The Tempest

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon on 13 June 2026

Richard Eyre directs Kenneth Branagh as Prospero with Ruby Stokes as Miranda, Amara Okereke as Ariel, Ashley Zhangazha as Caliban and Fred Woodley Evans as Ferdinand in a production designed by Bob Crowley.

A previous RSC production featuring a famous actor returning to the fold (Simon Russell Beale) made a point of using sophisticated computer technology to enhance the magical aspects of Prospero's island (see my review from 19 July 2017). In this new production, with Kenneth Branagh acting for the RSC again after many years, the stage is almost completely bare, with a large slightly raised circular platform; a backcloth allows for projections of a storm, and more tranquil island sunlight, and it is occasionally opened to reveal a further cloth put to similar uses.

The opening storm is thrillingly evoked with projected rain in a wild gale, and waves apparently surging on the stage floor, while the circular platform tilts alarmingly. A directorial decision has been made to have Prospero appear quietly before all this starts, donning mage-like robes and taking up a wand to create the storm, more like the conductor of an orchestra, since the wand was essentially a conductor's baton. Should we not be led to believe that the storm is real, until we discover with Miranda in the second scene that it has been confected by her father? It's just a little awkward to have Prospero so relentlessly visible during the storm when attention should be fully on the hapless ship's crew and passengers.

Branagh's Prospero, though almost entirely in control of all he surveys, is not particularly dictatorial; the long conversation with Miranda was without the emotional tension it sometimes has, allowing for a more genial father-daughter relationship. He has more steeliness in relation to Ariel when she provokes him, and to Caliban who is always provocative, and he pursues his plan of vengeance methodically until the moment when he (to the surprise of the three sinful men, and perhaps himself) offers forgiveness. The overall effect, though of course Branagh has a masterful command of verse-speaking, is somewhat muted in comparison with more volatile interpretations of the character in other productions.

The burgeoning love between Miranda and Ferdinand is nicely played out, and Ferdinand looks suitably sweat-bound after carrying logs for hours in the island's heat. Fred Woodley Evans did not quite have the bearing of a prince, but he was an engaging young man struck suddenly with love for a dazzling young woman.

Stephano and Trinculo representing the low-life of the court were suitably sozzled and clownish, but Caliban's initial subservience to them perhaps strained credulity since he was not portrayed as an almost inarticulate monster. This production chose instead to emphasise that Caliban had in fact been deprived of what he may legitimately have thought of as his inheritance by the arrival of the more powerful Prospero (though this can't be a matter of simple colonialism or enslavement, since Caliban and his mother were also arrivals on the island, not natives of it).

Ariel was continually airborne as befits her name; this required Amara Okereke to be attached to a trapeze-like mechanism on which she swooped into view and disappeared again at the highest level of the stage. This was effective to begin with, but ran the risk of seeming too mechanical a device when used throughout the performance. Ariel's wary respect for Prospero, and his wary affection for the spirit, were poignantly expressed on several occasions when she reached down and he reached up so that their hands almost touched.

The relations between Prospero, Ariel and Caliban are mysterious, and there is plenty of scope for interpreting them in different ways. Here, the matter of Ariel's freedom was given a most unusual twist: as Prospero finally freed the spirit she was released from her trapeze and put her feet on the ground - where she did not know how to walk: freedom, it seemed, would be quite a challenge. As far as Caliban is concerned, the most derogatory references to him by Prospero were cut, and the character always had a certain quiet dignity.

There was more: the great Epilogue speech is usually given directly to the audience as Proposer begs for his own freedom to depart and claims that it is dependent on the audience's applause - the character almost disappearing as the actor breaks the fourth wall. Here, Branagh almost exclusively addressed Ariel and Caliban, asking for their indulgence, and he left them alone on the stage, regarding each other in silence, wondering what to make of their "brave new world" - an extraordinary conclusion to a thought-provoking production.

I was not convinced by every aspect of Eyre's and Branagh's work on this play, but it is a salutary reminder that The Tempest is no straightforward drama. It's the sixth time I have posted a review of the play, and on each occasion there are new insights to ponder.

