TITUS ANDRONICUS – ALL THE BLOOD AND VIOLENCE THAT YOU CAN TAKE WITH SOME RESTRTAINT

Reviewed by James Karas 

The scenes: a woman is raped by two thugs and her hands and tongue are cut off; a man’s hand is cut off by a hacksaw; a man is sacrificially killed; there are numerous stabbings; dinner is served and the main dish is a meat pie filled with human flesh.

The assignment: Stage them.
 

No, this is not a black comedy but Titus Andronicus, a revenge tragedy by Shakespeare. It is now playing at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in a production by the redoubtable Royal Shakespeare Company.

Director Michael Fentiman and Designer Colin Richmond have opted for a straight-faced reading of the play with mostly judicious choices that provide an effective and restrained production. With Titus Andronicus “judicious” can mean something as basic as not provoking giggling from the audience. They managed to avoid giggling almost completely.

The play is set ostensibly in ancient Rome but this production has a variety of elements that set it somewhere between ancient Rome and sometime in the future. Some of the men wear modern jackets and pants with an emphasis on black. There are some purple arm bands that, together with the black shirts, could be construed as Nazi paraphernalia. The Roman soldiers wear black helmets in a shape that made them look like people from some sci-fi movie. The Goth soldiers wear primitive attire. Titus and his sons wear burgundy officers’ jackets. Although there is a radio on stage, there are no guns, only swords and daggers. The play is thus set in no particular era and the design works.

Stephen Boxer is an effective Titus. He is mostly stentorian in the opening scenes but his character and his attitude change when he goes mad and regains his sanity later in the play. Many of the other characters in the play are mostly one-sided leaving scant room for development or introspection. However, Boxer delivers the goods.

Saturninus (John Hopkins) and Bassianus (Richard Goulding) are the sons of the late Emperor and they are vying for his job. There is not much difference between the two but Fentiman cleverly makes Saturninus a bit effeminate while Bassianus is the more macho figure.

Tamora, the Queen of the Goths (Katy Stephens) is an exuberant character from her begging for her sons’ life in the beginning of the play to her energetic embrace of evil throughout.

Aaron the Moor, Tamora’s lover, stands out for the sheer breadth of his evil. Kevin Harvey has one of those deep, rolling bass voices that is just a pleasure to hear. You do not want his Aaron as your neighbor.

Perry Millward as Demetrius and Jonny Weldon as Chiron make an impressive duo of remorseless thugs. They are the sons of Tamora and are outside the pale of morality as recognized by most people.

Worthy of mention is the performance of Richard Durden as Marcus Andronicus. He has a deep voice and displays gravitas among a lot of shouting and killing.

Lavinia, beautiful, blonde, dressed in white, is lovely to behold. She is Titus’s daughter who is raped and mutilated and Rose Reynolds is very good in the role. She does her best work after she is mutilated as she tries to identify her attackers.

What does the creative team do with the blood and gore? The first murder is the sacrifice of the Goth Alarbus (Nicholas Prasad). As his attackers descend on the victim, a trap door opens and they are all lowered below stage. The killers come up covered in blood, carrying a large bowl of Alarbus’s body parts. The same is done with Lavinia and she emerges covered in blood and mud. She spits out blood from her severed tongue. Her severed hands are stumps and she is one need hardly say a pretty pathetic sight. The irony is that the blood and gore are not all that gross.

The rest of the stabbings are fairly antiseptic if numerous. One scene does stand out and that is the severing of Titus’ hand. He must offer one hand as proof of loyalty and Fentiman has it cut off on stage with a hacksaw.

Titus Andronicus is part of the Shakespearean canon and is probably produced for that reason alone. It was very popular in its day but the 20^th century held a dim view of it. Aside from its historic interest, the way a director stages those vile scenes peaks one’s curiosity. Do we get enough revolting detail or are we left disappointed?

This production has its good points but in the end making meat pies with human flesh is just not what it used to be.

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Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare opened on May 23 and continues in repertory until October 26, 2013 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. http://www.rsc.org.uk/

AS YOU LIKE IT AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON - A PRODUCTION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY?

 

Reviewed by James Karas

In the epilogue to As You Like It, Rosalind tells us that good wine does not need to be enhanced by a bush but tavern owners do use good bushes for good wines. It is equally true that old wines do not need new bottles but they are no doubt poured into them occasionally if only to keep the current proverb alive since Shakespeare’s is not clear without the help of a footnote.

Putting old plays in new bottles occurs with every production but there is no doubt that some bottles are better than other. This holds true for the current production of As You Like It at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon.

