Three Sisters

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 19 March 2025

Caroline Steinbeis directs Michell Terry as Olga, Shannon Tarbet as Masha and Ruby Thompson as Irina in Rory Mullarkey's translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters. 

The candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an ideal space for rendering the intimacy verging on claustrophobic intensity of a Russian household existing on faded grandeur (their father was a General) and over-optimistic hopes for the future - fulfilment in work or fulfilment in Moscow seem to keep the sisters going, though Olga is crushed by her work, Masha is disillusioned in her marriage, and Irina enthuses about the ennobling prospects of work without having yet had to try it. Their brother Andrei (Luke Thompson) meanwhile dreams of becoming a professor - or is it that his sisters dream this for him? - and in the meantime giddily marries a local social climber Natalya (Natalie Klamar).

Soldiers are billeted in the town and provide a welcome distraction, though they too are marking time. Tuzenbach (Michael Abubakar) and Solyony (Richard Pyros) both fall for Irina, while the philosophising Vershinin (Paul Ready) attracts Masha. Despite these developments a certain listlessness pervades the play, as the characters talk and talk but rarely converse: even Tuzenbach's declaration to Irina is baffled by her less than enthusiastic response, while we have to infer a dalliance between Masha and Vershinin and wonder at the credulity of her husband Kulyigin (Keir Charles). In a clever twist, Natalya's infidelity (also obvious to all except her spouse) is with someone whom we never see.

The first act is comparatively brightly lit for Irina's name day celebrations and the first arrival of the soldiers, but the middle two acts take place at night time (though not the same night) and the overhead candelabra are extinguished; the light sources are simply the candles on the pillars and those held close to the face by the actors. This cleverly focuses the attention on the tell-tale signs of stress and impatience particularly among the women. By the time of the second act Andrei is married and Natalya has begun her take-over of the management of the house, relying on a cunning mixture of sentimentality over her children (who could criticise her for wanting what's best for them?) and a ruthless way with servants and old fashioned views of loyalty. The sisters are powerless to stop her and Andrei has retreated to gambling and domestic inaction.

The third act, notionally in the bedroom now shared by Olga and Irina (since Natalya's son "needs" the healthier atmosphere of what had been Irina's bedroom) is here envisaged as a general space at the top of a stairway cleverly revealed in the stage floor. It's hardly surprising that menfolk retreating from the fire raging through the town should bed down for a while here until they are evicted in the name of propriety. Even more effectively, when Andrei embarks on his long self-justification, where it might be presumed that his sisters can hear him while modestly behind screens, here, they have retreated to further annexes, leaving him talking to no-one. This serves to reinforce the general unwillingness of so many of the characters to face up to unpleasantness of any sort: Olga's tired "oh, leave it until tomorrow, Andrei" is quite understandable at the end of an exhausting night, but also fatally symptomatic of a pervasive procrastination.

In the open air again, the final act in which hopes are dashed is a masterclass in dramatic tension: a duel is obviously going to happen but no-one will directly talk about it, and in the meantime the departure of the soldiers prompts only banal farewells.

The cast performs well, the verbosity of some of the characters, and their infuriating blindnesses, are convincingly presented without unduly exasperating the audience. Intriguingly there is more unbridled bad temper on display than in other productions of the play as tempers fray: Masha is obviously highly strung from the beginning; Solyony (the definitely rejected suitor) verges on the psychopathic; Natalya veers quickly from a nauseating wheedling to perhaps confected but still vicious rage when crossed. In this intimate theatrical space the sisters are more certainly trapped no matter what.

Cymbeline

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 18 January 2025

Jennifer Tang directs Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare's late plays, which is full of incident, misunderstandings, disguises, and an almost absurd number of resolutions: a description of the plot on the page makes it seem utterly chaotic and implausible, but in performance (if well done) it can be fun, exciting, distressing and moving by turns - even though it is still implausible.

So it proves in this production in the intimate candle-lit space of the Sam Wanamaker theatre, the second time I have seen the play produced here (see the review of 12 March 2016). Cymbeline, a contemporary of Caesar Augustus, is facing a Roman invasion (not actually historical in Augustus's time), while his daughter Imogen (or now more commonly Innogen) has earned his wrath by marrying a commoner (of Roman extraction to boot); and his consort is the classic wicked stepmother with an uncouth son of her own (the aptly named Cloten, played by Jordan Mifsúd) who has designs on the hapless princess.

