Review Imogen (William Shakespeare's Cymbeline Renamed And Reclaimed)

Imogen
William Shakespeare's Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed

Romans (Rap) In Britain
http://imogen.shakespearesglobe.com/

As far as TLT could recall from her dim and distant past of Shakespeare studies, Cymbeline is a bit of a ragbag of Shakespeare's Greatest Hits. Echoes of King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night abound.

It's also part of that loose association of plays in lit crit which are known as "problem" plays (but also a romance or tragicomedy) with its improbable plot and eponymous character who is out of the picture for much of the play's running time.

Director Matthew Dunster's adaptation focuses instead squarely on the character of Imogen, daughter of  kingpin drug dealer Cymbeline, who in any case always has the most lines in the play, far more than the King of the Britons, her father.

In fact, TLT's little but learned hatchback reminded her there are only four Shakespeare plays with women in the titles. Like joint bank accounts, the male name automatically comes first in Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet and Troilus and Cressida and it's only in The Merry Wives of Windsor where women stand merrily alone.

Cymbeline (Jonathan McGuinness) is Britain's most powerful drug dealer running a gang producing a factory conveyor belt's worth of Class A substances. Meanwhile far off Rome is home to a rival white tracksuited bling drugs' gang.

One of Cymbeline's lieutenants Belarius (Martin Marquez) is falsely accused of treachery and in revenge for unjustified exile steals Cymbeline's two sons Aviragus (William Grint) and Guiderius (Scott Karim)  bringing them up as his own. Only Imogen (Maddy Hill) remains within the drugs' gang compound.

Previously, Cymbeline had brought Posthumus (Ira Mandela Siobhan), the son of another of his lieutenants, who had been murdered into his inner sanctum. With gangland members as nannies Imogen and Posthumumus are brought up together eventually getting it together and secretly making  it legal as wife and husband.

But Cymbeline has married again and the new Queen Bee in the drugs' gang (Claire-Louise Cordwell) has a definite sting. She and Cymbeline want Imogen to marry her cocky son Cloten (Joshua Lacey) from a previous marriage. So when Cymbeline discovers the marriage of Imogen and Posthumus, he banishes the latter to keep them apart.

Before he goes into exile to Rome, Imogen and Posthumus exchange love tokens: He gives her a bracelet and she gives him a diamond ring.

The rest of the play pivots round a bet with devious Giacomo (Matthew Needham), placed against Imogen retaining her virtue which Posthumus is lured into and tricked by whilst in exile,  Imogen escaping Cloten's clutches in disguise as a boy, the Romans and Brits in gang warfare and how Cymbeline's family is reunited,  the fortunes of Belarius and finally Posthumus restored and the latter coming to see how wrong he has been about Imogen's supposed adultery.

With its rather awkward mix of pantomine, fairytale, Britain's mythic history and revenge tragedy-like gruesomeness, it's already a romcom which  fits with a certain modern cinematic sensibility.The updating of Cymbeline to embrace gangland culture isn't entirely new.  There's a 2014 US movie set in biker culture directed by Michael Almereyda ending with Imogen and Posthumus riding off into the sunset on a motorbike and freedom.

But this is set in current day London, including a historical nod to West Side Story and The Long Good Friday, with its transparent butcher's shop curtains, rap, hip hop and electronic music  - Skepta's Man, Daft Punk's Get Lucky amongst others - and gangland honour culture. Branded tracksuits are the gang uniform in an interpretation, cutting out much of the supernatural gumph, giving the story in some respects recognition and clarity for modern audiences.

It's also literally an electric show - the Globe stage is flooded with artificial light and miked and electricity is bound up with the drugs' gang concept of the show (design by Jon Bausor and lighting by Lee Curran). That's to say the hydroponic drug "farms" with their steep electricity bills.

At the same time, there's a certain cost to the balance of the play. Rather than Imogen as a Renaissance babe (ok, maid) emerging with untutored virtue out of barbarous Britain, Imogen, although clean of drugs, ends up as a potential narcotics' gang matriarch.

