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 The Alchemist

On a trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Francis Beckett relishes a classic city comedy by a contemporary of Shakespeare.

The Alchemist

By Ben Jonson

Greed Is Good

https://www.rsc.org.uk/

This production of The Alchemist by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), currently running at the Swan Theatre in Statford-Upon-Avon, zips along nicely, even if it isn’t quite up to the National Theatre’s splendid 2006 rendering. 

Yet it manages to  find for us the fun that the original 1610 audience would have found in Ben Johnson’s satiric London tale of confidence tricksters and their prey. 

Whereas the National Theatre offered the likes of Simon Russell Beale, the RSC gives us a solid, reliable and  accomplished cast – no one great standout performance, but a talented troupe of actors who make us laugh at and care about the characters at the same time.

For me, the nearest to a standout performance is Mark Lockyer’s Subtle, a cynical, world-weary alchemist, bamboozling all around him and taking their money. 

For others it might be Ken Nwosu as his collaborator Face, the manservant who grasps his chance when his master, Hywel Morgan's Lovewit, decides to find respite from the plague outside town. 

Then again it could be Dol Common, played here by Siobhán McSweeney, delightfully and amusingly, as a podgy and cynical whore..

There are some fine cameo performances. Sir Epicure Mammon – Ben Johnson's names often describe his characters – is a greedy, priapic, self-indulgent upper class oaf, brought to bibulous life by a fine character actor, Ian Redford. 

Timothy Speyer as Tribulation Wholesome (there, you know almost everything about him already), a pastor of Amsterdam. Driven out for his faith from his home city – as he never tires of telling anyone who comes within earshot  – is all pious, self-righteous whingeing.

Listening to him, I understood something about religious persecution. For, when every sect is attacking the other, anyone might tend to be cynical about a man persecuted for his religion who, given the chance, would persecute in turn.

Director Polly Findlay’s production scores over the National in its minimalism.  The National these days seems obsessed by complicated, massively expensive and, generally, entirely unnecessary sets, and technical tricks for their own sake.  Here we have a table and chairs, and an uncomplicated, unchanging backcloth; simple, and all the better for it.  

 

She also scores with her decision to cut twenty minutes off the play.  People are often frightened of cutting classics like Johnson, but each generation requires things to happen faster than the last, and a twenty first century audience will not tolerate the length of speeches that a Jacobean audience would find normal.

Altogether this is a fine rendering of a play which manages to be funny and to tell us something uncomfortable about human greed, earning a green light from this reviewer.