Here, in an ingenious twist to the political opposition between Britons and Romans, the whole society is imagined as being a matriarchy, and Cymbeline (Martina Laird) is the Queen rather than the King of Britain. Furthermore, Innogen's unapproved marriage is to a woman, an arrangement not remarked on in any way apart from the fact that it does not have the Queen's blessing (and is an obstacle to Cloten's desires). All the rituals of the court, and its religious rites, are female-oriented, with all references to Jupiter in the text replaced with prayers and invocations to Gaia. It's a remarkably effective idea to soften the effect of some significant 'gender-blind' casting, and it proves an intelligent way of creating a 'British' culture in preference to stereotyped Druidism.

Innogen (Gabrielle Brooks) and Posthumus (Nadi Kem-Sayfi) are parted almost as soon as they are married, and Posthumus gets involved in a rash wager that Innogen is chaste and faithful, which the scheming Iachimo (Piero Niel-Mee) apparently disproves by smuggling himself into her bedchamber and taking an inventory of its design and of Innogen's distinctive mole. The masculine aura of this shoddy wager is preserved even with Posthumus being female, and it is the trigger for much of the subsequent plot development.

Soon many of the characters are in Wales, well away from the court; the setting should be the wild hillsides, which is of course impossible in the playhouse. Nonetheless the verve of the production encourages indulgence on this point as on so many others, not least the propensity for several characters to adopt or be given false names and disguises which delay any chance of untangling all the cross-purposes. Even though the fact that Innogen mistakes Colton's headless body for that of Posthumus, simply because Cloten is wearing Posthumus's clothes, is rendered doubly implausible since one was a man and the other a woman, in the rush of events and the momentary revulsion inherent in the whole scene the confusion is allowed to pass.

In a series of revelations and explanations which provoke delighted hilarity in the audience, everyone finds out everything they need to know. With just the right amount of seriousness in the cast, these denouements pass muster, and all is as it should be - even the conniving Iachimo has a chance to reform. As Oscar Wilde much later had it, "the good end happily and the bad unhappily: that is the meaning of Fiction" .

Richard II

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 5 April 2019

Adjoa Andoh and Lynette Linton co-direct an exciting production of Richard II performed by a cast of women of colour supported by an entirely female stage crew. Adjoa Andoh herself plays King Richard, with Sarah Niles as Bolingbroke, Dona Croll as John of Gaunt, Shobna Gulati as the Duke of York, Ayesha Dharker as Aumerle, Leila Farzad as the Queen, Indra Ové as both Mowbray and Northumberland, and Nicholle Cherrie, Lourdes Faberes and Sarah Lam playing the other parts.

There is of course an element of statement-making about all this: why should actors of any gender or race be denied the chance to play Shakespeare, especially considering that originally (in Shakespeare's day) all the female parts were taken by men or boys? But, dramatically as an experience on stage, the issue is virtually irrelevant: the production is magnificent at exploring new facets of a familiar - even over-familiar - story, simply by capitalising on the extraordinary energy and freshness of the performances and the exotic setting.

Edward II

by Christopher Marlowe

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 12 March 2019

Nick Bagnall directs Tom Stuart as King Edward II, Katie West as Queen Isabella, Jonathan Livingstone as Young Mortimer, and Beru Tessema as Piers Gaveston, with a supporting company of seven taking the other parts, in Christopher Marlowe's play about the disastrous career of the king who fatefully places a selfish desire for personal pleasure above the recognised responsibilities of a medieval ruler.

Marlowe, often seen as a histrionic, not to say bombastic, playwright in contrast to the more nuanced Shakespeare, is well served in the candlelit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, where the lyrical aspects of his language can be appreciated as much as the dramatic turns of the plot. In particular, the intense, and intensely physical, relationship between Edward and Gaveston is expressed by high-flown but not insincere poetry, which has a more personal resonance in the smaller acting space of this theatre.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 21 September 2016

Shakespeare's Globe and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse have collaborated on this production, which is directed by Nick Bagnall (from Liverpool E&P) and designed by Katie Sykes. The play, one of Shakespeare's earliest, has been imaginatively re-set in the 1960s, with many clever musical pastiches and a great deal of energetic climbing of ladders.

The traditional house style of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse has been subverted here, understandably so as the production is to go on tour to venues both inside and out. Though the candles remain lit, there is plenty of electric light as well, not least because there is also a stage within the stage that is crammed with the musical instruments required by a pop band; this is brightly lit and could easily belong in an edition of Top of the Pops. Characters ascend and descend on either side of this box, and the Playhouse's own balcony gives on to its top, constantly tempting the cast to leap over the railing which usually protects the musicians from falling.

