Farinelli and the King

by Claire van Kampen

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse 23 February 2015

This new play stars Mark Rylance as King Philip V of Spain and Sam Crane as the castrato Farinelli, with his arias sung by Iestyn Davies (sung in some performances by William Purefoy). King Philip suffered from what may have been deep depression, but this was much alleviated by the singing of Farinelli, who relinquished a glittering public career to become part of the king's household. Even after the king's death he did not resume singing in public.

Mark Rylance gives a consummate performance as the troubled king. The intimate setting of the playhouse gives him the chance to be quietly desperate, almost conversational, so that his occasional outbursts of anger and violence are the more shocking. We seem to be eavesdropping on a very private torment.

Sam Crane portrays Farinelli as a sympathetic character - it is the appeal to his good nature which prompts him first to visit and ultimately to stay with the Spanish royal family - and the use of both an actor and a singer for the part is well managed (the singer only appears when required, usually dressed identically to the actor), providing a nice underlining of the difference between the person and the performer. Iestyn Davies sings the arias with a beautiful clarity and control, exquisitely suitable to the space of the theatre.

Taken at Midnight

by Mark Hayhurst

seen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 12 February 2015

This play, transferred to London from Chichester, concerns the attempts of Irmgard Litten (Penelope Wilton) to obtain the release of her lawyer son Hans (Martin Hutson) from 'protective custody' - that is, effective imprisonment - in various German concentration camps from 1933 until his suicide in Dachau in 1937. Hans Litten had earlier (in 1931) issued a sub-poena to Adolf Hitler to appear in a trial of four Brownshirts (members of the SA), a humiliation not forgotten when the Nazis came to power. (The play is based on Irmgard Litten's own memoirs.)

Love's Labour's Lost

by William Shakespeare

seen by live streaming from the RSC on 11 February 2015

This production directed by Christopher Luscombe features Edward Bennett as Berowne and Michelle Terry as Rosaline. It is set in the summer of 1914 ostensibly at Charlecote, the Elizabethan manor house near Stratford on Avon (in whose park the boy William is reputed by some to have poached deer).

Details of the manor house have been used and adapted to provide a library and a drawing room as interiors, and a gatehouse and roofscape, as well as indication of the park, as exteriors. The stage design, by Simon Higlett, is inventive and bewitching. Music by Nigel Hess evokes the style of Elgar and the often melancholy tone of folksong to brilliant effect.

The Merchant of Venice

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 9 February 2015

This production, directed by Rupert Goold, was originally performed by the RSC in Stratford. As Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre, Goold has revived the production with a new cast for the Islington theatre. Ian McDiarmid plays Shylock with Susannah Fielding as Portia.

Goold sets the play in modern Las Vegas, glitzy and brash, with the Belmont scenes imagined as a reality TV show from 'Belmont Productions' called 'Destiny' (though Portia and Nerissa do actually live somewhere other than in the TV studio). The play opens in a Las Vegas casino, and its mercenary aspects are constantly underscored by the gambling atmosphere in Vegas and the greed and superficiality of the suitors in 'Destiny'. All the characters speak with American accents, some of them extremely broad; Shylock is stereotypically New York Jewish.

Dara

adapted by Tanya Ronder from Shahid Nadeem's play

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) 6 February 2015

This play, originally performed in Pakistan, has been adapted into English. It tells of the rise of Aurangzeb, who succeeded his father Shah Jahan as Mughal Emperor in 1659 by eliminating his brothers, in particular the crown prince Dara.

The play is mainly concerned with the critical events of 1659, but includes a number of explanatory flashbacks (the earliest to 30 years before when Shah Jahan's sons and daughters were still teenagers), and a final scene in 1707 when Aurangzeb was 89 and close to death.

The Changeling

by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 4 February 2015

The wonderful indoor playhouse associated with Shakespeare's Globe on Bankside continues its series of Jacobean plays with the tragedy of Beatrice-Joanna as she finds that her attempts to secure her passion for Anselmero trap her in a spiral of moral degradation.

As usual the intimate candle-lit space is used to stunning effect. In fact the play opens in darkness with the major characters appearing and carrying a candle each with a reflector that shines the light only onto a part of their faces, so that eyes, mouths and noses seem to be floating past each other, the gazes snared by the sudden proximity of another's visage. This is a great introduction to a play in which the sight of another person can inflame passions of attraction and revulsion, but also in which many people are fundamentally unknowable or not what they seem.