Hansard

by Simon Woods

seen by live streaming from the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 7 November 2019

Simon Godwin directs Alex Jennings as Robin Hesketh (MP and junior Cabinet Minister) and Lindsay Duncan as his wife Diana in an intense drama which begins almost innocuously as social or political comedy set in May 1988, in the week that the Local Government Act including the notorious section 28 was passed into law.

Robin returns to the marital home in the Cotswolds on the Saturday morning after the crucial vote to find Diana still not dressed, and a familiar sparring begins in which it becomes clear that she has nothing but scorn for the role of politician's wife, and, even more difficult for her husband, little sympathy with Tory policy or the general outlook of her husband.  The arguments are presumably well worn in the house, but still engaged on both sides with some degree of passion mixed with the sort of resigned weariness that allows the audience to be amused.

Antony and Cleopatra

by William Shakespeare

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 2nd January 2019

Simon Godwin directs Ralph Fiennes as Antony, Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra, Tunji Kasim as Octavius Caesar and Tim McMullan as Enobarbus in a production sumptuously designed by Hildegard Bechtler making inspired use of the famed Olivier drum revolve to resolve the difficult task of transferring quickly the scene of action across various sites in the Mediterranean world (though the programme informs us that the play is set in 'an imagined present').

Boldly, the play here opens with the final tableau of the text, Caesar pronouncing (most of) the final eulogy, and then Agrippa taking parts of Philo's opening speech as if commenting on the denouement rather than setting the scene. At this point the revolve reveals the Egyptian scene and the body of Cleopatra becomes the Queen lazily awaiting the arrival of her lover. 

Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 8 March 2017

Hamlet again - the fifth since I started this blog, and I think the twentieth stage production I have seen (plus three films). This time, Robert Icke directs Andrew Scott as Hamlet, Juliet Stevenson as Gertrude, Angus Wright as Claudius, Jessica Brown Findlay as Ophelia, Peter Wight as Polonius, Luke Thompson as Laertes, David Rintoul as the Ghost and the Player-King and Elliot Barnes-Worrell as Horatio, with sets and costumes designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

A modern Hamlet with video surveillance cameras first alerting the guards to the Ghost's appearance, TV newsreel footage of the old king's funeral at the beginning, and Hamlet's at the end (a really nice touch to have the running text at the foot of the screen in Danish), and a camera always ready to film coverage of public royal occasions such as the beginning of the marriage feast, the Royal party attending the play and the fencing match, and Claudius making various public announcements. 

Mary Stuart

by Friedrich Schiller adapted by Robert Icke

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 14 December 2016

This production is directed by Robert Ice with set and costume designs by Hildegard Bechtler. Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams take the parts of Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I of England, selecting which part to play in each performance on the toss of a coin. (On days with matinee performances, the matinee allocation is reversed for the evening performance). Vincent Franklin is Burleigh (Elizabeth's wily political adviser), John Light is Leicester (his emotional allegiance apparently torn between the two queens), and Rudi Dharmalingam is Mortimer (a convert to Catholicism and Mary's cause).

The play is not historically accurate - it famously includes a personal confrontation between Mary and Elizabeth which never took place - but it embodies serious political and philosophical themes in intensely powerful and bitterly opposed personalities. Can the agents of one state imprison the head of another state? Can the prisoner, a queen, be justly tried by a court which by definition cannot be 'of her peers'? How much is the sovereignty of a governing queen constrained by the wishes of her people and her councillors? How do the courtiers survive the minefield of their queen's imperious will? All this and more is on display here.

Richard III

by William Shakespeare

seen by live streaming from the Almeida Theatre on 21 July 2016

Rupert Goold directs Ralph Fiennes as the eponymous king, with Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Margaret, Finbar Lynch as Buckingham and Aislín McGuckin as Queen Elizabeth. The set is designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

The play opens with a forensic excavation of a pit or grave, taking place while the audience enters. This is, it transpires, the famous exhumation of King Richard's remains from under a car park in Leicester in 2012. As the news broadcast of the DNA confirmation of the skeleton's identity fades, the play begins. The grave remains constantly visible, usually through a perspex floor; but it is occasionally used as the receptacle for executed or murdered victims of the king, before he himself is finally killed in it during the battle at Bosworth Field.