The 60s setting works well with the general tone of the play, in which young people are finding their way often quite selfishly, and certainly kicking against the restraints of the older generation. The uneasy tone (uneasy at least for modern sensibilities), in which male friendship is at first betrayed and at the end appears to trump romantic longings, is somewhat mitigated by the heady sense of experiment and possibility associated with the swinging sixties. This is exemplified in the clever device whereby the band of outlaws which Valentine joins when he is exiled from Milan becomes The Outlaws, a raucous rock band.

The whole concept is ably supported by the cast, many of whom are both strong actors and proficient musicians. Though the juxtaposition of modern music and Shakespearean verse can be a woeful mistake, in this case there is no problem: the verse speaking is fine and the sentiments of the songs complement the action. The two gentlemen Valentine (Guy Hughes) and Proteus (Dharmesh Patel) are passionate young men, though the former is rather proper and the latter suddenly unscrupulous.

The only false note came from Garry Cooper playing the older parts (the two disobliging fathers). His exaggerated style of villainy, full of strange tics and jerks, seemed out of place amid the more natural exuberance of the younger players. Amber James had the rather thankless task of playing Thurio, the spurned suitor of Sylvia - a shallow character made more flat by being cross-dressed. She was far more impressive as Julia's maid Lucetta in an early scene of the play.

Leah Brotherhood (Julia) and Aruhan Galieva (Sylvia) were the objects of affection, all too often seen as little more than that. However each character has a mind of her own, leading to a touching scene in which Sylvia speaks of her pity for Julia all unaware that the young messenger she addresses is actually Julia in disguise.

Comedy is provided by the two servants Speed and Launce. The director Nick Bagnall stood in for Speed capably with script in hand where necessary. Launce was excellently played by Charlotte Mills pulling off the very difficult trick of talking to a dog much of the time, represented by the otherwise non-speaking musician in the band (Fred Thomas). This dextrous patter is of the sort that most dates Shakespeare's clowns, but here it was very well managed.

It is fascinating how many themes in this play are developed in later plays with more power and subtlety. They are, of course, the stock themes of romantic comedy - disguise, thwarted love, mistaken identity, and so forth - but even here the darker side is revealed in some of the twists. It is something of a shock when Valentine offers to give up Sylvia to cement his friendship with Proteus, even though Sylvia clearly prefers Valentine. Proteus just as abruptly dismisses the offer and turns back to Julia whom he has moments before felled with a blow (admittedly thinking 'him' to be Sebastian). In fact, in the final scene both young women are merely observers of the spectacle of the men (including Sylvia's father) arranging matters to suit themselves. In the play they have no comment to make, but in this production the pardoning of the outlaws is replaced by a song of angry pain by Julia and Sylvia who rail at their loneliness. The play hardly suffers from this reminder that all may not be well. 

Pericles

by William Shakespeare (and George Wilkins)

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 24 March 2016

Dominic Dromgoole directs James Garnon (Pericles), Jessica Baglow (Marina), Dorothea Myer-Bennett (Thaisa and Dionyza), Simon Armstrong (Antiochus and Simonides), Fergal McElherron (Helicanus and the Pander), Dennis Herdman (Bolt), Kirsty Woodward (Lychorida and the Bawd), Steffan Donnelly (Lysimachus) and Shiela Reid (Gower) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

Pericles, the only play commonly attributed to Shakespeare but not included in the First Folio edition of his plays, is actually a collaboration, and the text is thought to be woefully defective in certain places. However, despite its episodic and even disjointed plot, and its reliance on fantastical coincidences and unlikely turns of events, it can be a very satisfactory theatrical experience.

The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 15 March 2016

Dominic Dromgoole directs Tim McMullan (Prospero), Phoebe Pryce (Miranda), Dharmesh Patel (Ferdinand), Pippa Nixon (Ariel) Fisayo Akinade (Caliban), Trevor Fox (Stephano) and Dominic Rowan (Trinculo) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

A play which starts on a boat engulfed by a terrifying storm, and continues entirely with scenes on an island, might seem a tall order for an intimate candle-lit space with a highly decorated  wooden screen at the back of the stage and no sense of the natural world about it. However, the storm was brilliantly staged in semi-darkness, with crew and passengers careering across the stage in unison as if the whole edifice were tilting with the waves. The only questionable gambits were to have a large stylised picture of a storm displayed, with Prospero in front of it with his staff, before the action began, and to have Ariel swinging on a lantern above during the storm itself. This weakened the important revelation in the second scene that the storm, so realistically presented, is in fact only a concoction of Prospero's art.