That's not to say this version of the play does not work on its own terms It does. It's loud and it's brash. There's some clever, punchy updating of the text through pauses and modern speech patterns giving new meaning to old words.

There's a little too much hand gesturing and self-conscious feel to Maddy Hill's Imogen, more comfortable on the Globe stage when she dons her male disguise and becomes an active figure rather than the previously more passive recipient of bad news.

There's also a notable playful and tender performance from Grint's Averagus with deaf signing feeling a natural part of the play. Nevertheless the updating doesn't have the rigour and attention as this season's other problematic play "The Taming Of The Shrew".

It flattens Cymbeline into a gangland tale and the comedy and violence no longer form part of a delicate Shakespearean meditation on inherent nobility threading together the pastoral, the court and the supernatural in its concerns, language and dramatic contrasts.

Without these skeins giving the possibility of a more idealistic existence, it also feels rather lengthy. But - and in these days, it's a big (positive) but - the dancing (choreography Christopher Akrill), blunt black comedy, music, aerial acrobatics and choice use of pauses to twist lines into current speak may still find an appreciative audience, especially those who come to Cymbeline for the first time in this version focussed on Imogen. An amber light for an electric performance which, despite its flaws, still leaves many in the audience on a high.

Review Running Wild

Running Wild
Adapted by Samuel Adamson
From the novel by Michael Morpurgo

A Family And Other Animals
http://openairtheatre.com/

The herd of humans, collectively known as a theatre audience, showed its usual resilience at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre as the heavens opened. But luckily it passed and even added to the environmental accuracy of park greenery melding with the rain forests of Indonesia for an adaptation by Samuel Adamson of Michael Morpurgo's best-selling children's novel, Running Wild.

On a stage of concentric tree bark rings, we follow the bildung of young Lilly (Ava Potter), left fatherless after her soldier Dad (Ira Mandela Siobhan) is killed in the Iraq War, who travels to Indonesia with her Mum (Hattie Ladbury). Caught up in the tsunami, her life is saved by the beach elephant Oona who senses the impending tidal wave and races inland with the bewildered child on her back.

But Lilly quickly wises up and proves her own resilience and kindness, adapting to her new jungle life, helped in part by her childhood favourite Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book to which her father had introduced her.

It's a tale dramatised somewhat perfunctorily by Adamson and, even with the imaginative staging, such as the sea of undulating blue srips transformed into the tidal waves, at first seems somewhat stretched to fill the capacious Regent's Park stage. But even more of an asset is the triumphant puppetry of Gyre and Gimble's Finn Caldwell and Toby Obié which finally won us over. 

We honestly thought for one heartstopping moment, when the wrinkled grey head of Oona the elephant turned the corner of the theatre entrance and moved towards us, co-directors Timothy Sheader and Dale Rooks had raided nearby London Zoo for a real pachyderm!

And the buffoonery (yes, that really is the collective noun!) of orangutans and the predatory elegant tiger (accompanied by the William Blake verse)  excite awe and poignancy as the story kicks in big-time with a group of poachers led by sleazy Mr Anthony (Stephen Ventura) whose fortune derives from the ecologically disastrous trade in palm oil, as well as the illegal sale of orangutans and other animals.

The character of Lilly becomes Willy in some performances, Potter alternating wiith Joshua Fernandes and Tyler Osborne.While The Jungle Book is in part of manual for life, the translation into twenty first century terms - a condemnation of war, the capture and slaughter of animals and the exploitation of  trees for palm oil - while more than commendable, sometimes dramatically feels rather preachy, probably to the converted.

Still there's plenty of spectacle in the show to enjoy and Lilly is a feisty character for the kids in the audience, especially the girls, to identify with. Plus the relationship of Lilly with the animals is touchingly realised, so an upper level amber light  from we theatre human cubs for the opening play in the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre season.