SEPTEMBER 21ST A DANCE FOR AUTUMN?

And so to Heyford, on the Oxford canal, a return to my pal Robin’s boat for a gentle cruise in the fine autumn sunshine, with tea amongst the drift of just-turning leaves, a respite from a hectic couple of weeks. September is when wheels start turning again, and work demands attention.

These last few weeks have seen the arrival of new students from America, the start of a new season of theatre visits, a fresh spate of note-taking and seminars. It’s been a time of explaining just what the British royal family is, what they’re for, and why we still write plays about them, four centuries and more after Will Shakespeare chronicled the blood-soaked politics of the Plantagenets. And then explaining why most of us felt a huge wave of relief to discover that Elizabeth Windsor was not, as of last Friday morning, about to become Elizabeth the First of Scotland.

At Wyndham’s Theatre we saw a cracking cast led by Tim Pigott-Smith in Rupert Goold’s expert production of “King Charles the Third”, a witty exploration of a fantasy scenario in which Charles, on becoming king, promptly refuses to sign off an act of parliament with which he disagrees. It’s a neat idea, cleverly written in quasi-Shakespearian blank verse by Mike Bartlett. Originally staged at the Almeida, with wickedly funny echoes of “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”, the supernatural element is introduced via a wispy ghost of Princess Diana.
                                     

The cast, while none of them looks especially like the familiar characters they portray, all grasp the essential elements and attitudes, and are utterly convincing – for instance a marvellously pragmatic and elegant performance by Lydia Wilson as Kate Middleton, bringing middle-class common sense to a family condemned by its own creaky history to a world of luxurious, confusing impotence.

A set of fine supporting performances comes from Nyasha Hatendi, one of which  – as Chief of the Armed Forces – echoed for me memories of his commanding officer in “Journey’s End” at RADA, one of the shows I directed and one full of happy memories, which were stirred again this week at the Trafalgar Studios, where another former member of the cast, Philip Cumbus, pitches a strong, thoughtful Tudor Earl of Richmond against Martin Freeman’s “Richard the Third”.

Following the dramatic mayhem of this tale of the Last of the Plantagenets, yet more explanations of the ways of British royalty have been required, but also of the ways of British theatre directors.The joy of “King Charles the First” was that the show told its story seemingly effortlessly, an example, for my money, of excellent directing – in other words, the sort of directing you don’t really notice. The worrying thing about the Trafalgar Studios show is that it has “Director with a Concept” written all over it. The programme has several articles giving detailed explanations as to why Jamie Lloyd chose to re-set the play’s late medieval time-frame to the 1970s. Could a need for lengthy written explanations indicate how secure the “concept” is – or perhaps isn’t?

Back in the 1980s, the English Shakespeare Company toured an entire “Wars of the Roses” cycle directed by Mike Bogdanov, which threw up a set of problems akin to those I experienced with this show i.e., if you’re going to stage a Shakespearian civil war in modern Britain, what do you do about the references in the script to medieval weaponry, and indeed transport? You can of course cut them, but when you’ve got a line as famous as “My kingdom for a horse!” what are you going to do with it in a battlefield bristling with automatic weapons a few miles off the M1 in Leicestershire? When the crippled, wicked king responded to Richmond pointing a gun at him by yelling for a horse, it seemed to me it would have made equal sense if he’d called out “Taxi!”

That said, the production rattles along with lots of energy, pace and excitement, and most of the young people in the audience who’d come to see Mr Freeman – and incidentally caught a great play by a great writer – seemed to enjoy the experience no end, and you can’t argue with that.

What I will argue with is the current rash of Shakespearian shows involving naff dancing! Mercifully there wasn’t any in the “Richard the Third’ but almost every show nowadays at the Globe, and indeed at the RSC, includes episodes of actors jigging. Usually it happens at the end, but sometimes at the beginning and even sometimes at the interval as well. Now, if you’re doing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” the play requires the mechanicals to perform something called a “bergomask” and it’s up to the director or choreographer to produce something appropriate and funny. But what on earth is the spectacle of British actors hopping about supposed to add, for instance, to “Anthony and Cleopatra”? And if you’ve given the audience a lot of fun with the mad plot-complexities of “A Comedy of Errors” why risk spoiling it by prancing about at the curtain-call, demanding everyone clap along in rhythm to your unconvincing capers?
                                         

I was at a lovely party last night where three smashing singers in a sparkling Malcolm McKee cabaret featured a number called “Don’t You Hate It When They Make You Sing Along?” Exactly. Listen, directors: most British “classical” actors aren’t very good at, and hate, dancing, and getting the audience to clap along doesn’t make them any better at it. These guys speak poetry superbly, can create stunning characters, they’ve mostly attended period dance classes at RADA or elsewhere, but please, spare us. 