The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare

seen in the Everglades Gardens, Leura (NSW) on 10 January 2026

Sport for Jove presented their annual outdoor summer Shakespeare production in various venues this year, including the atmospheric Everglades Gardens in Leura, in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. On a perfect summer evening, mercifully made cooler by incoming breezes after an extremely hot day, Damien Ryan's and George Banders' production of The Comedy of Errors proved a delightful choice of play, its comic plot of mistaken identities and unexpected reunions bolstered by some inspired physical comedy and enhancements to the text.

In a timely reminder of the plight of refugees in the modern world, the directors decided to open proceedings with a speech that is rarely performed: the address to the London mob pleading the case of "strangers", delivered by Sir Thomas More from Act One scene 6 of the play of that name. Sir Thomas More is a collaborative play, but this scene is known to have been written by Shakespeare, and the speech asks the incensed Londoners to put themselves in the strangers' shoes - to imagine how they would feel if they were exiled - before condemning the influx of refugees.

This all adds weight to Egeon's long speech explaining why he, a merchant of Syracuse, has come to Ephesus, when the two cities are mutually excluding each other's citizens from visiting. The prospect of his imminent execution for transgressing this law hangs (lightly it must be admitted) over the increasingly manic proceedings of the day, to be removed only by the final twist of the plot when all the errors are explained away and Egeon's family is fortuitously made whole again.

Blessed with (unrelated) actors who, thanks to physical style and costume, could plausibly be mistaken for one another, and unexpectedly more prominent roles for the sisters Adrian and Luciana (the latter fantastically fit and clearly a force to be reckoned with), the production proceeded to milk the play's comic confusions with great verve and energy, providing a wonderful evening's entertainment.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at  the Bridge Theatre on 19 August 2025

This is a revival of Nicholas Hytner's hugely successful 2019 production of the play, with a new cast except for Puck, inimitably played by David Moorst: it is hard to imagine anyone else bringing his skills as an actor and acrobat to this interpretation of the part.

Even on a second viewing the production was well worth seeing, the modern interpolations as funny as before, and the stagecraft marvellous to behold. Though it may be suspected that the Bridge is 'marking time', having hugely extended its run of Guys and Dolls and then revived a past production, the move must be justified financially and the standards have by no means slipped.

See my review from 17 August 2019 for more details of how the play was conceived.

The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare 

and

A Company of Rascals

by Phil Porter

seen at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre Guildford on 24 and 25 July 2025 

The Guildford Shakespeare Company has created a fascinating double bill directed by Joanna Read and designed by Neil Irish, whereby a new play by Phil Porter, A Company of Rascals, is entwined round Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. After a scene-setting prologue which takes place on the banks of the River Wey outside the theatre, the Comedy is enacted in the main auditorium. Audiences for both plays see the new prologue and the Comedy's first scene, after which those seeing Rascals leave the auditorium and are taken to three different locations nearby to watch what the characters of the Comedy are imagined to be doing when they are not on stage; the two audiences are reintegrated for the final scene of the Comedy in which "all is revealed".

Shakespeare's play involves proliferating misunderstandings when two sets of identical twins, each separated in infancy due to a complicated shipwreck, are continually mistaken for each other not only by the residents of Ephesus where one of each pair lives as master and servant, but also by each other, because the other pair (also a master and servant) have arrived unexpectedly in town. By an improbable sleight of hand, which can't be called into question without destroying the whole basis of the farce, each master has retained the name Antipholus, and each servant the name Dromio, and each named twin dresses alike, thus allowing all the mistakes (or errors) to occur until finally all four are on stage together - and even then there is still room for confusion. 

The new play, set variously in the Centaur Inn (where the visitors have chosen to stay), in Doctor Pinch's premises, and in the Porpentine (where the resident Antipholus has dined when unable to enter his own house), capitalises on the mistaken identities wherever possible, but also follows the progress of the golden chain commissioned by the Ephesian Antipholus through many more hands than merely the goldsmith and the visiting Antipholus as seen in the Comedy, and also follows the continuing misfortunes of Egeon, the elderly Syracusan merchant arrested at the beginning of the play. Where the Comedy relies on chance meetings and displays of verbal wit, Rascals introduces madcap physical comedy with swapped bags, outright chicanery, and bravura charlatanry.

