King John - Globe Theatre

King John set

Black-hooded monks, incense, organ music, candles aplenty...what more could you want from a performance of Shakespeare's rarely performed play King John? Robin Hood, perhaps? He didn't feature but the character of The Bastard provided one with all the outspokenness, courage and rebelliousness (albeit not against King John) that one might desire.

It was good to be back at the Globe. Unlike usual, as soon as one entered the theatre - and, as a groundling who had queued for over 1.5 hours, I was one of the first to enter the theatre - there were people on stage - hooded monks - playing instruments and intoning religious chants. Combined with the incense, one immediately felt as though one was in medieval times in an ecclesiastical setting. I felt that the Globe went the extra mile for this production when it came to the music and props, perhaps in order to compensate for the fact that most people wouldn't be familiar with the play. The organ and Tibetan singing bowl in particular were used to excellent effect.

Most of the action took place in France, which I hadn't expected. King John (Jo Stone-Fewings), his mum, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Barbara Marten), and his recently-discovered illegitimate nephew, The Bastard (Alex Waldmann), set off for France with an army, because John feels threatened by his rather angelic young nephew, Arthur (Laurence Belcher), whose claim to the throne is strong. John allies himself with King Phillip of France (Simon Coates). John's niece, Blanche of Castile (Aruhan Galieva - who had a beautiful voice), marries Louis the Dauphin (Ciaran Owens) in a match that will strengthen John's claim to the throne. There follows a dramatic breaking of allegiances, an excommunication, a potential blinding with hot irons and a succession of deaths. There was a reasonable amount of sword fighting, which I enjoyed.

There weren't many female characters but the ones that there were were memorable. I often find myself pleasantly surprised by Shakespeare's parts for women. Eleanor of Aquitaine is portrayed as a formidable elderly woman, prepared to fight if need be. Blanche makes it clear that she's not happy with her marriage to Louis and that she can't automatically support his cause just because they're married. Constance (Tanya Moodie), Arthur's mother, is fiercely protective of her son and is determined to see him fulfil what she believes to be his destiny. None of them is reluctant to put forth their views in a forceful manner.

King John isn't portrayed as pure evil, as I'd expected. He certainly isn't a paragon of morality, but he is no worse than many of the shady, scheming monarch/courtier characters in Shakespeare's plays.

I loved the music, the costumes (wimples!) and the atmosphere, but wasn't overly keen on the plot. I've found other history plays, such as the Henry VI trilogy and Richard III much more exciting and tense. And...there was NO JIG. NO JIG at the end! Why not? Globe, if you can still find it in you to perform a jig after the carnage and destruction of Macbeth, why not after King John?? Songs are great, but don't make up for a jig.

Next: Richard II

Travesties - Bridewell Theatre

Me watching Travesties

'Travesties! When the feeling's gone and you can't go on, it's Travesties! When the morning cries and you don't know why...' The last Tom Stoppard play I saw was Arcadia, about fifteen years ago, which I didn't enjoy on the grounds of it being pretentious and difficult to follow. I was concerned I would have a similar reaction to Travesties when I read the blurb on its advertising leaflet: 'With all the pithy wit of Joyce and the literary virtuosity of Wilde, the political rigour of Dada and the absurdity of Lenin - Travesties is a whirlwind tour through politics, art and really great trousers. While the Great War rages across Europe, Zurich in 1917 is a battlefield of ideas and ideals. [...]' 

Anything that has the words 'Joyce', 'literary virtuosity', 'Dada' and 'battlefield of ideas and ideals' in its description has GOT to be pretentious, right?

Well, not necessarily, but this play certainly was.

I liked its basic concept: elderly man called Henry Carr (performed here by a Bruce Forsyth lookalike) reminisces about his younger days when he lived in Zurich, and the influential people he met. As he reminisces we see his reminiscences played out. However, his memories are faulty and sometimes confused, and there are times when the same basic memory is played out more than once but in slightly different ways. An interesting concept. The people with whom Carr interacts are James Joyce, Tristan Tzara (a founder of Dadaism) and Lenin. Carr played the part of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest while in Zurich and his memories are closely intertwined with this play.