Cymbeline

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 12 March 2016

Sam Yates directs Emily Barber (Imogen - or Innogen as the Globe researchers have preferred to call her), Jonjo O'Neill (Posthumus), Calum Callaghan (Cloten), Joseph Marcell (King Cymbeline), Pauline McLynn (his Queen) and Eugene O'Hare (Iachimo) as part of a season of Shakespeare's four 'romance' plays.

The plot of Cymbeline is over-complex, with princes kidnapped at birth, a loving couple separated and subjected to mischievous misinformation, a king besotted with an evil queen, a fraught political situation, and a final scene in which all is straightened out in a manner that always threatens to fall into sheer absurdity as one character after another comes forward with a variation of 'oh, but that means .... ' The unlikelihoods and coincidences pile up in what ought to be a fatally damaging mess, but given the right direction, it can all prove both entertaining and curiously satisfactory.

This production proves the point. The several strands of the plot are played out seriously, which means that many of them could prove disastrous for the characters - and indeed Cloten the hapless son of the queen is decapitated. The final resolutions, though inevitably comic in their pell-mell succession, transform what could have been tragedy into benevolent reconciliation. The unreasonable jealousy of Posthumus leads not to murder as Othello's does, but into timely remorse. The murderous plots of the queen do not engender the slaughter of Macbeth's career; the intransigence of Cymbeline does not lead to Lear's catastrophe even though he is quite as angry at his daughter to begin with.

The Winter's Tale

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 9 March 2016

Michael Longhurst directs John Light (Leontes), Rachel Stirling (Hermione), Niamh Cusack (Paulina), Tia Bannon (Perdita), Steffan Donnelly (Florizel), David Yelland (Antigonus) and James Garnon (Autolycus) as part of a season of Shakespeare' four 'romance' plays.

It is interesting to compare this production with Kenneth Branagh's (reviewed in November 2015). The size and the ambience of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse make for a very different experience - the opening scenes seemed more intense, less stately, with Leontes prwoling in his jealousy far closer to this wife and friend. Meanwhile in the second half, Autolycus could interact far more directly with the audience, even purloining a pair of spectacles at one point to facilitate his 'disguise' as a courtier.

Ellen Terry with Eileen Atkins

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 21 January 2016

The great actress Ellen Terry began touring with a series of lectures on Shakespeare in the latter part of her career. She drew her material from her vast experience of acting many of the major female parts. 

Eileen Atkins has selected and arranged excerpts from these lectures both to show the sorts of things that Ellen Terry discussed, and to showcase her own considerable acting talent. Thus we see Atkins's impression of Terry's analysis and performance of a number of celebrated roles - Beatrice, Rosalind (a part she regretted that she had never actually played), Desdemona, Viola, Juliet. No matter that Terry was in her sixties when she began lecturing, and that Eileen Atkins is now over eighty - the delivery is sharp, the verse speaking assured, and the revelation of character through the recitation of mere excerpts of speeches is fascinating and rewarding.

As a tribute from one great actress to another, looking back over a century, and as a tribute by Ellen Terry to her beloved Shakespeare, this was a marvellous use of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Thomas Tallis

by Jessica Swale

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 7 November 2015

The play, directed by Adele Thomas and designed by Hannah Clark with Harry Christophers providing musical expertise, features Brendan O'Hea as Thomas Tallis, with Simon Harrison and Katy Stephens taking various parts and Guy Amos as King Edward VI, and with six singers from The Sixteen.

In the gorgeous atmosphere of the candle-lit playhouse the music of the great Tudor composer Thomas Tallis could hardly fail to charm, and indeed as the play opens with Tallis himself speaking to us about the roughness of human speech being transformed into song we await the first sounds of polyphony with eager expectation. We are not disappointed, as the sounds emerge from behind the doors, and then the six singers appear - immaculately attired in modern evening dress. 

The Death of King Arthur

translated by Simon Armitage

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 14 July 2015

The so-called 'alliterative Morte Arthure' is a poem composed in about 1400 in alliterative verse. A modern translation by Simon Armitage has been prepared for dramatic recitation by the poet assisted by David Birrell and Polly Frame, with musician Paul Johnson, directed by Nick Bagnall.