Director Maria Aberg, Designer Naomi Dawson and Movement Director Ayse Tashkiran have set the play in a modern non-realistic setting and added Molly dancing. According to Tashkiran, these are country dances “danced by men and women dressed up in exuberant disguises and drag.”

There is indeed a lot of dancing in the production which generates a great deal of energy and the performance evokes quite a few laughs but in the end failed to resonate with me as being a completely satisfactory vision of a favourite play.

In the second scene where we meet Rosalind and Celia in the Court of Duke Senior, there are some well-dressed people at the back performing a type of robotic dance. They move their hands and bodies like automatons. The result is that they are distracting us from the performance and the text.

Most of the play takes place in the Forest of Arden, a very different and transformative world from the world of the court. What does the forest consist of? A number of 4” x 4” wooden posts with something like dead leaves on the floor. There is a band on stage to play some loud music and provide accompaniment for the songs. This is a sterile world and if it is supposed to be yet another way of bringing Shakespeare into the 21^st century, please stop and let me off the ship. It is not a pleasant sight.

As You Like It is a comedy of love set against the background of a coup d'état and usurpation of the power of the rightful Duke. The foreground of the play is the friendship of Rosalind, the daughter of the overthrown Duke and her cousin Celia, the daughter of the usurper.

Rosalind, played beautifully by Pippa Nixon, is a tall and slender woman with short-cropped hair who pretends to be a man in the forest and falls in love with Orlando (Alex Waldmann), another victim of usurpation. Nixon has a marvellous delivery of Shakespearean verse and makes a splendid Rosalind.

Celia (Joanna Horton) has her own love interest in Oliver (Luke Norris), the transformed brother of Orlando. The two are accompanied by the fool Touchstone, superbly done by Nicolas Tennant. The pursuit of love among the gentry and the country bumpkins goes into high gear. By the time the play finishes, the stage will be strewn with brides and grooms as becomes a good comedy.

The Duke has some interesting companions in the forest including the grumpy Jaques (Oliver Ryan) and singer Amiens (Chris Jared). The country bumpkins such as the shepherdess Phoebe (Natalie Klamar), the shepherd Silvius (Michael Grady-Hill), the goatherd Audrey (Rosie Hilal) and her lover William (Mark Holgate) are guaranteed generators of laughter.

Aberg is not above in letting the actors abandon the text and engage the audience directly to hilarious effect.

My issue is not with individual performers but with the overall conception of the play presented by Aberg and her collaborators. We want, indeed demand, fresh interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays and look forward to the fresh, the new, the unexpected, and the miraculous. Sometimes we get it. This production did not have that effect on me.

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As You Like It by William Shakespeare opened on April 24 and will continue in repertory until September 28, 2013 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.    http://www.rsc.org.uk/

HAMLET IN SUPERB PRODUCTION AND FENCING AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

Reviewed by James Karas

Many productions have a memorable tag or theme that sticks in the mind years after we have seen them. The current production of Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon will no doubt be recalled as the Fencing Hamlet.

Jonathan Slinger as Hamlet wears a fencing outfit throughout and fencing swords are in evidence all the time. Fencing as the central metaphor of the pay has a number of advantages. It qualifies Hamlet as athletic, nimble of mind and body and not just a brooding and deeply troubled man at war with himself and the world. In addition it makes swords available for the fights in the play. This is a modern dress production and the presence of swords may otherwise be hard to explain. Fencing is done wearing masks and we get the additional metaphor of hidden thoughts.

Aside from athletic, Slinger’s Hamlet is extremely theatrical. He is a mimic, a clown, a hyperactive person who jumps, dances and is very aggressive. In fact he assaults Ophelia, pulls her clothes off and acts like a brute toward her. When this Hamlet goes mad he goes completely wacko.

Slinger displays an amazing number of vocal intonations. He can change his voice in a second to mimic or mock other people and even himself.  When he starts the famous soliloquy, he says “To be or not to be” seriously and then in a higher, almost comic tone he states “THAT is the question.”

His madness disappears when he returns from England and we see yet another side of the multi-faceted character. A phenomenal performance.

Greg Hicks plays Claudius like a well-suited businessman. Hicks also plays Hamlet’s Ghost and his resonant voice and strong stage presence provide for a fine performance from this veteran Shakespearean.

Ophelia (Pippa Nixon) in this production is a frumpy young woman who is dominated by her father. He points his finger at her and she goes where he directs her. She looks as if she is not all there from the start making her eventual descent into madness a short trip.

