A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at Racks Close Guildford on 17 June 2022

Abigail Anderson directs A Midsummer Night's Dream, the first play this summer's season by the Guildford Shakespeare Company, performed in Racks Close, a hilly park in the centre of Guildford. A cast of nine take on the twenty speaking roles, though intriguingly Titania's four servants are never actually seen; only Rosaline Blessed has a single role as Nic Bottom. As is almost traditonal, Theseus and Oberon were twinned (Jim Creighton), matched by Hippolyta and Titania (Johanne Murdock).

The play began in the picnic area, which was perhaps a too difficult acoustic for some of the audience. However, once the Mechanicals had arrived, ostensibly from among the picnickers, and distributed their parts, the audience was invited to walk up to the proper acting area where seats were provided before an amphitheatre-like stage. Here it was much easier to follow the proceedings, and the setting was ideal for the night's events in the forest.

The opening scene was played 'straight', that is, with no hint that the suavity of Theseus's words to Hippolyta might be masking a fairly brutal marriage arrangement, and no hint from Hippolyta that she might find the Athenian laws affecting Hermia in any way distasteful or wrong. (The long recriminations between Oberon and Titania were also curtailed.) The travails of the four young people were thus related only to their own misaligned loves and Puck's mismanagement of the magic flower; creating a light-hearted entertainment on a balmy summer's night. The brutality of the courtiers' disparagement of the Mechanicals' play was considerably watered down by the fact that only Theseus, Hippolyta and Philostrate were witnessing it - the two pairs of lovers were busy being various Mechanicals, and the members of the court were seated among the real audience with many of their harshest comments cut. Again, the effect was to lighten the mood, without detrcting from the ridiculousness of the Pyramus and Thisbe play: as should be expected Bottom provided a spectacularly over-the-top death scene.

Robin Goodfellow (Daniel Krikler) was an engaging Puck, at one point riding a unicycle, and appearing on stilts at the beginning of the second half. He was far too cheerful to be downcast by his mistakes or Oberon's displeasure, and thought nothing of scaling the tree in the centre of the stage to watch the foolish mortals from above. The sound design by Matt Eaton augmented his magical side by throwing his voice around through cunningly placed speakers, and this feature was also put to excellent use in directing the audience's attenton to the invisible Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed and Peaseblossom.

All in all, a delightful way to enjoy an outdoor version of the play.

Life of Pi

by Lolita Chakrabarti based on Yann Martel's novel

seen at Wyndhams Theatre on 11 June 2022

After the erudite expositions of Socratic philosophy in Cancelling Socrates, I saw on the same day a rather different approach to dramatising fundamental questions about existence in Lolita Chakrabarti's inventive adaptation of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi, in which a young boy (Hiran Abeysekera, ably supported by a dozen cast members and assorted puppeteers) first faces and then accounts for a lengthy voyage across the Pacific Ocean adrift in a lifeboat as the only human survivor of a shipwreck (he is accompanied by a number of animals including a huge Bengal tiger incongruously named Richard Parker).

The play, directed by Max Webster with brilliant set and costume designs by Tim Hatley, opens in the hospital in Mexico where Pi is recovering from his ordeal; representatives of the Canadian consulate (Pi and his family were due to settle in Canada) and the Japanese owners of the wrecked ship are interviewing him to try to find out what happened, but are baffled by the extravagant story he tells of shipping a zoo from India to Canada, and the perils of sharing a small lifeboat with a large tiger.

Here is another play in which narrative plays a significant part, but it is only a framing device, quickly seguing into dramatic reconstructions of the major events of Pi's story; with a dazzling array of video projections and more traditional opening and closing of doors and walls the coldly lit hospital ward is transformed into the vibrant town in which Pi and his family live, the port of embarkation, and the cramped conditions of the ocean-going vessel. Lastly the outlines of the lifeboat emerged as if by magic from the stage floor as the vast loneliness of the ocean was evoked by waves projected onto the floor and expansive vistas of sky elsewhere on the stage. All the while, fantastic puppetry designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell and directed by the latter brings to life the animals and ocean creatures encountered by the resilient boy at the centre of the story.

