'The Motive and the Cue' by Jack Thorne
22 March 2024
In 1964 Richard Burton asked Sir John Gielgud to direct his Hamlet on Broadway - a production which set the play in a theatre rehearsal room. Two of the cast wrote books about the rehearsals and the tussles between the very different approaches of Gielgud and Burton. Those two books provided the inspiration for Jack Thorne’s new play ‘The Motive and the Cue’, directed by Sam Mendes at the National Theatre in London (which we watched at a NTLive screening at the Odeon Milton Keynes on Thursday). It’s a fascinating exploration of theatre, acting and actors, with ‘Hamlet’ and its father-son relationships providing a clever backdrop both to the relationship between Gielgud and Burton and their relationships with their own fathers. Johnny Flynn is great as the volatile Richard Burton and Mark Gatiss is very moving as Gielgud. Allan Corduner as Hume Cronyn (playing Polonius) also stood out in a large cast and Tuppence Middleton almost stole the show as a wonderful Elizabeth Taylor.
Labels: Drama, Film, Theatre
'Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening' by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin
19 March 2024
When ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ - Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin’s Channel 4 sitcom, set in the offices of a TV news channel - started in 1990 its unique selling point was the way it weaved in topical news stories (and gags about them) by recording some elements of each week’s show just before it was broadcast. Watching ‘Drop the Dead Donkey: The Reawakening’, the stage reunion of the original TV cast, at Milton Keynes Theatre last Saturday, I was pleased to see up-to-the-minute references to doctored photos of the Royal Family, the Russian presidential election etc. As a fan of the TV series, the stage show was gloriously nostalgic, with all the surviving cast members reprising their roles thirty years on (and a moving tribute at the end to David Swift and Haydn Gwynne). For anyone unfamiliar with the original series I suspect the opening scenes, punctuated by rapturous applause as each character reappeared, was probably a little tedious. But once the plot, and the mystery of why the gang had been brought back together to run a new TV news operation (‘Truth News’) started to get going, it was good fun and quickly fell back into the comic rhythms of a good sitcom. If the satire felt a little tame now, well thirty years is a long time and the news today often feels beyond parody. But it was lovely to see Susannah Doyle, Robert Duncan, Ingrid Lacey, Neil Pearson, Jeff Rawle, Stephen Tompkinson and Victoria Wicks back together again. And interesting to note that, despite the incredibly witty script, it was two brilliant moments of slapstick that got the biggest laughs.
Labels: Comedy, Theatre, TV
'A Midsummer Night's Dream' by William Shakespeare
15 March 2024
When we started the Open Stages project in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2009 - working with hundreds of amateur theatre groups and professional theatre companies across the UK - it was interesting to see one question dominating the discussions at our skills-sharing sessions. What amateur theatre directors most wanted to ask the RSC was whether it is permissible to cut or amend Shakespeare's texts. It always seemed to surprise the RSC staff that they were seen as the definitive arbiters on this question: Shakespeare has been out of copyright for centuries and many RSC productions have taken extremely creative approaches to the plays. Last Saturday we were at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to see Eleanor's Rhode's new RSC production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and I was struck by the fact that you don't need to change the text to achieve a different take on the play. In this production Duke Theseus was not the strong, authoritative leader he normally appears - an adult amongst the squabbling children. Here, played by Bally Gill (who doubles as Oberon), Theseus is a weak, nervous leader, trying to please everyone and constantly seeking affirmation from Hippolyta (Sirine Saba) - though you could imagine he might have firm views on the proper way to stack the dishwasher! This was all brilliantly conveyed through his body language and voice, without any need to change the words he spoke. It's a great production, in modern costume on a mostly bare stage, allowing the acting and the movement of the actors to dominate. In particular Mathew Baynton as Bottom, Ryan Hutton as Lysander and Rosie Sheehy as Puck demonstrate amazing physicality and balletic movement: movement director Annie-Lunette Deakin-Foster deserves much credit. Eleanor Rhode also works with an Illusion Director and Designer, John Bulleid, and his moments of conjuring and sleight of hand, sparingly used, add to the magic of the play. It's also a very funny production, with real laugh-out-loud scenes involving the lovers and the rude mechanicals. Helen Monks is brilliant as Peter Quince, almost stealing the show from Mathew Baynton: it's the first time I have seen the prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe performed as a rap! It would be impossible not to come out of the theatre smiling.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'Demon Copperhead' by Barbara Kingsolver