For her mad scene she is dressed like a bride and she shows her more forceful character when she is away from the sane world that she left. The frumpy girl becomes  a beautiful and very affecting bride. After her burial, she is left visible on the stage during the duel between her brother Laertes and Hamlet. A marvelous touch by Director David Farr.

Farr treats Rosencrantz (Oliver Ryan) and Guildenstern (Nicolas Tennant) quite seriously instead of evoking the usual laughter that is easily available at their expense. An effective choice by the director ansd well done by the actors.

Charlotte Cornwell, in a fancy dress and mink stole around her shoulders, is a portly Gertrude, well past her prime. She is usually portrayed as sexually attractive woman but not in this production. When Hamlet tells her that “at your age /The heyday in the blood is tame” he means that both desire and physical attractiveness have diminished. Cornwell rises to superb dramatic heights in the bedroom scene with her son and the Ghost.

The renovated Royal Shakespeare Theatre has a thrust stage that extends well into the audience. There is an attempt to resemble a 17^th century theatre without the open space for the groundlings and without the open roof. The advantage of course is that the audience is very close to the acting.

Farr makes full use of the stage. There is an acting area at the back, a stage with a curtain in fact,  with a table and some chairs but most of the action takes place in the open space. Farr lets the text dominate the performance and with Shakespeare one can hardly go wrong with that approach with good actors. Slinger especially displays the many ways that Shakespeare’s lines can be spoken to great effect.

An outstanding production.

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Hamlet by William Shakespeare opened on March 14, 2013 and continues in repertory at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.     http://www.rsc.org.uk/

OTHELLO AS RIVETTING MODERN DRAMA FROM THE NATIONAL THEATRE

 

***** (out of five)

Reviewed by James Karas

The National Theatre has produced Othello as a modern war drama that is full of subtleties and magnificent performances. It is the work of Director Nicholas Hytner who can take risks and deliver outstanding theatre.

In the opening scene, Iago and Roderigo meet outside a pub. As Iago expresses his hatred of Othello, Roderigo offers him a cigarette. He takes one and puts the pack in his pocket. That is a nice touch of characterization of our villain who is not just a grossly evil man but also a small time pilferer. There are numerous such touches throughout this masterly production.

Adrian Lester’s Othello appears dressed in a suit like a gentleman without military or heroic bearing. He speaks well despite his claim to have no talent for courtly language. We will witness this gentleman deteriorate into a murderous animal and in the final great scene regain his stature and nobility as he realizes the enormity of what he has done. It is a performance of enormous subtlety and power.

Iago is always the more interesting character and that holds true for this production with Rory Kinnear in the role. From pilfering Roderigo’s cigarettes to his manipulation of Othello, Iago is a low-class thug. He does not seem very subtle but he is cunning, ruthless and, of course, absolutely evil. He may be loyal and capable as a soldier but even with limited perspicacity Othello must have realized that this thug has limited leadership qualities. Hence Othello’s failure to promote him and thus sealing his own fate at the hands of a man whom he considers honest.

Olivia Vinall’s Desdemona is a modern woman who first appears in blue jeans and sneakers. There is some incongruity between the descriptions she gets from the others and her actual appearance. She is a free-spirited woman who is in love with a man that her father disapproves of but the incongruity of her appearance and the descriptions we get of her works the least well in Hyrner’s production.

Othello lands in an army camp in Cyprus. We hear helicopters overhead, see soldiers dressed for war: fatigues, helmets, machine guns and backpacks. Roderigo and Cassio shoot each other and only at the end is there a sword and a knife produced. This Othello is set in the midst of a modern war.

Iago’s wife Emilia is a soldier who is assigned to look after Desdemona. Lyndsey Marshal gives a powerful performance in the role.

Tom Robertson as Roderigo is dumb, eager and innocent: a perfect tool for Iago. Cassio (Jonathan Bailey) is not as dense as Roderigo but he is no match for Iago.

The sets by Designer Vicki Mortimer are strictly army issue and perfectly suitable for the style of the production. The Duke’s office in the first act consists of a small table with a few chairs. Strictly utilitarian.

Hytner has one scene set in a bathroom. This is where Othello is driven beyond endurance and in fact collapses. He vomits in a toilet bowl and a furious Bianca (Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi)  chases Cassio (Jonathan Bailey) into the men’s room. A brilliant move by Hytner that works realistically and metaphorically to emphasize Othello’s complete degradation.