The thing that annoyed me about Travesties - and Arcadia, too, as far as I remember - is that one's enjoyment of it depended almost entirely on whether one understood its myriad of social, political and literary references. In this case you had to have a reasonably intimate knowledge of The Importance of Being Earnest in order to understand half the script. Fortunately I happened to have seen TIoBE and listened to a radio adaptation of it recently [smug look] so I think I scraped a pass on that score. However, in order to wring the most enjoyment out of this play you would also have to have a good knowledge of Joyce, Ulysses, Dadaism, contemporary Russian politics...and probably a load of other things that I'm too goshdarned pig ignorant to even be aware of. Confession: I'd never heard of Tzara before seeing this play and it wasn't until the second half that I realised he was based on a real person, like Joyce and Lenin (yes, I had heard of them [wipes brow]).

There were some parts that I found amusing, such as Carr's love of clothes even while fighting in WW1, but didn't find anything laugh-out-loud funny.

My dislike of the play aside, Travesties was performed admirably by the Tower Theatre Company, a well-known amateur group. It wasn't an easy play to perform, requiring a good sense of rhythm, especially in the poetry scenes. Now I have a better knowledge of some of the characters I'm impressed by how well the actors copied their appearances. The costumes were great, hairstyles impressive. The set was excellent. It was good to see consecutive sets containing divans!

Next: I don't know. Nothing by Tom Stoppard, though. For another fifteen years.

Candida - Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Candida book cover

I'm afraid I didn't see Eigengrau because I felt miserable that day and didn't feel like it. However, I've been reliably assured that it was amazing and I missed out.

This was my first visit to Upstairs at the Gatehouse. It's a theatre located on the upper floors of the Gatehouse pub; hence its moniker. It turned out to be a bigger space than I'd anticipated. With free seating (as opposed to designated seating) I was able to bag a seat in the front row.

The set was wonderful. I think it's vital for plays by the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Noel Coward to have properly detailed sets in order to convey the period atmosphere and give one something to look at during the long dialogues when one's mind inevitably wanders. This set was one of the most detailed I've ever seen. The play is set in the 1890s in the drawing room of a middle class home. Fireplace? Check. With GLOWING LOGS, even though they wouldn't have been visible to most audience members. Black and white photograph of a relative on the wall? Check. Divan? Check. Bookcase? Check. Low chair near fireplace? Check. Replica newspaper? Check. Oil lamp type thing? Check. Houseplant that I don't know the name of, but which looked authentic? (Bamboo?) Check.

The Reverend James Morell (Harry Meacher) has candida is married to Candida. A charismatic Christian Socialist preacher, he believes that their relationship is solid and happy and that she depends upon him for love and protection. Candida (Judi Bowker) returns from a lengthy sojourn away from home with a young aristocratic poet, Eugene Marchbanks (Sebastian Cornelius), who, it transpires, has fallen in love with her and wants to get together with her. When he learns of Marchbanks' feelings Morell is initially dismissive but when he speaks to Candida about them he is shaken to discover that she does not feel as he thought she would about not only Marchbanks, but his preaching career and him in general. The play culminates in a 'who will she choose?' scene, with surprising consequences.

Candida is refreshingly feminist in the way it acknowledges that, in many cases, the success of men should at least partly be attributed to the unseen work of the women in their lives (e.g. emotional bolstering work, undertaking a greater share of the housework and childcare etc.). Maybe this was undermined slightly by the incredibly unsubtle patronising nature of Candida - she speaks to her husband and Marchbanks as though they were about two, referring to them as 'big babies' and 'boys', and doles out some pretty harsh passive aggressive criticism - which makes one wonder why either of them is so desperate for her love and approval. But that was also refreshing in its way. It's like the opposite of the end of A Doll's House; in this case the woman chooses to remain with her husband and he accepts that he's a much weaker person than he had always thought and recognises and acknowledges how much he has always relied on her.

The actors playing Morell and Candida were older than I imagine GBS had envisaged (Candida looked about the same age as the man playing her father), but I didn't think it mattered, as everyone played their parts plausibly and well.

I liked the character of Eugene a lot. He was the kind of person I imagined my adult self falling in love with when I was about 13: poetic, profound, passionate, attractive, romantic and melancholic, with an 1890s bohemian dress sense. Nowadays I think I'd find him a little irritating.

Next: Travesties

Sunny Afternoon - Harold Pinter Theatre

'Sunny Afternoon'

Sunny Afternoon is a 'jukebox musical' depicting the formation and fortunes of 60s/70s British band The Kinks. I've been a fan of The Kinks ever since hearing 'You Really Got Me' and the one that sounds almost identical to 'You Really Got Me', 'All Day and All of the Night', on a Sixties tape in the car as a child. 'Death of a Clown' and the titular 'Sunny Afternoon' were, I believe on different tapes; the latter was also one of my favourite songs. This being the case, I had high expectations for the musical.

