure and the Israeli Hamlet that followed, you will have to ask elsewhere...
At the Back
See Prompt above
Contents / Reviews
London |
||||
BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE New play by Fraser Grace (RSC) |
Soho |
12 Apr |
22 Apr |
438 |
DISCO PIGS Revival of play by Enda Walsh |
Pleasance |
8 Apr |
7 May |
460 |
ENDGAME Revival of play by Samuel Beckett (Beckett Centenary Festival) |
Barbican |
20 Apr |
23 Apr |
446 |
15 MINUTES New play by Christine Harmar Brown (B&R Prods/New Vic Workshop) |
Arcola |
21 Apr |
13 May |
464 |
FOOTLOOSE Stage adaptation of screenplay by Dean Pitchford |
Novello |
18 Apr |
|
454 |
412 LETTERS New play by Matthew Wilkie (Adverse Camber) |
Union |
7 Apr |
22 Apr |
439 |
HAY FEVER Revival of play by Noël Coward |
Haymarket |
20 Apr |
5 Aug |
456 |
HILDA New play by Marie NDiaye |
Hampstead |
10 Apr |
6 May |
420 |
HUGE Revival of play by Jez Butterworth/Ben Miller/Simon Godley |
King's Head |
10 Apr |
29 Apr |
444 |
MACK AND MABEL Revival of musical by Jerry Herman, Michael Stewart (Watermill) |
Criterion |
10 Apr |
|
423 |
MAJNOUN Return of play by Mehrdad Seyf |
Lyric Studio |
19 Apr |
22 Apr |
427 |
MOVIN' OUT New musical by Billy Joel and Twyla Tharp |
Apollo Victoria |
10 Apr |
|
428 |
NO-BODY NOSE New piece by Ishwar Maharaj |
Space |
18 Apr |
29 Apr |
453 |
PHAEDRA New adaptation by Frank McGuinness from Racine |
Donmar Warehouse |
21 Apr |
3 Jun |
461 |
THE PIMP New play by Dic Edwards (A2 Prods) |
White Bear |
21 Apr |
7 May |
451 |
PLAY / CATASTROPHE Revival of plays by Samuel Beckett (Beckett Centenary Festival) |
The Pit |
13 Apr |
23 Apr |
445 |
PREACHEROSITY New play by Larry Herold |
Jermyn Street |
13 Apr |
6 May |
451 |
RAINBOW KISS New play by Simon Farquhar |
Royal Court Upstairs |
10 Apr |
6 May |
433 |
THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN Revival of play by Peter Shaffer (NT) |
Olivier |
12 Apr |
|
440 |
SAVED OR DESTROYED Transfer of play by Harry Kondoleon (Kondoleon Project) |
BAC |
20 Apr |
30 Apr |
422 |
SUMMER BEGINS Revival of play by David Eldridge |
Southwark Playhouse |
13 Apr |
29 Apr |
432 |
TAOUB New piece by Aurélien Bory (Collectif Acrobatique de Tangier) |
Queen Elizabeth Hall |
14 Apr |
18 Apr |
452 |
UNCUT CONFETTI New piece by John Hegley |
BAC |
20 Apr |
30 Apr |
422 |
THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS New musical adaptation from book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean |
Lyric Hammersmith |
13 Apr |
29 Apr |
447 |
YIKES! New musical by Bryony Lavery |
Unicorn (Weston) |
6 Apr |
14 May |
437 |
Regions |
||||
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC; Complete Works Festival) |
Stratford, Swan |
19 Apr |
14 Oct |
470 |
Arches Theatre Festival 2006, including: |
Glasgow, various |
11 Apr |
22 Apr |
474 |
Beasts New piece by Calum Beaton |
Glasgow, Arches |
13 Apr |
15 Apr |
474 |
Danger: Hollow Sidewalk New piece by Rebecca Sharp (Seenunseen Prods) |
Glasgow, Arches |
13 Apr |
15 Apr |
474 |
The Factory New piece by Al Seed |
Glasgow, Arches |
19 Apr |
19 Apr |
474 |
Five In The Morning Transfer of new piece by Rotozaza |
Glasgow, Arches |
21 Apr |
22 Apr |
475 |
Flea New piece by Alex Rigg and Florencia Rigg (Oceanallover) |
Glasgow, Arches |
18 Apr |
19 Apr |
474 |
The James Dean Death Scene New play by Alan McKendrick |
Glasgow, Tron |
11 Apr |
15 Apr |
474 |
K Devised by Stuart Murdoch and the cast, from The Castle by Franz Kafka |
Glasgow, Arches |
11 Apr |
15 Apr |
474 |
Merce New piece by Ambra Senatore |
Glasgow, Arches |
17 Apr |
18 Apr |
474 |
Shiver New piece by Kate Brailsford and Gillian Kerr (Rough Ruby Prods) |
Glasgow, Arches |
17 Apr |
19 Apr |
474 |
This Incredible Human Heart Machine Part 1 New piece by Megan Barker/Philip Farr/Richard Reed Parry |
Glasgow, Arches |
13 Apr |
22 Apr |
474 |
Victory At The Dirt Palace Return of play by Adriano Shaplin (The Riot Group) |
Glasgow, Arches |
21 Apr |
22 Apr |
475 |
Zugzwang New piece by Martin O'Connor (Think Tank Th) |
Glasgow, Arches |
13 Apr |
22 Apr |
474 |
THE COLLECTION Revival of play by Mike Cullen |
Glasgow, Citizens Circle Studio |
21 Apr |
29 Apr |
478 |
LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES Revival of adaptation by Christopher Hampton from novel by Laclos |
Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum |
22 Apr |
20 May |
478 |
ROMEO AND JULIET Revival of play by Shakespeare (RSC; Complete Works Festival) |
Stratford, Royal Shakespeare |
18 Apr |
14 Oct |
467 |
TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA New adaptation by Ade Morris from Jules Verne |
Newbury, Watermill |
10 Apr |
6 May |
473 |