Review Caste

Caste
by TW Robertson

The Book Of Esther 
 http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

Caste is like a solid piece of 1867 Victorian furniture brought out, dusted down and polished in this winning production from youthful theatre company Project One.   It's a play that's surprisingly shrewd with a deceptive simplicity which masks a sophisticated take on its own literary craft.

Indeed a certain critic named GB Shaw calling it "epoch-making" said at a 1897 revival, "'Caste' delighted everyone by its freshness, its nature, its humanity ... In the windows, in the doors ... in the kettle, in the fireplace, in the ham, in the tea, in the bread and butter ..."

The Honourable George D'Alroy (Duncan Moore), a moustachioed army officer, has transformed himself from backstage Johnny to adoring husband when he marries below his station chorus line ballet dancer Esther Eccles (Isabella Marshall).

George's mother the haughty "Brahmin princess" Marquise De St Maur (Susan Penhaligon) is horrified when she learns of the marriage, rejecting her daughter-in-law who is left almost destitute with a child when her husband goes missing presumed dead on active service in India. Suffice to say, there is a twist and turn before a Happy Ending.

Caste deals in stock characters and styles, melodrama, burlesque and the sentimental, but with knowing self-referential glances and with a claim to pioneering stage management in its use on stage of more realistic scenery and props, "a cup and saucer" drama. 

What is also surprising is like Douglas Jerrold's earlier Black-Eyed Susan, Caste turns from melodrama to genuine second act social critique in an unlikely mouth of the workshy drunkard, Esther's father Eccles (Paul Bradley in mutton chop whiskers).

One can even detect a direct line to Shaw's own Pygmalion and other later movements such as the Manchester School  and the Angry Young Men generation of playwrights.

Equally this is all pitched with genial humour and a discussion of its central theme of caste or class made more complex by the inclusion of military, colonial, political, financial and inheritance circumstances.

As Captain Hawtrey (Ben Starr), "a swell" and D'Alroy's brother in arms, puts it, "The inexorable law of caste ... commands like to mate with like ... forbids a giraffe to mate with a squirrel ... all those marriages of people with common people are all very well in novels and plays on the stage ..."

Meanwhile would-be shopkeeper Sam Gerridge (Neil Chinneck) takes the boundaries of different stations in life more literally, "Life is a railway journey, and mankind is a passenger - first class, second class, third class".

Robertson uses feisty, flirty quick-tempered  Polly (Rebecca Collingwood), Esther's sister and Sam's intended, to conjure up pictures of life outside the Eccles's London home. This not only provides burlesque amusement but gives the audience a sense of panorama, almost like cinema trailers of other types of entertainment.

Charlotte Perkins directs a nicely paced production which takes seriously the social issues without stinting on the laughs deliberately threaded in by the playwright.

We weren't convinced by the introduction of a photo studio element but this is a minor quibble in a very enjoyable hour and forty five minutes which never descends, as it so easily could in less skilful hands, into parody.   

Over 50 years ago a young actor, a certain Ian McKellen, grew to appreciate the craft in the drama when he played gasfitter Sam Gerridge. We're now in the 21st century and theatrical metaphors can be unravelled for the audience.

It's part of actor-manager's Tom Robertson's art that he knowingly carves for the audience a tasty large slice of ham, along with barnstorming melodrama but also bread and butter realism. It's a green light for a production which keeps the kettle on the boil to produce a satisfyingly strong and entertaining brew.

Review Much Ado About Nothing

Francis Beckett admires a beguiling Benedick and distinctive Don John in the RSC's Much Ado About Nothing but finds the 1918 setting unconvincing

Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare

Making A Home Fit For A Hero 
https://www.rsc.org.uk/haymarket

The decision to set Much Ado About Nothing at the end of the First World War sounds like a good idea, since the play starts with the men returning from war.

But, like a lot of good ideas for making Shakespeare work better for audiences nowadays, it struggles to survive its confrontation with parts of the text. 

There are some splendid things in it, the best of which is Edward Bennett's witty, sardonic Benedick with a touch of self-mockery and impeccable comic timing.

The first scene of raillery between Benedick and Beatrice is very well done, with every ounce of humour extracted from Shakespeare's very clever dialogue.

When hidden Benedick is gulled into believing Beatrice has declared her love for him, it is laugh-out-loud funny. This is achieved by making the best use of Shakespeare's own funny dialogue and building the business round it.

But it's followed by a dreadfully unfunny scene where the comic possibilities are overlooked in which the same happens to Beatrice. And the relaxed, urbane Benedick contrasts strangely with Lisa Dillon's stressed and ambivalent Beatrice.

The clowns don't work at all. Director Christopher Luscombe seems to have taken the view that the words are not especially funny and he needs to extract his laughs by means of rather too forced and over-the-top slapstick. 

Nick Haverson's Dogberry roars out his lines, and does his best to make us laugh by imitating disabilities which are not at all funny. At one point I was left with the impression he was pretending to have Parkinson's Disease.

Any version of Much Ado About Nothing has to address one main problem: How to make believable and acceptable Hero's passive and grateful acceptance back of the fiancé who, on the flimsiest of evidence, so brutally denounced her in public, at the altar on her wedding day.

Indeed I have never seen a production without nurturing a momentary hope she will give his second proposal of marriage a two-word answer, the second word being "off".

The 1918 setting makes this even harder to pull off. It was the year women got the vote in Britain - only women over 30, it is true. 

But, while Britain was still a patriarchal society, women were not handed over to their future husbands by their fathers like cattle in the way Hero is handed to Claudio.

Rebecca Collingwood's charming but passive Hero smiles and simpers her way through the play. There's not much else to be done, it seems to me. Tunji Kasim does his best to make Claudio's stupidity believable.

The villain of the piece, the man who frames Hero, is Don John. I have always thought him one of the most interesting characters in Much Ado About Nothing, and he is here given a World War One injury that requires him to use a crutch.

Sam Alexander plays him quietly and makes him intriguing as well as menacing. But why is his brother Don Pedro played by someone - John Hodgkinson - who seems, though a fine actor, to be easily old enough to be his brother's father? 

There are many good things about this production of one of Shakespeare's best comedies, but there is too much wrong with it to merit more than an amber light.