The cast of twelve expertly manages to perform both plays at once (though the audience of course can only see one of them at a time), aided in the case of Comedy by some extended pauses between scenes which are gloriously filled with 1960s pop songs (it's a modern-dress production). Cleverly, the new play focusses more on the minor characters of the Comedy, giving particular prominence to the jailer, and ludicrously making him the twin brother of Doctor Pinch to explain cast doubling, and introducing a few new characters to fill out the town scene.

Fortuitously I saw Comedy first and Rascals second, which I think is probably the most satisfactory order: the new play enriches the older even in retrospect, and its fast-paced double-dealings and general context require familiarity with the Comedy for maximum effect. The two together made for a really enjoyable theatrical experience.  

The Merchant of Venice (1936)

by William Shakespeare (adapted by Brigid Armour and Tracey-Ann Oberman)

seen at the Richmond Theatre on 9 April 2025

The most problematic aspects to modern eyes of The Merchant of Venice - its racism and anti-semitism - are confronted boldly in this re-imagining of the play set in London's East End in 1936 as the Jewish community there faced the increasing activism of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. The director Brigid Armour and the "first female Shylock" Tracy-Ann Oberman have adjusted and streamlined the play to fit this tense time not far out of living memory, and in doing so have shone a disturbing light on the play and the period.

In front of a backdrop representing the terraced house fronts of a typical East End street the play opens with a Passover supper celebrated by Shylock and her family and friends, with daughter Jessica asking the time-honoured questions (usually it is the youngest male child who performs this task, but none is present). It is interrupted by the first shouts of the baying mob, and then Shakespeare's text takes over with Antonio's world-weariness, his friends' easy badinage and Bassanio's importunity. For Portia's scenes a white gauze curtain is drawn across the back of the stage lending an insubstantial air to the setting of Belmont, but back in town it is always the East End, and there is little reference to Venice: Bassanio is even referred to as an Englishman.

Gobbo, the clownish servant who determines to leave Shylock's employ, is here Mary (Evie Hargreaves, doubling as Nerissa) rather than Lancelot, and there is no sign of the father met and hoodwinked in the street (no bad thing, as the scene needs to be exceptionally well managed in order not to be tedious). But the sense of Shylock's house being only a precarious safe place is enhanced by the encroaching Blackshirts: a drunken Gratiano (Xavier Starr) sporting the scarlet armband relieves himself against Shylock's door while shouting insults. No wonder Shylock urges her daughter to keep away from the windows, little realising that Jessica has decided to elope with Lorenzo.

In this setting, with misogyny added to the anti-semitism, and the jeering males increasingly colluding with the Blackshirts and adopting their uniform - even Antonio and Bassanio are wearing armbands by the time of the court scene - Shylock is all the more threatened and her "merry bond" a forlorn hope for some redress, ultimately forestalled by the legal nicety revealed by the young lawyer (Portia disguised) in court. The whole atmosphere of the play shows up the "Venetians" as an unpleasant and self-righteous lot, with the casual insouciance of their prejudices most in evidence in their treatment of Jessica. She is completely disdained by Lorenzo's male friends, and when she addresses Portia the latter rudely cuts her off (an interpolated exchange, I think): Portia is clearly an upper class anti-semite (and she has also evidenced an unpleasant disdain for the Prince of Morocco here re-imagined as a Maharajah).

In the trial scene Shylock's determination to execute the bond, followed by her utter humiliation, is loaded heavily with prejudice - the jeering of Gratiano at her discomfiture is particularly grating in this production - and she brokenly disappears from the scene by walking down in front of the first row of the audience while the two young lawyers persuade Bassanio and Gratiano to part with the rings which they swore would never leave their fingers.

