PLAY REVIEWS Contents

Transcription

PLAY REVIEWS
Contents
Stratford-upon-Avon Winter Season 2004-2005
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Fiona Buffini for the RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratfordupon-Avon, 13 January 2005
Peter J. Smith
A New Way to Please You (or The Old Law), by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, directed by
Sean Holmes for the RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 14 April 2005
Greg Walker
Julius Caesar, directed by David Farr for the RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 17 January
2005
Neil Allan
45
45
49
London Winter Season 2004-2005
Macbeth, directed by John Caird, Almeida Theatre, London, 4 March 2005
Jami Rogers
Julius Caesar, directed by Deborah Warner for the Barbican Theatre, London, 14 April 2005
Nathalie Rivere de Carles
Twelfth Night, directed by Stephen Beresford for Tara Arts, Albery Theatre, London, 8 September 2004
Jami Rogers
Chichester, Nottingham, Liverpool and Bristol
Doctor Faustus, directed by Martin Duncan, Edward Kemp, Steven Pimlott and Dale Rooks, Minerva
Theatre to Cathedral, Chichester, 20 September 2004
Peter J. Smith
Hamlet, directed by Yukio Ninagawa, The Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 30 November 2004
Greg Walker
Dr Faustus directed by Philip Wilson, Liverpool Playhouse, 12 February 2005
Elinor Parsons
Twelfth Night, directed by David Farr, Bristol Old Vic, 12 November 2004
Elinor Parsons
The Tempest, directed by Richard Baron, Nottingham Playhouse, 2 November 2004
Greg Walker
50
52
54
56
59
61
62
63
America
Pericles, directed by Mary Zimmerman, The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington D.C., 30 December 2004
Kelly Newman
Richard III, directed by Benjamin Evett for Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Old South Meeting House,
Boston, MA, 30 October 2004
Jami Rogers
Coriolanus, directed by Karin Coonrod for Theatre for a New Audience, Gerald W. Lynch Theater at
John Jay College, New York City, 20 February 2005
Jami Rogers
66
67
69
France: Lille, Orléans, Paris
Juli Cèsar, directed and adapted by Àlex Rigola, translated into Catalan by Salvador Olia, French subtitles by Jérôme Hankins, Théâtre du Nord, Lille, 12 December 2003
Vincent Roger
La Répétition des erreurs, directed and adapted by Marc Feld and Claude Duneton, Carré Saint
Vincent, Scène Nationale d’Orléans, 3 March 2005
Estelle Rivier
Delivered by Ingenta to: ?
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
71
72
Les Joyeuses commères de Windsor, directed by Jean-Marie Villégier and Jonathan Duverger, ATAOScène Nationale d’Orléans, 21 October 2004
Estelle Rivier
Coriolan, directed by Jean Boillot and Delphine Stoutz, translated by Laetitia Coussement and Olivier
Chapuis, Théâtre Gérard Philippe, Saint-Denis, 13 November 2004
Estelle Rivier
Troilus et Cressida, directed by Bernard Sobel and translated by Bernard Pautrat, Théâtre de
Gennevilliers, Gennevilliers, le 10 April 2005
Estelle Rivier
Un songe, une nuit d’été..., d’après Shakespeare, adaptation et traduction de Benoîte et Pauline Bureau,
mise en scène de Pauline Bureau, au Théâtre du Ranelagh, Paris, le 5 janvier 2005.
Guy Boquet
Comme il vous plaira, traduction de Xavier Maurel, mise en scène de William Mesguich, par le Théâtre
de l’Etreinte au Théâtre 13, Paris, le 10 novembre 2004
Guy Boquet
Le songe d’une nuit d’été, traduction de Jean-Michel Déprats, mise en scène de Sophie Lorotte, au Théâtre Mouffetard, Paris, le 6 janvier 2005
Guy Boquet
La Tempête, d’après Shakespeare, mise en scène de Frédérique Lazarini, dramaturgie de Didier Lesour,
à La Mare au Diable, Palaiseau, le 13 février 2005
Guy Boquet
La Vie de Timon, traduction d’André Markowicz, adaptation et mise en scène de Victor Gauthier-Martin, au Théâtre de l’Aquarium, Paris, le 23 mars 2005
Guy Boquet
Femmes gare aux femmes (Women beware women) de Thomas Middleton, traduction et adaptation de Marie-Paule Ramo, mise en scène de Dan Jemmett, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, le 12 octobre 2004
Guy Boquet
Macbett, farce tragique d’Eugène Ionesco, mise en scène par Jérémie Le Louët, au Théâtre 13, Paris, le
11 mai 2005
Guy Boquet
73
75
76
78
79
80
81
82
82
83
Istambul
Hamlet, directed by Adrian Brine at the city theatre, Kadiköy, Istanbul, 11 March 2005
Tom Band
A Note on the Translation
Ayse Nur Demiralp Band
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
85
86
PLAY REVIEWS
Stratford-upon-Avon Winter Season 2004-2005
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, directed by Fiona Buffini
for the RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon,
13 January 2005, front stalls.
S
ince David Thacker’s 1991 production of Verona
(see Cahiers Élisabéthains, 41 [1992], 55-56), the
RSC has only staged the play once (directed by
Edward Hall in 1998). Thacker set his production,
complete with crooning chanteuse, in the age of Jazz.
How disappointing then that Fiona Buffini and her
designer, Liz Ascroft, had set theirs in… the age of
Jazz: double breasted suits, spats, furs and patentleather shoes. Not only did the setting and costume
recall Thacker’s production but they drew attention
to the ways in which that earlier version was so
much better than this one. For, whereas Thacker had
used the period to underline the youthful naivete of
Shakespeare’s adolescent lovers with allusions to
the excesses of an age balanced on the verge of the
Great Depression, for Buffini it provided little more
than the opportunity to stage a number of Busby
Berkeley musical routines. Whereas Thacker’s world
adumbrated its own decline, Buffini’s was hopelessly
happy with whooping party-goers complete with
martini glasses, staggering across the stage at the
end of almost every scene. While Jonathan Bate’s
programme note sees in the play qualities that may
identify it as juvenilia, “freshness, energy, pace,
wholeheartedness, a desire to get to the point and to
speak its mind”, The Two Gentlemen of Verona contains
one of the most insidious jealousy plots in the canon
which makes it kin in some respects to Othello.
Buffini ignored these darker tones and gave us a play
about a farting dog, funny messengers and mixed-up
youngsters out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This was a world of pretty young things, Vile
Bodies, so that when age did appear, it did so as a
caricature. Patrick Romer’s Antonio was less of a
father figure than Hamm out of Beckett’s Endgame,
slumped, grey-haired and helpless, in a wheelchair
and propelled willy-nilly by Adrian Schiller’s
inebriated Panthino in Max Wall tails, helping
himself to the rack of hard liquor fixed to the back of
his master’s chair. Christopher Saul’s Duke of Milan,
the play’s other senior citizen, was also ridiculed,
stripped by the outlaws down to his granddad vest
and long-johns. But, without the authority of these
patriarchs, the scenes of Valentine’s banishment or
the relations between Sylvia and her father make
no sense and such characters seem merely to be the
fuddy-duddy remnants of a bygone era.
Over a ragtime piano score the lovers variously
threw themselves on a chaise longue downstage
of a dressing screen embossed with the latest Deco
designs. Laurence Mitchell as Proteus bewailed
his lovesickness in patterned knitwear sweater
and tweeds. His relationship with Alex Avery’s
Valentine was little more than two boys joshing—
less Brideshead Revisited than Carry on Jeeves. There
was very little depth to any of the relationships and
only Vanessa Ackerman as Julia managed to mine
the play’s deeper emotional tones. Zubin Varla’s
Thurio was a slicked back spiv—a combination of
Al Capone and a pantomime villain—unthreatening
in his arrogance and Cloten-like ignorance. Even the
guaranteed scenes between Launce and Crab failed
to ignite; Andrew Melville played the servant as a
morose Scot, and Ria – a lanky lurcher—embodied
this sense of boredom with its tail literally between
its legs and an expression of canine ennui.
The problems of the closing scene were
inadequately prepared for and the enormity of
Proteus’ assault and Valentine’s “gift” of Sylvia
were never adequately addressed. After Valentine
intervened to prevent the attack on Sylvia, he
almost immediately conceded her. This is in the
play but what was so alarming was the alacrity with
which Sylvia (Rachel Pickup) complied and moved
towards Proteus. I am not suggesting that she should
bridle in the manner of Katherine from The Taming
of the Shrew but she has just been the victim of an
attempted rape and, if she is shown to be blindly
obedient to Valentine’s wishes, we should at least
know why. Her submission is of course precluded
by Julia’s unmasking and her all too brief hesitation
before embracing and kissing the newly forgiven
Proteus. That this account of the production’s final
scene sounds perfunctory ought to be unsurprising.
One can only hope that the play’s next outing is less
inconsequential than this.
Peter J. Smith
*
A New Way to Please You (or The Old Law), by Thomas
Middleton and William Rowley, directed by Sean
Holmes for the RSC, The Swan Theatre, Stratfordupon-Avon, 14 April 2005, centre stalls.
B
ehind the plot of A New Way to Please You, the
first of the “rarely performed” Elizabethan
45
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
CAHIERS éLISABéTHAINS 67
SPRING 2005
and Jacobean plays that make up Greg Doran’s 2005
“Gunpowder” season in the Swan, lies a simple
conjecture: what if a law was passed condemning
the elderly to death as soon as they became a burden
on society? How would people react to so seemingly
rational, yet cruel an Act? Middleton and Rowley
throw such a statute into the midst of their play-world
(a gesture strikingly literalised in Holmes’s gamesome
production, which opens with a massive pile of
legally-bound documents falling onto the stage with
a hugely amplified thud) and watch as its inhabitants
scurry about, variously seeking to escape or capitalise
on its provisions.
The conceit is a simple but highly effective way of
generating social satire – of exposing to open view the
avaricious and lustful motives that drive a corrupt
world. If suddenly it is made a capital offence to reach
the age of eighty (in the case of men) or sixty (the
span allotted to women, who are, it is claimed, only
“productive” so long as they can reproduce), then new
social imperatives are created (don’t look old!) and
new opportunities for venality present themselves.
The Parish Clerk is instantly elevated to new-found
power and influence, for he keeps the register of
births and deaths and can say who is due to die next
(thus identifying prime targets for marriage for legacy
hunters, both male and female), and can sell that
information for a tidy profit. And hence avaricious
husbands and lusty young wives can plan with cynical
confidence for their next marriages, being able to
predict to the day and the hour the moment that their
current older spouses will have their state-sponsored
appointment with the hangman.
Billed as a “black comedy” by Greg Doran, and a
tragicomedy in Richard Rowland’s programme notes,
Middleton and Rowley’s The Old Law (the RSC have
inverted the original title and subtitle to call their
version, perhaps more in hope than expectation:
A New Way to Please You) is better described as a
Problem Play in the making. Like Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure it proffers an unsettling mixture
of burlesque comedy and
macabre human viciousness,
with the former usually
generated when the latter
miscarries. As in Measure,
the plot is instigated by the
seemingly capricious decision
of a Duke to let slip the forces
of corruption and see what
happens, presumably with the
intention of testing his subjects’
mettle before reining them all
in again at the end. Albeit in
this play the Duke, Evander
of Epire, does not actually
explain his motives in any
detailed way, opting instead
for the brief summation in Act
5 Scene 11:
A New Way to Please You, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Top right: Jon Foster, standing, & Julian Stolzenberg (Courtiers), Jonjo O’Neill (Simonides)
Above: Matt Ryan (Cleanthes), Evelyn Duah (Hippolita).
Photos both pages courtesy of Stephen Vaughan
46
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
[…] We have our end,
And all is ended well. We have now seen
The flowers and weeds that grew about our court
rogues, backed by a supporting cast
of avaricious household servants,
dismissed on the apparent death
of Simonides’ father Creon, spend
the bulk of the play conspiring
to marry, divorce, or bed their
current or prospective partners in
the shortest possible time for the
maximum financial reward. The
only exception to the vicious norm
is provided by Cleanthes and his
wife Hippolita, the young and
loving son and daughter-in-law to
Leonides, whom they protect from
death by announcing that he has
died of natural causes, concealing
him in a forest lodge until they are
betrayed by Eugenia. This last action leads to the
arrest of the virtuous characters and their trial at the
hands of the villains, until, in the final denouement,
the Duke intervenes to restore the status quo and,
thanks to the revelation that no one has actually
been put to death, engineer the (partial at least)
reconciliation of all parties.
Faced with what is, on the surface at least, a rather
perfunctory, ill-balanced (the court scene presided
over by the young parasites is far too long and wordy
for what has gone before) and rather sour text, Sean
Holmes wisely accentuated its comic potential in an
attempt to live up to the implications of his title. He
ruthlessly modernised the play’s satirical focus on
the sartorial peccadilloes of the younger and older
generations, and shifted the moral weight of the
first half from the exploration of the viciousness of
the young to the burlesque exposure of the folly of
old men trying to ape the manners and lifestyles of
Presumably, by 1618, the date of first performance,
the idea that the ruler might step forward as Deus
ex machina to put everything to rights with the
Renaissance equivalent of “it had all been a terrible
dream…” (the recourse of many a modern schoolchild
in search of an ending for an intractable piece of
creating writing) was so hackneyed a dramatic motif
that it seemed to the playwrights to need no detailed
exposition here.
In the meantime between the promulgation of the
law and its eventual revocation, the play offers a
series of brisk vignettes of the kinds of venality that
putting the fate of the old in the hands of the young
might provoke. There is the parasite son, Simonides,
all too anxious to hasten his parents’ demise so that he
can squander the fruits of his inheritance on clothes
and self-indulgence with his cronies. Then there is
Eugenia, the vain,
A New Way to Please You, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
gold-digging young
Above: Michelle Butterly (Siren), Fred Ridgeway (Gnotho)
wife of the ancient
Below: The Company
counsellor Lysander,
who is impatient to
see the back of him
so that she can marry
Simonides (“always
take age first to make
thee rich; / That was
my counsel ever,
and then youth /
Will make thee sport
enough all thy life
after.” 2.1.). Finally
there is the vicious
“clown” Gnotho, who
wants to rid himself
of his old wife Agatha
in order to marry
the younger, more
attractive Siren. These
47
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
youths. Hence Lysander (James Hayes), desperate to
regain his virility in an attempt impress his young
wife as well as to evade the strictures of the law,
transforms himself from a white haired geriatric
into a surreal vision of the nightmarish 70’s TV
presenter Jimmy Saville. Throwing off his shaggy
white coat to reveal a garish yellow checked track
suit, and with his hair and beard dyed – with the
exception of a recalcitrant snowy tuft (“This little
mangy tuft takes up more time / Than all the beard
beside!” (3.ii.)) - a very unnatural shade of matt
black, he engages the services of a hip-hop dancing
instructor (Mark Springer) in white vest, walkman,
and designer trainers. He then proceeds to challenge
the young parasites to a dancing competition played
out on a “disco-mat” machine under disco lighting,
with every robotic step accompanied by raucous
electronic honks and squeaks from the speakers
wheeled in behind them. This scene, in which age
implausibly routs youth in a series of increasingly
bizarre “duels”, was the comic centre of the play,
and no opportunity was lost, here or elsewhere, for
comic asides and overt contemporary references. So
Lysander, examining his new, “younger” look in a
full-length mirror, fell into an adaptation of Robert
de Niro’s famous “You talkin’ to me?” routine from
Taxi Driver: “Art thou talking to me?…There doth be
no one else in the chamber”. Meanwhile the vicious
young courtiers (Julian Stolzenberg and Jon Foster)
and Simonides (Jonjo O’Neill), the latter stealing
every scene with his dry asides, faux concern for
other’s well-being, and exaggerated Belfast accent,
entered to woo Eugenia with a chorus line from
Oklahoma!, and signalled their commitment to
fashion in ever more extravagant variations of Boy
George hats, glitter make-up, and Adam and the
Ants haircuts. And, just to prove that the wardrobe
mistress had her finger on the pulse of the very latest
youth fashion (the design was by Kandis Cooke),
the courtiers also displayed prominently above the
waistbands of their jeans, underpants (and at one
point, incongruously, a woman’s thong) bearing the
mock designer labels “CkuF” and “IstH”.
Set against these vanities of contemporary fashion,
the older generation wore exaggerated versions of
contemporary OAP-wear. Thus Creon (Geoffrey
Freshwater) appeared like a old soldier on Poppy
Day, sporting a chest full of medals, a red military
beret and a jacket a good three sizes too tight, fastened
up the front by a bizarre line of over twenty buttons
- this, presumably, to make some visual sense of the
First Courtier’s line: “our diseased fathers…love a
doublet that’s three hours a-buttoning, / And sits
so close [it] makes a man groan…” 2.1). To drive the
point home, the programme was full of photographs
of iconic images of the fashion-mistakes of the Saga
Holiday generation: comb-overs blown awry by the
wind, over-brightly coloured pattern ties, and zip-up
cardigans. Somewhere in between the extremes of
sober age and vicious youth were the virtuous young
couple, Cleanthes (Matt Ryan) and Hippolita (Evelyn
Duan). Dressed in vaguely hippy homespun, neither
very trendy nor especially orthodox looking, they
made the most of the slightly saccharine, preachy
roles of “lone voices of virtue in a corrupt world”
that the text demanded. Similarly, Fred Ridgeway,
playing Gnotho as an ageing Cockney wide-boy in a
pork-pie hat, was as engaging as it is possible to be in
the role of a man who openly falsifies his wife’s age
to speed her early death, punches her in the stomach
when she upbraids him for his unfaithfulness, and
tells her to her face that he intends to marry a more
attractive woman the moment she is dead. Ishia
Bennison also did well with the few lines afforded to
Agnes, his wife, combining a kind of feisty brassiness
with an understandable air of injured innocence.
The differences between the younger and older
generations, like the “battle” between the sexes, is
a seemingly timeless theme, always amenable to
contemporary reworking. So Holmes’s decision
to update wherever possible, and to add visual
humour whenever the script seemed to be open
to it (as when, during the drinking contest in 3.ii,
the cast momentarily stopped their business and
collectively hopped up and down like rabbits
accompanied by a loud electronic pinging sound to
symbolise the disorienting effects of the strong liquor
Lysander had just drunk) was a wise one, winning
over a predominantly middle-aged audience with
its relentless energy and determination to point
out the ridiculousness of fashions of all kinds.
The production was not, however, oblivious to
the darker tones of the play, nor to the potentially
unsatisfactory implications of its rather perfunctory
ending. How Lysanda and Eugenia, Agnes and
Gnotho would resolve their rather obvious marital
difficulties henceforth was dealt with through the
simple expedient of having the first two tearfully
reconciled in the final moments, and allowing Agnes
to “swinge” Gnotho offstage at the end with a cuff
about the head. But, how the state as a whole would
resume “business as usual” in the aftermath of the
crisis brought about by the Duke’s actions could
not be so readily resolved. Notably, when Peter De
Jersey’s Evander, played as a smooth politico in a
lounge suit, clapped his hands and called for music
in the final lines, nothing happened. The band that
had intervened decisively throughout the production
(Music and Sound Design were by Chris Branch and
Tom Haines), providing accompaniment to all the
major scenes and offering intrusive over-amplified
thuds when books were opened on tables, and loud
rustlings when money was counted out or changed
hands, pointedly failed to strike up. Perhaps,
his anxious look around him before the blackout
suggested, the genii of misrule would be harder to
48
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
put back into the bottle than he had initially thought.
The text used is: Thomas Middleton and William Rowley,
A New Way to Please You or The Old Law, ed. Richard
Rowland (Nick Hern Books/RSC, 2005).
1
Greg Walker
*
Julius Caesar, directed by David Farr for the RSC,
The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 17 January
2005, left stalls.
“H
ow many ages hence / Shall this our lofty
scene be acted over, / In states unborn
and accents yet unknown!” (III.1.71-73). Cassius
articulates the relevance of the drama to both an
Elizabethan audience and any future context: the
play will speak to us as long as there prevails a
struggle between autocracy and democracy, state
authority and the anarchic force of the multitude.
Any given production is thus invited to tease out the
latent connections between its own socio-political
context and that of Shakespeare’s Rome. The risk is
that this interpretative operation can become overly
didactic, furnishing a distracting veneer of modish
gestures, reading the Capitol as Capital.
The challenge is embraced by this production, with
predictably mixed results. The programme invokes
Berlusconi and Putin as leaders whose manipulation
of the media has imperilled democracy; Caesar is
comprehended through the lens of today’s semiotic
imperialism, waging a ratings war. This insight may
not be original, but it carries a certain urgency and is
consonant with the text. The decorated images of the
opening scene are now screen projections of Caesar,
who then enters to face a microphone. Christopher
Saul’s Caesar is a rather shallow figure, an efficient
if easily manipulated media-conscious politician. His
rebuff of Metellus Cimber’s imprecations is addressed
more to the audience than to the supplicant, spinning
stubbornness as consistency.
The orators at Caesar’s funeral are filmed from
two angles, and composite live images play on a
screen hung from the scaffolding that dominates the
set. Gary Oliver’s Antony cuts a swaggering figure,
crying “havoc!” (III.1.276) with conspicuous relish.
He also understands (as Brutus does not) the iconic
impact of Caesar’s body, potent even (and especially)
in death. The corpse’s wounds are microscopically
traced by camcorder and writ large on the screen as
Antony directs and exploits the crowd’s response to
the virtual snuff movie.
The set, too, highlights its manipulative status: the
musicians are present on stage, the points of light
picking out the mixing desk serving as a constant
reminder of the orchestration of effects and affects.
The disorder of the natural world is conveyed by
neon strip lights: taking their cue from David Lynch
or Martin Creed, they figure disorientation as they
flicker and buzz. Rome has become an isle full of
noises, the sputtering of the lights merging with
high-pitched electronic ululations and white noise.
This enveloping static is evocative of a distorted
signal: the characters cannot tune in to the cosmic
message.
Certain gestures arising from the same impetus
are far less effective. The crowd clambers over the
scaffolding in a manner more befitting a musical.
Cinna the poet’s body hangs ominously behind
Antony as he pricks the names of the condemned, but
is then reanimated in order to lead an incongruous
cod-Brecht/Weill number announcing war. The
antagonists confront each other before the battle in
front of a UN flag; perhaps the scene is meant to
resonate with recent pseudo-diplomatic processes in
which war is a foregone conclusion, but any further
analogies are strained: who is meant to be “America”
here, who “Old Europe”, and on what grounds?
The most serious reservation, however, concerns
Zubin Varla’s Brutus. He delivers the lines with a
curious singsong intonation as if attending to the
words’ sonorities at the expense of their meaning.
Perhaps this apparent detachment from the import
of the speeches is intended to convey the character’s
stoicism, but it does so at considerable cost, stripping
Brutus of vitality and inner conflict. Varla’s delivery
elides the comma in “Then lest he may, prevent”
(II.1.28), but surely it marks a truly vertiginous
moment of the sort memorably evoked by T. S. Eliot:
“Between the idea / And the reality / Between the
motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow” (“The