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 5 March 2016

Chekhov's play has been adapted by the director Robert Icke so that its setting is less obviously Russian (Vanya is 'Uncle Johnnie') and also later than the nineteenth century (there is a telephone, and electric light in the house). It features Paul Rhys as John (Vanya), Jessica Brown Findlay as Sonya, Tobias Menzies as Michael (Astrov, the doctor), and Susan Wooldridge as Maria (John's mother and Sonya's grandmother), with Hilton McRae as Alexander (the professor) and Vanessa Kirby as his second wife Elena, Richard Lumsden as Cartwright (Telyeghin) and Ann Queensberry as the nanny. The production is designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

On a raised platform of wooden boards, with posts at each corner supporting a black roof or canopy, there are a few props, and an old nanny and a visiting doctor. Conversation is desultory, the old woman offering tea and complaining about the disruption to the routines of the household, the doctor absorbed with signs of his slow disintegration into mediocrity. Slowly, the whole platform revolves, while a neighbour and the members of an ill-assorted family appear and disappear. The management of the estate, which normally occupies Sonya and her uncle Johnnie, has lapsed during the visit of Sonya's father and stepmother who seem to have exerted a fatal lassitude simply by being there, city folk ill at ease in the country. But John is attracted to Elena, his brother-in-law's new wife (Sonya's mother was his sister), and this adds to the simmering tensions.

Waste

by Harley Granville Barker

seen at the National Theatre (Lyttleton) on 27 February

This production is directed by Roger Michell and designed by Hildegard Bechtler, and features Charles Edwards as Henry Trebell, Sylvestra le Touzel as Frances Trebell and Olivia Williams as Amy O'Connell.

The play, banned on its initial publication in 1907, was revised in the 1920s though its subject matter was still controversial. This production uses the later version of the play, in which, among other things, the character of Amy O'Connell is portrayed as more active in creating the brief but catastrophic liaison between herself and Henry Trebell. The consequences - an unwanted child and a fatal illegal abortion - lead to all manner of waste: the child and mother dead, the promising career of the father in ruins (causing his own suicide), the political establishment seen to be immovably patrician, self-serving and misogynistic. But, crucially, everyone is complicit and no-one spotless.

Teddy Ferrara

by Christopher Shinn

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 15 October 2015

The play, directed by Dominic Cooke and designed by Hildegard Bechtler, features Luke Newberry as Gabe, Oliver Johnstone as Drew, Matthew Marsh as the college president and Ryan McParland as Teddy.

This play depicts the contradictory and confusing attitudes surrounding campus politics as the administration attempts to deal with calls for less discrimination in the wake of a student suicide. Drew, the editor of the student newspaper, publishes an article claiming that the suicide was gay, though the issue had never before been raised. When Teddy Ferrara, a new gay student, also takes his own life, the situation becomes even more explosive.

Oresteia

by Aeschylus in a new version created by Robert Icke

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 27 June 2015

'Oresteia', directed by Robert Icke and designed by Hildegard Bechtler, features Lia Williams as Klytemnestra, Angus Wright as Agamemnon (and Aegisthus), Luke Thompson as Orestes and Jessica Brown Findlay as Elektra. It is the first in a series of Greek plays at the Almeida in 2015.

The 'new version' is definitely a 'version' and not merely a translation of the Greek text. The original trilogy ('Agamemnon', 'Choephori' or 'Libation Bearers', and 'Eumenides' or 'Kindly Ones') has in effect been turned into a tetralogy by dramatising an incident mentioned in 'Agamemnon' as a fully-fledged action in its own right. Looked at another way, Euripides's play 'Iphigenia at Aulis' has been adapted into an extended prologue to Aeschylus's trilogy.