Back in Belmont Lorenzo (Mikhail Sen) and Jessica (Gráinne Dromgoole) spar with their talk of past lovers. This scene can be played as a romantic and lyrical teasing between two youngsters in love, but nowadays it is often, as here, played to show a mounting unhappiness and strain between the two speakers. When the triumphant crowd returns from the city Jessica can hardly feel comfortable surrounded by black-shirted men. But the usual conclusion of the play - a perhaps wary reconciliation of the other two married couples after the debacles with the rings - is interrupted by the off-stage raucous crowd and a sudden collapse of all the characters into a group of doughty East Enders fighting off the fascists in the Battle of Cable Street, as described by Shylock herself.

This transposition on the whole works well, though some of the sound effects and silent projections of headlines and crowd scenes are a bit heavy-handed; the final account of community resistance is doubtless uplifting but has virtually nothing to do with the play. Of course some aspects of the play are sacrificed in order to re-shape it to the political scene of the 1930s. The emotional centre of the play rests on Shylock, a startlingly powerful performance by Tracy-Ann Oberman; we cannot engage very much with the fortune-hunting Bassanio (Gavin Fowler) or the frustrated if entitled Portia (Georgie Fellows), or even with Antonio (Joseph Millson) perhaps impossibly in love with Bassanio himself. The supporting cast are strong, but their characters are on the whole unappealing, a factor which is certainly present in the original play, but which is understandably highlighted here.

Richard II

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 27 February 2025

Nicholas Hytner directs Jonathan Bailey as the eponymous king with Royce Pierreson as Henry Bullingbroook (sic.) in a production designed by Bob Crowley and lit by Bruno Poet.

This is the fifth production of Richard II I have seen since beginning this blog and, true to form, it is quite different from all the others: proof, if any were needed, of the capacity for intelligent reinterpretation afforded by many of Shakespeare's greatest plays.

Performed on a long thrust stage initially bare, but with parts of the floor able to be sunk in order to set and remove furniture as required, the production is in modern dress, entirely subdued in greys and blacks. Stripped of the gorgeous medieval finery often used in honour of the Wilton diptych (which features a portrait of Richard II as a sacral king), all attention is on the language and on how the characters relate to one another in political and personal terms. The result is fascinating, the power plays surprisingly modern, and Richard's self-absorption entirely credible, rarely descending into self-pity.

Jonathan Bailey is a superb Richard, speaking the verse with unerring musicality, and he is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast even if none of the others quite rise to his level of delivery. Bullingbrook is something of a cipher, not obviously irritated with his cousin's theatrics in the deposition scene, but instead impassively prepared to indulge him. But he upholds his rights earlier in the play with conviction and hence gains the support he needs to press his claims and ultimately to become the new king.

Two of the major scenes involving women have been cut: the dialogue between John of Gaunt and his widowed sister-in-law the Duchess of Gloucester; and the famous "gardener" scene in which Queen Isabel overhears commoners discussing the disaster befalling her husband. This streamlines the play, and puts heightened emphasis on the poignant but brief scene in which Richard and Isabel are parted. The only other woman featured is the Duchess of York (Amanda Root); her frantic support for her errant young son Aumerle (Vinnie Heaven) is beautifully staged, providing some light relief from the increasing tension without tipping over into parody. (The Bishop of Carlisle here was female, the only concession to gender-blind casting, which in the modern context was effective.)

The staging was excellent; from the gallery to one side I never felt that I was being deprived of good views of the actors or being presented with a badly skewed vista of the production - indeed it would be interesting to see the play from the front as it were, to gauge whether there was a significantly different effect: in the deposition scene, conducted like a commission of enquiry or a court hearing, Bullingbrook sat for some time with his back to those sitting at the 'front', rendering him even more inscrutable at this point.

In the modern setting there were some clever adjustments. The joust between Bullingbrook and Thomas Mowbray is prepared for in all its formality, but rather than being a cumbersome affair in full armour (possibly on horseback) it is re-imagined as a bare-knuckled fight - bare-chested too - in a pit conveniently created in the versatile stage floor. The visceral rivalry between the two noblemen is thus given a macho physicality barely contained when Richard intervenes to stop the fight.

