Showing posts with label Gregory Doran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gregory Doran. Show all posts
Tuesday, 11 July 2017
Review The Tempest
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
Fantasy Island
https://www.rsc.org.uk/
A harassed magician and ousted ruler Prospero (Simon Russell Beale), with an impatient Miranda (Jenny Rainsford) straining at the leash, a far more patient but troubled bondservant in the spirit Ariel (Mark Quartley) and a beastly Caliban (Joe Dixon) all uneasily share an island in The Tempest.
And now they're joined by a digital world created by Intel and The Imaginarium Studio and projected on to the large Barbican stage.
Directed by Gregory Doran, towering undulating images dwarf the actors. Otherwise the design by Stephen Brimson Lewis has on each side of the stage half of a ship's two tier skeletal hull, two splays of ribs with an expanse between.
The Tempest would seem like the ideal Shakespeare play for digital special effects. Yet we found several problems with them. They interrupted the rhythm of the play which made some of the real life performances unfairly, we think, seem over-emphatic. Sight gags which would have gone with the flow if there were no gizmos then also feel inserted rather than organic to the play.
It is the quiet moments that work best - especially between Beale's tetchy Prospero and Quartly's thoughtful and elegant Ariel as the latter works towards his freedom while measuring his master's emotions and keeping within his boundaries.
Otherwise Jenny Rainsford makes for a feisty Miranda who has outgrown her father's admonishings and the island. Simon Trinder's white-face, tartan-trousered clown and James Hayes's mutiny-on-the-bounty Stephano's butler make a comely enough comic duo.
Joseph Mydell's Gonzalo is also distinctive as, having been Prospero and Miranda's saviour, he is also a court politician looking to retain the status quo. We weren't so sure at first about Joe Dixon's Caliban, wrapped in a cockroach-type carapace, but ultimately the severance of his relationship with Prospero has a searing quality.
The special effects? We didn't see the cinema screenings but it struck us on screen they may have worked better for us. Even though there was a difference made between the scenes of humans and spirits on the island, the masque interludes and the final moments where Prospero abjures his magic, it felt overloaded on stage. It is an experiment worth doing, and doubtless there's a learning curve which will bear fruit, but the play's the thing and we give an amber/green light.
Wednesday, 16 November 2016
Review King Lear
King Lear
by William Shakespeare
The Generation Gap
https://www.rsc.org.uk/barbican
Your Mum's dead. Your difficult, out-of-touch Dad offers to transfer all his property into your name, relieving you and your loved ones of all financial problems - as long as you keep him in the manner to which he has become accustomed.
How many in Shakespeare's world could identify with these material concerns is a moot point, although even the poorest elderly peasant who nevertheless had a roof over his head could fear the younger generation ousting him (or her). But Gregory Doran's handsome production of King Lear launches us into a world where an autocratic leader has also, unbeknown even to himself, suppressed unruly divisions in his kingdom.
Antony Sher as Lear is borne by underlings on stage in a magnificent gold and glass casket - a Titoesque dictator in his combining of three kingdoms, grotesquely assuming he is loved, clad in furs like some pagan Santa Claus.
His demand that his three daughters, including the soon-to-be given-away in marriage and truthful Cordelia (Natalie Simpson), tell him how great he is has the complacency of a Victorian actor-manager hearing the rehearsed plaudits of his favoured actresses.
There's a minimal feel to the staging designed by Niki Turner - tightly packed red brickwork and later an illuminated blank white screen with shadow projections as backdrops, single gilded tree branches, giant bronze discs, great swathes of undulating polythene sheets on the floor and falling from above.
Lear's two eldest daughters, Goneril (Nia Gwynne) and Regan (Kelly Williams) in gorgeous gold brocade on dark luscious velvet robes of another era take part in the ceremony of Lear's vainglorious and unforced, wilful splitting of his kingdom. Indeed when Lear's company of knights later riot and assault serving maids, there seems to be some justification for Goneril's complaints, especially when Lear's bear hug turns into an exercise in power and blight.
There's certainly a clarity and emphasis to the verse speaking and those Shakespearean words come back to bite over the centuries with the twenty first century's own take on value and finance.
Regan's words, "Sir, I am made of that self mettle as my sister,/And prize me at her worth. In my true heart,/I find she names my very deed of love—/Only she comes too short".Then the later lament of the Duke of Gloucester (David Troughton), "the bond crack'd/'twixt son and father.", the forthright speech of the Duke of Kent (Antony Byrne) "I can keep honest counsel ... and the best of me is diligence." The Fool (Graham Turner) "No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part on't..."
At the same time, Cordelia is "unfriended" and the vagrants, the crowd of shadowy figures who lurk and criss cross throughout the play, band together to shake literally the ground beneath Lear and those who stay loyal to him. And two football players have a fidelity to the text but almost immediately place Edgar (Oliver Johnstone) as part of the younger, so far carefree, generation.
Indeed the content of this Lear seems to stretch, especially visually, across from the nineteenth century through that of twentieth century Samuel Beckett to our age. Lear himself transforms into male Ophelia in white asylum longjohns and a garland on his head - a delicate echo of the Pre-Raphelites which avoids parody. His slow, measured tones, with curses acompanied by melodramatic drum rolls, which gradually break down, have undoubted power, although their pace could do with a tad more variation.