Hollow Men”, lines 72-76). Adrian Schiller, a gaunt
and misanthropic Cassius, verbally assumes the
role of a looking-glass in which Brutus can discern
a contorted reflection of himself with which he
cannot but identify. The set renders concrete this
image: the backdrop is a dark, distorting mirror in
front of which the plot is hatched. However, this
phantasmagoric warping finds no counterpart in this
Brutus, who delivers tormented verse with an odd
lack of engagement. This performance is effective
only when enacting rhetorical failure: Varla’s Brutus
seems unaware of semantic volatility, relying rather
upon an imagined transparency of his case, and
therefore fails to manipulate the emotive resonances
of Caesar’s image.
The door is thus left open for Antony and Octavius
Caesar, the latter’s triumphant image appearing on
the screen to announce a new visual imperialism.
When the stage empties, only a hi-fi is left to convey
the echoes of the departing crowd. Caesar’s besuited
ghost enters — this is a consummate politician, not a
bloody reminder of violence — and switches it off. In
this iconodulic struggle, Caesar himself has the final,
sardonic gesture, cancelling his own show.
Neil Allan
49
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
London Winter Season 2004-2005
Macbeth, directed by John Caird, Almeida Theatre,
London, 4 March 2005, middle stalls.
I
t is modern theatrical custom to run Macbeth
without interval. Theatres as diverse in location
and audience as the Royal Shakespeare Company,
the Sydney (Australia) Theatre Company, Max
Stafford-Clark’s Out of Joint Theatre Company and
the Sandbach Comprehensive School in Cheshire
have recently done productions of the play without
a break. John Caird’s production at the Almeida
Theatre broke with this, creating a version that
showed Macbeth does not have to be played as a
Jacobean thriller.
The stage floor was a simple round of black marble,
curving slightly out towards the audience. The costumes were of Elizabethan cut, although without the
ruffs and bulky finery associated with the era, which
was thus merely hinted at — giving the production a
more timeless feel. With more than a little nod to the
legendary 1976 RSC production directed by Trevor
Nunn, Caird contained much of the action to within
a circle encompassing the centre of the marble base.
Simon Russell Beale’s portrayal of the title character was a lucid and intelligent study in guilt.
Macbeth was a man preoccupied with judgment and
remorse, as he grappled with his conscience. During
his “If it were done…” soliloquy, for instance, he
paused to consider “We still have judgment here”
(I.7.8), pointing emphatically at the ground, knowing
there would be consequences for his actions. After
Duncan’s (William Gaunt) murder, asked by Macduff
(Paul Higgins) “Is the king stirring, worthy thane?”
(II.3.42), Macbeth’s guilt manifested itself in fretful
hand-washing worthy of his wife, as he paused and
answered with a slow, “Not yet.” (II.3.42). His crown
became a focal point for his guilty burden and as he
sat with the assassins who would kill Banquo (Silas
Carson), Macbeth suddenly took off his diadem and
scratched his head where it had lain, as though he
were allergic to the crown — or at least his bloodsoaked method of attaining and keeping it. Banquo’s
death was necessitated in this production by the
absolute knowledge that Macbeth had murdered
Duncan, as Banquo angrily grabbed the bloody daggers from Macbeth’s hand (he hadn’t left them with
the grooms’ bodies) and said pointedly to his face his
“Fears and scruples” sentence (II.3.126-29). Banquo,
thus threatening judgment upon Macbeth, had to be
slain. However, regardless of Macbeth’s later prickings of conscience, there were indications early in
the action — particularly through William Gaunt’s
superb portrayal of Duncan — that Macbeth was
not entirely trusted by the establishment. The King
seemed unsure of this Thane as, speaking about
the previous Cawdor, he hesitated to say “trust”
at Macbeth’s entrance on “He was a gentleman on
whom I built / An absolute trust”. (I.4.14-15), which
signalled a certain amount of distrust for Macbeth.
Duncan also appeared to be about to confer his
crown on Macbeth, rather than his heir Malcolm in
Act I Scene 4. As he conferred upon Malcolm the title
of Prince of Cumberland, Duncan faced Macbeth,
the crown in his hands and as he hesitated, it was
clear that Macbeth thought he was about to receive
the crown. Macbeth’s disappointment when Duncan
turned away was palpable.
The relationship between Macbeth and his wife
was subtly and astutely drawn. Far from being the
termagant of theatrical lore, Emma Fielding’s Lady
Macbeth was a woman whose frustration in her
loveless marriage caused her to concentrate on her
advancement, achieved by her husband’s ascent. The
cracks in their marriage were vividly apparent in the
way they communicated. She taunted his manhood
on occasion — noticeably when she hit lines such as
“Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act
and valour /As thou art in desire?” (I.7.39-41) — with
an edge to her voice. She also made clear her low
opinion of her husband’s abilities, highlighted by the
micro-management delivery of her line “I laid their
daggers ready; / He could not miss ‘em.” (II.2.11-12),
emphasizing the second phrase to show she lacked
faith in his ability for action. When he returned with
bloody daggers a few lines later, Lady Macbeth impatiently grabbed them, scolding him and showing
she thought him a child incapable of following the
simplest instructions. The marriage breakdown was
most visible in Act I Scene 7, placed as they were at
opposite sides within the playing circle, which emphasized the emotional distance between them; this
was a couple who seemed to have not communicated
for years. Separated by this vast gulf, Macbeth looked
on in horror at his wife as she said she would “Have
plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, / And
dash’d the brains out…” (I.7.57-58). They seemed to
know each other no longer.
Caird and his company made Macbeth’s descent
into madness extremely lucid, beginning with his
obsession with dreams. Macbeth made clear that his
dreams, too — like those of his wife in Act V — are
sullied. Speaking to Lady Macbeth in Act III Scene 2,
he emphasized the phrase “terrible dreams” (III.2.18)
and then, in real anguish, he howled “O full of scorpions is my mind” (III.2.36). Macbeth’s madness was
enhanced by Russell Beale, who was able to con-
50
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
Macbeth, Almeida Theatre, London
Emma Fielding (Lady Macbeth), One of the Weird Sisters
Photo courtesy of Hugo Glendinning
nect Macbeth’s rapid descent into insanity with the
jealousy that rankled since the favourable prophecy
given Banquo’s descendents’ by the Weird Sisters.
Thinking on it anew, Macbeth seethed with anger
and huskily shouted at the audience “For Banquo’s
issue have I filed my mind” (III.1.64). When Banquo
came to haunt Macbeth, upset at not having his tale
of a ghost in the room believed, the thane became a
whining child on his “I saw him” (III.4.73). He then
turned into a sarcastic host in full flow, stating that
once upon a time a man who was dead would stay
dead (III.4.77-82). The total effect of Macbeth’s fit
of sarcastic wit was of a less lanky version of Basil
Fawlty, provoking an embarrassing scene at his
own dinner party — a social faux pas which Lady
Macbeth pointed out with an icy “You have displaced the mirth” (III.4.108).
After the dinner guests had departed, Lady
Macbeth laid her husband down in the centre of the
circle, and then left the stage upon hearing the sinister Weird Sisters’ approach (played by Ann Firbank,
Jane Thorne, Janet Whiteside). From this point
forward, the audience was made acutely aware of
Macbeth’s visions, and we became privy to his “ter-
rible dreams”. While Macbeth lay where his wife had
left him, the witches cast the spells of Act III Scene
5 over his still body. The two witches’ scenes were
conflated so that on “By the pricking of my thumbs”
(IV.1.44) he was awakened. The heath in the script
therefore became Macbeth’s disturbed dreams and
the apparitions of Act IV Scene 1 appeared in the
guise of children — Macduff’s children, later to be
murdered. In fact, a chilling moment in the production came just before the interval, as Macbeth slipped
on after Macduff’s eldest child had been carried off
to his death, leaving Lady Macduff (Sara Powell)
writhing in combat against the remaining murderer.
With his back to the audience, Macbeth was seen
stroking the face of Lady Macduff, calming her as
she was murdered. Only in her final death throes
did Macbeth turn toward the audience and his extra-textual presence was revealed, as his murderous
career became actual, no longer committed for him
by contract killers.
Worth noting here was the witches’ appearance:
when standing outside the playing circle they appeared normal, dressed unremarkably in the same
vague Elizabethan style as the other characters, but
once they crossed into the space their makeup gave
them an aura of death—like skeletons haunting the
earth and making their appearances sinister. Caird
used both the Weird Sisters and the apparitions
of Macduff’s children with increasing frequency
as Macbeth became more and more disturbed. For
instance, Macduff’s eldest child became the “creamfaced loon” (V.3.11) and after his exit, Macbeth motioned to the space where he had been saying “I am
sick at heart” (V.3.19). The news that “The Queen,
my lord, is dead” (V.5.16) was brought by the weird
Sisters. Effective though their frequent appearances
were, it was difficult to decide whether they were figments of Macbeth’s fevered imagination or actually
controlled events—whether they appeared in numerous guises because Macbeth was mad or whether
they had made him mad deliberately.
Played against current theatrical tradition of racing through the play at breakneck speed, Caird’s
production allowed for a skilful examination of the
characters and situations that populate this play.
The pace was measured, yet the payoff in being
able to get inside the main characters was immense.
However superbly portrayed the Macbeths, Banquo,
the three witches, and William Gaunt’s excellent
Duncan were, the rest of the production lacked the
same level of emotional rigour. Each actor was wellspoken and the story was clear, but they did not
achieve the same level of three-dimensional characterization, thus keeping the production from reaching its full potential.
Jami Rogers
*
51
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
Julius Caesar, directed by Deborah Warner for the
Barbican Theatre, London, 14 April 2005, centre
stalls.
Produced by BITE:05, Barbican; Co-produced by
Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris; Teatro Español,
Madrid; Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg,
Luxemburg.
I
n her answer to Paul Taylor’s question “Are we
talking 44 BC or 2003 AD?” in the programme,
Deborah Warner gave away her manifesto for her
version of Julius Caesar: “It’s exciting when our times
can release for us a text anew”. And indeed, this production of Julius Caesar echoes the eternal questioning of political ambition and righteous wars whether
in Antiquity or the present.
If Shakespeare’s foreign spaces were always reminiscent of sixteenth-century London, the scenery
at the Barbican is so familiar we could mistake the
inside of the theatre and the outside of Westminster.
Costumes are distributed according to social ranking
and occupation and match the variety of the audience. If it weren’t for the transparent curtain masking
the set before the play begins, the limit between audience and actors would be almost non-existent. Thus,
no matter however reluctant you might be at the
prospect of sitting through a play lasting over three
and a half hours, you are absorbed into its world
from the very moment members of the Roman mob
stumble on the stage and tear the veil away.
The thoroughly modern aesthetics of the production surprisingly fits the classic theme and the
agenda of unsteady Roman politics, starting with
the set design. Though confessing a slight personal
fixation with space and props, it is no exaggeration to
say that the scenography of Julius Caesar is the most
striking feature of the production. The set is a tailormade costume for a play about fragmentation. Julius
Caesar stages identities that are progressively shattered by the anxieties of political ambition. Hence,
before even talking about the cast and the stunningly
sober but powerful acting, it is impossible not to
mention the brilliant use of the Barbican Theatre’s
immense stage.
The set is absolutely modelled on the dynamics of
the play and never does its grandiose structure seem
inadequate to the act. Deborah Warner reaches the
perfect balance between space, bodies and words.
She chose to cut the play into two visually and rhythmically distinct parts. The first two hours focus on
Rome’s political space while the last hour features
the derelict environment of the battlefield. As stated
in the programme, Warner’s intention was to offer
the audience both sides of the political agenda of the
play: “I think we may have to change our language
to attempt to match Shakespeare’s experiment with
our own, so perhaps when the audience return after
the interval, they feel that they’ve not come back to
the same evening”.
The first part of the production stresses the orderly
architecture of the Roman state and its inner frailty.
The latter consists in the constant visual fragmentation of the stage space thanks to structures usually
evoking geometrical stability. Warner plays on vertical and horizontal frames and treats the stage like a
set of China dolls. The wide black stage is reduced
to a smaller set thanks to a U-shaped glass structure.
The back walls are fitted with side curtains framing
a giant central screen on which changing colours
are projected according to the characters, the tone,
the time and the place. The glass structure recalls
Norman Foster’s glass buildings whose fake transparency has become the emblem of the new political
London. It is within this striking frame that most of
the action will take place. The intricate structure is
not restrained by this doubling of the stage borders
but by the regular addition of another frame within
the frame made by the safety barriers and separating the Roman mob from the Senators. The intensely
composed space reflects Rome’s social structure
while also evoking a contemporary public gathering.
This proximity between the visual shape of the play
and our own experience of the urban political space
creates confusion between the time of the audience
and the time of the play. Yet this familiarity never
becomes a moralising plea against modern political
issues. The unexpected setting is reinforced by an
unexpected positioning of the actors on stage. A
large mob made up of a hundred extras is confined
between the glass walls and the barriers while a
crowd of Senators confusedly goes through the glass
doors at the back and occupies the steps. This first
contact between space, actors and speech plunges
the audience in a state of visual confusion. The stage
is saturated by the Roman mob, threatening to overflow the security guards, and the indistinct group of
Senators. The spectator’s eye is unable to identify the
title-character in this sea of unruly bodies.
Why is Caesar invisible? Indeed, the first contact
with the characters indicates an interesting but daring casting choice. John Shrapnel is a surprising
choice for Caesar. His entrance almost comes unnoticed and he is dwarfed by the more imposing
stature of the other Senators. He’s obviously cast as
a questionable leader both politically and physically,
ready to be overthrown by stronger-looking men.
The visual focus during the entire first part is clearly
on three characters: Ralph Fiennes’ Mark Antony,
Simon Russell Beale’s Cassius and Anton Lesser’s
Brutus. Fiennes enters the stage dressed in white
running gear, jumping around in a bacchic frenzy
which ends with the bathing of his triumphant body
in champagne by two girls from the crowd. Such ritualised excess casts Caesar in the margins of his own
triumph. Cassius’ strongly embittered plea against
Caesar’s physical weakness and overpowering ambi-
52
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
tion is ambiguously justified by this lack of charisma.
Mark Antony’s excessive physical strength, Cassius’s
active rhetoric and Brutus’ genuine anxiety about
Caesar’s triumph are all pitted against Shrapnel’s
interpretation of a sick and stubborn old general.
Rome appears already torn between various images
of a ruler. Such a dislocation of the political unity
is echoed by the inability to read the signs of the
characters. They look into mirrors with no shadows,
the way we look at the ill-defined, fluttering reflections of the act in the glass structure. The set echoes
Cassius’ words : “And since you know you cannot
see yourself / So well as by reflection, I, your glass, /
Will modestly discover to yourself” (I.2.69-71).
Who can read the prophetic signs when the vision is so fragmented? The ill-omened colours projected on the large back screen, the drunk soothsayer
shouting his “Ides of March” curse, Calpurnia’s
overlooked dream and the mourning purple of the
senatorial togas are all contrasted with Caesar’s misunderstanding and Mark Antony’s careless absence.
The entire scenography stirs towards Caesar’s assassination. His entrance in the senate is marked by a set
invaded by the colour of mourning: black and purple togas, screens and walls. If the moment they stab
Caesar is not particularly striking, Warner’s taste for
crude violence re-emerges in the cannibalistic feast
of the slaughtering Senators on Caesar’s dead body.
They seem to scavenger the corpse which merciless treatment will be echoed in the cruel murder of
Cinna, the poet, when a maddened crowd will gather
on his innocent body.
Cinna’s tortured body, whose mangled arms can
still be seen after the fall of the curtain, forms the transition to the second part of the play, set in a war zone.
The stage is further fragmented by the front curtain
isolating the forestage occupied by Mark Antony,
Octavius and Lepidus sentencing to death the conspiring senators. The main stage is seen behind the
veil and is occupied by a lonely prostrated Brutus
while the very back of the stage, free of the glass
structure, shows indistinct soldier figures. Now, we
have entered the problematic theatre of war. The cast,
in desert camouflage uniforms, negotiates around a
war-cabinet table and finally goes to war. The stage
is a dark barren space saturated with computerised,
non-figurative images projected on the back walls
and heavy-metal music achingly blasting whenever
they come to fight. The references to current warfare
are impossible to avoid: the uniforms, the weapons,
the bombing — embodied by the fall of domestic
débris from the ceiling — the music, the questioning
of human wastage. The visual and aural saturation
makes the audience uneasy and brings more confusion. It naturally leads to the conspirators’ appetite
for self-destruction. The serial suicides of Cassius
and Brutus and their companions are seen less as
Caesar’s ghost’s curse than as a consequence of the
absolute insanity of the conflict. The only remaining
calm but chilling presence is that of Mark Antony,
nonchalant walking about the stage lazily smoking
a cigarette while holding a revolver. His laid-back
but tough aura is already contrasted with the rising
power of an inexperienced but frighteningly cold
Octavius. The chaotic portrayal of those ruthless men
is brought to its climax after the suicide of Brutus.
The tribute of Beethoven’s solemn music paid to the
noble fellowship of the dead is brutally interrupted,
leaving Mark Antony standing alone, contemplating
Brutus’ corpse and his own end.
The talented sobriety of the acting complements
perfectly the material fashioning of the play. Fiennes’
Mark Antony is a man of few words who unleashes
his power in the brilliant manipulation of the Roman
mob. The crescendo of his voice, more and more
fuelled by an ill-contained anger, turns the mutinous
crowd into his revengeful instruments of justice.
His standing on a wooden platform looking upon
Caesar’s shrouded body strengthens the impression
of a troubling role-playing. His cunning manipulation of Caesar’s purple toga shredded to pieces by
the conspirators’ daggers is violently contrasted with
the stained shroud enveloping the murdered corpse.
The evolution of Mark Antony throughout the play
matches his ever changing outfits. From the white
pyjamas for the ritualistic triumph and the untidy
suit of the careless politician to the mourning clothes
of the faithful friend and ruthless avenger and the
uniform of the campaigning soldier, Mark Antony is
pictured as this striking visual landmark of a state
hovering between its success and its frailties.
Simon Russell Beale’s contrapuntal Cassius is the
perfect foil to Fiennes’ toned Mark Antony. Beale’s
scruffy academic look enhances the banality of this
character lost in a sea of men in suits. Beale’s fake
triviality and improbable physique for the part are
soon erased by a powerful delivery reminiscent of his
performance of Hamlet for the National Theatre. His
first embittered monologue and his crafty manipulation of Brutus are tinged with sufficient ambivalence
to coax the audience into understanding his cause.
Throughout the play, he is the bad conscience of a
frail, lean, sleepless and guilt-ridden Brutus. Beale’s
convincing performance fits the duality of Warner’s
modern interpretation. The audience strives to find
a character to side with. Spectators end up being
another versatile Roman crowd or the passive cynical voyeurs of ambitious men’s quarrels and aimless
bloodsheds. The interpretation of the entire lead cast
stresses the absence of a righteous ideology.
Warner’s dark interpretation of the political agenda of Julius Caesar combines the Renaissance text on
political unsteadiness and contemporary anxieties of
a world in transition. There’s no room for a clear-cut
legitimate ideology in this phoney orderly society of
Warner’s Julius Caesar. And the only character liter53
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
ally embodying this decaying spectral utopia is the
gangly, crippled body of Portia. Fiona Shaw’s emotional plea as the daughter of Cato suggests that the
last noble man left in Rome is a dying woman. This
cameo part of the impressive Shaw is the flesh and
blood synthesis of the ills of Rome and the end of the
violently innocent triumphant era.
Like those cold opaque architectural buildings
disturbing our sense of beauty, this production is a
dark glass reflecting a chaotic past and revealing an
anxious present.
Nathalie Rivère de Carles
*
Twelfth Night, directed by Stephen Beresford for Tara
Arts, Albery Theatre, London, 8 September 2004,
front circle.
T
he lights go up on Twelfth Night at the Albery
Theatre to the sound of a hard rain — which
becomes visible upstage as the lights grow stronger
— and sitar music. It immediately evokes the feeling
of the monsoon season and I could almost imagine
the humidity thick in the air. This Illyria had become modern India, and it was the setting that was
perhaps the most intriguing part of the production.
The set was dominated downstage by a representation of modern, cream-coloured tenement buildings
— which were just derelict enough to cause one to
wonder why the wealthy Olivia was living in them
— and upstage was a layer of gravel over which occasionally a bicycle or a rickshaw passed in an effort
to bring everyday Indian life on stage. In India the
cycles would not pass one at a time, so what was
missing from the Indian atmosphere was the sense of
an overcrowded world with no room to move.
In this setting, the characters inhabited a world
that retained some vestiges of British colonialism.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Paul Bazely) was a westernised man, dressed in tan slacks and cream shirt,
who clearly does not fit in — Shakespeare’s version
of The Jewel in the Crown’s Hari Kumar — as he seemingly tries to be a British Indian. Aguecheek’s line
“I am a great eater of beef” only emphasized his
estrangement from the Hindu society in which he
lived. For his duel with Cesario, his compatriots
had clearly dressed him for their own amusement as
he was stripped down to his white vest, shorts, and
awkwardly wore cricket pads to protect his shins
— as if the greatest danger from Cesario would be
his kicks, rather than the sword.
The other misfit in this society is Malvolio, played
touchingly by Paul Bhattacharjee. Upon reading the
letter planted by Maria (Harvey Virdi), he breaks into
a smile which is pleased but sheepish and accompanied by an involuntary shrugging of his shoulders
— like a little schoolboy who has been granted his
wish for the girl next door and is both excited and
shyly embarrassed about his good fortune. He exits
but returns to the stage after Maria and company
have vacated it, just prior to the interval, bringing on
his portable radio, the lights fading as he sits there
beaming with happiness. It is a touching glimpse
into Malvolio’s private world. In the final scene,
as Fabian explains the plot against him, Malvolio’s
features crumble as his little boy’s dream comes to
naught. As he exits, he says softly, “I’ll be revenged
on the whole pack of you” (V.1.368) with his voice