Richard himself speaks with authority but comes dangerously close to losing face as he interrupts the 'joust'. His fitness to rule is more seriously put into question for us in the scene with his favourites, who are lounging together and snorting cocaine, a very modern but all too plausible indication of their unfitness to govern the realm. They and Richard are obviously still high when visiting the dying John of Gaunt, so that the king's assumption of Gaunt's revenues is enacted in a drug-fuelled haze as the king lolls on the old man's vacated sickbed. Yet despite the hedonism, the king is for the moment still the king and none can gainsay him.

Richard in his last scene is contemplative and vulnerable. As part of the editing of the play for this production, his murderer was evidently Bagot (a former crony) rather than the named new character Exton, but nothing was made of this being a final example of betrayal. At least this was a more credible directorial choice than having Aumerle (a cousin of the two kings) perform the deed, as has been done elsewhere, something that would have been beneath him. Shockingly the corpse was presented to Henry IV in a body bag, undisclosed but a fateful reminder of the guilt which would overshadow the new king in the subsequent plays.

 

Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

live performance from the Donmar Warehouse (2024) screened on 11 February 2025

A chance to revisit the excellent production directed last year by Max Webster featuring David Tennant as Macbeth and Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth, with a supporting cast refreshingly speaking almost universally with Scottish accents (except for the children Fleance, the young Macduff, and the young Siward).

In the auditorium the audience was provided with headphones to listen to the entire play, which was performed without an interval to maximise the ongoing tension. In the cinema we heard the text through the normal speaker system, but it remained intimate and happily devoid of the jarring effect of listening in a different medium to voices projecting for the stage. The eeriness of the encounters with the weird sisters, and Macbeth's terror at witnessing Banquo's ghost, remained powerful; indeed the soundscape in general transferred well.

There were some aspects of the production that I had forgotten, but which the camerawork reminded me of. In particular a generic young boy was occasionally visible throughout the play, though generally not on stage - the back wall could be opaque or transparent as the lighting changed. This pointed up the unresolved question of whether Macbeth had a son or not (the textual evidence seems contradictory on this point); or perhaps it signified that he was betraying his personal innocence by pursuing his ambition. This culminated in a brief moment when Macbeth held the boy, perhaps MacDuff's son, in his arms only to pass him on to a murderer; and later, in grappling with the young Siward, there was another embrace in which the king broke the boy's neck.

As in the production at the Almeida, it appeared that Lady Macbeth was discussing Macduff's absence with Lady Macduff (it is the thane Ross in the text); but the link to Lady Macbeth's mental distress so powerfully evoked at the Almeida, where she actually witnessed the massacre of the Macduff family, was not pursued here. 

I had also forgotten the updated speech of the porter, who knowingly engaged with the audience, making some disparaging remarks about London audiences (as perceived by those north of the border), and complaining that he didn't have headphones so he couldn't hear what was being said. This was a clever adaptation of a long speech which, though vital to the dramatic shape of the play, often runs the risk of being tedious for a modern audience, since its references are 'topical' to the sixteenth century rather than our own.

All in all, this was a fine opportunity to revisit an outstanding production of the play.

(See also my review of the Almeida production from October 2021, and a paragraph in the "seen in 2024" post, to see how differently the two directors approached this plays problems.)

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" .

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.

Henry V

by William Shakespeare

screening of a live performance from the Donmar Warehouse seen on 21 April 2022

Although I had seen this production in the theatre itself (see my review of 10 March 2022 for a discussion of its deatails) I decided to attend the cinema transmission. It was not a live broadcast, but a live performance had been filmed during the production's run last month.

I wanted to see it again because my seat in the theatre had not been ideal. Of course the drawback with a filmed presentation is that the editor and camera personnel decide what is seen, and from what angle, but in the main this gave me a better opportunity to appreciate the forward-facing aspects of the staging. Though the visceral immediacy of the production was inevitably somewhat muted in the cinema, it remained a powerful interpretation of the play.