The painterly visual and the verbally poignant come together most effectively in the quieter scene where blinded Gloucester and denuded Lear at their nadir sit together on the ground and the full import of their fates come home.
Meanwhile there is a lucid charismatic performance from smooth-cheeked Paapa Essiedu as Gloucester's illegitimate son Edmund, innocent looking and wide-eyed enough to be a plausible deceiver and inviting lover for the Lear's truly thankless daughters.
Oliver Johnstone's Edgar convincingly manages the transformation from gullible half-brother through experience to feeling statesman. Graham Turner's Fool is literally a strutting avian white cock beneath his coxcomb, albeit with the ability to play a music hall ukelele.
Overall, the storytelling is also lucid, but it sometimes feels as if the characters, although acting on each other, are themselves separated in glass caskets. The natural ebb, flow and waves of this towering play are sometimes a little frozen. However it is an amber/green light for a tragedy otherwise well-served by every level of the cast with plenty of wry humour emerging alongside the calamity and horror.
by William Shakespeare
The Generation Gap
https://www.rsc.org.uk/barbican
Your Mum's dead. Your difficult, out-of-touch Dad offers to transfer all his property into your name, relieving you and your loved ones of all financial problems - as long as you keep him in the manner to which he has become accustomed.
How many in Shakespeare's world could identify with these material concerns is a moot point, although even the poorest elderly peasant who nevertheless had a roof over his head could fear the younger generation ousting him (or her). But Gregory Doran's handsome production of King Lear launches us into a world where an autocratic leader has also, unbeknown even to himself, suppressed unruly divisions in his kingdom.
Antony Sher as Lear is borne by underlings on stage in a magnificent gold and glass casket - a Titoesque dictator in his combining of three kingdoms, grotesquely assuming he is loved, clad in furs like some pagan Santa Claus.
His demand that his three daughters, including the soon-to-be given-away in marriage and truthful Cordelia (Natalie Simpson), tell him how great he is has the complacency of a Victorian actor-manager hearing the rehearsed plaudits of his favoured actresses.
There's a minimal feel to the staging designed by Niki Turner - tightly packed red brickwork and later an illuminated blank white screen with shadow projections as backdrops, single gilded tree branches, giant bronze discs, great swathes of undulating polythene sheets on the floor and falling from above.
Lear's two eldest daughters, Goneril (Nia Gwynne) and Regan (Kelly Williams) in gorgeous gold brocade on dark luscious velvet robes of another era take part in the ceremony of Lear's vainglorious and unforced, wilful splitting of his kingdom. Indeed when Lear's company of knights later riot and assault serving maids, there seems to be some justification for Goneril's complaints, especially when Lear's bear hug turns into an exercise in power and blight.
There's certainly a clarity and emphasis to the verse speaking and those Shakespearean words come back to bite over the centuries with the twenty first century's own take on value and finance.
Regan's words, "Sir, I am made of that self mettle as my sister,/And prize me at her worth. In my true heart,/I find she names my very deed of love—/Only she comes too short".Then the later lament of the Duke of Gloucester (David Troughton), "the bond crack'd/'twixt son and father.", the forthright speech of the Duke of Kent (Antony Byrne) "I can keep honest counsel ... and the best of me is diligence." The Fool (Graham Turner) "No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part on't..."
At the same time, Cordelia is "unfriended" and the vagrants, the crowd of shadowy figures who lurk and criss cross throughout the play, band together to shake literally the ground beneath Lear and those who stay loyal to him. And two football players have a fidelity to the text but almost immediately place Edgar (Oliver Johnstone) as part of the younger, so far carefree, generation.
Indeed the content of this Lear seems to stretch, especially visually, across from the nineteenth century through that of twentieth century Samuel Beckett to our age. Lear himself transforms into male Ophelia in white asylum longjohns and a garland on his head - a delicate echo of the Pre-Raphelites which avoids parody. His slow, measured tones, with curses acompanied by melodramatic drum rolls, which gradually break down, have undoubted power, although their pace could do with a tad more variation.
The painterly visual and the verbally poignant come together most effectively in the quieter scene where blinded Gloucester and denuded Lear at their nadir sit together on the ground and the full import of their fates come home.
Meanwhile there is a lucid charismatic performance from smooth-cheeked Paapa Essiedu as Gloucester's illegitimate son Edmund, innocent looking and wide-eyed enough to be a plausible deceiver and inviting lover for the Lear's truly thankless daughters.
Oliver Johnstone's Edgar convincingly manages the transformation from gullible half-brother through experience to feeling statesman. Graham Turner's Fool is literally a strutting avian white cock beneath his coxcomb, albeit with the ability to play a music hall ukelele.
Overall, the storytelling is also lucid, but it sometimes feels as if the characters, although acting on each other, are themselves separated in glass caskets. The natural ebb, flow and waves of this towering play are sometimes a little frozen. However it is an amber/green light for a tragedy otherwise well-served by every level of the cast with plenty of wry humour emerging alongside the calamity and horror.
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