breaking with the effort of holding back his sobs.
This Malvolio will be too heartbroken and ashamed
to seek revenge.
The musical Feste (Kulvinder Ghir) was transformed into a Baul singer, a Bengali traditional
minstrel. There are two traditions of Baul travelling
singers, and this Feste fits the type who has no fixed
abode and is treated as an outcast in this society. Baul
songs are mainly concerned with the problems of
separation and unrequited love which fits perfectly
with the themes of Twelfth Night. Feste’s place in this
world of Illyria was to make the other characters as
uncomfortable as possible, perhaps in an attempt to
provoke them into pondering their own situations
through music. Feste invaded the personal space
of Aguecheek and Belch during “O mistress mine!”
(II.3.37) to the point where they were cringing, desperate to be away. “Come away death” (II.4.50) was
disturbing for characters and audience alike, as Feste
covered his head with cloth, crouched on the ground
while rocking back and forth, keening. It powerfully
showed the mortal subject of the song.
Viola (Shereen Martineau) and Olivia (Neha
Dubey) were both very strong. Olivia was dressed
luxuriously, the saree of her mourning period barely
less ostentatious than the green and gold dress she
sported to impress Viola. The two scenes which they
have alone together deftly portrayed the shift in the
power balance between them. They were not played
for cheap laughs. In the first scene, the two were vying for control over the situation and while Olivia
sternly rebuked Viola/Cesario early in the scene with
“Have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face?” (I.5.221), making it clear that she
is an aristocrat, neither gained complete control over
the other. In their second meeting, it was clear that
Olivia had lost power as she desperately flirted with
Cesario. Olivia had clearly changed when she fell in
love with the page and had thrown away her selfrespect, trying to fashion herself into something that
would please her beloved’s eye. Orsino (Raza Jaffrey),
by contrast, was rather weak. In the opening scene he
was believably in the throes of an unrequited love,
sitting in a chair, listening to his gramophone record
and suffering real anguish over Olivia. However, the
emotion was not sustained in the following scenes.
Later he did not seem able to *
54
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
come to grips with the complexity of the role, giving
no indication that he was truly in love with Viola, nor
retaining the anguish felt about Olivia when actually
confronting them both at the end.
Overall this production was lucid, telling the
story clearly. The language lent itself quite easily
to the Indian rhythms of speech — although Viola,
Olivia and Orsino all spoke in upper class English,
another remnant of the Raj. The setting proved once
again that Shakespeare’s plays are malleable, giving
a western audience a small window into Indian
culture. Whether an Indian audience would react the
same to this production when translated into Hindi
is a question begged by this Twelfth Night.
Jami Rogers
55
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
Chichester, Nottingham, Liverpool and Bristol
Doctor Faustus, directed by Martin Duncan, Edward
Kemp, Steven Pimlott and Dale Rooks, Minerva
Theatre to Cathedral, Chichester, 20 September 2004,
promenade.
wiring and cables and, in its chaos, looked not dissimilar to the offices of many academic colleagues.
Samuel West’s Faustus entered in jeans, a T-shirt
and trainers over which he wore an academic gown
and hood. This he immediately took off, suggestmagnificent achievement, this is the kind of ing some begrudging student who has just attendtheatre which deserves international touring; ed graduation ceremony for the benefit of his proud
parents but who is clearly
unimpressed by the idea
of professorial prestige. He
scooted his wheeled chair
recklessly between the four
poles of learning: divinity, law, medicine and philosophy, content and then
rapidly discontent with
each, kicking books and
slamming them shut before
opening and consulting his
necromantic volume. He
was clearly a scholar from a
working-class background;
there were no middle-class
expectations about attending university, rather this
was someone who had attended Wittenburg on his
own merits and graduatFaustus, Chichester
ed top of his year without
Samuel West (Faustus) and Vicki McManus (Lucifer’s consort)
losing his cockney accent
but sadly, that which makes it memorable and sig- — one was reminded of the affectations of Nigel
nificant also makes it impossible to move. With four Kennedy or Jamie Oliver both of whom assume a
directors, seven professional actors, over one hun- now chic East End persona in order to defy class condred and thirty amateurs and the glorious setting of ventions! At “che serà, serà” (1.46), West chanted the
Chichester’s eighteenth-century North Street, medi- line in the manner of a football hooligan: this was
eval market cross and gothic cathedral and cloisters, a Faustus frustrated and affronted by the etiquette
this Doctor Faustus was epic in both its ambitions and of High Table, by the fustiness of Oxford, Durham,
its achievements. What made it even more exciting Aberdeen, the Red Brick or even the Plate Glass uniwas the shift from the mundane to the momentous versities. Later in the production, Steven Beard’s
— from the banality of a studio theatre with strip eccentric 1930s Rector admonished him from a fulllighting and a linoleum floor to the arched magni- speed bicycle in billowing academic gown and mortude of Chichester’s medieval cathedral (in which, tar board — exactly personifying the stuffy traditions
incidentally, Larkin’s “earl and countess lie in stone”, against which Faustus had set himself. This was a
Larkin having confused Chichester with the nearby graduate of Luton or Derby who could see no way to
Arundel and so having wrongly entitled his poem shirk his background in spite of his intellectual bril“An Arundel Tomb”).
liance. In this way, his necromancy was as much one
Faustus’s study was a room off a post-1992 uni- in the eye for the academic system as an expression
versity corridor, slightly tatty with an office chair of a personal ambition.
on wheels and a boring grey lino floor — no King’s The Good and Bad Angels (Matt Costain and
College Cambridge here. The ceiling was festooned Stephen Ventura) sat among the audience, their
with computer monitors, keyboards, television conflicting advice all the more effective for its bescreens, video recorders and similar “info. tech.” de- ing plainly delivered. Faustus never acknowledged
tritus. All of this apparatus was interconnected by them directly and so they seemed to be speaking
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLARE PARK
A
56
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
PHOTO COURTESY OF CLARE PARK
from inside his head. As the scholars discussed this was why the sight of Faustus drawing his own
Faustus, we saw him ecstatically tracing a penta- blood from a hypodermic which Mephistopheles
gram, hand on crotch and intoning his spells with a had given him was all the more shocking. As Faustus
frenzied sexual intensity. Quite what this signified, held the syringe with one hand, the other being outI could not be sure but the effect was to make the stretched, he looked to Mephistopheles to assist him
summoning of Mephistopheles disturbing and al- and withdraw the plunger. Mephistopheles backed
most embarrassing in its fervidness. As the schol- away holding his hands in front of him as though
ars exited and the lighting switched to a lurid red, to indicate squeamishness but clearly to signify that
out leapt a devil (Vicki McManus) — on all fours in Faustus, who then had to employ his teeth on the
scarlet, skin-tight costume with long tail and rubber plunger, was acting alone and of his own free will: this
mask — so extending the uncomfortably erotic na- was a brilliant touch. As Faustus was beset by “Homo
ture of the scene. Faustus’s immediate panic and re- fuge!” (5.81) there were hints of the hateful siege of
quest for a more acceptable shape led to the re-entry contraries which were going to animate his final soof Mephistopheles in the guise of an urbane vicar in liloquies. In order to distract him, Mephistopheles
black suit and dog collar. But (and this was genuinely presented him with a dance of devils and a Prospero
frightening), in addition to the large and evil-looking gown. One final sardonic touch: Faustus was lauded
silver skull on his ring, Michael Feast wore a pair of with a crown of thorns.
red contact lenses which gave him a truly demonic We were then ushered from the Minerva studio
appearance. Feast’s performance was one of the best to the cold evening of the vast car park immediately
I have ever seen in any dramatic role. He was charm- outside. On the roof of the neighbouring main-house
ing as the insouciant Faustus challenged him about theatre we saw a spectacular fire-eater. We processed
the whereabouts of Heaven and Hell but his gentle as a group between two rows of cars, their headlights
tone of explanation became a guttural roar at “Why, on and weird ambient noises coming from their stethis is HHHHHHHELL, nor am I out of it!” (3.78): reo systems. Between the cars, draped across their
Faustus, like the audience, physically jumped at the bonnets or sitting on their roofs, were black clad devsavagery in his voice. Yet, in spite of the horror of ils hissing and haranguing us. As we passed down
this devil, Faustus approached Mephistopheles and the North Street, we saw them, grasping at us from
kissed him on the lips. Instantly recalling the kiss in the tops of phone boxes and pillar boxes, draped
Gethsemane, this was also a continuation of the sex- across benches and leaping at us from shop fronts.
ual subtext of temptation and thus looked forward to Inventively, groups of devils enacted the Seven
the appearances of Lechery and Helen of Troy.
Deadly Sins. Wrath was a group of post-pub louts
The following scene (5), in which Faustus contracts throwing punches at each other, Gluttony smeared
his soul in exfood
around
change for twentheir mouths,
ty-four years of
Covetousness
Satanic power
attempted
to
was
ominous
raid a cash mayet
strangely
chine on North
achieved
with
Street.
Sloth
many of the clidraped themchés from the
selves over the
horror
genre.
pavement
in
Fundamental
front of us while
organ
chords,
Envy, trapped
thunder
and
behind
railflickering
ings, grasped
lights presaged
and screamed
the arrival of
curses at us. At
Mephistopheles
one point, the
who pushed the
damned souls
set apart and
were tumbled
Faustus, Chichester
walked downthrough a Hell’s
Samuel West (Faustus) and Vicki McManus (Lucifer’s consort)
stage with an orMouth which
dinary wooden
had been erectand metal desk the like of which one can see in any ed across a shop front. In spite of their lacking the
school or university office. His briefcase was perfect- intensity of the psychologically naturalistic scenes in
ly ordinary and the paper-work was conducted in an the Minerva, these promenade scenes were true to
atmosphere of disarming reasonableness. Perhaps the ribald public spectacle of Marlowe’s play. Doctor
57
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
Faustus is, as we tell our students every year, situated
on the fault line between the spectacular drama of
the Middle Ages and the emergent interiority of the
early modern theatre.
The scene with the Duke and Duchess of Vanholt
and the mysterious appearance of the out of season grapes was enacted on a small square scaffold.
Faustus, in white bow-tie and black tails, was an urbane and charming master of ceremonies. The Good
and Bad Angel shouted advice from the balcony of a
neighbouring hotel (this production had clearly taken some arranging). Lucifer and his consort (Kieran
Hill and Vicki McManus) arrived in a topless sports
car, she a gorgeous and sexually alluring presence,
he an Italianate wide-boy in sunglasses, sharp suit
and wielding a cane. From thence we were led to the
Papal palace, groups of friars, nuns and cardinals
flanking a tall umpire’s chair which served as Peter’s
throne. The invisible Faustus, Mephistopheles and
Lucifer strolled among them, throwing their food
and spilling their communion wine while Lucifer’s
consort sat in the papal throne, her fish-netted legs
splayed and her cleavage very much on display, smiling down at the ensuing chaos. Next we processed to
the medieval market cross to witness scenes of lechery, Faustus receiving a blow job from an assembled
gaggle of devils! Throughout these proceedings one
was struck by the contrast between the neo-classical
harmony of North Street’s architecture and the pandemonium of the noise, violence, showers of victuals
and jostling of the crowd as we avoided the clutches
of the more enthusiastic devils. The effect was one of
both exhilaration and humour. We will never re-experience the organised chaos of the pageant wagons
or the intrusions of the Tudor interludes, but perhaps
this was a tincture of that flavour.
We arrived in the magnificent Cathedral Gardens
as Faustus resurrected Alexander the Great and his
Paramour for the entertainment of the Emperor
and Empress. Brilliantly they arose from mock-ups
of tombs exactly like the real ones adjacent to them
so that, for a brief moment, their emerging limbs
gave rise to a frisson of panic among the audience.
Led inside the cloisters, we watched the Emperor’s
banquet with guests seated behind a long table and
eating and conversing in silence and in slow motion. Floodlit from the front, the blanched guests
threw huge shadows on the gothic arches behind
them. All costumes, utensils and props were white
so that the effect was reminiscent of a bleached version of Leonardo’s Last Supper — strangely eerie and
intriguing. The horse courser scenes were enacted
by a commedia dell’arte troupe (Faustus was doubled
at this point) with plenty of comic lazzi involving
buckets of water, hay bails and crude sound effects.
Unfortunately, although the intentions of this inset
drama were clear and the addition of another genre
should have caused no problems, commedia with its
rapid improvisation and interplay with its audience
is notoriously difficult to bring off and this episode
was disappointing. While on the one hand, these
were amateur performers, on the other the production’s directors should have been aware of the pitfalls of expecting so much from them.
From here we processed to another part of the gardens to see the despondent Faustus slouched against
a wall, his conscience squirming. He was distracted
by the scholars who requested he summon up Helen
of Troy so that they could see for themselves the erotic
cause of Homer’s epic struggle. At Mephistopheles’s
command she appeared aloft on the Cathedral roof.
McManus (doubling this part with Lucifer’s consort)
was costumed in billowing gold, her face masked,
her gestures graceful. Dropping a handkerchief to
the enraptured scholars she was gone as soon as she
had appeared — a vision which was to remain with
Faustus and cause him to request her reappearance
for his sole delectation in the final scenes.
The huge Gothic resplendence of the interior of the
cathedral was an uncanny setting for the final scenes
of spiritual agony. Faustus’s passion was enacted on
a simple square dais just ‘downstage’ of the choir
and immediately in front of the stone rood screen. As
Steven Beard’s Old Gentleman attempted to win him
back to the path of righteousness, he was assaulted
by a group of devils who had crept up guilefully on
him. The final speeches of the attendant Angels were
delivered from the vertiginous clerestories above the
Cathedral door. The Angels stood right up near the
roof in front of the enormous double arch of the western stained glass window. As the Good Angel spoke
about what could have been had Faustus listened to
his advice — “behold / In what resplendent glory
thou hadst sit…” (19.111) —the window was illuminated from without, so that the effect was of dramatic
revelation: this was a magnificent coup de theatre. As
the Bad Angel described Faustus’s future torments
in Hell, we looked down from the clerestories to the
glass doors behind us to see, in silhouette and lit in
red light, devils spitting and roasting damned souls:
pure Bosch.
But the evening’s most disturbing moment came
with the re-entrance of Mephistopheles. Stripped to
the waist, with tattered black sleeves hanging from
his wrists which at once recalled the academic gowns
we had seen earlier and also stood in for the singed
wings of a fallen angel, Feast’s Mephistopheles
railed from the top of the rood screen at the stupidity and hopelessness of Fasutus. The echo around the
Cathedral, the devilish red lighting, the potency of
Feast’s acting, not to mention the force of Marlowe’s
text, were enough to make this moment genuinely
frightening and, in such a setting, peculiarly blasphemous. Against this Satanic fury, the final quiet
desperation of West’s beautifully spoken Faustus
(the cockney seemed to have evaporated) contrast-
58
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
ed brilliantly and, as the cathedral bell tolled midnight, the choir stalls were lit red and inevitably and
ineluctably, Mephistopheles entered behind him. His
seizure of Faustus’s soul was simply another kiss,
looking back both to the reference to Gethsamane
and the lines which had been addressed to Helen,
“Her lips suck forth my soul” (18.102). The two of
them expired and tumbled on top of one another,
heaped onto the stage. At this moment the cathedral
was plunged into darkness and ten or so speakers
entered with candles to pronounce the epilogue. As
they reached their last lines, they blew the candles
out and we were left darkling and in total silence.
This was magnificent theatre — an astonishingly impertinent and outrageous realisation of one of the period’s most disturbing plays. Marlowe would have
loved it.
Peter J. Smith
*
Hamlet, directed by Yukio Ninagawa, The Theatre
Royal, Nottingham, 30 November 2004, centre stalls.
T
his new touring production of Hamlet, directed
by Yukio Ninagawa with a largely Japanese design team, and starring Michael Maloney, offered a
powerful reminder of the virtues of both the play and
its relationship to theatrical space and spectacle. The
overall design of the production and the well realised
central performances — Bob Barrett as a thoughtful,
engaging Horatio, Peter Egan who doubled a clear
and charismatic Claudius with a somewhat histrionic Ghost, and quintessentially Maloney himself as
the prince —are evidently driven by a clear vision
of the play as an exploration of the alienation and
redemption of the central protagonist.
Set design and costumes combined to produce a
visually arresting and eminently readable production. The set itself was a large black box, with two
sets of tall double doors on each of its three walls
providing ample avenues for entrance and exit and
alcoves for courtiers to stand in during moments
of high ceremony, but also allowing for a sense of
intimacy, even claustrophobia when all of the doors
were shut. Within this black space, changes of mood
and tone were created by variations in costuming
and lighting. Whole scenes were effectively colour
coded. The soldiers on the battlements wore dark,
dusty grey armour, resembling a cross between
Lewis Carroll chess-pieces and traditional Japanese
warriors. The Ghost itself was in full samurai costume with what looked like a Darth Vader mask
pushed back over his head. For the indoor scenes,
King, Queen and courtiers were dressed in rich crimson robes, the courtiers with scarlet scarves thrown
around their necks like ruffs, while for their scenes
together, Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia wore light
silver grey, the father in long scholar’s robes, the son
in travelling coat and slacks, the daughter in summer
gown and short-sleeved jumper. Against these bold
swathes of colour Hamlet’s “customary suits of solemn black” (I.2.78) (first a formal robe and then, for
the “mad” scenes, a black blazer worn over a wide
floor-length skirt) presented an effective contrast,
suggesting an unresolved anomaly in the society of
the court, literally matter out of place. Only on his
return from the sea did he vary the theme, sporting a
bright white shirt symbolic of his new resolution and
clarity of purpose.
The supporting roles were competently rather
than eye-catchingly performed. Brendan O’Hea and
Nick Bagnall’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who
first appeared in matching blue tank-tops, the latter sporting ultra-modern heavy-rimmed glasses
and speaking with an incongruous Mancunian accent), were a little too broadly drawn, too obviously sketches rather than fully-realised characters, to
work in a play world with little time for the kind of
comic business that might have suited them better.
Robert Demeger’s Polonius was better judged, a
pedantic schoolmaster, anxious to win the approval of his male peers and superiors, but vindictive
and openly aggressive when dealing with women.
He slapped Ophelia (Laura Rees) when she seemed
less than totally submissive, and even presumed to
silence Gertrude (Frances Tomelty) when she tried
to interrupt his account of Hamlet’s derangement.
Tomelty’s Gertrude was well played, but the rôle
was again somewhat underdeveloped, leaving it
unclear as to her motivation at key moments in the
play. At Claudius’ “I pray you go with me” (IV.5.219),
she pointedly refused his outstretched hand, choosing to exit through a door stage-left rather than join
him upstage, suggesting she had perhaps taken to
heart Hamlet’s injunctions to avoid his uncle-father’s
company. Yet, two scenes later, when her husband
again offered her his hand at “Therefore let’s follow”
(IV.7.169), she not only took it but wrapped her arm
around his waist, leaning her head on his shoulder as
they exited in each other’s arms. The implied contradiction was neither pursued nor resolved, although
the look of both shock and disbelief on her face in
the final scene as she realised that the drink had been
poisoned, perhaps suggested that until then she had
not taken her son’s accusations too seriously. Her direction of a derisive “He’s fat and scant of breath!”
(V.2.239), not at Hamlet but Laertes in mockery of
his poor performance, as her son took a comfortable
three-nil lead in the fencing match, was, however,
one of the funniest moments of the night, an unexpected suggestion of both the degree to which family
honour was at stake and the pleasure to be gained by
spectators from the early stages of this usually sombrely staged confrontation.
At the heart of the production, inevitably, was
59
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
Maloney’s superbly modulated performance as the prince.
Unlike Toby Stephens, the lead in the current RSC production (see Cahiers Élisabéthains 66 [2004], 41-43), Maloney
does not have youth on his side. Hence the addition of an
auburn wig was needed to suggest the gap in years between
himself and Gertrude. But what he does have is a wealth
of experience to bring to the rôle; and how it showed! He
established an instant rapport with the audience, emerging from the wings, a single black-clad figure amid a sea
of crimson, to deliver his first line, “A little more than kin,
and less than kind” (I.2.65). And thereafter he maintained,
seemingly effortlessly, a close relationship with the spectators throughout what was a master-class in dramatic timing
and verse-speaking. Emblematic of the performance was
the moment when, at “I have heard / That guilty creatures
sitting at a play / Have by the very cunning of the scene /
Been struck...” (II.2.577-80), he leaned up, rested his hand
on the front of one of the stage-side boxes, and peered out
to deliver the lines at the spectators in the first circle, an eyebrow raised in quizzical invitation, tacitly daring them to
say it was not so. He then turned to the front stalls to confide in us that “I’ll have these players / Play something like
the murder of my father” (582-83), an idea that he seemed
to imply might have been lost on those in the upper seats.
The great soliloquies were treated with similar subtlety,
mixing frenetic rage with moments of delicately poised intimacy. At the exit of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern following
II.2.536, he closed the upstage doors with a flourish, and, as
the dust settled in the spotlight around him, turned to face
the audience with an emphatic half-whispered “Now I am
alone”. With a shrug he threw the book in which he had
seemingly been so engrossed during his exchanges with
Polonius high into the air, watching its pages scatter across
the stage. Now at last, the gesture suggested, he could lay
aside his antic disposition and share his real thoughts with
the audience. Stepping to the very edge of the stage he delivered “O what a rogue and peasant slave am I...” (II.2.538
and following) with a steadily gathering rage, rising to
a crescendo on “Bloody, bawdy villain! / Remorseless,
treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!” (II.2.568-69), when
he threw himself at the doors upstage and stage left, highkicking them open and battering his head and shoulders
against them. Then, the fury subsiding at “O vengeance”,
he returned to the edge of the stage, sat down, and with
a shrug of almost resigned self-contempt delivered “Why,
what an ass am I” (II.2.571) as a whisper. Similarly, “To be or