The boy has grown up exposed to three very different religious traditions - Hinduism, Islam and Christianity - and has participated in the communal aspects of all of them perhaps without deeply understanding their theological underpinnings. However he remains touchingly convinced that a religious outlook on life is essential; atheists he can cope with because at least they have a belief, while agnostics simply flummox him. This attitude undoubtedly helps him to survive even as the cold rationality of his intercolutors threatens to unhinge him; it's a remarkable testimony to the power of stagecraft, as much as to the power of fiction, that we are on his side as he asserts his right to tell his own story in his own way.

It was really exhilarating to see a play rush headlong through a strong and exciting tale with such confidence and energy.

Cancelling Socrates

by Howard Brenton

seen at the Jermyn Street Theatre on 11 June 2022

Tom Littler directs Jonathan Hyde as Socrates, Hannah Morrish as his wife Xanthippe (and also as a Daemon), Robert Mountford as his friend Euthyphro (and also as a Gaoler) and Sophie Ward as the hetaira Aspasia in Howard Brenton's new play Cancelling Socrates based on the four Platonic dialogues long published in the Penguin Classics series as The Last Days of Socrates.

The Jermyn Street Theatre is a small basement space underneath a restaurant, so the play is kept in an intimate form, the stage bare except for a fluted column, two pedestals for food offerings and a bench. The scene is amusingly set by having the sign pointing to the toilets in both Greek and English, and the formal announcements about starting times, switching off mobile phones and wearing facemasks given first in Greek and then in English translation (presumably modern rather than classical Greek). Indeed, when he first appears, the snippets of conversation involving Euthyphro, a young merchant who gives his name to the Platonic dialogue opening the sequence, come from invisible Greek speakers, though fortunately for us he answers in English.

Soon he meets Socrates, engagingly played as an eccentric with a powerful mind and a twitchy manner by Jonathan Hyde, Euthyphro soon being ambushed into a discussion about what constitutes justice and holiness, and whether the gods are just (particularly if different gods support different sides in a war, for example) before a conversation about their several reasons for attending the magistrates' court emerges. Euthyphro is, as usual, trapped by the Socratic line of questioning, but he is appalled at the flippancy with which Socrates seems to regard his own approaching case. 

Wisely the play does not directly present the Apology, Socrates's formal speeches to the court in which he defended himself against the accusation of sacrilege and corrupting the young, and then proposed an alternative to the death penalty voted by the jurors on his conviction (the defendant had the right to propose an alternative). There is no way the theatre could suggest a court hearing in which there were 501 jurors. Instead there is an extremely interesting and tense discussion between Aspasia and Xanthippe (a discussion that Plato would never have conceived of writing), the former appealing to politics and the state as the protectors of civic life, and the latter advancing the claims of family. Xanthippe has brought finely spun birds-nest pastries which she has made herself; Aspasia provides the new-fangled Egyptian delicacy she calls 'baklava' but scornfully dismisses any knowledge of how it is made, since a slave made it (that is what slaves are for). Irritatingly, Socrates, when he appears between his speeches, ignores his wife's cakes in favour of the exciting novelty of the pistachio-rich baklava. But Xanthippe knows her husband better than the worldly-wise Aspasia: she realises with horror that he will improvise his second speech rather than deliver the politic proposal prepared for him by Aspasia, and the result is disaster: the death penalty is upheld.

A cynical and down-to-earh gaoler presents the possibility that Socrates might simply escape from gaol rather than face the looming execution: as is cusomtanry for those with connections, the Gaoler has been bribed to let this happen. This covers the material in the short dialogue Crito but in a more comedic vein as the Gaoler's practical concerns (he needs th money for roof repairs at home) almost inure him to the restless Socratic pursuit of knowledge. The final scene of Socrates's life, depicted as an extended discussion of the afterlife among a host of friends in the Phaedo, is here presented in far more mundane fashion with only the Gaoler and Aspasia in attendace (Xanthippe having safely gone into exile with her sons), and the mysterious Daemon apparently present only to the great philosiopher's own consciousness.

