Review The Cardinal

The Cardinal
by James Shirley

Les Liaisons Dangereuses
http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/

We have to admit our knowledge of theatre history has hitherto jumped from the Revenge Tragedies to the Restoration plays, and left out the drama of the Caroline era. That is, the era when Charles I ruled before Oliver Cromwell engineered Chaxit and closed down the theatres.

So we are indebted to director Justin Audibert and his cast of James Shirley's 1641 tragicomedy for a sure-footed introduction to this witty chessboard of a play, The Cardinal.

Set in a Spanish court, yes, there's a more than an echo of John Webster's The Duchess Of Malfi with a touch of Measure For Measure.

But playwright Shirley turns out to be a real discovery for us. His own chequered background as a Catholic convert and the uncertain times in which he lived produces a shrewd assmilation of past masterpieces, but also a grasp of contemporary politics, a refreshing attitude to women and lucid, pointed verses.

The widowed Duchess Rosaura (Natalie Simpson), beautiful and smart niece of the King of Navarre (Ashley Cook) has been promised that she can marry the man of her choice. Nevertheless she finds herself coerced into a marriage with rough-hewn Columbo (Jay Saighal), the nephew of the scheming Cardinal (Stephen Boxer).

By hook or by crook she determines to marry the handsome Count D'Alvaraz (Marcus Griffiths) and, by legitimate if tricksy means, achieves her goal except that on her wedding day ...

Ah, dear blog reader, you'll have to skidaddle to Elephant and Castle's Newington Causeway and Southwark Playhouse to find out the often murderous twists and turns which have all the cliffhangers of a boxed set thriller.

Simpson (last seen as Cordelia in the RSC's King Lear) is a slender but tough Duchess, as sharp as the silver edge of a rapier matching the cynical wit of Boxer's scarlet-robed Cardinal with a wily but sceptical turn of phrase.

Timothy Speyer also gives good value as the Secretary evaluating a quick-changing situation. Ashley Cook's King has the stillness and dignity of a portrait amidst a fast moving plot when the country was still weighing up the worth of their own monarch. 

Shirley himself gained the favour of, without being fully a part of the court of, Charles I and his French wife Henrietta Maria.

There is a particular astuteness and scepticism which marks Shirley, also a grammarian and schoolmaster as well as a playwright, apart from those other playwrights he draws upon, making him appeal to a modern sensibility.

Anna Reid's light gray marble set gives a sense of the echoing halls of the Caroline era where swords clash in Bret Yount's excitingly choreographed fights   And surely those were not the chimes of Big Ben we heard in the midst of the chorals in Max Pappenheim's subtle echoing soundscape?

For a new perspective on an era and a remarkably clear-sighted play given a production of elegance and wry humour, we eschew the scarlet for a green light.    

Review Cymbeline

Cymbeline
by William Shakespeare

Swan's Way
https://www.rsc.org.uk/barbican

Once upon a time TLT remembers watching a BBC children's serial The Changes where suddenly nearly everyone in the British Isles turns violently against technology and goes back to medieval village way of life. Meanwhile mainland Europe remains unchanged.

This emerged from the muddy depths of memory while watching the Royal Shakespeare Company's Cymbeline where the Britons live in a twilight post apocalyptic candle-lit world.

Meanwhile over on the continent ... Yes, the Romans host an electric international court with an  multilingual casino lifestyle where the courtiers swan around in luxury designer brands, confident that Latin remains the language of diplomacy.

The programme posits the Britons paying tribute to the Roman Empire as a Brexit fantasy (it was first performed in Stratford-upon-Avon before the referendum), although the parallels feel a little strained in Melly Still's whirlwind gender-swapping production. 

Innogen (Bethan Cullinane) is a tough but still emotionally vulnerable young princess, first seen with a ragged skirt of downy swan feathers, picking up on lines in the play, "Hath Britain all the sun that shines?Day? Night?/Are they not but in Britain? In th' world's volume/Our Britain seems as of it, but not in'it:/In a great pool a swan's nest"

She defies her statuesque Boadicea of a mother, Queen Cymbeline (Geraldine Bevan), to marry her childhood sweetheart Posthumus (Hiran Abeysekera) but their newly married life quickly goes awry when Posthumus is banished and then ends up in Rome.

With its unstable mix of genres and self conscious narrating-the-story style, there's no doubt Cymbeline is a challenge and there are plenty of strengths in individual performances in this production.

Cullinane makes a sturdily attractive Innogen, tenacious and resilient but still fragile enough to make us care in female garb and disguised as a boy. 

The slighter figure of Abeysekera, her lover, then husband who is easily persuaded in a wager that she is an unfaithful wife is more problematic.

He's a bit of a soft puppy dog at the beginning but his final brief scene with treacherous Iachimo does make for a natural and intuitive sense of an ending to that side of the story.

Changing the sex of Cymbeline and that of her consort who becomes "The Duke" (James Clyde) brings a new dynamic to relationships. Out goes the wicked stepmother trope and The Duke (James Clyde) is a rather too subtle, modern brown-suited villain with leather patches on his elbows.

More successful is Italian nobleman Iachimo (Oliver Johnstone) who as a villainous devil steals all the best tunes bringing lusty swagger and humour before his come-uppance.

A word too for the Posthumus's gender-swapped servant Pisania (Kelly Williams), acting as her master's secret agent at the British court who also brings clarity to the plot.

The trouble is chunks of the story get lost in the low-light opening scenes - it's hard for newcomers to the story to grasp, even with flashed up projections of newspapers, that two of the Queen's children were kidnapped as babies or even that the doltish would-be pop star Cloten (Marcus Griffiths) is The Duke's son from an earlier marriage.

Even so, the soundscape from composer Dave Price does bring visceral ripples as the plot unravels. Over in Wales, a nobleman banished unjustly many years earlier from the Queen's court, Belarius (Graham Turner in a solid performance) is living in the wilds with the Queen's children, in this version a girl and a boy rather than two boys, who know nothing of their Royal birth.

Turned into a pair of Peter Pan-like Lost Children, despite a famously gory outbreak of violence, the two (Natalie Simpson and James Cooney) make an engaging bow-and-arrow pair. Altogether, this is a curate's egg of a production which feels a tad long but it's an amber light for this awfully big adventure.