With many close-up shots of the characters it was possible to appreciate fine nuances of expression in Kit Harington's excellent portrayal of the King; perhaps he was in part reacting to the presence of cameras since the modulations of his half-smiles might have been harder to appreciate even in the intimate space of the Donmar. Far more potent and disturbing also was the mixture of resignation and disdain on Princess Katherine's face as she acquiesced in what was evidently an unwelcome marriage at the behest of her father and King Henry's insistence. Anoushka Lucas as the princess was no simpering lady: she learnt English while boxing with her maidservant, and gave a very cool welcome speech in the peace coference which concludes the play.

The produciton was well worth a second viewing.

Henry V

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 10 March 2022

Kit Harington plays the King with a supporting cast of fourteen taking all the other roles in Max Webster's production of Henry V, designed by Fly Davis. On a bare stage of four marbled tiers or steps, with a featureless metallic wall at the back which occasionally splits apart in the form of a St George's Cross, the career of the hero king from wastrel prince to victorious military leader is played out with sobering attention to the darker side of his progress.

After the famous Prologue apologising for the paucity of stage effects when dealing with such weighty military and political actions, the low expectations of the new king's character are underscored by the interpolation of part of the first tavern scene between Prince Hal and Falstaff from Henry IV Part One, and the crushing rejection of the latter by the former from Henry IV Part Two. Only then are we presented with Hal's full transformation into King Henry as he listens to the Archbishop of Canterbury's interminable lecture about the Salic Law in France (or properly belonging somewhere further east, as the case may be), its tediousness underlined by a confusing Powerpoint presentation projected onto the back wall. The Dauphin's insulting gift of tennis balls does far more to kindle the King's ire and to convince him to invade France to claim his right to the kingdom.

The play veers beween high politics and the less glamorous life of the ordinary soldiers. Indeed, some of the named infantry were once Prince Hal's tavern friends, and two of them come to a bad end, Bardolph in particular singled out for a judicial hanging which the King watches with apparent impassivity. For this production, which is in modern dress, movement director Benoit Swan Pouffer brought in Tom Leigh, a former Royal Marines Commando, to teach the cast basic military drill and to discuss with them the often traumatic impact of combat. The result can be seen in the intimidating manoeuvres on stage, but also in the pained reactions to some events (in particular the order to kill all the French prisoners at Agincourt, which is brutally performed onstage) and in the wild partying following the battle.

All this helps to sharpen the contrast between the high flown rhetoric of the famous speeches, which are wonderfully delivered by Kit Harington, and the sordid reality of close combat. The mutual incomprehension of the two sides (English and French) is emphasised by having the French characters speak French among themselves, with English translations provided on a screen. This cleverly extends the device used in the scene with Princess Katharine as she struggles to learn English, which is often played for laughs. Here, it is not a matter for laughter, and later the Princess has a decidedly unromantic encounter with the King whose plain-speaking wooing is not the bumbling effort of a stranger to flirting (as he suggests), but rather nothing more than a steely determination to consolidate a business deal no matter what the Princess thinks.

Indeed several scenes often used to lighten the tone here receive a more sober and disturbing turn. Captain Fluellen, usually portrayed as an amusing pedant, is here more of an obsessive, and his baiting of Pistol, forcing him to eat a leek, is is an exercise in sadistic bullying. Luckily for the hapless soldier Williams, who had unwittingly wagered to box the King's ear (not knowing who he was talking to before the battle), the scene in which the King asks Fluellen to bear the exchanged glove was omitted: this Fluellen would probably have shot Williams out of hand. Instead the King and Williams resolve the matter directly without the intervening 'joke'. Everyone is clearly very skittish after the victory; the atmosphere is credibly febrile and the King himself erupts in brittle laughter when he is presented with the account of the slain.

It was inevitable that the play would resonate with the current crisis in Ukraine. 'Once more unto the breach' is the rallying cry of a leader besieging an enemy town, and the King's later threats to the governor of Harfleur are a chilling reminder of what a victorious army can do to a town that did not surrender. It is not possible in view of the shelled urban areas in Ukraine to shrug this off as an example of medieval babarity which the modern world has outgrown. By contrast the great St Crispin's Day speech is the exhortaton of a leader in the face of overwhelming odds (a fact perhaps obscured by the unexpected outcome of the Agincourt battle). This too has its parallel in the events unfolding; the outcome is not yet known. 