not to be” was delivered with a hushed intimacy from the
edge of the stage, a conversation between actor and an audience co-opted as like-minded friends, whose agreement
to his propositions — “Who would these fardels bear...?”
(III.1.77) — was implied by glances across the footlights and
nods of acknowledgement. Maloney’s capacity to engage
the audience fully in his thought processes and maintain
their understanding of what he was doing meant that there
were no lingering doubts that his madness was real. The implication was clear that it, like his cruelty towards Ophelia,
was no easy thing for him to feign, but a necessary strategy
for survival in a corrupt and dangerous world.
As a clear and engaging reading of the narrative bequeathed to us by the play’s complex textual history, Ninagawa’s production
worked triumphantly. The issues at stake
were clear from the start, the performances
well matched to the clarity of the direction.
There were one or two odd omissions. In the
closet scene the crucial lines in which Hamlet
confronts his mother with her own guilt — “A
bloody deed — almost as bad, good mother,
/ As kill a king and marry with his brother...” (III.4.29-30 and following) — were cut,
leaving her collapse from self-righteous indignation into shattered self-reproach far less
clearly motivated — a contributory factor,
perhaps, towards the apparent ambivalence
about her rôle mentioned earlier. Similarly,
in the scene of preparation for The Murder of
Gonzago, much of Hamlet’s advice concerning
“tear[ing] a passion to tatters” and keeping
the clowns in check (III.2.9 and following) was
omitted. Given Maloney’s engaging relationship with the audience and theatre-space elsewhere, it was disappointing that this explicitly
meta-theatrical moment was not made capitalised on. But such minor objections should
not detract from an appreciation of this ambitious and almost completely realised vision of
Dr Faustus, Liverpool Playhouse
Above: Nicholas Tennant (Faustus),
Samuel Collings (Good Angel)
Opposite page: Jamie Bamber (Mephisto), Nicholas Tennant
Photos courtesy of Stephen Vaughan
60
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
the play. Rarely has a production combined so compelling a performance from an actor at the height of
his powers with such clarity of directorial vision and
design.
Greg Walker
*
Dr Faustus directed by Philip Wilson, Liverpool
Playhouse, 12 February 2005, front stalls.
F
ull bookcases stretched from floor to ceiling on
three sides of the stage in Philip Wilson’s production of Dr Faustus at Liverpool Playhouse. Mike
Britton’s impressive set integrated a central entrance
on each wall which focussed attention upon the
symmetry of the design. The hatching pattern on
the wooden doors seemed evocative of a confessional screen. The predominance of wood emphasised
the ecclesial atmosphere. The height of the set was
emphasised with ladders on either side of the stage.
Despite this, however, there was a strong sense of
claustrophobia. A librarian (Alan Barnes) hissed
“Shhh” to quieten Faustus (Nicholas Tennant) during
his opening soliloquy. Wagner (Michael Brown) was
also present at the beginning, reading at the same table as Faustus, and he continued working, oblivious
to the latter’s debate: Wagner’s (and the Librarian’s)
presence paradoxically enhanced Faustus’s isolation.
Nicolas Tennant is not a tall actor, so although the
stage space was sparsely furnished, the heavy library tables and chairs did have an oppressive effect.
Valdes and Cornelius (Simon Harrison and Daniel
Osgerby) both towered over Faustus. For their first
appearance, they wore academic gowns, which increased their size and also contrasted with Faustus’s
brown tweed suit, his unbuttoned shirt and loosened
tie. Some similarity in his appearance to Frank (the
Liverpudlian academic in Willy Russell’s Educating
Rita) was also suggested by Nicholas Tennant’s prosaic and at times painstaking articulation of Faustus’s
Latin. This, combined with his unprepossessing
appearance, ensured that Faustus seemed more
Everyman than tragic hero. His muted and conversational tone contrasted with the clipped and often
forceful verse of Mephistopheles (Jamie Bamber).
The text used was the A-text and fairly heavy
cutting (Philip Wilson acknowledged in the programme the loss of about 160 lines) meant that the
piece was played without an interval. The small cast
of eight meant much doubling for all but Faustus
and Mephistopheles. This technique underlined the
play’s hierarchy of characters. The sense of Faustus
and Mephistopheles using those around them was
intensified by the changing rôles. Symbolic costuming was evident in the white and black gowns worn
by the Good and the Bad Angel (played by Samuel
Collings and Daniel Settatree) respectively. The contrast was marked by the fact that both wore huge
wings. These ensured that they moved very little
61
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
and so their first scene (entering from opposite sides)
underlined both the symmetry of the staging and
the heaviness of Faustus’s known world. It is appropriate that the notion of a good and bad side of the
stage was subverted by Mephistopheles (wearing a
tailored suit with an orange lining and red trainers),
who occupied the Good Angel’s side for most of his
initial, persuasive dialogue with Faustus. There was
a resonance in Mephistopheles’s reference to “each
other’s spheres” (6.40) which was spoken just before
he broke the established duality by moving to stand
close to Faustus. Mephistopheles’s influence was
shown on a basic level when Faustus demonstrated
his liberation by, immediately after the pact, rearranging the solid wooden library tables. The lithely
agile Mephistopheles had encouraged a subversion
of the environment by standing and lying on the furniture in his first scene. His athleticism increased the
contrast with the stolid advice of both the Good and
the Bad Angel.
The physicality of Mephistopheles’s performance
prompted an unpredictable dynamic with Faustus.
There was a sexual frisson to which Faustus seemed
drawn and which Mephistopheles utilised. The allmale cast helped highlight this. Lechery (Michael
Brown) made an overt sexual approach to Faustus
and unnerved him. All Seven Sins were dressed in
the same brown suit as Faustus; attention was focused here upon the production’s overarching notion
of the events in the play as an extension of Faustus’s
mind. The opening had established this idea with
the prologue being spoken by disembodied voices.
Both Faustus and Wagner were on stage, but only
Faustus could hear and react to those voices. When
Mephistopheles later conjured up spirits for Faustus,
a light shone on Faustus’s face and the audience
saw shadows moving across it and heard noises.
The ethereal presence of Mephistopheles was enhanced by him not carrying any properties himself.
The “fire” (5.63) which he used to liquify Faustus’s
blood was a cigarette lighter, which Mephistopheles
deftly picked from Faustus’s jacket pocket and then
returned. Mephistopheles’s “book” (5.169) was
Mephistopheles himself. He stood centre stage with
his arms outstretched and compelled Faustus to stand
behind him with his arms slightly lower. The tableau
they then created was reminiscent of Leonardo da
Vinci’s drawing “Vitruvian Man”. The animation of
the picture demonstrated Mephistopheles’s commitment to action.
The closing sequence was remarkably powerful.
Faustus’s “I’ll burn my books” (19.190) was not the
usual desperate promise but a commitment which
was immediately fulfilled. He frantically created a
pyre of his books from those surrounding him on
the shelves, tables and floor. The fire was ignited
by Faustus using his cigarette lighter. He was now
in control of those items that Mephistopheles had
manipulated (and become). The audience quickly
became engulfed in smoke which eventually cleared.
The solidity of the upstage bookshelves had dissolved into a piercingly bright blue cyclorama.
Charred pieces of wood traced the outline of the
structure of the library, silhouetted against the light.
The focus, however, was just off centre where the
wood had been burnt, leaving the shape of a crucifix.
The established symmetry was broken and yet, here,
perhaps was the clearest indication of a spiritual
centre to the piece. Contradictions were juxtaposed
but perhaps not resolved in the survival of an image
which testified to both a rejection and an assertion
of faith.
Elinor Parsons
*
Twelfth Night, directed by David Farr, Bristol Old Vic,
12 November 2004, rear stalls.
“W
hat country, friends, is this?” (I.2.1). Viola
erupts from a pool of water. Wet, and seemingly cold, Nikki Amuka Bird begins David Farr’s
production. Although the captain is standing next to
Viola, and Orsino and his servants are present, it is
the audience she addresses as “friends”. Her words
hang in the air whilst Orsino (Charles Edwards) offers the text’s first lines and characterises what is
clearly a separate location. It is, perhaps, fortunate
that the audience is given time to frame a possible
response to Viola’s question. The space for contemplation of Angela Davies’s elaborate set makes a
straightforward response more difficult. High walls
with detailed plasterwork would enclose the stage
on three sides were it not for the large holes which
are blasted through on either side. Scaffolding poles
increase the sense of the structure’s fragility. We perceive a destroyed, rather than decayed, grandeur.
Any instinct to situate this in a precise time period is
discouraged by the suspension of a neon strip-light
next to a chandelier. A television-set is visible among
the bric-a-brac which busies both sides of the stage
and it seems similarly incongruous. Illyria is seemingly very British (Curio’s hunting dress and Feste’s
Irish accent reinforce this). A prompt to the audience
to view the action through the “mists of time” is offered in the smoky haze which is present throughout
the performance.
It may only be later that the audience realise that the
tableau at the beginning also included Olivia (Rakie
Ayola). She is seated at the top of what appears to
be a pile of precariously balanced chairs which lean
against the centre of the back wall. She only draws
attention to her veiled figure when she descends
the furniture gracefully (which facilitates the long
entrance needed for her first appearance). Her silent
presence onstage is paralleled by Sebastian (Joseph
62
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
Kennedy), who the audience witness enter and then
sleep on a make-shift mattress downstage right. His
beige suit and neon orange shirt is matched by Viola
as Cesario and identifies them as twins. Their contrast, however, in physical appearance and vocal dissimilarity does perhaps strain an audience’s ability
to suspend their disbelief when Orsino comments:
“One face, one voice …” (V.1.213). The casting choice
means that much of the confusion between the twins
provokes more bewilderment than amusement in the
audience. The humour does become hard-worked
and often seems separate from the text itself. Sir Toby
(Jimmy Yuill) splashes in the pool of water when carousing with Sir Andrew (David Delve). Sir Toby’s
Wellington boots had earlier concealed his alcohol.
His humming of “Singing in the Rain” is predictable. A similar inevitability characterises Olivia’s fall
forward into the water after propositioning Viola (as
Cesario). She loses her dignity and also some credibility in the choreographed movement.
Maria (Lindy Whiteford) shows a comparable lack
of spontaneity. There is no sense of her having a pivotal rôle in this production. Dressing her as a maid
compounds the denial of her significance within
the play. Lindy Whiteford’s flowery overall makes
Viola’s inability to identify “the lady of the house”
(I.5.173) confusing. The relationship the audience
witness between Maria and Sir Toby Belch is goodhumoured but not intimate. Jimmy Yuill isolates
himself partly through his interest in photography.
The black and white photographs decorating the set
increase the impact of his hobby. A potential superficiality in his relationship with Feste (Ian Lindsay)
and Sir Andrew is indicated when he takes a group
photograph to secure the alliance: “Three merry men
be we” (II.3.75). He also shows a voyeuristic delight
in taking photos of Malvolio when he is cross-gartered. The shift in fortunes for Sir Toby after his
wounding encounter with Sebastian is reinforced by
Fabian producing the camera to record the humiliation. Laughter, however, rather than sympathy is
provoked. Similarly, the turn of fortunes for Malvolio
is dealt with light-heartedly. Malvolio is imprisoned
in a piano (it had provided the sweet music at the
beginning). The audience is encouraged to find his
confinement in “hideous darkness” (IV.2.30) more
comic than disturbing. The emphasis here is consistent with the humour that is generated later by Mark
Lockyer’s petulant delivery of “I’ll be revenged on
the whole pack of you” (V.1.375).
An uneasy resolution is indicated, however, after
Feste’s closing song. Ian Lindsay’s flat tone and inclination towards speech rather than song contrasts
with the upbeat tune which comes from his radio. A
tableau is constructed at the end with Sir Andrew,
Antonio and Malvolio entering severally from stage
right. On the opposite side of the stage the newly
made couples form a celebratory group. Feste is in
the middle. There had been a similar symmetry earlier when on either side of the stage Orsino and Olivia
kissed Viola and Sebastian respectively. This had the
effect of making the embraces seem more forced than
spontaneous. At the end, therefore, the audience is
unlikely to be allied in feelings with any of the characters. The overwhelming impression is that we have
only been superficial acquaintances with everybody
that we met in this Illyria.
Elinor Parsons
*
The Tempest, directed by Richard Baron, Nottingham
Playhouse, 2 November 2004, centre stalls.
The Tempest is a notoriously challenging play to
stage. Its potentially disorienting mixture of stately
masques and spectacle with domestic scenes of great
intimacy and some of Shakespeare’s most direct
discussions of Renaissance power politics, coupled
with unrelenting focus on Prospero as the central
protagonist, stage-manager, and deus ex machina,
call for a very clear vision on the part of a director
if a production is to succeed. The best Tempests have
thus often been those that have imposed the clearest
reading on the play, taking liberties with the text
where necessary to create a distinct and memorable
theatrical experience. Richard Baron’s competent,
colourful new production for the Nottingham
Playhouse Theatre Company, while being entirely
workmanlike and explicable in its own terms, failed
to grasp this nettle, suffering from an over-reverential
approach to both text and narrative that left the play
rather less than the sum of its parts.
It was not that any of the performances, or any of
the directorial choices themselves were necessarily
poor ones. Indeed, it is hard to say precisely what
was lacking in the production, but demonstrably on
the night that I attended, something was. Perhaps it
was just teething trouble. Only three days into the
run, the timing of many of the exchanges, especially
those between Caliban (Michael Melia), Trinculo and
Stephano (played as a pair of Glaswegian drunks by
Graham Crammond and Rod Matthew respectively,
the former dressed, rather incongruously, in the
oversized shoes and checked jacket of a circus
clown) may have still been slightly off. Whatever
the cause, a great deal of carefully choreographed
comic business — as when Matthew circled around
the blanket under which Melia and Crammond were
performing complex variations of a pantomime
horse and a game of “Twister”, trying to find an
orifice into which he might thrust his bottle — raised
little beyond an occasion ripple of dutiful laughter.
Similarly the scenes between the courtiers were well
acted, suggesting some very subtle readings of the
various rôles, but the pacing was too leisurely, and
the business too limited to engage the audience
63
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
when the text was not readily captivating
for a modern audience. Here at least
some judicious cuts might have moved
things along more swiftly, removing lines
that were superfluous to the points the
production was seeking to stress.
Much more could have been made
of the tension suggested here between
Gonzalo, Sebastian and Antonio. Gonzalo
was played, slightly unusually by David
Terence, as a rather shrewd as well as an
honest counsellor, who could see through
the intriguers’ schemes and was keeping a
weather eye on them throughout the play.
Dressed somewhat unnervingly as a kind
of superannuated English provincial lordmayor in frock coat and chain, but with the
wild white hair and facial expressions of
Barrie Humphrey’s dissipated “Australian
Cultural Attaché”, Sir Les Patterson,
Terence brought a distinct critical edge
to the role that it often lacks. More also
could have been made of the relationship
between Sebastian (who was doubled
by Rod Matthew and played as a portly
1930s playboy in a white suit and circular
shades) and the more serious intriguer,
Antonio, played by Michael Mackenzie
as a junta general bedecked with medals.
Pericles, directed by Mary Zimmerman, The
PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROBERT DAY
The Tempest, Nottingham Playhouse
Right: Matthew Bugg (Ariel), Clive Francis (Prospero)
Below: Matthew Bugg (Ariel)
Photos courtesy of Robert Day
64
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
The latter’s exasperation with Sebastian’s
fecklessness was splendidly brought out when
Alonso (Kern Falconer) and Gonzalo fell asleep.
Rather than seize the opportunity to take his destiny
into his own hands, Sebastian produced a spliff from
his cigarette case and lay back to enjoy it. When
he passed it on with a comradely smile, Antonio
threw it abruptly into a rock-pool and began to
lecture his slightly distracted ally on the realities of
Machiavellian realpolitik.
At the heart of any production, setting the tone
for everything else, is, of course, Prospero. And here
too the production revealed both its strengths and its
limitations. Clive Francis’s magus was an avuncular
beachcomber, wearing his homespun cotton trousers
rolled, Prufrock-like, above the ankle and, when he
was not shrouded in his magic robe, sporting reading
glasses and what looked like a knitted waistcoat. It
was hard not to like him, but equally hard to imagine
him raising the dead or anyone taking too seriously
his threat to cleave Ariel in an oak. His moments of
anger were brief outbursts of exasperation rather
than signs of any deeper malice or suggestions that
he had delved deeper into the realms of magic than
was good for him. Hence some of the darker textures
of the rôle — and some of the more interesting
complexities to the play — were lost. There was
no hint here, for example, of any of the interest in
postcolonial politics that has dominated scholarship
on the play for the past two decades: Melia’s Caliban
was a brutish savage pure and simple, a grumbling,
howling creature out of his depth in human society
who attracted little sympathy from audience or other
characters alike. Nor did Francis’s Prospero gesture
towards any wider themes, whether imperialist
politics or the associations of the magus with the
playwright himself. Here was a straightforward
father figure who was working out the best way
to secure a safe return to Milan for himself and his
daughter (played by Eilidh Macdonald) and a good
marriage for the latter into the bargain. That he
had magical spirits at his command and apparatus
that gave him access to the innermost secrets of the
universe was rather by the bye: a feature of island life
(like the ability to carve rather fetching lookout posts
from local wood) that would readily be discarded
when his work was done.
What the production offered then, was a
straightforward and rather reverential reading
of the play that took few liberties with the text
and did little to challenge conventional readings.
Where it did allow itself a little innovation was in
the depiction of the spirit world, represented here
as a decidedly camp trio with a taste for crossdressing and cabaret. Matthew Bugg was an athletic
Ariel, who brought a dancer’s poise to the task of
slinking around the stage or flying in above it, as
he variously enticed and terrified the courtiers with
his incantations or the music of a violin. Adept at
quick costume changes he appeared variously in a
multi-coloured bodysuit crested with a flamboyant
coxcomb, a 1930s one-piece swimming costume,
and a winged harpy suit with skull headpiece and
huge clawed feet. He was ably assisted by Jean Marc
Perret (Spirit/Isis) and Danielle Young (Spirit/Juno),
especially in the Masque of Juno and Ceres when all
three emerged from the rear of the set in outrageous
allegorical headgear (a rainbow, a sheaf of corn, and
what looked like a gilded model of the solar system,
respectively) like a tableau from the Sydney Gay
Mardi Gras.
The set, designed by Ken Harrison, was attractive
and functional. A raised platform upstage, with
pivoting sections represented both a space ‘above’
from which Prospero might observe action at stage
level, and the rocking deck of the ship in the opening
storm scene. The space under the platform was open
to view, and provided a crawling chamber for Ariel
to traverse to eavesdrop on the courtiers and doubled
as Caliban’s cell. Downstage the wooden floor gave
way to a shoreline of sculpted rock formations and
pools of water in which characters paddled. It was
over this barrier between the stage and auditorium,
the island and the wider world, that Ariel clambered
to exit through the auditorium when Prospero gave
him his freedom at the end of the play. He went,
not with a curse, spitting in the face of his erstwhile
master as Simon Russell-Beale memorably had in
the RSC production of 1993 [reviewed by Angela
Maguin in Cahiers 44 (1993), pp. 95-97], nor with an
exultant leap of joy and look of gratitude, but with a
quiet smile of satisfaction. It was a fitting end to this
functional, understated production. He did not look
back.
Greg Walker
65
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
America
Shakespeare Theatre, Washington D.C., 30 December
2004, rear of the stalls.
D
espite its awkward plot construction and critical condemnation as a corrupted text, Pericles on
stage can sweep away all objections with the force
of its once-upon-a-time. Tempests, knights vying for
the hand of the fair princess, pirates, shipwrecks, and
a miraculous recovery from death are just a few of
its theatrical jewels. Mary Zimmerman has brought
Pericles to the Shakespeare Theatre’s stage for the
first time in its seventeen-year history, and I could
not help feeling that she might have put a few more
of those jewels on display. The production sparkled as bright but as coldly as a diamond. The Tony
Award-winning director of Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
Zimmerman created some lovely stage pictures—
Thaisa’s birthday party, all autumnal silks and harvest flowers; Pericles almost drowning in the long
blue silk streamers representing the storm at sea; the
silvery goddess Diana—but neglected the dramatic
possibilities in other moments. I especially missed
the knights’ tournament, which, though not explicit
in the text, is an opportunity to showcase the actors’
stage combat skill. More problematic was the lack
of aural clarity in several scenes; two of the Gower
speeches were even set to music, and the singers did
not help matters. Zimmerman seemed more interested in the visual magic, leaving the actors to try to tell
the story as best they could.
The production began swiftly, with Act I Scene 1,
the lines of Gower’s opening speech divided among
the cast as the play unfolded. Two ladies–in-waiting
clad in black knelt upstage as the incestuous daughter entered, wearing a long crimson veil (a rather
odd interpretation of Pericles’ description of her as
“appareled like the spring”, I.1.13); they hid their
faces in their hands as Antiochus kissed the girl. The
production did not include any visualization of the
dead suitors (Antiochus gestured out to the audience
on “yon sometimes famous princes”, I.1.35), but the
ladies’ movement hinted at the corruption in which
his courtiers colluded. As a messenger dashed on to
report Pericles’ flight, the action froze and the two ladies walked downstage to deliver the opening Gower
speech. Sharing the role of Gower among the cast
kept up the speed of the production—on the whole,
pace was not one of its flaws (except for an unnecessarily long set change into Thaisa’s birthday party:
a choreographed arrangement of tables, chairs, and
bouquets that was almost as complicated-looking as
the subsequent dance of the knights and ladies).
Key performers were strong and clear. Ryan
Artzberger, as the eponymous hero, was best in his
moments of suffering, which seemed to shape his
characterization. He began the play as a pleasant
enough prince, but it took the trials of fortune to
make the audience take a lasting interest in him.
Colleen Delany was a graceful princess Thaisa; her
sudden love for Pericles was one of the delights of
the production, and her reported death in childbirth
took audience members around me by surprise.
Artzberger showed his skill in this scene, pouring