The peculiarities of the Athenian court system and the weirdness of the position Socrates adopts - his apparent flippancy disguising a fearsome curiosity about deep philospohical questions - are brilliantly conveyed by the cast without stretching our patience or overloading us with too much informaton. At the same time there are some sly moments when the Athenian world and our own are shown to be not all that far apart: the trial takes place not long after a hideous plague beset the city, followed by a gruelling war (not that the UK is directly waging war at the moment, as Athens had been, but the point stands), and a waspish comment such as 'the young believe it's their absolute right not to be upset' drew wry chuckles from the mainly elderly audience.

These particular Platonic dialogues, among the most obviously dramatic of his works, have been finely brought to the stage in this excellent production.

Girl on an Altar

by Marina Carr

seen at the Kiln Theatre on 1 June 2022

Here we are at Aulis for the second time within a month as Marina Carr's new play Girl on an Altar has its world premiere at the Kiln Theatre in Kilburn in a production in partnership with Dublin's Abbey Theatre. It is directed by Annabelle Comyn with Eileen Walsh as Clytemnestra, David Walmsley as Agamemnon, Kate Stanley-Brennan as Cilissa (a serving woman, daughter of an Amazon), Nina Bowers as Cassandra, Daon Broni as Aegisthus and Jim Findley as Tyndareus.

From the cast list alone it is clear that this is very different from Age of Rage (reviewed recently), the expansive elaboration of the tangled story of the House of Atreus devised by Ivo van Hove. With Iphigenia and the other children only referred to here and not seen (and the young victim described as only ten years old) the revolting act of sacrifice impinges on the audience through the filter of her parents' reactions: Agamemnon's angry self-justifications and Clytemnestra's appalled feelings of betrayal and loss.

Again ten years are elided and we soon witness Agamemnon's homecoming from Troy, but the play pursues a sharply different narrative from the usual: the king and queen live in tense hostility as he knows that Clytemnestra has had an affair with Aegisthus - there is even a child - and she seethes with resentment and horror at what Agmemnon has done, while still occasionally falling prey to a visceral physical attraction to him. This proves to be a startlingly effective and powerful means to explore the dynamics of a ghastly situation at both the personal and political level. Agamemnon appears to think that present necessity overrides past misdeeds - 'tell me what will make it right between us again?' - while Clytemnestra is trapped in her grief and rage. The situation proves impossible to maintain; when Clytemnestra is banished to the living death of the palace harem rebellion is fomented by Aegsithus and her father Tyndareus, while yet another confrontation between the central couple leads to a shockingly familiar outcome - at which point the play finishes.

The set, designed by Tom Piper, features an enormous bed in an otherwise featureless room. When Clytemnestra is the favoured woman there is a rich brocade cover, but Cilissa eventually has to strip the bed and provide more austere linens when Cassandra is promoted to the premier position. Huge wooden-slatted screens at the back are occasionally pushed aside to reveal further vistas, but much of the action takes place in this suffocating domestic space, The actors not only speak to one another but also tell us directly what they are thinking and what they observe one another doing. It's a curious device which eliminates implausible speechifying while still transmitting vital information about their interior lives; at first I thought there was no direct dialogue at all, but then I realised that conversation and observation were profoundly intermingled, allowing all sorts of nuances and instabilities to flourish.  

The cast are excellent, Eileen Walsh in particular giving a towering performance as Clytemnestra, ably matched by the masculine swagger of David Walmsley's Agamemnon. This is a completely refreshing (though hardly consoling) investigation of a story now millennia old, proving once again the extraordinary dramatic power of these ancient tragedies.