It was strange seeing John Dagleish as frontman of the band Ray Davies, having only seen him before as the winsome, accordion-playing Alf Arless in Larkrise to Candleford. But he was really good, both in musical terms and in conveying the complexity of the character (i.e. haunted by his older sister's death, a musical genius, a perfectionist struggling with depression etc.). I couldn't help feeling endeared to all the 'boys', despite some of their more obnoxious antics.

One of my favourite scenes was that showing the 1965 gig in Cardiff that ended in a fight between Dave and Mick. Pete, the bass guitar player, tries to carry on performing after the other two have been taken off/run away respectively, playing the guitar and the drums at the same time. The script was genuinely funny; there were some laugh out loud moments. I particularly enjoyed the communist/socialist scene set in America.

The relative intimacy of the theatre meant that it was easy to get absorbed in the show. The runway running from the centre of the stage through the audience was mainly occupied by enthusiastic female dancers in classic 60s outfits. All the major Kinks songs were played. 'Tired of Waiting' wasn't played in its entirety, which I felt slightly disappointed about because it's one of my favourites, but it was alluded to in another song. The music fitted in well with the action; it didn't feel as though it had been crowbarred in. Lillie Flynn, who played Rasa, Ray's wife, had a really beautiful voice.

Given Ray Davies' involvement in Sunny Afternoon (he's credited under 'Original Story'), I wonder whether it portrays him in an unrealistically positive light. From what I've read, Ray's relationship with Dave was always volatile, while in the musical the animosity between Dave and Mick is highlighted and Ray is presented mostly as a concerned older brother in relation to Dave. Ray's relationship with Rasa is also probably idealized, to some extent, given that they ended up divorcing. However, I don't think it matters how much is true and how much is seen through rose-tinted spectacles if the story's good and the characters are interesting - provided there are no serious objections from the people it's portraying.

In conclusion it was funny, feel-good and absorbing, and I would recommend it. It had more 'soul', somehow, than Jersey Boys. Be prepared to be encouraged to dance at the end.

Next: Eigengrau

London Theatre Bloggers event

Last Friday I attended an event for London theatre bloggers (#LDNTheatreBloggers) organised by the vivacious Rebecca Felgate of Official Theatre, after having been kindly invited by Michaela of my stage is the world.

The event took place upstairs at Planet Hollywood and was co-hosted by Seat Plan, the 'definitive seating guide to London theatres'. 

Being my introverted, teetotal, slightly-deaf-in-a-noisy-room self, I was somewhat nervous about the prospect of spending several hours in a noisy room with a group of (probably mostly extroverted) strangers. However, I enjoyed myself. It was really good to be able to talk about theatre shows with people who had seen the same show (even on the same day, in some cases!). The food - sausages on sticks, mini hamburgers, potato wedges, pizza - was lovely. I particularly enjoyed talking to Laura of Loitering in the Theatre, whom, it turned out, shares my alma mater. 

King Charles III - Wyndham's Theatre

King Charles III  promotional material

Vivat Rex. This 2014 play by Mike Bartlett depicts the lives of key members of the British royal family in the period between the death of the present Queen up to and including the coronation of the next monarch. Charles takes over after the Queen's death, but is soon faced with a dilemma - should he sign into law a bill restricting the freedom of the press, even though he disagrees with it? Debate ensues between the King and politicians as to the limits of royal power, and what the consequences will be for the monarchy if he adheres to his principles. The play was written in blank verse, which gave it a poetic, Shakespearean quality. 

I enjoyed the actors' portrayals of the royals. Their voices and mannerisms were done extremely well and the costumes were recognisable. Tim Pigott-Smith was sympathetic as a principled and naive Charles III. 

Apart from the face, Kate (Lydia Wilson) looked exactly as she does in real life - glossy chestnut hair slightly waved at the ends, severe black dress showing off her very slim figure, stiletto heels...Her voice was perfect, too. 

Harry (Richard Goulding) was convincing, with characteristically rumpled hair and a desire to spend most of his time away from the palace. He forms a relationship with a stereotypical art student, Jessica. My favourite usage of blank verse in the play occurred when Jessica described her past indiscretion of sexting a boyfriend to a member of palace personnel, in the hope that he would stop the papers from hounding her. She described it as 'sending a token of my love' or something.