8 March 2024
As I have mentioned here before, I found the Hogarth Shakespeare series of books, in which contemporary novelists re-imagined Shakespeare plays, a bit cringe-worthy (with the exception of ‘Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold’ by Margaret Atwood, reviewed here in January 2022). So, despite many people recommending it, I came to ‘Demon Copperhead’, Barbara Kingsolver’s retelling of ‘David Copperfield’ with some trepidation. But, while ‘Demon Copperhead’ (as the title signifies) is another example of a loosely disguised classic tale in a modern setting, with clever contemporary variations of the character names, I thought it worked extremely well. I think this is because Barbara Kingsolver is interested in updating both Dickens’ story and his exposé of social problems. Her first-person narrator Damon Fields tells the story of his difficult childhood in Lee County, Virginia, in the 1990s. He is born to a drug-using teenage single mother in a trailer, passes in and out of foster care and experiences trauma and tragedy at a very young age. In front of this bleak backdrop, Barbara Kingsolver paints an engaging cast of Dickensian characters to create what feels like it is going to be an entertaining coming of age story about overcoming adversity through friendship. But Kingsolver’s underlying theme is America’s opioid crisis and seeing Demon (and most of his contemporaries) descending into over reliance on drugs and addiction feels painfully real and distressing. ‘Demon Copperhead’ is a brilliantly written novel: it is a tribute to Kingsolver’s skill that you soon forget the Dickens parallel and get sucked into the modern tragedy of a generation lost to drugs. The second half of the novel becomes increasingly uncomfortable reading but it is a compelling commentary on a shameful episode in our recent history of which Charles Dickens would have been proud.
Labels: Books
Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
5 March 2024
Last Saturday I played in a Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert which featured a rare performance of the First Symphony by Sir Arnold Bax. The early 20th century English composer was a committed Hibernophile, passionate about Ireland, Irish culture and the Gaelic language. He wrote poetry in Gaelic and named his children Dermot and Maeve. Bax was deeply affected by the 1916 Easter Rising and the execution of Irish rebel leaders by the British Army, but felt unable to speak out as he was then Master of the King's Music. His 'Symphony No 1', completed in 1922, while not publicly connected to the events in Ireland, reflects his anger and grief. As a programmatic work about the armed suppression of protest and rebellion it made for a fascinating comparison with our performance last year of Shostakovich's 'Symphony No 11:The Year 1905' (reviewed here in June 2023) and the 'Peterloo Overture' by Malcolm Arnold (reviewed here in October 2019). Bax's First Symphony is scored for a massive orchestra, including hecklephone (bass oboe), sarrusophone (or contrabassoon), bass flute and two harps. It's a brutal, angry piece, punctuated by some surprising moments of gentle beauty. It took me some weeks of practice to begin to appreciate the music but it really grew on me and I thought we gave a impressively coherent and moving performance of the symphony. Our concert also featured the 'Violin Concerto No 2' by Prokofiev - a stunning performance by Joo Yeo Sir. Both Bax and Prokofiev went out of copyright on 1 January 2024 so I suspect there will be more performances of works by both composers this year. We opened the concert with Bernstein's 'Symphonic Dances from West Side Story' - last performed by the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in 2008 (reviewed here in March 2008). 'West Side Story' is a challenge for any orchestra - both because of its complex syncopated jazz and Latin rhythms, and because it is so well known. As we settled our nerves, took a deep breath and launched into the opening bars, conductor John Gibbons immediately halted the performance and dashed off stage, having forgotten to bring with him the police whistle whose shrill blast halts the Jets and Sharks at the end of the Prologue. Amused and relaxed by this intrusion, the orchestra started again and gave an exciting and slick account of Bernstein's score - featuring a brilliant percussion section, amazing work by Terry Mayo on trumpet and a beautifully controlled flute cadenza by Graham Tear, providing a haunting moment of stillness after the mayhem. It was a wonderful concert, enthusiastically received by a sold out audience at Christchurch, Northampton.
Labels: Concerts, Music, NSO23-24