out his grief over his wife’s body as the silk waves
rippled softly around her. The imagery in his eulogy—“A terrible child-bed hast thou had, my dear,
/No light, no fire” (III.1.56-57)—could have been
more strongly reflected in the staging, however: the
tempest was rather tamely presented, despite the description of the “dancing boat” and the baby’s “rudeliest welcome to the world” (III.1.13; 31). The production began with the sound of thunder and heavy rain,
but there was none in this scene. The beauty of the
moment that followed made up for that lack, though:
the “sea” stilled as Pericles laid Thaisa’s body on one
of the silk streamers, a sailor draped its end over her,
and another pulled her offstage as if she were borne
away by the waves.
This script offers many excellent roles, and the
Shakespeare Theatre cast was impressive. Particularly
memorable was Richard Pelzman as King Simonides;
he provided many of the lighter moments of the
evening, whipping on a cone-shaped party hat as he
resolved to “awake [Pericles] from his melancholy”
(II.3.86) and dancing with glee as he plotted to bring
his daughter and Pericles together. One wished that
Shakespeare had written more scenes for this jolly
man — or that Zimmerman had doubled him with
another character, as this play can afford some particularly fruitful doubling. Michelle Shupe excelled
as the radiant goddess Diana and the wicked Queen
Dionyza, and so did Naomi Jacobson as the kindly
Lychorida and a hilariously nasty Bawd; while Floyd
King showed his range with the First Fisherman (his
comic timing was impeccable) and the Pander, quite
the most menacing of the brothel crew.
Zimmerman was less fortunate in her Marina.
Dressed in a costume that recalled Dorothy in The
Wizard of Oz and speaking in a high-pitched voice,
Marguerite Stimpson looked and sounded like a
little girl, which emphasized the seediness of the
brothel but did little to establish her as a strong heroine. Marina carries much of the action in the second
part of the play, and the seriousness of her trials parallels that of her father, but the staging seemed bent
on downplaying any real threat to her life or virgin-
66
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
ity. Leonine’s attempted murder turned into a chase
through a wheat field that went on for so long that
I started to wonder what was keeping the pirates.
More important, her victory over the lechers in the
brothel seemed more a result of their ineptitude than
her sterling goodness. The script for her scene with
Lysimachus followed the Complete Oxford edition
(with textual additions by George Wilkins—the
Act V reunion of Thaisa and Pericles was likewise
lengthened), which can make his reformation more
dramatically credible, but turned his lines into lame
excuses for his behaviour, rather than the epiphany
that this moment should be. Marina’s warmth and
compassion were rather lacking in Stimpson’s performance, though she showed more of these qualities
in the crucial reunion scene with Pericles.
Though Zimmerman and her cast found felicitous
moments of comedy in the staging (Antiochus and
Leonine delivered some of the Gower lines together
wearing devil horns, as if they had become imps in
hell) the de-emphasis of the serious marred potentially dramatic scenes. “Bad child, worse father, to entice
his own /To evil” (Prologue 27-28) was strangely
played for a laugh, diminishing the sense of threat
to Pericles. The array of knights in Act II Scene 2—including an African warrior performing a dance that
invited the audience’s laughter, and an armoured
knight carrying a sword too heavy for him—did not
offer Pericles much of a challenge; against competition like this, he was bound to win the tournament.
Most disappointing, the final scenes of reunion failed
to achieve fully the sense of wonder that the characters express. There are laugh lines in the script, to be
sure — Pericles breaking off his frenzy of embraces to
ask, “Who is this?” (V.1.214) on spotting Lysimachus’
unfamiliar face — but Artzberger simply sounded
peevish. The laughter should accompany tears, both
onstage and in the audience.
The production’s coldness was largely due to the
design. Dan Ostling’s set, with its high, grey walls
and large windows accented by a plain metal-railing balcony and one wall comprised of drawers
and cupboards, evoked a forbidding institution,
not the flexible every-place this play might require.
Actors pulled pieces of fabric out of drawers and
carried ship models on sticks , and the pirates made
a memorable entrance out of a cupboard. Excellent
productions of this play have been performed on an
essentially bare stage, but here the scanty scenery
was lost in the austerity of the set. A pile of sand on a
blanket represented Tarsus, with Cleon and Dionyza
accompanied by a lone famine victim, but in general
the groupings of furniture in the middle of the huge
empty room contributed little.
Bringing this play to life requires warmth of spirit
from its actors and directors, and perhaps a leap of
faith: with its comparatively slight production history, there is less of that familiar certainty that all
will come out right. When it does (both as a play and
as a production) it can move the audience to tears.
The production was extremely well received, so the
Washington audiences must have taken that leap of
faith and savoured the visual feast, but to this viewer,
a more emotional telling of the old tale would have
been more satisfying.
Note: All line references are from the New Cambridge
edition, Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond, eds.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Kelly Newman
*
Richard III, directed by Benjamin Evett for Actors’
Shakespeare Project, Old South Meeting House,
Boston, MA, 30 October 2004, front stalls.
B
oston’s historical Old South Meeting House —
from which the colonists began the Boston Tea
Party — was the unique backdrop for a different type
of revolutionary politics, as the Actors’ Shakespeare
Project chronicled Shakespeare’s Richard III and his
rise to power. The auditorium comprised the white
pews and the space underneath the pulpit doubled
as a stage. The audience was introduced to Richard
before curtain-up, dressed in a dark business suit
with a grey tie, leaning against one of the cream pillars supporting the pulpit. He looked more like the
stereotype of a brooding Hamlet than the wizened
hunchback. He appeared distinctly anti-social as piano music played, and characters walked among the
pews as though at a cocktail party and a uniformed
servant offered the Bishop of Ely’s strawberries to
those who sat waiting for the play’s beginning.
John Kuntz’s Richard began as a rather ordinary
young man, clearly harbouring a grudge, but not the
kind of venom that indicated the carnage to come.
Despite the content of Richard’s opening soliloquy,
his relationship with his brother Clarence (Allyn
Burrows) at the beginning of Act I Scene 1 showed affection between the two as Richard clung to Clarence
in farewell and Clarence knuckle-rubbed Richard’s
head in a big-brother token of affection. This was
possible because Kuntz did not signal to the audience that Richard was play-acting, nor did he play
him as a comedic star turn in the first half. Each
phrase Richard uttered was said in complete earnestness, whether he was speaking to his family, his
political rivals, or the audience. In his early scenes,
he seemed affable and charming, so much so that the
young Princess Elizabeth (Maureen Regan), an addition to the text, in schoolgirl’s uniform, gazed at him
in admiration. The first indication of Richard’s underlying menace came on his meeting with the two
princes. The young Duke of York, showing childish
curiosity, conversed warmly with his uncle while
67
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
Pericles, Shakespeare Theatre, Washington
Ryan Artzberger (Pericles), Michelle Shupe (Diana), Jonathan Wiener (ensemble member)
Photo courtesy of Richard Termine
Richard III, Old South Meeting House, Boston
Carlos Rojas (York), John Kuntz (Richard)
Photo courtesy of Kippy Goldfarb
68
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
he unconsciously explored the fingers of Richard’s
“blasted sapling”. When Richard could stand York’s
touch no longer, he suddenly lashed out and slapped
the child’s fingers hard. From that moment, Richard’s
ruthlessness was laid bare for the audience.
The rest of Benjamin Evett’s staging was equally
thoughtful in its portrayal of the play’s power politics. Richard’s crony Buckingham (Marya Lowry),
played here as a woman, had seemed loyal to
Edward IV and his family, yet when she spied her
chance for advancement she stated to Richard, “My
lord, whoever journeys to the Prince,/For God sake
let not us two stay at home “ (II.2.146-47). Richard
quietly summed her up, appraising the idea and the
package from whence it came, until he exclaimed
“My other self” (II.2.151), signaling their new political alliance. In a clever bit of stage business at the
beginning of Act III Scene 5, the Mayor of London
(Paula Langton) entered and was greeted by Richard
and Buckingham. Just after the initial welcome, the
lights in the auditorium went suddenly black, as
though the group had come under attack. Catesby
(Allyn Burrows) shielded the Lord Mayor who was
clearly frightened. Ratcliffe (Michael F. Walker) then
entered and dropped the head of Hastings on the
ground with a loud thud as the lights came back
up. The Lord Mayor was completely speechless,
clearly torn between knowing that the coup which
had just taken place was criminal, yet afraid for her
own head. This beautifully illustrated how Richard
was able to come to power by using the simple tool
of fear. Unfortunately, this well-defined sense of
politics was missing in the reconciliation at Act II
Scene 1. That scene did not make it clear how the factions felt about each other, although it did match in
tone Kuntz’s early downplaying of Richard’s machiavellian tendencies. However, in this case, what was
missing was not comic glee in Richard’s nastiness,
but a sense of just how the fractious rifts within
the royal family would leave a power vacuum into
which Richard soon stepped.
The most powerful performance came from Paula
Plum’s cameo appearance as Queen Margaret.
Inserting herself into Act I Scene 3, Margaret was
dressed in a black cocktail dress from the thirties,
which portrayed her as a creature from the past
not engaged in the modern political world of the
Yorks, who all wore contemporary business suits.
Her asides were said directly to Richard, who ignored her at times, at others he stuck his fingers in
his ears, and once spat a hateful “What?” (I.3.112) at
her before completing his sentence railing at Queen
Elizabeth (Jennie Israel). In her later scene, Margaret
entered on “If sorrow can admit society” (IV.4.38),
moving across the stage as a polite hostess would,
making her guests feel welcome. Margaret clutched
a ragged book and as she spoke the name of each of
her enemies, she recalled their fates and crossed out
their names, tearing at the paper with her pen. As she
exited, Margaret dropped the book at the Queen’s
feet, stating “And leave the burden of it all on thee”
(IV.3.113), thus bequeathing the Queen her sorrows.
This distinctive use of props and the contemporary business costumes allowed the production to
mimic the machinations of today’s politicians and
campaign officials, greedily seeking the world’s top
job. The scene dominated by Queen Margaret also
brilliantly showed how the loss of power not only
affected Margaret, but also Queen Elizabeth and her
daughter, as they were each reduced to sobbing at
Margaret’s vengeful feet. Because Kuntz’s Richard
was not a star turn, his portrayal made him all the
more evil once he had cast off his affable veneer. His
rise and fall was not that of a cheeky, loveable villain
but of a man who chillingly stopped at nothing to
gain power.
Jami Rogers
*
Coriolanus, directed by Karin Coonrod for Theatre for
a New Audience, Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John
Jay College, New York City, 20 February 2005, front
stalls.
A
high wall of wooden panels, lit to make them
appear grey, made an artificial room within
the proscenium arch stage. This stylized rendering of Theatre for a New Audience’s production of
Coriolanus began with the cast ascending ladders that
were placed deep within the orchestra pit, the entrance mimicking the wartime cliché of going “over
the top”. This was the only time the ladders were
used, but it was effective in its evocation of social upheaval and war.
The cast then became anonymous citizens of Rome
— clothed indistinguishably in costumes of similar
cut, differing hues of grey, belonging to a nameless,
timeless epoch — followed their leader, and began
to chant “corn at our own price” (I.1.10‑11), which
firmly established their actions as a hunger riot.
Menenius (Jonathan Fried), who had entered as one
of the crowd, separated himself on his entrance line,
put on his spectacles and addressed the citizens in
the soft tones of a well-spoken politician. To illustrate
a point, as though in a classroom, Menenius drew the
rotund figure of a man on the back wall—clarifying
for the plebeians exactly what the “belly” and “the
body’s members” (I.1.93-94) meant to them. Not to
be outdone in artistic ability, the first citizen (unidentified in the programme) used the chalk to illustrate
his own points within the ensuing argument.
This use of graffiti was never more effective than
in Act I Scene 1, clarifying the argument of what can
be a tedious scene during performance, but it became
a gimmick that was overused. At each scene change
in the first half, an actor would announce to the au69
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
dience a scene number and name it with a phrase
as the rest of the company wrote the caption on at
least two of the walls: “Scene Two” (I.3, as I.1 and 1.2
were conflated into one segment) began with graffiti
of “manifest housekeepers” (I.3.52-53) added to the
walls. While it provided excellent clarification for an
audience orientating itself to both the story and language at the beginning of the show, by the seventh
“scene”, it was a tired device and distracting as the
company did not cease writing the slogan (“the people are the city”, III.1.199) during “scene seven”.
A much more effective technique was a stylised
staging used often in the early sections of the production. The staging was reminiscent of acting exercises
which try to isolate the meaning in difficult texts
via movement. For instance, in Act I Scene 1 when
Coriolanus (Christian Camargo) and Menenius
began their exchange, the citizens remained frozen
in place. Likewise, as Sicinius (Simeon Moore) and
Brutus (Michael Rogers) began their dialogue with
“Was ever man so proud as is this Martius?” (I.1.250),
it was Coriolanus and his party who froze, enabling
the two tribunes to circle around the stationery
figures in a menacing way, making the characters’
opinion of Coriolanus crystal clear to the audience.
This stylisation, while abandoning Shakespeare’s
crowd scenes, isolated the motives of key characters
which are often lost when played with a traditionally
large cast. This illuminative effect was also employed
in Act I Scene 4, when Coriolanus, instead of exiting
to enter Corioles, was immobilized centre-stage as
his soldiers discussed his foolhardiness at entering
the city alone (I.4.46-63). The soldiers’ admiration of
Coriolanus was clear, which is difficult to achieve
within a traditional staging of the chaos of war.
The portrayal of Coriolanus was much enhanced
by these theatricalities. His ability to rally his troops
was also perceptible when he exhorted “Those are
they / That are most willing” (I.6.66-67) to follow
him. Camargo’s characterization here showed quite
clearly Coriolanus’ self-assurance and his faith that
only those troops committed to winning would be
those that followed him. By believing in himself,
he enabled his troops to believe in him in return.
Though the language and situations are different, the
effect onstage in Act I Scene 6 was of a King Harry
stirring up the troops for St. Crispin’s Day. This
Coriolanus also displayed what I interpreted to be
true modesty. He was uncomfortable when praised
and, when given the honorific title “Caius Martius
Coriolanus”, he smiled wryly and said “I will go
wash” (I.9.66). The staging of the beginning of Act II
Scene 2 emphasized his discomfort, as he was placed
in a chair downstage centre, lit by a spotlight, with
the senators upstage right seated behind a table and
the tribunes upstage left seated unceremoniously
on a bench, each group arguing over the merits of
naming Coriolanus Consul. The focus here was on
Coriolanus’ shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
Despite his modesty, this Coriolanus’ downfall
was caused by his inability to solve his problems
by any method other than violence. When confronting the tribunes in Act III Scene 1, Menenius and
Cominius (Ezra Knight), the experienced politicians,
tried to convince Coriolanus to broker a deal with
the tribunes. Any chance of a political settlement
was removed when Coriolanus’ instinctive reaction
to Sicinius labeling him a “traitorous innovator”
(III.1.174) was to grab the tribune violently by the
throat. Volumnia (Roberta Maxwell) also tried to reason with her son (played here as no controlling force
over him, merely another voice trying to temper his
excesses), to no avail—violence remained his tool, as
politics seemed unknown to him.
Oddly, the stylisation which had enhanced the first
half of the production completely disappeared in the
second. After the interval, the production lost all momentum as scenes were played with actors statically
speaking to one another. The staging became dull
and the scenes lacked the clarity which had worked
well in the first half. Therefore, Coriolanus’ meetings
with both Aufidius (Teagle F. Bougere) and Volumnia
were underplayed. Had more moments grown from
the acting exercises which had served the first half so
well, this Coriolanus could have had a second half to
match its first.
70
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
Jami Rogers
PLAY REVIEWS
France: Lille, Orléans, Paris
Juli Cèsar, directed and adapted by Àlex Rigola,
translated into Catalan by Salvador Olia, French
subtitles by Jérôme Hankins, Théâtre du Nord, Lille,
12 December 2003, front stalls.
À
lex Rigola belongs to that generation of young
Spaniards (taken here to mean also Basques
and Catalans) who have burst onto their country’s
cultural scene with a mix of confident irreverence
and experimentation that makes for both artistic
creativity and thought-provoking reappropriation.
After winning attention (and awards) for his Titus
Andrònic in 2000, which was his first staging of
Shakespeare, he has been widely acclaimed — and
granted yet more awards — for his Juli Cèsar. Created
in November 2002 for the prestigious Lliure Theatre
in Barcelona, which Rigola directs, Juli Cèsar has been
on a world tour that has taken in Lille, Toulouse, Palermo, Rome, Saint Petersburg and Caracas.
The production is divided in two parts of unequal
length, respectively entitled “Word” (Acts I-III) and
“War” (Acts IV-V). This idea was adopted by Stuart
Seide in his staging of Antony and Cleopatra (see Cahiers Élisabéthains 66 [2004], 68-69)1, which harmoniously rounded off the “Lille 2004” theatrical season,
which was one of the major events that marked the
French city’s year as European capital of culture.
The setting of the play, “Roma”, is clearly indicated
by black lettering on the left side of the backdrop. As
politicians play on words to get their message across
and to achieve their ends, there is an interesting play
on these letters which confers structural unity to this
production. By the beginning of the second part, the
“R” and “M” have disappeared, leaving only the
vowels “O” and “A” on the wall. The audience is
left to wonder whether these stand for Octavius and
Antony and whether Rigola is also subtly equating
the two parts, “Word” and “War”, through their
vowels.
Before the play actually begins, the actors come
onto the stage in turn, running on the spot so as
to suggest the vanity of the human race for personal gain. The actors’ black and white underwear
matches the off-white set design and modern black
furniture, and it quickly gives way to black trousers
and white business shirts. The only colours used in
this production are black and white, with a touch of
red for the long silk dress worn by a most dignified
and generous Portia, played by Matilda Espluga, and
also for the carpet used when Caesar makes his regal
entry and the blood-stained shirts after his assassination. Caesar is the only character dressed in a black
polo-neck jumper and black trousers.
The stage is wide but not very deep, which allows for effective lateral choral movement. Eight
black chairs and one small one, with their backs to
the audience, are lined up on the stage. It becomes
apparent to the spectators later on in the play that
the small chair is for the thirteen-year-old boy who
plays Octavius Caesar (Joel Roldàn), thus symbolically preserving the impression of an age difference
between Caesar (younger than usual here than in
most productions) and his successor, who later becomes the aptly named Augustus Caesar. The chairs
are used in several ways during the production. In
the Senate meeting scene at the Capitol presided
over by the Roman general, they are placed around
a long black table, evocative of a Board of Directors
chaired by an MD, just before being dismissed from
office. After the interval, placed haphazardly on the
stage, the chairs convey a feeling of revolt and disorder and later on again, they are used as horses. At the
very end of the play, they stand like stelae or statue
plinths in honour of the dead Roman tyrant and the
conspirators, reminiscent of Caesar’s (II.2.76) and
Pompey’s (III.2.190-91) statues, from which streams
of blood flow.
Another notable element in this production is
the very effective use of microphones to create a
battlefield atmosphere. The main microphone symbolises the power of words as a political instrument
and serves as a dagger for stabbing Caesar, sending
out an ear-splitting explosion and ending in a shrill
whine. Words can kill.
As pointed out in a public discussion with the
actors after the performance, an interesting parallel
can be drawn between Cassius, Casca and Brutus
trying to convince themselves and others to join the
conspiracy to kill the Roman tyrant and George W.
Bush, Tony Blair and José María Aznar trying to persuade their allies that it was necessary to send troops
to Iraq. The second part of the production probes
deeper into the political void left by an assassination.
The conspirators, plunged into confusion and disarray, face civil war in Rome, in much the same way as
the capture of the Iraqi dictator has left the country
in chaos. This does not imply that these parallels
were initially intended by the director, since the war
in Iraq had not yet started when the play was first
staged but it can be seen as a further example of history repeating itself.
Ferran Carvajal is a fragile and supple, somewhat
effeminate, Caesar. His acting has an ethereal quality
about it which makes him seem almost physically
unreal. The savage assassination of this lone, ghostly
figure contrasts with the general impression that
71
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
he was somehow inaccessible and thus protected
from the violence of the conspirators. The solidlybuilt Pere Arquillué is particularly impressive as
Antony, especially in his funeral oration from the
Forum rostrum before the plebeians as they sit on
the theatre steps. He is also very moving in the scene
where Antony holds the frail, bare and blood-soaked
body of Caesar in his sturdy arms, in a scene that is
suggestive of the Deposition of Christ by Joseph of
Arimathea (III.1). Brutus, played by David Selvas, is
convincing as the leader of the conspiracy and is ably
assisted by an intriguing Cassius (Julio Manrique),
although neither of them attain full tragic stature
when they commit suicide at the end of Act 5. The
black dog Gastón appears twice in the production,
the first time, unleashed and vaguely evocative of
the mythological Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog at the gates of hell, as a portent of Caesar’s impending death, and the second time as a guide-dog
to Caesar, Brutus’s “evil spirit” (IV.3.281), during one
of his ghostly apparitions and also perhaps as one of
the “dogs of war” (III.1.273).
As regards the music, Àlex Rigola and sound
designer Igor Pinto have drawn on a wide range of
musical genres, from Wagner’s The Valkyrie to The
End by The Doors and also some of the trendiest Barcelonese techno music, with original lighting effects.
When young Octavius Caesar is playing with his war
toys in Act IV Scene 2, there is an obvious allusion to
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
The overall impression is of a resolutely modern
and daring production which nevertheless always
remains faithful to the essence of the play. With a
well-balanced cast, Catalan director Àlex Rigola’s
original and stimulating approach, which highlights
some extremely uplifting moments, is like a breath
of fresh air.
1. In that review, the first phase of the production was
mistakenly called “World” instead of “Word”. s
Vincent Roger
*
La Répétition des erreurs, directed and adapted by