If I pay to watch dance, I expect the performers to be doing things I couldn’t possibly do, stuff I can marvel at and be excited by. When did you last see a prima ballerina recite a sonnet at a curtain-call?

Mind you, the Shakespeare’s Globe “Anthony and Cleopatra”, which I caught in a rare “outside in” performance at the candle-lit Wanamaker Playhouse, was wonderful, with our Eve Best being – as usual – brilliant as Cleopatra, Clive Wood an ideally rugged Anthony, Phil Daniels a sharp and sinewy Enobarbus, with lovely work from the stunning Sirine Saba as Charmian. 

The Wanamaker may not be the most comfortable theatre to sit in, but boy is it atmospheric. And it brings a sharp focus to plays – like this one – written in the Jacobean period, probably performed in just such a wooden playhouse, lit like this by a multitude of candles.

Outside on the Globe’s main stage “The Comedy of Errors” has been very cunningly cast, with the two masters and two servants looking uncannily alike, feeding the comic confusion wonderfully. The play resonates down the ages – it was after all, based on a piece by Plautus written about 200 BC – and is given a suitably rousing production by Blanche MacIntyre. Except, except…would not actors in Roman and indeed Elizabethan productions have had really accomplished circus skills, and when they danced their jig at the end – assuming they did dance a jig – would they not have been really skilled dancers…? I rest my case.

On Thursday to Marylebone station, en route to Stratford on Avon and the bookshop at the Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, for a book-launch at which I am expecting to meet up with two ex-students.   Waiting for the electronic board to tell me my train’s platform I glance up and find myself beneath a poster of both of them – that is to say Ed Bennett and Michelle Terry – in glamorous Edwardian mode for the RSC double of “Love’s Labours Lost and “Love’s Labours Won” (aka “Much Ado About Nothing”). The first opens this week – good luck chaps. 

The book being launched, by the way, is “Stratford upon Avon The Biography” by the amazing Nicholas Fogg, and is a snip at around 15 quid for lots of fascinating, illustrated history and insight.  Click on the link below to reserve yourself a copy.

Meanwhile back in ever-astounding Walthamstow my friend Robinson and I found ourselves this afternoon wandering into an extraordinary emporium called “God’s Own Junkyard”. You wanna buy neon?

Look no further. There are neon signs and devices of every description, many from movie sets, and many surely destined to be hired or bought by movie designers in the future. It’s a glowing, shimmering Aladdin’s Cave in an unlikely, unglamorous corner of E17. Come visit.



                                      

Links:
STRATFORD upon AVON THE BIOGRAPHY 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stratford-Upon-Biography-Eyewitness-Accounts/dp/1445637871

GOD’S OWN JUNKYARD:

http://godsownjunkyard.co.uk

FOOT-NOTE (literally) In discussion with fellow sufferers, a new movement to call a halt to directors imposing excruciating jig-dancing on British actors and audiences has been instigated, with the witty acronym of SAND – Shakespearians Against Naff Dancing. (The title inspired by those great sand-dancers Wilson Keppel and Betty, who had they still been alive, could have made an entirely appropriate contribution to “Anthony and Cleopatra”. You can see what we mean by clicking on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkhJpr2zR8s) 

If you would like to express support for SAND, please write in.  

p.s.  TYA has just announced a new set of “live” acting classes in London for October/November. Click on: www.teachyourselfacting.com 


If you’d like to respond,  if you disagree with any of the above, or would like to add a comment or two, I’d love to hear from you – you can do so anonymously, if you like – and I’ll happily publish your views. Just click on the word “comments” in the little panel below, and follow the instructions.