At the beginning of the play, William (Oliver Chris) and Kate came across as benign, benevolent and slightly condescending. But as the play progressed it became clear that Kate was more invested in the future of the monarchy than one might suspect and that she was playing the long game. Hilary Mantel was correct when she described the way in which Kate is depicted in the media: 'In those days she was a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore. These days she is a mother-to-be, and draped in another set of threadbare attributions. Once she gets over being sick, the press will find that she is radiant. They will find that this young woman’s life until now was nothing, her only point and purpose being to give birth.' 

It was refreshing to see Kate depicted as a cunning strategist. I like the idea of her being like that in real life. She was a more interesting character than William, who was more conventional in his approach to the situation. Towards the end of the play the actions of the dapper duo - masterminded by Kate - took a turn for the sinister. I felt a little chill down my spine when Harry informed Jessica that he must break up with her...having been ordered to do so by William and Kate!

Set: concave brick wall with doorways through which people (including the ghost of Diana) entered and exited, a frieze near the top of the wall showing indistinguishable faces, a rectangular plum tiered stage not covering the stage proper, which had parquet flooring...Candles. Good set, helped evoke atmosphere.

Music: chorus at outset, reminiscent of Philip Glass. Also helped evoke atmosphere. 

I enjoyed this, but didn't love it. I was amused by the funny parts but not deeply affected by the more serious elements. 3.5 stars out of 5.

Next: Sunny Afternoon

The Knight of the Burning Pestle

KotBP title page, 1613 edition

This was a strange one. I wish I could get the soundtrack to it because it featured some good songs, including 'My jolly red nose'. The play's premise was as follows: a London grocer and his wife - the 'citizens' (Phil Daniels and Pauline McLynn) - go to see a play entitled The London Merchant. Soon after the play begins they interrupt it from their seats in the audience, insisting that the grocer's apprentice, Rafe (Matthew Needham), is given a part because grocer characters are underrepresented in plays. Rafe, a sweet, ordinary kind of young man, agrees, and adopts the character of the 'Knight of the Burning Pestle', carrying about a wooden pestle in a mystical glowing casket. Over the course of the play the grocer and his wife periodically interrupt the action, demanding that Rafe appear in varied scenes and guises of their own choosing. In the second half they demand to see him speak with a princess dressed in burnished gold, become King of the May, and command an army. There was also a demonic giant barber. A satire on chivalric romances, it was sillier, funnier, more arbitrary and entertaining than I'm making it sound.

The lack of a plot and the randomness of the action struck me as unusually modern for a play of that era. The idea of members of the audience giving a running commentary on a play also seemed modern, but I suppose it was done in a minor way in A Midsummer Night's Dream, when Hippolyta and Theseus watch and comment on the mechanicals' play. The contributions of the citizens do not consist only in stopping the play and putting forward their points of view. While the actors try to get the play back on track and continue with the original scenes, the citizens rustle paper, eat liquorice and offer it to other members of the audience, and talk loudly amongst themselves in the manner of stereotypical impolite theatre-goers.

My favourite character was definitely Old Merrythought (Paul Rider), a jolly, tubby, Father Christmas-like man who sings all the time and refuses to be melancholy about anything. Merrythought claims he would sing even upon seeing his sons on the gallows: 'Down, down, down they fall; Down, and arise they never shall.' When, later on in the play, he sees the coffin that he believes contains one of his sons, he does indeed sing. One of the Knight's squires, the 'dwarf' (a large man), also had some good songs, including one outside a castle where the Knight's party are to stay the night.

My favourite scene was possibly the one in which Rafe comes on as King of the May, accompanied by his entourage dressed as Morris dancers.

It was interesting to see this in the same week as Shakespeare in Love, as I have seen both plays described as 'a love-letter to London and the theatre'. I enjoyed all the references to London and its environs in KotBP; Hoxton, Mile End, Waltham Forest.

The theatre was festively decorated with festoons of greenery and dried oranges and a kissing bough suspended over the front of the stage. The music, played on seventeenth-century instruments, was as excellent as usual. The musicians wore Santa's elf-style hats. The costumes in general were bright and colourful - there was a lot of velvet and unlikely colours and nods to an earlier era. It was a good choice of play to see at this time of year; quite panto-ish. There was even a man dressed up as a woman (the princess).

Next: King Charles III