Marc Feld and Claude Duneton, Carré Saint Vincent,
Scène Nationale d’Orléans, 3 March 2005, centre.
T
he performance of La Répétition des erreurs — an
adaptation of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors
and Pascal Guignard’s philosophical text, La Raison
— started as the audience was taking place in the
large Pierre-Aimé Touchard Theatre. On the stage, a
huge architectural skeleton representing a collapsed
Mediterranean edifice supported by a scaffolding
was being dusted while technicians, dressmakers and actors seemed to prepare the stage for the
performance. You could hear someone hammering
offstage while costumes were being ironed and lighteffects checked… Suddenly, Bernard Menez (who
played the Duke, Luce and Doctor Pinch), dressed
as a contemporary stage-director, walked among the
stalls and asked one of the usherettes whether the
play could start. In bright light, he addressed the
audience: “You are going to attend a run-through”,
he said and added “despite a few trials and difficulties the show is almost ready. As a matter of fact there
was a fire in the wings, which partly burnt the costumes and damaged the setting…” This, of course,
was no improvised statement, but the prologue to a
performance that would ostensibly illustrate the art
of illusion.
The set, which was purposely not finished, also included a huge screen on which images of Mediterranean harbours were cast. The views were supposed
to recreate the atmosphere of Ephesus where the plot
is set. Yet the film also proved to be half ready: the
image sometimes showed excerpts of commercials,
news items, and old films where actors were fencing.
It even broadcast the interior of an actor’s dressing
room where a pet dog was acting the fool! As a matter of fact the dog was to come onstage later on in the
performance after having supposedly escaped from
his kennel. So as to justify the intrusion of modern
technology in an Elizabethan play, Bernard Menez
explained that as Shakespeare’s verse are not always
understandable, he had had to resort to some form
of magic effects. “After all, he added, Shakespeare
did encourage such technique,” and he quoted
Prospero both in English and in French. To launch
the plot of The Comedy of errors, the actors came on
stage and put on their sixteenth-century costumes.
This action reiterated the notion that the play was a
“repetition” (the French word meaning “rehearsal”)
as the title of the performance stated. Hence the first
Shakespearean lines, translated by Claude Duneton,
sounded approximate and were chaotically scanned.
After Egeon’s long storytelling in Act I Scene 1, the
performance shifted to a long monologue taken from
Guignard’s Raison. The latter broke off the action on
stage and led to another mental space, a more meditative one with its own language and meaning. La
Raison tells the story of a philosopher wandering in
ancient Rome while pondering on the “reason” that
influences human action. In Feld’s adaptation, the
text was uttered by Egeon (Jacques Denis), a character who does not appear much in Shakespeare’s play.
It was a way to complete the portrait of both Antipholuses’ father, who as a doomed figure needed
to meditate on the human’s fate. He intermittently
intervened during the performance, guided by his
gaoler and violinist (Richard Axon.)
The plurality of voices due to the superimposition of texts was further echoed by the actor’s cues.
Since some members of the cast were English-speaking, they sometimes told their lines in English. The
72
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
final lines of the abbess (Natasha Cashman) in Act V
Scene 1 were told in English for instance; they were
translated by the other characters onstage with much
confusion and inaccuracy, which obviously conferred
a comic tone to the end of the performance.
Overall, Feld’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy was rather lively and meant to be entertaining.
To complete the mise en abyme of dramatic art, the
performance encountered further difficulties: after
an hour and a half, lights went out and the first row
had to hold pocket-lamps and direct them to the
stage so that the actors could go on “rehearsing”…
Previously Dromio’s mind had gone blank, the iron
curtain had suddenly fallen and Menez-director had
confusedly apologized for the unexpected interval.
What is more the unfinished set constantly reminded
the audience of the artificiality of the world on stage:
various parts of the ruin were sometimes gathered,
lifted by a visible string wheeled onstage by a technician, but once vertically settled those Hellenic columns remained shaky, and the actors could not lean
against them safely.
To juxtapose the interior and exterior parts of
Adriana’s house in Act III Scene 1, where some of
the characters are supposed to have supper inside
(Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse) while others
(Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus, Angelo and
Balthazar) are conversing outside and trying to enter
the house in vain, the upper part of the scaffolding was partly concealed behind lace curtains. You
could easily guess the characters’ silhouettes above
and follow the talking below. This vertical interplay
created a very dynamic bi-dimensional play, and recalled the balcony of the London Globe. It was also
a trick to pretend there were two different actors to
perform the two Antipholuses… but the final scene
where all the cast was reunited disclosed the truth
in that matter since one of the brothers was nothing
but a broadcast image: a fake Antipholus, gigantic
and remote; once again the illusion was, willingly,
imperfectly rendered.
To Marc Feld, “a play is a polyphony of materials that meet and are confronted to one another;
[…] as a consequence a play is always complex.”
His adaptation showed this complexity because of
the multiple doubles it encompassed: the original
play’s doubles (the two pairs of twins), the textual
doubles (Shakespeare’s play on the one hand, Guignard’s prose on the other), the double genres (drama
and philosophy), the double language, the double
worlds (real and theatrical), etc. It was perhaps too
much in a single net. Some of the actors managed
to switch back and forth between the different parts
they had to perform and succeeded in inhabiting the
two worlds (fictitious and mock-real, or Shakespearean and contemporary). Others were clumsy, hardly
ever truly involved in the plot, and they scanned
Shakespeare’s (translated) verse very oddly. It was
hard to know at times whether this was intentional
or not, since everyone seemed to play hide-and-sick
with the different levels of reality. Moreover, though
Guignard’s text was poetical, it tended to lengthen
the development of the praxis and created confusion.
It was difficult to relate the philosopher’s meditations to Shakespeare’s plot. Guignard’s speculations
on human nature and the solemnity of his prose
did counterpoise the comic tones of the Errors but it
unfortunately missed the point: people had come to
see a comedy first and foremost. Unless one chooses
to see it as contributing to the maze of confusion in
which Shakespeare likes to lose his audience; all in
all, it certainly made for an amazing show where
nobody could understand, see, and know who’s who
and what’s what.
Estelle Rivier
*
Les Joyeuses commères de Windsor, directed by JeanMarie Villégier and Jonathan Duverger, ATAO-Scène
Nationale d’Orléans, 21 October 2004, rear stalls.
O
ne usually expects from a performance of The
Merry Wives of Windsor to be entertained and
allowed to indulge in good-humoured laughter. The
characters, mainly Falstaff, all tend towards buffoonery and are endowed with grotesque features: Falstaff is often caricatured as an excessively self-confident paunchy clown; Bardolf, Pistoll, and Simple are
his sly acolytes, though his punching bags too; Mistress Quickly is a farcical, cunning woman, whose
function is to originate imbroglios. Skilful casting
and directing can produce a delightful atmosphere
of comedy. Regretfully, laughter proved shortlived in
this production by Jean-Marie Villégier.
The curtains opened onto what seemed to be a
promising start. Bright colours dominated the scenographic design formed by three tiers of curtains
that hung from wooden rails. A whitish platform
contrasted with the rest of the huge stage, which was
plunged in the dark.
The first characters who entered the stage — Master Shallow (Alain Delanis), Page (Didier Niverd)
and Slender (François Genty) — wore bright costumes that, combined with their manner, initially
invited amusement: Master Shallow looked like a
semi-demoniac, semi-Gallic crank whose malapropisms were rather hard to understand. His red and
black garments and long white moustache created a
funny effect when the protagonist desperately struggled to communicate, especially since his head nodded continually from right to left like that of a toy
dog on the rear shelf of a car. Generally speaking,
all the characters aroused laughter as they came on
stage, and yet these humoristic assets soon lost their
verve, so that the audience, sitting in comfortable
73
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
seats, either preferred to doze off or to leave during
the interval.
Falstaff (Jean-MarieVillégier himself) was indeed at
the heart of foolish games, in keeping with the plot of
the play, allegedly written at Queen Elisabeth’s bid,
but he never gave rise to the audience’s connivance
nor looked miserable enough to arouse their sympathy when he was finally ridiculed in the forest scene
and mocked by everyone. Falstaff never seemed to
be deeply enough in love to be loved indeed.
Pistoll (Stéphane Jaouen) and Nym (Emmanuel
Guillou), who were dressed up as Batman and Superman respectively, were initially delightful, but
they soon became rather boring, especially when
they kept laughing during Falstaff’s soliloquy in
Act I Scene 3: the audience could not hear what was
being said and missed part of Falstaff’s plans. Such
redundancy of humour made for tediousness.
Love should have been the central character of
the play since it is at the core of the different plots.
However no emphasis was laid on it. Even the cause
of discord between the Pages (over Anne’s marriage)
was almost silenced. What remained highlighted in
the Pages and the Fords was that they were fools and
poltroons, made to appear almost indistinguishable
in behaviour and appearance. Mistresses Ford and
Page (Karine Fellous and Agnès Proust) wore longsleeved black-silken gowns, were high-heeled and
dark-haired, thus featuring rather sinister women
— witches in a fairy-tale? — whose sensual movements and extravagant laughter (a cute oddity) suggested the two Siamese cats in Walt Disney’s Beauty
and the Tramp. Page and Ford (Alain Trétout), wore
cream-coloured suits and looked like a pair of dwarfish dogs next to their tall bossy wives. In a similar
mirror effect, the doctors (Jean-Claude Fernandez
and Emmanuel Guillou) resembled the well-known
Thomson and Thompson of Tintin’s adventures.
While some of Villégier’s deliberate references to
the world of comics and TV cartoons were obvious enough — Fenton was dressed like Robin Hood
and Shallow’s nephew (François Genty) like Peter
Pan — others were puzzling: Anne Page, who was
performed by an actor (Jonathan Duverger), might
recall Mylène Farmer (an eccentric red-haired French
singer) or a puppet waving her awkward mechanical
arms while roller-skating on the stage…
Villégier’s translation (published by Editions Espaces 34) was interspersed with well-known French
lyrics (such as extracts from “Partenaire particulier”)
and French political metaphors (including one which
depreciatively compared the Educational system to
a Mammoth needing to be slimmed down). They
aroused knowing laughs from the groups of teenage
students in the audience who were accompanied by
their teachers — even though they and others who
came to discover Shakespeare as an author capable
of comic prose might have wondered whether they
were indeed hearing Elizabethan theatre. In the
programme Jean-Marie Villégier explained that he
had opted for modern references to avoid the play
sounding “incomprehensible” to a modern audience;
he also alluded to the various levels of language that
Shakespeare had multiplied in The Merry Wives.
Because of their respective Welsh and French backgrounds, the parson and doctor are not at ease with
English and make a lot of mistakes; Villégier chose
archaic phrases to characterize their cues. Moreover
in Shakespeare’s play most of the characters speech
alternate between verse and rather colloquial prose:
Falstaff sometimes parodies an epic style while Fenton speaks mostly in iambic pentameters, which
Villégier chose to keep mostly in English. While the
audience appreciated listening to “authentic” Shakespearian poetry, they wished they could understand
what Fenton really said to Anne Page. Villégier
seemed to consider it was not worth knowing… Others probably did.
The female rôles were performed with a wellbalanced mixture of humour and sensuality. The
host[ess] (Béatrix Meunier) was a tall blonde, dressed
in glossy blue (with prominent breast and backside)
and Mrs Quickly (Béatrix Meunier again), who never
stopped going to and fro across the stage carrying a
little bag, had a nasal voice and a hairdo and manner
remindful of the French president’s wife’s — to the
extent of setting aside her loose change, as the latter
invites everyone to do every year to raise money for
children in hospitals. The setting, with its arrangement of curtains, also made for rapid, flowing movement on stage. While a character stood in the foreground, another could tiptoe away through the pink
curtain, disappear behind the blue one while another
had had time to come from backstage through the
yellow one (cf. drawing of the stage setting). These
neat comings and goings brought liveliness to the
performance and were reminiscent of a puppet theatre, for instance when heads suddenly popped out
of holes artificially made between two curtains. The
lighting effects were not sophisticated but they managed to lay focus on some scenes. The forest scene
for instance was feebly lit. The stage was swathed in
a mysterious haze as all the characters, astride horseheaded brooms and wearing long colourful sheets,
messed around, mocking, booing and shouting at
Falstaff.
Overall the audience was plunged in a rather contemporary atmosphere which drew on the conventions of archetypal comedy and the world of cartoons
and the media. This was not quite what this audience
expected, perhaps, on attending a performance of a
Shakespeare comedy, but the choice was potentially
exciting — if only it had been consistently followed
through.
74
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
*
Estelle Rivier
PLAY REVIEWS
Coriolan, directed by Jean Boillot and Delphine
Stoutz, translated by Laetitia Coussement and
Olivier Chapuis, Théâtre Gérard Philippe, SaintDenis, 13 November 2004, central stalls.
O
n this rather gloomy and rainy Saturday at
Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris, the audience
entered the Theatre Gerard Philippe in an appropriately apprehensive mood. While Brecht considered
Coriolanus as one of the greatest plays ever written
by the Bard, it is still one of the least performed of
all Shakespeare’s works. For Jean Boillot, the stage
director, to produce this play does not mean to deliver a message. Neither did he want his production
to stand as a model of truth enabling people to grasp
the meaning of the play. His purpose was to create a
polyphony of voices, whether they were historical,
social or intimate.
The scenography created by Laurence Villerot was
a grey, black and white adjustable scaffolding, representing the tiers of a Roman arena. As the lights went
on, the public could discover what was supposed
to be a street in Rome where rioting citizens were
supposed to be demonstrating — except that in Boillot’s production, the Roman plebe was performed
by a single character, a small, slim and teenage-like
actress (Anne Réjony) who gesticulated in front of a
passive audience embodied by the other characters
sitting on the tiers as well as by the “real” audience
of the play. “I wished to produce Coriolanus because
politics and drama are intimately linked in that play,”
the stage-director said. “Its theme, that is the making
of politics, corresponds to its working process, that is
the dramatic performance. Shakespeare’s metaphor
‘all the world’s a stage’ becomes ‘the political world
is a stage’ and vice versa. The forum is a stage and
the stage is a forum.” (Jean Boillot, September 2004)
Consequently the major part of the performance occurred on and around that important prop (which
filled the scenic space almost entirely). Divided down
the middle by narrow stairs, the scaffolding did not
always aim at representing the forum. Some of its
intermediate platforms could be lowered and reveal
the “innards” of the prop, in which small alcoves had
been furnished to become private lodgings, in particular those of Volumnia (Joséphine Derenne) and
Virgilia (Isabelle Ronaynette). When Caius Marcius
leaves Rome to fight against the Volscians (I.2), his
wife Virgilia secludes herself in her tiny bedroom
where she spends her time embroidering while her
mother-in-law, Volumnia, goes to sit in hers, which
is furnished with an armchair and a (stuffed) dog.
The scaffolding and its inner thus juxtaposed all the
protagonists on different vertical levels.
The imposing architecture of the scaffolding also
signalled the passage from one locus to another.
Built on casters it could be driven to one corner of
the stage platform or be shown sideways. For the
market scene (II.3) it was set in profile, with the
(one and only) citizen arranging his/her goods on
it (a few coloured tee-shirts on which “the Plebe”
was written, and two garlands made of geometric
knick-knacks) when Coriolanus approaches. As a
candidate for the Senate, he has to get the votes of
the plebe, which means flattering them — in this
case, the one and only citizen, which contributed to
the comic mood of the scene in this production. The
contextual incongruity — Coriolanus who scorns the
people deplores having to play the hypocrite — was
heightened by the deliberately anachronistic scenic
image. Coriolanus (David Ayala), wearing his white
Roman gown, looked somewhat ridiculous in this
odd-looking environment which suggested the flea
market at Barbès (a district of Paris), rather than at a
fifth-century forum in Rome.
Initially, the prop functioned well. It created an
effect of surprise and enabled the actors to be active
throughout the performance (even when they remained feebly lit in the background recesses.) In the
end, though it became too overpowering and tended
to lose its meaning. When banished Coriolanus
signs an agreement with the Volscians (Ivan Mathis
played the lieutenant), the scaffolding was pushed
into a dark angle of the stage, as if it had become a
burdensome, redundant macro-accessory. However
the spare space left around the scaffolding, before it
was wheeled away, also played an important part.
It served as an exit passage towards the wings even
though, following the Brechtian distancing mode,
these were not hidden behind walls or curtains; the
actors sat on chairs left on the stage sides and eventually changed their clothes, turning into Romans or
Volscians as the case might be. One could say that
they eventually lost their fictional dimension, appearing as human beings merely playing the parts
of Shakespearean characters, but one might also
consider the scaffolding as a leitmotif showing that,
when no longer on the tiers, men partially lost their
ascendancy over their brethrens and became humble:
“the characters in Coriolanus,” Jean Boillot explained,
“have no existence of their own when they are not
taking part in the debate on their right to belong to
the political body.”
Symbolically, the loss of existence was expressed
by the characters losing their dramatic functions
when they ostensibly showed their common dimension, i.e. when they stood as normal men, even as
members of the audience on the stage sides… Yet
other interpretations of that intermediate space, in
between two worlds — the fictional and the tangible
— could be proposed. One may argue for example
that it represented the base world, the people, since
the latter could hardly climb the stairs except when
they were encouraged to condemn Coriolanus,
shouting “à la roche, à la roche!” (“to th’ rock to th’
rock with him!”III.3.79.) It could also be the transitory
75
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
space leading Coriolanus to his death, since he had to
cross that area before being murdered in the final act.
Those remarks remain suppositions which Jean Boillot’s following comments might clear away: “As soon
as democracy has been invented, it becomes fragile:
the Patricians don’t want to lose their privileges; the
plebe is badly educated; the politicians don’t pay attention to the masses […]. Perversions are deeply anchored. Coriolanus is an incorruptible Patrician […]
who thinks there is life elsewhere else, outside the
political and corrupted Roman community. Yet his
tragic death teaches him [and us] that History cannot
exist without a dialogue which is called democracy.”
As a result the space around the scaffolding could
stand as this “elsewhere” where democracy had not
yet taken root and where, in consequence, all individuals are exposed to the risk of death.
Death was undoubtedly one of the main characters
in Boillot’s production. Another huge prop intermittently intervened in the performance to remind the
audience of that discomforting guest. Operated by
a technician opposite prompt side, a white curtain
made out of plastic and gauze was lowered into
sight. An image was projected onto it to background
sounds of crackling, splattering and running feet.
First the white silhouette of a body was scanned and
zoomed; a wound was then cut in one of its limbs
and blood spread on the white curtain. Finally a
black and white silent scene taken from contemporary news footage was broadcast: people were seen
running in the streets (a coup d’Etat in Venezuela)
but the image was blurred and you were never too
sure of what really happened there and what it
meant. The white silhouette lying on its right-hand
side was the final image of the production just after
Coriolanus’s death, reflecting the position of the Roman patrician who had died falling on his right-hand
side.
The screen functioned well for the battle scenes in
Act I, scenes 7, 8, 9 and 10. Standing on the highest
level of the scaffolding, Marcius and soldiers mimed
the events from behind the curtain, speaking in microphones while another character addressed the
public and commented their actions. A musician
situated under the scaffolding created sound effects
throughout the scenes: shouts, fanfare of bugles
and trumpets, thunder and so forth. That was a
climatic moment in the production since with very
little means, it managed to recreate the atmosphere
of a Peplum.
David Ayala (Coriolanus), a stout and authoritarian man, uttered his lines in a solemn but hoarse
voice; Pierre-Alain Chapuis (Menenius) and Josephine Derenne (Volumnia) offered a well-balanced
and sensitive interpretation. Dressed in contemporary suits, the Romans (and mainly the tribune) were
intended to appear more civilized, but also much
weaker, than the Volscians, who were either half-
dressed (their bare muscles showing their physical
strength) or fur-coated and bloody-looking. Yet, by
the end of the performance, the contrast was less obvious: colours only enabled the public to be aware of
the passage from the Capitol to the Volscians’ camp :
the colours of the ties Romans and Volscians wore by
then were either grey or dark red. Because the code
of colours was barely noticeable, it was inefficient
and altered the contrast which had clearly opposed
the two camps at first. However this sudden absence
of limits between the two camps might be supposed
to show that the enemies ended up being almost interchangeable.
The translation and adaptation (by Laetitia Coussement and Olivier Chapuis) was harmonious and
well served by the actors’ professional dictions.
This new script brought out the modernity of the text
which Jean Boillot had chosen to emphasize. When,
in Act III Scene 2, Volumnia encourages her son to
flatter the plebe, her words seem to describe contemporary politicians’ public relations strategies as she
encourages her son to “speak to them with empty
words and honeyed speeches” (“Parlez-leur avec
des mots vides, des discours mielleux. Pourquoi ne
pas user de la même stratégie en temps de guerre?”
Her patronizing sense of superiority is heightened
by Marcius’s infantilization, when he promises to go,
pleading with her not to be scolded : “j’irai maman,
mais je t’en prie, ne me gronde plus”. Let us note that
the relationship between mother and son was ambivalent: kissing his mother’s lips, kneeling in front of
her, uttering strange sounds (like a wounded bird’s)
when he was scolded, Marcius lost his credibility in
Volumnia’s presence.
Brecht, who re-wrote the play, dismissed the ending for lack of evidence, as he saw it: Aufidius’s
funeral oration was replaced by a meeting at the Senate where the order of the day was discussed, thus
showing that life went on without any providential
man. Just as Marcius had said early in the play that