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse proves an ideal location to hear the recitation of a mediaeval English poem, just as it did a few weeks ago for 'Beowulf'. Simon Armitage presents his own modern alliterative version of the original poem, with musical accompaniment (mainly percussive, with some pipes) and two actors to vary the pace and characterisation. These are essential, as his own reading style is not dramatic, but rather sing-song - effective in a narrator with this style of verse, but made all the more so with the contrasts provided by the others. David Birrell mostly gives Arthur's speeches, while Polly Frame provides some narrative, and also speeches by the Emperor Lucius and other characters.

Kreutzer vs Kreutzer

by Laura Wade

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 12 July 2015

This new 'play for voices' features Katherine Parkinson as 'Woman' and Samuel West as 'Man', with Thomas Gould (violin) and Ana-Maria Vera (piano) playing Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 9 (the 'Kreutzer' ), and Thomas Gould (first violin), Jamie Campbell (second violin), Max Baillie (viola) and Minat Lyons (cello) playing Janáček's String Quartet No. 1 (the 'Keutzer Sonata'). It is directed by Tamara Harvey.

Laura Wade has had the brilliant idea of linking three famous works - the two musical pieces mentioned above and Tolstoy's story 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - in a meditation on the fraught relationships between men and women. Tolstoy's story is related by a man who has killed his wife from jealousy when she has begun an affair with a musician friend of his while they were practising Beethoven's sonata together. Janáček's quartet, in turn, is a response to Tolstoy's story, inflected by his own unconsummated passion for a young married woman (Kamila Stösslová) to whom he wrote more than 700 letters towards the end of his life.

Beowulf

performed by Julian Glover and Jamie Glover

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 24 May 2015

Julian Glover has been reciting a performing version of 'Beowulf' for some years. It is abridged from Michael Alexander's 1973 translation for Penguin Classics, with some material from Edwin Morgan's 1952 translation and occasional lines from the original Old English text. On this occasion (the evening recitation) he was performing it for the last time and 'handing on' the oral tradition to his son Jamie.

The candlelit playhouse was an appropriate venue even though its decorative style is far removed from ancient or even mediaeval English architecture; and there was in fact some discreet spotlighting of the stage too. Julian Glover began by chatting to members of the audience in the pit, in order (he said) to get the recognition chatter over and done with before the recitation started. He was casually dressed, but wearing an Anglo-Saxon style cross pendant.

Once started he moved from easy geniality to firm assurance and commanding speech according to the demands of the poem. With only a table, two chairs, a drinking tankard and a sword for props, he evoked the story with consummate ease, and demonstrated the enormous power of the poem in recitation (as opposed to book reading), despite the use of the translation. The Old English text, when spoken, added an emphatic air of mystery and age; often a translation followed (or had immediately preceded) these lines, demonstrating how extremely distant the original is from common understanding, but at the same time contributing strongly to the atmosphere of the evening.

The poem has three major movements - the scene setting and Beowulf's struggle with Grendel, which occupied the first part, the struggle with Grendel's mother which began the second part, and Beowulf's struggle with the dragon fifty years later which concludes the work. The fights of Beowulf's youth are full of proud endevour and triumphant celebration, while the final struggle leads to his death, and to the passing of the flame, so to speak, to his young kinsman Wiglaf. Thus it was entirely appropriate that on this occasion Julian should stop speaking at the moment of Beowulf's death, and that Jamie should come onto the stage from the pit to conclude the account of his funeral. The shape of the performance thus matched the narrative of the poem and lent an extra authenticity to the whole experience of the oral tradition.

The Broken Heart

by John Ford

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 24 March 2015

Directed by Caroline Steinbeis with Brian Ferguson as Orgilus, Amy Morgan as Penthea, Sarah MacRae as Calantha, Owen Teale as Bassanes, and Luke Thompson as Ithocles.

The play is set in Sparta, with references to the gods, Delphi and oracles to underline its pre-Christian milieu. The word 'spartan' evokes notions of stoicism and self-denial as ideal character traits; the modern connotations of frugality and austerity arise as the consequence of rigorous personal self-control, not as mere descriptions of the physical or economic environment. Thus there is an atmosphere of self-denial and self-control assumed to essential aspects of civic virtue, and this permeates and poisons the relationships in the play.

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.

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.