Everyman

a new adaptation by Carol Ann Duffy

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 27 April 2015

The late-mediaeval morality play has been adapted and expanded by the current Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. It is directed by Rufus Norris, the new Artistic Director of the National Theatre, and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Everyman, Kate Duchêne as God (and Good Deeds), Dermot Crowley as Death and Penny Layden as Knowledge.

The play opens with Everyman falling slowly from the fly gallery of the Olivier theatre into a pit created in the drum revolve - curiously, the reverse of the poignant conclusion of the opera 'Between Worlds' which I saw a couple of days previously. The two pieces both deal with the unexpected but inevitable confrontation with death, but in 'Everyman' the emphasis is on a personal 'reckoning' with God, which in turn requires a searching self-reckoning as Everyman, totally unprepared, confronts his maker.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire

by Caryl Churchill

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 16 April 2015

The play, directed by Lyndsey Turner, features a cast of eighteen speaking actors taking some twenty-seven parts supported by forty-four members of the Community Company, a group created from the outreach work of the National Theatre's Learning Department.

'Light Shining' looks at the English Civil War and the Commonwealth not as a conventional history play dramatising pivotal historical events (the King's duplicity, the battles, and so forth) but rather through a whole series of vignettes in which ordinary people grapple with the perplexing ideas of their time: dissent, obedience, millennial hopes, freedom, bondage, religious faith. The first half closes with scenes from the Putney Debates of 1647, taken from the transcripts of the sessions. Here, significant historical characters such as Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law Henry Ireton are indeed present, but there is no attempt to characterise them or to provide their 'back story' - the focus is entirely on the debate concerning democratic representation.

King John

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Temple Church (Middle Temple) on 15 April 2015

Shakespeare's Globe's first production of 'King John' is being performed at various historically relevant locations before coming to the Globe itself in the summer. The Temple Church, located in the Middle Temple which supported John during the baronial crisis of 1215, is particularly evocative as one of the characters in the play (the Earl of Pembroke) is actually buried there.

The production, directed by James Dacre, features Jo Stone-Fewings as King John, Alex Waldmann as the Bastard, Barbara Marten as Queen Eleanor, Tanya Moodie as Constance, Laurence Belcher as Prince Arthur and Mark Meadows as Hubert.  

The audience enters the Round Church - the image of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem - to find monks chanting around the figure of King John lying in state on a catafalque, in imitation of the effigy in Worcester Cathedral (a copy of which is nearby). However the performance takes place in the adjoining nave and chancel, where a series of rostrums has been constructed along the whole length of the central aisle and also along the transepts. The bulk of the lighting is provided by candles at floor level along the rostra and in various higher clusters, with some discreet spotlights which are at first hardly noticeable as the spring twilight streams through the windows. The general effect - chanting, lighting and quantities of incense - is dramatic and exciting.

The Hard Problem

by Tom Stoppard

seen at the National Theatre (Dorfman) on 28 March 2015

Tom Stoppard's new play is directed by Nicholas Hytner (the retiring Artistic Director of the National Theatre) with Olivia Vinall as Hilary and Damien Molony as Spike. It is partly an examination of the 'hard problem' of the relation between consciousness and physics, with reflections on the questions of ethical goodness and the existence of God, and also on game theory as manifested in the machinations of the financial world.

The summary shows the grand themes jostling for attention in a single dramatic piece. Stoppard has an impressive track record in juxtaposing unexpected storylines to illustrate often abstruse philosophical questions while providing fizzing entertainment - see for example 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead', 'Jumpers', 'Travesties' and 'Arcadia'. Unfortunately this play is not one to add to the list.

A View from the Bridge

by Arthur Miller

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 27 March 2015

The play, transferred from the Young Vic, is directed by Ivo van Hove with Mark Strong as Eddie Carbone, Nicola Walker as his wife Beatrice, Phoebe Fox as his niece Catherine, Luke Norris as her fiance Rodolpho, Emun Elliott as Rodolpho's brother Marco, and Michael Gould as the lawyer Alfieri.

Miller's tense drama from 1955, revised in 1956, is here stripped of almost all realistic reference to reveal its strong affiliation with Greek tragedy. The set is a bare space made almost like a shallow pit through being surrounded on all four sides by a low-level boundary which can be used as benches or to signify the enclosing walls of a room. At the back is a wall with a single entrance cut in its centre leading to a black space behind.

Antigone

by Sophokles newly translated by Anne Carson

seen at the Barbican on 26 March 2015

The play is directed by Ivo van Hove and stars Juliette Binoche as Antigone and Patrick O'Kane as Kreon.

A wide platform with some spaces at the front (between the platform and the true stage level) which could be low shelves for books or folders in an office, or for ornaments in a living room. A high wall at the back along the whole width of the stage, with a narrow vertical rectangle cut in its centre and surmounted by a large circle almost exactly covered by a disk. The space beyond the rectangle is black, an entranceway into some unfathomable space. Light bleeds around the edges of the disk covering the circle.

Thus the setting for Ivo van Hove's striking interpretation of 'Antigone'. As the play begins, dust is blown across the stage, and the huge wall becomes a screen onto which is projected a dry landscape engulfed in a dust-storm. The disk slowly moves in a great circular sweep until it completely disappears, revealing a dazzling circle of light, as if a solar eclipse were just ending.