as “a stupid actor”, he remained “voiceless” (“comme un acteur stupide, je reste sans voix”), the audience, leaving the theatre Gérard Philippe, could say:
“as a conventional viewer, I remain puzzled”…. But
as free citizens, they certainly cherished their fortune
secretly.
Estelle Rivier
*
Troilus et Cressida, directed by Bernard Sobel and
translated by Bernard Pautrat, Théâtre de Gennevilliers, Gennevilliers, 10 April 2005, front stall, centre.
I
t may seem a commonplace to say that Troilus and
Cressida is as beautiful a text to hear as it is a hard
play to stage. Because of the philosophical and poetic imagery the text holds, this play seems more a
76
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
matter of words than of action, and the challenge for
the whole cast is to convey the meaning without the
help of stage movement. Bernard Sobel did choose to
concentrate on the characters’ voices, and whether it
was Stefan Delon (Æneas), Gilles Masson (Ulysses),
Brontis Jodorowsky (Hector) or Damien Witecka
(Pandarus) to name but a few of the main actors,
each of them had a clear and elegant diction.
The performance opened with Thersites (Bernard
Ferreira) wearing a contemporary beige raincoat and
black trilby hat. He uttered the prologue in a very
casual way, addressing the audience as a teacher
may address his class, without any emphasis or
stage business. After introducing the setting where
the play is to take place, he showed what was hidden under his overcoat, a fake coat of arms, and said
“and hither am I come,/A prologue arm’d but not in
confidence/ Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but
suited/ In like conditions as our argument”(emphasis
mine.) It was a subtle and immediate way to exhibit
the artefact of drama, and to bridge the gap between
the 21st century and Greek antiquity.
The set consisted of five tall anthracite mirrors
reaching up to the flies. Throughout the performance
they revolved mechanically, indicating the passage
from one camp to another. There were hardly any
lighting effects: the stage remained half-lit most of
the time. Because of the dark colour of the glass panels, the overall atmosphere was rather solemn and
disquieting. The pattern on the actors’ dresses was
reminiscent of the aesthetics chosen by Jean Vilar in
the 1950s when the characters wore long black and
white gowns covering matching overalls. The design
was geometric: orange zigzagging lines for the Greek
army and square-shaped lines for the Trojans. The
Trojan pattern suggested a caduceus wrapping itself
round the actor’s body, in keeping with Thersites
reference to Mercury in II.3.9-11 : “O thou great thunder-darter of Olympus, […] lose all the serpentine
craft of thy caduceus […]”. Yet, apart from the pattern on the actors’ costumes, the aesthetics did not
attempt to plunge the audience into ancient days.
There were scarce properties onstage (a tiny stool
and, in Act III Scene 2, an apple to illustrate Pandarus’s garden) and hardly any heavy props brought
in within the three-and-a-half-hour performance. So
what did Bernard Sobel aim at highlighting in his
production ?
If we consider the programme we soon discover
that he based his analysis on Jan Kott’s Shakespeare
Our Contemporary which he quoted over two pages.
In this play, buffoonery surprisingly swings both to
a bitter philosophical reflection and to a tale of passion. According to Kott, heroes “want to chose in full
awareness. They philosophise, but it is not an easy or
apparent philosophy. Nor is it just rhetoric.” (p.62)
Troilus and Cressida is as much a fight opposing two
warlike enemies as a quarrel on the meaning of life
and of love. Values are questioned and mainly the
way in which man is able to survive in a cruel and
topsy-turvy world. “Is this how men live ?” Sobel
asked, “Theatre has always been one of the tools
that man invented to break his isolation. […] Shakespeare moves me today because in such a defective
play as Troilus and Cressida this painful question is
not solved.” The characters’ long soliloquies require
concentration on the part of the audience. Ulysses’s
cues are particularly enthralling. The production
gathered momentum after his meditation on the attitude of the mocking Greeks (I.3.142-210) who mimic
their opponents. This is a crucial example of Shakespeare’s meta-theatrical discourse. From then on the
meaning of the scenography seemed more obvious.
The mirrors are an easy convention to set forth man’s
fatuity and pride. Yet in a play where so many lines
are devoted to vanity and the power of appearance,
it eventually seemed appropriate. It is eyesight and
hypocritical praise that shape things, thus creating
mere illusions: man is not aware of the things he
owns “till he behold them formed in the applause/
Where they’re extended; who, like an arch, reverberates the voice again […]” (III.1.119-21)
In such a picture in which the characters’ debates
do not lead to action, who are the true heroes?
Jérémie Lippman and Chloé Réjon, who respectively
played Troilus and Cressida, performed their parts
with praiseworthy freshness and spontaneity. They
took the opposite view to romantic leads’ love at
first sight, and succeeded in giving a modern drive
to their meetings. Their encounters never seemed
stereotyped and even aroused surprise, drawing
parallels with similar scenes written by Shakespeare.
Cressida is as mean of her face as countess Olivia is
in Twelfth Night for instance: “Come, draw this curtain, and let’s see your picture”, Pandarus says to his
niece in Act III Scene 2, when her face is covered by a
veil, echoing Olivia’s words, “we will draw the curtain and show you the picture” (I.5.237.) Likewise,
Troilus and Cressida’s last (quite erotic) kiss in the
same scene managed to exemplify an Elizabethan superstition, often hinted at by the bard (e.g. in Richard
II, V.1), conceiving that lovers’ hearts passed through
their open lips, either to seal a marriage oath or to
serve as a token of faithfulness. Jérémie and Chloé’s
kiss was so passionate that we could easily imagine
that even their souls were being exchanged through
their embrace.
There was hardly any music in the performance,
which dissociates this production from most of its
highly orchestrated contemporaries. After the interval the red curtain was drawn and a remote soundtrack was heard, just as it is suggested in Shakespeare’s text (III.1.16.). Pandarus, Helen (also played
by Chloé Réjon, who wore a mask so as to mark the
difference with Cressida) and Paris appeared enveloped in white sheets that suggested their orgiastic or
77
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
at least leisurely existence. It once again drew a parallel with Sobel’s reading of Kott who emphasized
the double entendre in the play : “Everybody knows
that Helen is a whore, that the war is being fought
over a cuckold and a hussy.” In the programme of
the production, one of the headlines was a quote
from Thersites: “All the argument is a whore and
a cuckold” (II.3) thus setting forth one of the main
directions led by the producer.
Soon after, at Helen’s request, Pandarus sang
a song. He was given a guitar by an anonymous
arm appearing from the wings and started to play
a very odd, discordant air. It obviously reflected the
disordered context in which the historical events
occurred. Disorder was also well illustrated by Cassandra’s madness. The character was performed by
Camille Louis. The young actress’s shrill voice was
striking : her confusing and resonant words seemed
disincarnate. The public might have been frozen to
the bone by such a ghostly intervention !
As a whole it was a production worth being attended if only for the actors’ ability to voice the complex textual message. W. H. Auden, whom Sobel also
quoted in the programme, considered that in Shakespearean tragedy, man’s desire to be a god who can
escape from his fate exists before man’s pride: heroes
create a mad world because the desire at the source of
their actions is hidden. In Troilus and Cressida the audience is shown the madness of a world which is also
their own… It is true that Sobel enabled his audience
to hear a modern text and to draw possible parallels
with contemporary thoughts (especially through
Ulysses’s or Pandarus’s speeches.) Yet the tempo of
the production was too slow. Body language was
static and conventional. The setting was cloisonné:
it gave the illusion of an interior environment and
never brought the audience metaphorically out into
the open, where most of the praxis is to occur. People
needed time to become involved in the context of
the play, and it is a pity there were no scenographic
movements that could have entertained an audience
that expects not only to “hear a play” but also to “see
a text.”
Estelle Rivier
*
Un songe, une nuit d’été..., d’après Shakespeare, adaptation et traduction de Benoîte et Pauline Bureau,
mise en scène de Pauline Bureau, au Théâtre du Ranelagh, Paris, le 5 janvier 2005.
Q
uinze élèves de la promotion 2004 du Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique ont
fondé la compagnie La Part des Anges et présentent
pour leur sortie leur propre version du Songe d’une
nuit d’été. Pour Pauline Bureau, qui signe la traduction avec sa sœur Benoîte, angliciste, “le lutin est ma-
léfique, les amoureux échangistes et la reine zoophile. Quelques sortilèges libèrent toutes les pulsions,
criminelles, sexuelles, suicidaires, racistes. La nuit est
un lieu où l’animalité s’exprime, où le temps est tissé
de la matière des rêves, un lieu de tous les possibles,
l’aube un retour à la conscience et au réel. Le jour,
les pères sont tyranniques, la loi implacable et les
inconscients cadenassés. La nuit libère le double fantasme de chacun. Thésée et Hippolyta se divinisent
en Obéron et Titania, régnant sur la terre entière et ne
dirigeant plus les actions des hommes mais leur âme.
Les artisans s’habillent de cuir pour devenir des fées.
La forêt est un gigantesque kaléidoscope de fantasmes, de désirs et de pulsions. Puck, seul à avoir un
vision globale d’images morcelées, tire les ficelles de
l’action avant de dévoiler celles du théâtre”.
Virginie Destiné limite le palais de Thésée à une
haute toile blanche: en haut à gauche une ouverture
carrée est la fenêtre derrière laquelle parlent Hippolyta (Sonia Floire en robe blanche décolletée d’Alice
Touvel) et Thésée (Gaëtan Vassart en cape de cuir beige), avant l’apparition d’Egée (Fabien de Chalvron) à
une fenêtre analogue plus petite à droite, dominant
au centre trois ouvertures hautes en guise de portes
où Lysandre (Mikaël Chirnian) et Démétrius (Yann
Burlot) en veste et pantalon noirs encadrent Hermia
(Samantha Markowic en robe blanche courte). La
grande Helena (Sarajeanne Drillaud en longue robe
blanche) entre par la porte centrale, à la fin de cette
scène, raccourcie et un peu terne. Après leur départ,
Quince (Bryan Polach) vient devant la toile appeler
d’une voix forte les autres artisans assis à côté du
public: Bottom (le grand et fort Nicolas Chupin, à
la voix tonitruante), Flute (le grand et mince Antony
Roullier), Snout (Elya Birman ) se ruent tour à tour
vers la scène et grimpent à une échelle derrière le
rideau pour paraître au-dessus; ils sont rejoints par
Starveling (Fabien de Chalvron ) et Snug (le petit
Camille Garcia).
La toile disparue, on voit dans l’ombre des troncs
d’arbre évoquant la forêt: sur l’un d’eux grimpe Puck
(Marie Nicolle) avant l’entrée d’Obéron et de Titania,
Gaëtan Vassart et Sonia Floire gardant leur costume
puisqu’il s’agirait donc des songes de Thésée et
d’Hippolyte, dont la dispute est raccourcie. Puck et
Obéron regardent passer Démétrius suivi d’Helena.
Après leur sortie, Titania entre avec quatre fées en
longue robe de cuir, doublons des artisans (Bryan
Polach, Antony Roullier, Elya Birman, Fabien de
Chalvron): s’ouvre la petite clairière très éclairée,
jusqu’alors masquée par un rideau noir, le séjour de
la reine des fées. La scène entre Lysandre et Hermia
voit celle-ci repousser les enlacements de Lysandre
sous le regard de Puck. Après leur sortie, les artisans
commencent à répéter leur représentation du drame
de Pyrame et Thisbé; Bottom parti revient avec une
grosse tête d’âne, faisant vite fuir les autres artisans
dont deux reviennent enlever quatre petits pliants
78
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
sur lesquels ceux qui ne jouaient pas regardaient répéter les autres. Dans la rencontre de Bottom et des
fées, celles-ci parlent très peu, laissant l’essentiel à
Titania qui emmène assez vite Bottom dans sa clairière où elle commence à l’enlacer tandis que tombe
le petit rideau noir qui cachera leurs amours. Obéron
et Puck Demetrius et Lysander, qui jouent à courtiser
Helena sous le regard furieux d’Hermia avant que les
quatre amoureux ne se placent aux quatre coins de la
scène. Après le réveil de Titania découvrant qu’elle a
dormi avec un âne, et sa réconciliation avec Oberon,
leurs deux interprètes reviennent vite en Thésée et
Hippolyte — sans Égée — pour emmener avec eux
les deux couples d’amoureux réconstitués.
Quince tire à la corde une rampe de théâtre d’ampoules électriques tandis que les autres artisans placent un cadre de scène entouré de lampes pour présenter Pyrame et Thisbé à Thésée et Hippolyta, assis
d’un côté de la scène, et aux deux autres couples,
assis de l’autre côté. Derrière le rideau du cadre de
scène, on aperçoit Bottom et Flute qui se déshabillent
pour jouer Pyrame et Thisbé tandis qu’Elya Birman
apparaît, vêtu d’une toile percée, pour représenter
le mur. Fabien de Chalvron tient une lanterne au
bout d’un perche en guise de lune et le petit Camille Garcia en costume couleur de lion est affublé
d’une petite tête de lion. Après la scène du mur, où
Flûte/Thisbé porte une longue robe claire, il ôte sa
robe pour n’être plus qu’en slip quand il a fui le lion:
après avoir parlé à l’homme à la lanterne, Bottom/
Pyrame voit cette robe et après de grands gestes tire
un poignard dont il finit par se frapper: Flûte/Thisbé
revient, d’abord derrière le rideau, puis prend le poignard et s’en frappe, à demi caché par le rideau. Tous
se relèvent et s’alignent sur la scène avant que Puck
appelle le public à applaudir.
Après un début un peu terne, la jeune troupe
s’épanouit dans les scènes de la forêt. La plupart des
comédiens semblent promis à un bon avenir.
Guy Boquet
*
Comme il vous plaira, traduction de Xavier Maurel,
mise en scène de William Mesguich, par le Théâtre
de l’Etreinte au Théâtre 13, Paris, le 10 novembre
2004.
P
our William Mesguich, “le voyage de Comme il
vous plaira est [celui] où le théâtre est à nu, et
aussi celui du bonheur de faire s’entrechoquer illusion et réalité, [...] tissant les liens du tragique et du
grotesque. [...] Tout est prétexte au jeu, le travestissement est roi, les corps sont vertige théâtral. [...] Le
dédoublement est un prince envoûtant qui flirte avec
l’infini, l’inachevé. [...] Un palais, une forêt, deux tribus, deux clans, des regards qui tranchent, des gestes
qui disent la violence, des mots couperets ou farces-
ques pour tromper l’ennui. [...] Une fable pastorale
agréable à l’oeil et à l’écoute [mais surtout] un texte
complexe, cruel qui raconte l’exil, la solitude, la peur
de l’autre, différent de soi, étranger à soi, avec, en
toile de fond, toujours, le désir fougueux, enfantin,
de réparer, de réconcilier. [...] Shakespeare mélange
les genres, bafoue les conventions, et nous entraîne
dans les méandres existentiels d’une folie douce où
cohabitent farce, complot, rage, amour et devoir
de mémoire. La forêt d’Ardenne [...] est une forêt
imaginairement réelle, peuplée de formes étranges,
reflet cassé et toujours renaissant de la cour du duc
usurpateur, sa sœur jumelle et paradoxale, forêt de
l’exil / liberté, lieu de nulle part et d’ailleurs. [...] Les
chants lettoniens et tziganes scanderont cette fable
vive-argent, [...] ce monde rapide comme l’éclair [...]
où le rayonnement clair-obscur foisonne d’artifices
quand cesse la duperie. [...] Ces êtres à la fois maîtres
de leur destinée et jouets de leur désir d’être autre
[vont] graver leur instabilité, leur folie, leur joie sur
le terrain aléatoire de la vie amoureuse et du rêve.”
La taille réduite de la troupe du Théâtre de l’Etreinte fait que seuls trois comédiens ne jouent qu’un rôle,
Laurent Prévot (Orlando), Sarah Mesguich (Rosalinde) et Samantha Markowicz (Célia); Laurent Montel
passe du duc Frédérick au vieux duc en exil, ce qui
n’est pas trop gênant, Florent Ferrier de Pierre de
Touche au lutteur Charles, d’où l’absence de Pierre
de Touche lors de la lutte, William Mesguich de Jacques au paysan William amoureux d’Audrey, Marine
Marty de Phébé à Audrey, Chris Egloff de Le Beau à
Amiens et au jeune berger Silvius, et Benjamin Julia
d’Olivier à un seigneur et au vieux berger Corin,
voire au curé de campagne au visage invisible tant sa
barbe est fournie. Les costumes d’Alice Touvet sont
très hétéroclites.
Le décor de Laura Gozlan est réduit au début à
quelques pendrillons blancs. Passent sur la scène
tous les comédiens, le vieil Adam n’étant qu’une
poupée tenue par Orlando qui lit son texte sur un
livre relié, avant l’entrée d’Olivier en vague costume
Renaissance assez sombre; le serviteur Denis a disparu. Après la sortie des deux frères, Rosalinde et
Célia en robe blanche font leur entrée en gesticulant
beaucoup et en se roulant parfois par terre; Rosalinde installe un moment au bord de la rampe un
phonographe à haut-parleur doré, avant l’arrivée de
Le Beau au visage maquillé de blanc et au costume
Renaissance surtout gris, qui gesticule encore plus
et esquisse des pas de danse; puis apparaît Pierre de
Touche en costume à carreaux rouges comme son visage et le petit bouton de clown sur son nez: il disparaît vite avant la courte lutte à coups de poings et de
pieds de Charles avec Orlando devant le duc Frédérick, observée par les deux cousines à moitié cachées.
Après la rencontre entre Orlando et Rosalinde et la
condamnation de celle-ci à l’exil, les pendrillons sont
ôtés et l’on voit trois petits arbres très tordus défoliés,
79
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
autour desquels tombent néanmoins des feuilles.
Tandis que le vieux duc se prépare à manger avec
son entourage d’exilés, parmi lesquels on voit une
femme, jouée par Marine Marty, Orlando, nus-pieds
et jambes nues, est en train de parler à Adam et on
le voit revenir en tenant un moment la poupée dans
ses bras. Si Pierre de Touche garde son costume très
voyant, Rosalinde en Ganymède laisse apercevoir un
pantalon noir sous une grande cape noire et porte
des petites moustaches postiches, tandis que Célia
est en robe brun beige de paysanne. Marine Marty a
un costume et une sorte de bonnet de laine blanche
laissant juste voir le visage quand elle est la bergère
Phébé mais a un costume bien plus séduisant pour
jouer Audrey. William Mesguich en Jaques est en
costume noir presque actuel et une sorte de chapeau
melon noir. Benjamin Julia a le visage caché par une
énorme barbe blanche quand il est le vieux berger
Corin, circulant sur une chaise roulant, mais aussi
le curé de campagne en longue soutane grisâtre et
grand cache-col. Les scènes dans la forêt sont très
animées, sauf pendant le monologue de Jaques sur
le monde entier comme théâtre: toute la troupe vient
alors l’entourer et la salle s’éclaire à ce moment: les
deux publics, celui sur scène, et celui dans la salle,
sont ainsi associés. Les comédiens font parfois des
entrées et des sorties par la salle. Quand on évoque
la chasse au cerf, Marine Marty, la tête affublée de
cornes de cerf, s’installe un instant derrière un grand
cadre placé sur la scène. Son double rôle conduit à
des coupures dans les dernières scènes. La rencontre
entre Olivier et Célia est un peu écourtée; et Rosalinde, qui a trouvé entre les feuilles jonchant le sol les
papiers où Orlando a écrit son amour pour elle, fait
conclure par des baisers ses dialogues avec lui alors
qu’il la croit encore Ganymède. La scène de reconnaissance de Rosalinde par son père est coupée, de
même que l’intervention du dieu Hymen, avant les
mariages et la danse finale de toute la troupe.
Si l’ensemble de la comédie est bien suivi, le texte
manque de la poésie qu’ont su conserver d’autres
adaptations comme celle de Supervielle. Le jeu est
trop souvent poussé à la grosse farce, sans que les
comédiens montrent la sensibilité nécessaire dans les
scènes capitales.
Guy Boquet
*
Le songe d’une nuit d’été, traduction de Jean-Michel
Déprats, mise en scène de Sophie Lorotte, au Théâtre
Mouffetard, Paris, le 6 janvier 2005.
P
our Sophie Lorotte, “Le Songe est à la fois un rêve,
un cauchemar, un fantasme. Dans un univers faisant la part belle à la poésie et à l’imagination, mêlant
Orient et Occident, passé et présent, réalisme et fantaisie, différents mondes coexistent et oscillent entre
féerie et cauchemar, [entraînant] dans ce tourbillon
de jeunes amants aux amours contrariées un couple explosif formé par le roi et la reine des elfes, un
malicieux génie et des artisans aussi exubérants que
maladroits, dont Bottom, le plus touchant et peutêtre le plus humain des personnages [...] du grand
Will. Quatre histoires d’amour vont s’entrecroiser au
coeur d’une folle nuit d’été. Aucun protagoniste n’en
sortira indemne, tant les rapports sont ici dominés
par la sensualité, l’orgueil et le pouvoir. Cette nuit
au cœur des mystères de la forêt sera celle de toutes
les révélations, de l’éveil des désirs, de l’adieu à l’enfance.”
Claire-Marie Magen évoque le palais de Thésée
par une toile de fond et des pendrillons colorés avec
un tapis au centre. Hippolyta (Julie André en robe de
chambre violet-mauve) et Thésée (David Seigneur
en robe de chambre rouge sombre) se montrent un
peu distants avant l’arrivée d’Egée (Frédéric Souterelle), de Lysandre (Stéphane Brel) et Démétrius
(Nicolas Beaucaire) en veste et pantalon blancs et de
Hermia (Herrade von Meier en robe blanche), puis
de Helena (Julie Deliquet en robe rose). Après leur
départ, Quince (Julie Deliquet méconnaissable par
le costume d’artisan et son faux nez au-dessus de
moustaches redressées) fait venir les autres artisans,
tous vêtus d’un costume plutôt défraîchi et portant
des lunettes, Bottom (Frédéric Souterelle), Flute (Stéphane Brel), Starveling (Nicolas Beaucaire) et Snug
(Herrade von Meier avec faux nez et moustaches).
Au son de la musique très rythmée de David
Georgelin, les artisans roulent le tapis et tordent les
pendrillons pour simuler des arbres devant un fond
d’échelles de corde reliées entre elles, où s’accrochent
parfois, la tête en bas, Puck (le petit Cyril Aubin en
pagne et écharpe diagonale sur le torse), Obéron (David Seigneur vêtu de même) et Titania (Julie André
en jupe courte et soutien-gorge légèrement bariolés).
Grimpant sur une échelle de cordes latérale sur laquelle s’allume une guirlande de petites lampes lors
des scènes où ils voient sans être vus, Puck et Obéron
observe l’arrivée de Démétrius, sans veste ,suivi
d’Helena. Titania passe avec quatre fées à costume et
masque noirs. Hermia gifle Démétrius quand il tente
de l’enlacer. Bottom, sorti après la confirmation des
rôles dans Pyrame et Thisbé et les premières répétitions très comiques, revient avec de grandes oreilles
d’âne laissant voir son visage. Titania, revenue seule,
enlève Bottom, l’enlace et part sur son dos quand il
quitte la scène à quatre pattes, en brayant. Obéron
et Puck regardent Lysandre et Démétrius, désormais
torse nu, courtisant Helena en présence de Hermia;
pieds nus toutes deux, elles se disputent entre elles
malgré les interventions des deux hommes, qui quittent la scène pour se battre. D’un jet de lumière, Obéron les fera sortir tour à tour de leur rêve et se placer
en couples reconstitués sur le devant de la scène. Ensuite, il réveille Titania qui découvre horrifiée qu’elle
80
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
a dormi avec un âne, le roi et la reine se réconciliant
tandis que Puck emmène Bottom pour lui ôter sa
tête. De nouveau en robe de chambre, Thésée et Hippolyta découvrent les deux couples reconstitués sous
les yeux d’Egée qui s’enfuit quand il voit que Thésée
prend le parti des jeunes gens.
Dans la mesure où les comédiens ayant joué Egée
et les amoureux jouent aussi les artisans, Thésée et
Hippolyta restent seuls à regarder Pyrame et Thisbé
devant la toile de fond et les pendrillons replacés en
musique par les artisans, après que Cyril Aubin est
revenu un instant en Philostrate sous un chapeau
qui le cache à moitié pour leur faire choisir la pièce
qu’ils souhaitent voir. Le mur est représentée par les
rangées de pierres imprimées sur la double cape que
porte Nicolas Beaucaire/Starveling, le trou étant
simplement indiqué par l’écartement de ses index
et ses majeurs de chaque côté; Herrade von MeierSnug a des manchettes en peau de lion et une tête de
lion sur la sienne qui laisse voir son visage. Frédéric
Souterelle arrive en Bottom/Pyrame en costume et
chapeau extravagants et il prendra un débouchoir
en caoutchouc en guise de poignard pour frapper
sa poitrine dénudée. Stéphane Brel-Thisbé porte une
énorme perruque et un costume encore plus extravagant, avec deux entonnoirs en métal en guise de
seins, et laisse tomber une écharpe. À son tour,, elle
prendra le débouchoir pour s’effondrer près de lui,
mais tous deux se relèvent quand Thésée donne son
avis avant le retour de tous sur la scène pour un salut en musique dansé sur la chorégraphie de Louise
Ekland et le dernier rappel de Puck au public.
Malgré les coupures, Sophie Lorotte donne au spectacle le rythme qui convient et tous les acteurs passent à merveille d’un rôle à l’autre.
Guy Boquet
*
La Tempête, d’après Shakespeare, mise en scène de