In frank acknowledgement of the uneasy parallels between art and life, Kit Harington interrupted the audience applause at the end of the play to explain that there would be a retiring collection for the Red Cross, to which we were invited to contribute. It was generously supported.

Hamlet

by William Shakespeare

seen at Trinity Church Guildford on 16 Febraury 2022

The Guildford Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet, performed in the Holy Trinity Church in the town's High Street, is directed by Tom Littler and features Freddie Fox in the title role with Noel White as Claudius, Karen Ascoe as Gertrude, Stefan Bednarczyk as Polonius, Daniel Burke as Laertes, Rosalind Ford as Ophelia, Pepter Lunkuse as Horatio, Sarah Gobran as Fortinbras and the members of the company doubling in other roles, with Edward Fox's voice as the Ghost of Hamlet's father.

Inevitably the text is cut to allow for just under three hours of performing time, and it is always interesting to see which of the ostensibly dispensable facets of the full text the director has chosen to retain. In this case director Tom Littler has made the politico-military sub-plot following the manouevres of Fortinbras one of the major threads of the production, while the extensive interactions of Hamlet with the players are necessarily truncated as only one player is present to give the vital Hecuba speech and there is no discussion of introducing new text to the Mouse Trap play. The dumb show of the Murder of Gonzago, imagined to be taking place in the real audience's space, is enough to scandalise Claudius. The abbreviations to the text, and the necessary culling of minor characters to enable the small supporting cast to double the parts, was intelligently managed.

The space and acoustics of the church provided an excellent environment for both the scenes at the court and the destabilising atmosphere on the battlements where the ghost 'appears'. With unostentatious modern dress the guards could deploy battery torches, the sharp white gleams piercing misty air as the characters tried desperately to pin down the apparition. Elsewhere pistols were in evidence - Hamlet shot Polonius at some distance - but rapiers were still essential for the final duel between Hamlet and Laertes. Though the gravedigger was digging a grave, it was only for an urn containing Ophelia's ashes.

Everything depends on Hamlet, and in Freddie Fox we had an engaging but troubled prince, taken to drink in his grief but soon shaking it off as he faces the challenge of revenge, and then by turns witty, sardonic, impassioned, and distraught, speaking the verse with a beguiling confidence and intelligence. The dynamic between Gertrude and Claudius seemed to be barely simmering in contrast to the prince's instinctive revulsion at his mother's actions, but the tensions in Polonius's family were nicely displayed in the scene of Laertes's departure, Polonius's sanctimony being given the added fillip of a clerical collar in a nod to the physical setting in a church. Ophelia's naive humanity was underscored by her facility in playing a cello, poignantly abandoned as she later descended into madness.

This was a stimulating production in an unusual but, as it turned out, entirely appropriate space. 

Hamlet (revisited)

by William Shakespeare

a recording from 2018 watched on 22 March 2020

Having announced a pause in postings to this blog, I've now decided to publish my thoughts on watching the Almeida's production of Hamlet (which I've already reviewed twice before in March and August 2017). The BBC broadcast it in 2018, when I recorded it, but it has taken the current situation for me to find time to watch it. I was a little apprehensive that a filmed version of a production which had impressed me so strongly in the theatre would be a disappointment, but I need not have worried. Here goes:

A Midsummer Night's Dream (again)

by William Shakespeare

seen by live streaming from the Bridge Theatre on 17 October 2019

Having so much enjoyed the production in August (see my review of 17 August 2019) I felt sure a second viewing in the cinema would not go amiss - this was actually a repeat of the original live streaming, also broadcast in August, as the production run has now finished.