Frédérique Lazarini, dramaturgie de Didier Lesour,
à La Mare au Diable, Palaiseau, le 13 février 2005.
P
our Frédérique Lazarini, si “après avoir rétabli
l’ordre, Prospero finira par se dépouiller de ses
pouvoirs, il s’agit là d’une métaphore du poète luimême renonçant définitivement à son art: La Tempête
est en effet la dernière des comédies de Shakespeare,
l’ultime hommage de l’auteur — le plus éblouissant
et le plus énigmatique à la fois — à la merveilleuse
machine qu’est le théâtre. La dimension philosophique de l’œuvre est enrobée dans un chatoiement
baroque, une exaltation des moyens de théâtre, des
trucs et des masques qui sont des ingrédients de la
féerie et d’une comédie fantastique jubilatoire”.
La scène est située entre deux groupes de petites
tables, placées sur de légers gradins, et autour desquelles est assis le public. Les comédiens entrent par
une porte latérale face à un mur décoré de quelques
rangées de petites lampes pas toujours allumées. Audessus de cet espace de jeu, une petite maquette de
navire à mât est attachée au plafond. Entrant avec
Ariel (Françoise Munch en maillot moulant gris
perle allant du cou aux pieds et sur lequel passent
quelques suites de minuscules lampes électriques
qu’elle peut allumer ou éteindre), Prospero (Didier
Lesour en blouson et pantalon beiges clairs avec une
ceinture et des bottes marron) se plaçant près du mur
fait un geste doublé d’un bruit tonitruant et l’on voit
le bateau remuer énormément en signe de tempête.
Après un noir, on voit apparaître le Bosco du navire
(Pierre-Marie Verchère en pantalon, maillot de corps
et bonnet) avec l’ivrogne sommelier Stéphano (Christophe Labas-Laffitte) et le bouffon Trinculo (Licinio
da Silva), tous deux pieds nus en pantalon blanc et
maillot à rayures bleues et blanches horizontales,
bientôt suivis des nobles voyageurs en costumes
contemporains, deux des personnages de Shakespeare étant joués par des femmes: le vieux conseiller
loyal Gonzalo est remplacé par la jeune femme Polonia (Lydia Nicaud en robe grise et bas de soie gris), le
roi de Naples père de Ferdinand est devenu la reine
de Naples (Françoise Carrière vêtue de même en un
peu plus élégant), et l’on retrouve Antonio, le frère
usurpateur (Philippe Thourel en veste et pantalon
noir et cravate) ainsi que Sébastian (Nicolas Klajn,
vêtu de même en gris), frère non pas du roi mais, en
l’occurrence de la reine de Naples.
Après leur départ, Prospero rentre avec Miranda
(Nina Seul en jupe rose à petites fleurs et petite brassière assortie, le visage caché derrière une très fine
dentelle tombant d’un mince ruban rouge enserrant
sa tête); d’un geste de sa baguette magique, Prospero
fait revenir Ariel et après son départ Caliban (MarcHenri Lamande, hirsute et le visage enlaidi par des
points de maquillage surtout noir ou rouge et torse
nu sous une sorte de petite veste de petites feuilles
au-dessus d’une culotte rougeâtre); Ferdinand (Nicolas Sauveton en veste et pantalon noirs et cravate
blanche dénouée) aperçu un instant auparavant lors
du naufrage tombe vite amoureux de Miranda, mais
Prospero l’immobilise d’un geste quand il le menace
et veut refuser de travailler pour lui.
Malgré des coupures, le spectacle reste des plus
fidèles à la trame et à l’esprit de Shakespeare avec
parfois des allées et venues d’un personnage à proximité du public. Ariel, à la démarche toujours d’une
belle élégance, contemple les nobles ambitieux ou les
immobilise d’un geste quand ils veulent poignarder
la Reine de leurs canifs; elle éteint parfois un instant
les petites lampes, qui dessinent de jolies courbes sur
son maillot moulant. Stephano entré avec une bouteille vide censée pleine abreuve Caliban, prélude à
des scènes assez acrobatiques avec Trinculo, et Stephano finira coiffé d’une petite barrique. Ferdinand
paraît un instant en portant un petit fagot de bûches
81
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
et quand Prospero lui permet d’épouser Miranda, il
lui ôte sa légère voilette de dentelle dont elle replie le
ruban. Par moments glisse un petit meuble couvert
d’objets conformes à la scène jouée, notamment les
victuailles du repas des nobles, d’où sortira Ariel,
coiffée un instant d’une énorme perruque pour être
un magicien au service de Prospero. Celui-ci fait
entrer les déesses témoins du mariage de Miranda
et Ferdinand entrés dans le petit meuble au milieu
d’un damier d’échecs: Junon (Marie Guibert en robe
claire à l’antique) leur parle avant Vénus (Sylvie
Cécile-Tombarel en jupe et brassière dorées sous
un léger voile) et Cérès (la forte Jacqueline Gérard
en robe claire mais coiffée d’un amalgame de choux
de couleurs diverses, de pommes et de grappes de
raisin blanc ou rouge) mais il n’y a pas de scène de
nymphes et de moissonneurs. Avant la fin, Prospero
prend son ancien manteau déposé près du public
pour signifier son renoncement à son pouvoir magique.
L’ensemble du spectacle est très bien mené, les
costumes, tout en étant modernes, correspondent au
statut des personnages et Nicolas Sauveton, MarieJo Henry et Catherine Arnoult ont su vêtir les autres
personnages de façon très conforme à l’esprit de la
pièce. Les éclairages de Xavier Lazarini font toujours
bien voir les personnages en action, même quand ils
passent à travers le public, et le son toujours bien
choisi d’Isabelle Surel concourt aussi à la réussite de
ce travail très bien servi par tous sous une direction
admirable.
Guy Boquet
de penser avec philosophie et d’agir avec démence
— fou comme un vrai sage..... Il vit pleinement ses
contradictions humaines et nous tend un miroir où
nous pouvons nous regarder et comprendre qu’il est
aussi difficile de donner que de recevoir. Le fantôme
du krach boursier, l’effondrement d’un système menacent derrière l’inflation de générosité de Timon;
un cauchemar où l’argent n’aurait plus sa valeur:
que feront à ce moment-là tous nos flatteurs et nos
corrompus, que ferons-nous nous-mêmes ?”
Ce point de vue sous-tend le choix de costumes
très actualisés par Angéla Séraline, sans pour autant
justifier leur caractère hétéroclite ni sans doute la
scénographie d’Yves Collet, deux murs de planches
déplaçables côté cour, un grand miroir transparent
côté jardin, une balançoire au-dessus du plateau,
un grand écran au fond et divers éléments mobiles,
dont des gros fûts métalliques argent ou rouge d’où
sortiront des personnages. Trois comédiens ne jouent
qu’un rôle, Régis Royer (Timon), d’abord assez élégant mais en costume très usé à la fin, Alban Aumard
(l’intendant Flavius) et Clémence Barbier (le serviteur Flaminus); les autres, Pascal Sangla, Alexandre
Steiger, Sara Louis, Julia Vidit, Gaëlle Hausermann,
Marion Bottolier, jouent six, voire huit rôles. Timon
écoute un moment à une sorte de portable la voix
de Jean-Paul Roussillon et l’écran montre Philippe
Bianco et Dominique Valadié parlant en tant que sénateurs. Malgré un énorme travail de mise en scène
et des déplacements multiples, tout ceci est très loin
de bien faire suivre l’action qui s’achève sur l’invitation aux spectateurs de se méfier des doux rêveurs et
même de les détester. Much work about nothing?
*
Guy Boquet
La Vie de Timon, traduction d’André Markowicz,
adaptation et mise en scène de Victor GauthierMartin, au Théâtre de l’Aquarium, Paris, le 23 mars
2005.
S
elon Victor Gauthier-Martin, “Timon, riche athénien, bouleverse l’ordre de la cité en partageant
son immense fortune avec des marchands, des flatteurs, des corrompus, des artistes [...] Il sème son héritage, espérant récolter de signes réciproques d’amitié et de respect et devient ainsi le moteur et le centre
d’une expérience utopique fondée sur la générosité.]
Mais sa logique est insensée, elle grippe la machine
sociale et met à mal les valeurs traditionnelles bourgeoises et religieuses. Il ouvre la voie au chaos: dévalorisation, dépréciation […] l’argent et le pouvoir se
distribuent comme des poignées de mains. Autour
de lui, les événements se précipitent, et rapidement
sa ruine est consommée, son projet d’art de vivre
en dehors de toute convention est un échec. […] Il
se regarde dans la vanité creuse d’un monde où le
mensonge épouse l’utopie, pour mieux la trahir. A la
fin, blessé, ruiné, abandonner de tous, il n’a de cesse
*
Femmes gare aux femmes (Women beware women) de
Thomas Middleton, traduction et adaptation de
Marie-Paule Ramo, mise en scène de Dan Jemmett,
au Théâtre de la Ville, salle des Abbesses, Paris, le 12
octobre 2004.
D
an Jemmett voit en cette pièce de 1622 “une tragédie jacobéenne comme le théâtre de Webster
et de Ford après la mort d’Elisabeth. L’extravagance
de ces pièces [...] ne les rend pas tout à fait sérieuses.
Middleton semble avoir voulu entremêler tout ce
qu’il aime au théâtre en usant d’une histoire assez
sombre et dure.”
La belle Bianca de 16 ans (Sonia Cardeilhac), arrachée à sa famille à Venise par le jeune dadais Léantio
(Vincent Berger), vit désormais à Florence mais, sous
l’influence du duc cinquantenaire (Pierre Banderet)
qui en tombe amoureux, elle passe de la jeune vierge
timide à une femme qui cher à se débarrasser de son
jeune mari, que désire l’intrigante veuve Livia (Josiane Stoléru), dont la nièce Isabella (Julie-Anne Roth) a
82
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
PLAY REVIEWS
une aventure avec son oncle Fabrizio (Thierry Bosc)
alors que son père Hippolito (Mathieu Delmonté),
avait, pour l’argent, préparé son mariage avec un
jeune crétin. Le Duc qui fait assassiner Léantio se
prépare à épouser Bianca et organise un spectacle
joué par Livia en Junon, Isabella en nymphe et Fabrizio et Hippolito en amoureux rivaux, qui tous tuent
quelqu’un, avant l’arrivée de Bianca qui se suicide.
La scénographie de Denis Tisserraud et Dan Jemmett transpose l’action à une époque récente, autour
d’une vieille voiture Triumph 2000 entre une tenture rouge et une baignoire où le valet Guardiano en
clown blanc (Thierry Bosc) verse de temps en temps
un seau d’eau. Les costumes de Sylvie Martin-Hyszka sont assez hétéroclites: Bianca passe d’une robe
blanche à une marron, Isabella est en orange terne,
Livia en noir, Hippolito en complet noir et son frère
Fabrizio en costume à grands carreaux rouges, mais
tous sont pieds nus, de même que le Duc en sorte
de robe d’apparat à dessins multicolores qui parfois
s’ouvre sur un crucifix précieux et une étole quand
Pierre Banderet incarne aussi le Cardinal frère du
Duc dans leur dialogue. Bianca est d’abord amenée
à Florence recroquevillée dans un cube à roulettes
où on la cache parfois encore; le jeune crétin est un
petit automate apporté dans une valise par Hippolito
qui le remet à Isabella en mettant en route en même
temps la voix enregistrée d’Andrew Aguecheek. Parfois, un personnage entre dans la voiture qui klconnr
avec stridence: c’est là que, rideaux baissés, Bianca
est séduite par le Duc et ressort un sein visible un
instant et que plus tard, Léantio est étranglé à la fenêtre arrière par un frère de Livia. Nul ne change de
costume pour le spectacle prévu pour le mariage du
Duc, mais le pot d’échappement et les gicleurs sont
censés envoyer des vapeurs asphyxiantes, la voiture
recule et écrase Hippolito, les boissons servies viennent d’un petit bidon d’essence et Fabrizio moribond
se dénude complètement avant de s’allonger dans
la baignoire pour s’y frotter d’eau rouge comme du
sang, avant que Bianca arrivant voie les autres allongés morts et boive à son tour la boisson mortelle.
Si l’action de “cette histoire excessive” est “alambiquée” comme l’avoue Dan Jemmett et si son extravagance est parfois dure à suivre, elle est en général
bien servie par les comédiens installés assis en vue
sur des chaises au fond de la scène avant d’entrer ou
sortir par la tenture.
Guy Boquet
*
Macbett, farce tragique d’Eugène Ionesco, mise en
scène par Jérémie Le Louët, au Théâtre 13, Paris, le
11 mai 2005.
E
n 1972, Ionesco a récrit Macbeth en pensant à sa
Roumanie natale, au totalitarisme qui a pesé sur
son pays, celui des nazis ou des staliniens, dénonçant avec un humour noir la quête paranoïaque d’un
pouvoir ubuesque qui entraîne le monde dans une
spirale sans fin d’hécatombes et de désespoirs. Sur
la scène sans décor majeur, que Virginie Destiné a
meublée de sièges mobiles dont un surmonté d’une
grosse couronne rouge pour évoquer un trône, Jérémie Le Louët et les six autres acteurs qu’il dirige,
en costumes récents de Sophie Volcker, incarnent
trois-trois rôles qui incarnent, dans le cadre d’une
réflexion profonde sur la mécanique du pouvoir, un
univers de fiction “passant du théâtre de boulevard à
la tragédie, en passant par le conte de fée”.
Ionesco a supprimé un certain nombre de scènes,
la réception de Duncan chez Macbeth, la fuite de
ses fils, le complot contre Banquo, le massacre des
Macduff, le somnambulisme de Lady Macbeth, éliminant par là aussi un certain nombre de personnages
shakespeariens, mais créant de nouvelles scènes et
de nouveaux personnages. On voit d’abord Glamiss
(Antoine Couret) et Candor (Hugo Dillon) en une
sorte d’uniforme noirâtre comploter contre Duncan
tandis que peu après Macbett (Julien Buchy) et Banco
(Laurent Papot) vêtus de même font assaut de loyalisme, laissant Glamiss et Candor lever leurs épées
pour se promettre fidélité dans leur révolte sanglante
contre Duncan, avant le meurtre d’un limonadier par
un soudard. Macbett confie son épée dite sanglante
à l’ordonnance qui revient aussitôt disant l’avoir
lavée. Banco fait de même. Tandis qu’on approche le
trône, entrent Duncan (Jérémie Le Louët en manteau
de cour), archiduc et non roi, et sa femme (Noémie
Guedj) en robe longue bleue et sa suivante (Florencia Cano-Lanza) vêtue de même: Duncan cite parmi
ses ennemis le roi de Malte, l’empereur de Cuba, le
prince des baléares, les rois de France et d’Angleterre et parle de partir en cas de défaite au Canada
ou aux États-Unis, avant l’arrivée d’un soldat blessé
enrôlé malgré lui par Glamiss et Candor et que Lady
Duncan aurait poignardé s’il ne s’était enfui. Candor,
fait prisonnier, sera exécuté avec ses soldats hors de
vue tandis que Lady Duncan en compte trente-trois;
Glamiss se noie en tentant de fuir en bateau. Deux
sorcières apparues dans l’ombre attendent le départ
de Banco pour annoncer à Macbett la mort de Candor dont il portera le titre. On a ensuite la parodie du
couronnement de Duncan et du toucher des écrouelles mais Duncan est poignardé par Banco déguisé en
moine, par Macbett et celle qu’il prend pour Lady
Duncan, déguisés en malades; Macbett met le manteau de cour que portait Duncan et la fausse Lady
Duncan (Noémie Guedj), ne gardant vite qu’un
soutien-gorge doré et un léger tutu, s’offre à Macbett et feindra de l’épouser en robe blanche et voile
de mariée. Banco, dédaigné par Macbett et prêt à la
révolte, est tué par lui. Après le départ de la sorcière
déguisée, la vraie Lady Duncan dit à Macbett qu’elle
n’est pas sa femme et Macol, se disant fils de Banco,
83
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
poignarde Macbett et annonce qu’il aura des descen-
ou tonitruant d’Ivan le Terrible de Prokofiev.
dants royaux. Une belle réussite parfois au son doux
84
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
Guy Boquet
PLAY REVIEWS
Istambul
Hamlet, directed by Adrian Brine at the city theatre,
Kadiköy, Istanbul, 11 March 2005, mid-stalls.
D
escribing a production of Hamlet as derivative
may, at first glance, appear to be somewhat
petty criticism. It is inevitable, given the popularity
of the play in performance, that certain ideas will be
reused and even Laurence Olivier wrote of the “legitimate borrowing” which takes place in the theatre. However, Adrian Brine’s production at the City
theatre in Kadiköy appeared to be a random mixture
of old ideas, strung together in an incoherent way
which demonstrated no over-all vision or sense of
purpose.
The action was played out on a bare stage with
a raised walkway along the back wall. This was
accessible via two staircases on either side of the
stage, one of which was open while the other was
closed off with old and worn-out black flats which
were in visible need of repair. In addition to the
usual side entrances there was a door upstage centre
underneath the raised walkway. This comprised of
two sliding black flats which became progressively
less efficient at opening and closing as the evening
wore on. This cheap, simple and flimsy design put
one in mind of a Student Union Drama Society
production. The costumes added to the whole S.U.
effect. Some had obviously been hired or made
especially but others appeared to be what the
actors had found at the back of their wardrobes.
For example, Claudius and Polonius wore morning
suits for much of the time but Osric (who seemed to
have the added role as Polonius’ personal assistant)
wore a modern lounge suit. The uniforms for the
castle guards resembled those of French Gendarmes
and the players were dressed in dreadful, ill-fitting
checked suits. Gertrude, Ophelia and the attendant
ladies wore evening dresses, some of which were of
a more modern design than others. One can conclude
that the “look” of the production (so far as there was
one) was twentieth century, but from which decade
was anyone’s guess.
Hamlet himself was costumed in a black polo-neck
and black trousers. This gave the effect of a student
from the 1960s and his mop-top hair cut added to
this image. It was this pseudo-sixties look which
really reminded me of past productions. It was Peter
Hall’s RSC production of 1965 which first presented
Hamlet (David Warner) as a disaffected student
of the post-war generation, complete with scarf
and overcoat and it was Trevor Nunn’s 1970 RSC
production which costumed Hamlet (Alan Howard)
head to toe in black. To plunder past performances
and to “borrow” ideas, which in the original versions
were all part of well thought through concepts,
and to drop them into a production which clearly
does not have one is a dreadfully uninspired and
unimaginative way to go about the process of
direction. This, however, was not the only idea which
appeared to be lifted from elsewhere.
When the American actor John Barrymore
played Hamlet in the 1920s he made tentative use
of Freudian psychology in his reading of the part.
In the 1936-1937 production at the Old Vic, Tyrone
Guthrie made much use of the Oedipus complex and
he and his Hamlet (Laurence Olivier) made repeated
visits to Freud’s biographer Professor Earnest Jones
for advice. These psychological ideas made their
way into Olivier’s 1948 film version and have been
used periodically ever since. The point at which
an Oedipal interpretation becomes most apparent
is the closet scene. However this is not the only
place where it can manifest itself, nor is Hamlet’s
relationship with his mother the only way of
interpreting Hamlet’s behaviour as Oedipal. Olivier
was an energetic and athletic Hamlet who in normal
circumstances would have killed Claudius in no
time. Therefore his reasons for inaction were not the
obvious ones of a sensitive soul set upon a vengeful
path which were far beyond his gentle capabilities
and other reasons for his moral philosophising had
to be looked for. However, such a sustained through
line was not evident and consequently the touchyfeely closet scene appeared to be unmotivated.
It was this random borrowing which muddied
the production. An Oedipal interpretation of Hamlet
needs to be addressed from the outset and thoroughly
thought through, as does an interpretation of a
disaffected, anti-establishment student. However,
bolting these two very different ideas together
resulted in a disjointed, incoherent and directionless
production.
Poor production concepts can often be saved by
good acting. This production started promisingly
in dim light and the sound of a bell tolling. The
majestic ghost, played wonderfully well by Haldun
Ergüvenç.
Poor production concepts can often be saved by
good acting. This production started promisingly in
dim light and the sound of a bell tolling. The majestic
ghost, played wonderfully well by Haldun Ergüvenç
appeared with his face half lit and accompanied
by some eerie music. Bernardo, Marcellus and
Ahmet Özaslan’s energetic Horatio were all suitably
frightened by the apparition and the evening got
off to a very promising start. Unfortunately it went
85
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
SPRING 2005
quickly down hill after the opening scene. The text
was cut, removing all the politics and reducing the
play to a domestic tragedy. This diminishes the status
of Claudius and makes him simply a villain rather
than a villainously shrewd political operator.The cuts
leave the actor with fewer choices and opportunities
to make anything of the character and Mehmet
Gürhan played him as a one-dimensional slimy
toad.
However, none of this would have mattered much
if Hamlet was played effectively, but unfortunately
Ayhan Kavas was not up to the task. Admittedly he
was not helped by Brine’s uninspired direction.Every
soliloquy was staged in exactly the same way.
Hamlet was positioned down stage centre sitting on
the edge of the stage and exactly the same lighting
(centre spot on Hamlet with the rest of the stage
dimmed) was employed for each one. This was
a dull and uncharismatic Hamlet. There was no
sense that he was either angry or depressed or mad
(real or feigned). There were odd moments, such
as an unconvincing tantrum during the “Oh what
a rogue and peasant slave” speech (II.2), where he
writhed on the ground weeping. However this was
neither preceded nor followed by any motivational
or consequential actions which would have put this
display of emotion into a recognisable context. It
was as though the actor had been told to do this by
the director and gamely complied, but with no real
understanding as to why he should do it. Another
peculiar moment was a strange dancing celebration
conducted by Hamlet and Horatio after Claudius
had been “frighted with false fire” (III.2.254). To
celebrate this moment as a victory over Claudius
by dancing around the stage banging a drum is
nothing if not original. However the sentiment that it
conveyed was that Hamlet was terribly pleased with
himself for being so very clever and thinking up such
a brilliant scheme. There was no sense of the awful
realisation that the ghost was right and that Hamlet
must carry out a task for which he is ill equipped.
Even without these unhelpful set pieces one seldom
got the impression that Hamlet was experiencing
a strange and terrible inner journey where he
was struggling to make sense of the confusing
circumstances which confronted him.
The great last scene is virtually director proof
and with it a certain amount of respectability was
regained. This was aided by a fine and dignified
performance from Mert Turak as Laertes and Kavas
appeared to understand better what was required of
him. He conveyed a certain sense of nobility and an
understanding and acceptance of the finality of the
moment as he confronted his own mortality.
Amongst the supporting cast Derya Çetinel
was excellent as Ophelia when mad, although
she lacked a sense of vulnerability when sane and
seemed a little too self-assured. Haldun Ergüvenç
made a welcome return as the first gravedigger in
the now old-fashioned doubling of those two parts
(in recent productions Polonius has doubled as the
grave digger). The rest of the supporting cast were
unremarkable.
Tom Band
A Note on the Translation
Hamlet was first translated into Turkish in 1908,
and this was followed by seven different twentiethcentury translations. The text used in the production
at the City Theatre is based mostly on Sabahattin
Eyüboglu’s translation (Hamlet, Istanbul: Remzi
Kitabevi, 1965). As a literary scholar, Eyüboglu is
careful to create a fluent language without giving up
his loyalty to the original text. In the grave-digger
scene, however, the production uses the more Turkish
sounding translation of Can Yücel, a well-known poet
himself, who refused to call his work “translation”
and preferred to use the expression “retelling in
Turkish” (Hamlet, Istanbul: Papirüs Yayınları, 1996).
To the English-speaking audiences of our age, it is
apparent that Shakespeare’s language belongs to
an earlier age. This is something that cannot be felt
in Turkish translations of Shakespeare because the
language used is modern Turkish. Dramatic verse,
however, is far from being natural to the Turkish
ear, and this contributes to create the sense that the
language, though modern, has a different tone from
that of everyday speech. To give a sense of how a
Shakespeare translation sounds in Turkish, here
is Horatio’s speech in I.1.167-74 retranslated into
English from Eyüboglu’s translation:
But look, the dawn is walking with its reddish
[skirts
On the dews of the Eastern hills.
Let us give up our watch and if you listen to me
Let us tell young Hamlet
About what we have seen tonight. Because believe
[me,
This spirit who hasn’t talked to us will speak to
[him.
What do you say? We should go and tell him about
[it, shouldn’t we?
This is what our love for and duty to him require.
86
IP: 93.91.26.29 On: Thu, 29 Sep 2016 19:04:52
Ayse Nur Demiralp Band

PLAY REVIEWS Contents

Transcription

Documents pareils

Revue de presse ANGLAIS Semaine du 24 au 30 octobre 2011

master de communication internationale - Univ

4228 Holland Dr Des Moines, IA 50310 | Home for Sale | Real

“What We Stand to Lose” Poster Lesson Plans

Show Notes ()

Jacksonville State University College of Arts and Sciences Updated

this PDF file

Education Outreach Programme – The study of

B.O.I Hist.Geo written 2010

23rd April compressed.pub

The sweet which is their poison”: of oison”

The Inventor Mentor