It was a great pleasure to see this inventive and engaging production again. In this case, there were benefits to be gained from camera close-ups and varying points of view, though occasionally the editor's choices of shots were frustrating. But the pleasure of seeing some of the details in the performances of the actors more than outweighed the disadvantages of filming a live show. In particular, the roguishness of Puck, the gleeful pleasure Titania took in her machinations, and the besottedness of Oberon gained from a closer look at their facial expressions, while Theseus's initial intransigence was chillingly conveyed just by the intensity of his narrowed gaze at Hermia.

The hilarious comedy of Bottom especially among the Rude Mechanicals, and the weirdness of Puck, whose curling toes seemed to have a life of their own, were wonderfully in evidence in one of the great productions of this play.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Bridge Theatre on 17 August 2019

Nicholas Hytner directs Oliver Chris as Oberon and Theseus and Gwendoline Christie as Titania and Hippolyta in an inventive restaging of this perennially favourite play, with David Moorst as Puck and Hammed Animashaun as Bottom. The production is designed by Bunny Christie.

As with last year's production of Julius Caesar (reviewed on both 27 January and 27 March 2018) the Bridge has been transformed into a theatre in the round with a central pit area where audience members can stand and be moved around by stewards as various parts of the floor rise to become acting spaces. There is no need for a crowd as such in this play, so there is less immediate involvement than in the other play, but the mere presence of so many people 'in the way' underscores the confusions the mere mortals undergo as they enter the forest outside Athens.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

by William Shakespeare

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 1 August 2019

Sean Holmes directs Peter Bourke as Thesues and Oberon, Victoria Elliott as Hippolita and Titania, and Jocelyn Jee Esien as Bottom, with Ciarán O'Brien as Demetrius, Amanda Wilkin as Helena, Faith Omole as Hermia, Ekow Quartey as Lysander, Billy Seymour as Flute and Mustardseed, Jacoba Williams as Snout and Moth, Rachel Hannah Clark as Snug and Peaseblossom, and Nadine Higgins as Quince, Egeus and Cobweb, in an exuberant production designed by Jean Chan including explosions of riotous colour in the fairy sequences.

Hotspur, Falstaff and Harry England

by William Shakespeare

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 10 May 2019

The more conventionally named Henry IV Part One, Henry IV Part Two and Henry V have been given alternative titles as a series of 'state-of-the-nation' plays which can be seen independently or, given sufficient stamina, together as today on a 'trilogy day'. The two parts of Henry IV take their alternative titles from characters considered important enough to be named in the expended titles of the original Quarto editions, while the third title reminds us of the intimate connections of Henry V with mythologised ideas about kingship and English greatness as exemplified by this particular warrior king, prompted by his father's advice to distract unhappy citizens from civil unrest by embarking on foreign wars.

The plays, directed by Sarah Bedi and Federay Holmes, are presented by a company of ten actors - five women and five men - joined by Michelle Terry as Hotspur in the first play of the sequence. Sarah Amankwah plays Prince Hal, later King Henry V, in all plays, and takes only one very small doubling part in Falstaff; the others take on all the other roles. In the full texts there are over one hundred parts across all three plays, though there are some cuts in the performance, and given the fluid performance style at the Globe, the changes of role are often signalled by the mere donning of a new cloak and a different posture, sometimes in full view of the audience. During the whole day this rarely led to any confusion from my point of view as a spectator, and only once did an actor definitely address a nobleman by the wrong name in a series of greetings. 

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.

The Tragedy of King Richard the Second

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 23 January 2019

Joe Hill-Gibbins directs Simon Russell Beale as King Richard with Leo Bill as Bolingbroke, Natalie Klamar as Carlisle, John Mackay as York, Robin Weaver as Northumberland, and Martins Imhangbe, Joseph Mydell and Saskia Reeves taking all the other parts.

The production uses a stripped down text, at less than two hours without an interval, in an oppressive box of felt walls and a perspex ceiling allowing for varying lighting effects, the design by ULTZ. All the actors are on the stage throughout, there being no obvious exit, and the only props are a golden crown modelled on the sort of crown found in a Christmas cracker; and two buckets each of helpfully labelled 'water', 'blood', and 'soil'. The costumes are anonymously modern tee-shirts and trousers.

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.