Hytner is able to put Othello in  a war zone with a convincing portrait of army life. It is the sort of production that one would never think could work even after seeing many different interpretations of the play. He pulls it off with some superb acting and scenic designs.

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Othello by William Shakespeare opened on April 23, 2013 and continues at the Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, South Bank, London, England.  http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/    

PEACE IN OUR TIME: A COMEDY MAKES BRAVE ATTEMPT TO GIVE LIFE TO SHAW’S GENEVA

 

Reviewed by James Karas

Bernard Shaw wrote Geneva in 1938 and revised it a number of times. You can gauge the popularity and perhaps the quality of the play by the number of times it has been produced by the Festival that is named after him. Once and that was back in 1988.

 

It seems that Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell has reduced the risk of producing the play for an almost empty theatre by having it adapted by John Murrell to make it simply funnier. The attempt is partially successful and the production directed by Blair Williams garners a few laughs. However, it is not a play that will make you scour theatre schedules so you can see it again.

 

Set in the 1930s, the play deals with the League of Nation’s Committee for Intellectual Cooperation, which apparently existed. The Committee somehow manages to haul Mussolini, Hitler and Franco before the International Court in The Hague on various charges.

 
Murrell spruces up Shaw’s script by adding broad humour and including Canadian and American content. Williams gives it a farcical treatment that calls for overblown characters to act overblowingly.
 

The opening scene is set in the dingy office of the Committee for Intellectual Cooperation in Geneva where Bell Browning whose real name is Liberty Bell Browning (Diana Donnelly) is minding the store and receiving visitors. She is a dumb, spunky and attractive American woman who is also quite funny. She is from Ohio, which is much better than Indiana!  She is holding onto her virtue for as long as it is convenient or something like that.

 

She is visited by Joseph Rubinstein (Charlie Gallant), a German Jew with a handle-bar mustache and an awful accent. He wants to haul Der Fuhrer to the International Court. He is quite funny as he deals with the dunce of a secretary and finds out that the Committee is a bit of a joke.

 

He is followed by Darcy Middleman (Andrew Bunker), a conservative from Manitoba who wants our Prime Minister dragged before the International Court because he (the PM) wants to visit Germany and listens to the operas of Richard Wagner. Middleman produces some of the standard jokes about Canadians (the cold, where is Canada) and Bunker does a fine job satirizing us.

 
Claire Jullien gets to be melodramatic as a gun-toting Spanish woman who wants revenge against the people who killed her husband, the former dictator of her country.
 

Michael Ball is perhaps the funniest in the role of Bishop Isling. He is a perfectly pompous cleric who is subject to fainting when he hears something outrageous and regaining consciousness quickly.

 

The fun lasts until The Senior Judge (Sanjay Talwar) arrives. The comedy plummets like the stock market on a bad day and never quite regains its liveliness and humour. The British contribution to the fun is supposed to be the Foreign Secretary played by Patrick Galligan. In a room full of outrageous accents and eccentric buffoons, Galligan falls short. The Foreign Secretary should be a Brit from central casting – avuncular, thickly accented and a caricature of the aristocratic Englishman. Galligan is simply miscast for the role. Ball would have been much better.

 
Mussolini (Neil Barclay) is fat as if a pump had blown him up; Hitler (Ric Reid) is a wiry buffoon and Franco (Lorne Kennedy) comes in last and is not very funny.        
 

All the characters are caricatures and their accents are intentional abominations (the Americans and the Canadians excepted, of course). The broad humour sneaks through but so does some of the ponderous political commentary.

 

There is an uneasy and uncertain marriage between the farcical and underlying serious social criticism; between sharp satire and broad humour that leaves you unsatisfied.

 
We may never get a chance to see Geneva and a glance at Shaw’s play will tell you that there are not too many laughs in it. With Murrell’s version we got a few laughs and left with the satisfaction that we almost saw a neglected play by Shaw.
 

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Peace in Our Time: A Comedy  by John Murrell, adapted from Bernard Shaw’s Geneva opened on May 19 and will run in repertory until October 12, 2013 at the Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

 

LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN PRODUCTION FAILS TO CAPTURE POSHLY ACCENTED WORLD

 

Reviewed by James Karas

Lady Windermere’s Fan may not be Oscar Wilde’s best play but there is no shortage of wit, epigrams and balanced sentences. Its milieu is the upper-class world of nineteenth century London where Lords, Duchesses, Dukes, Ladies and Sirs abound and lesser mortals exist usually only as servants. This world has a way of acting, speaking and carrying themselves that is quite removed from the world of hoi polloi.

The current production at the Festival Theatre, directed by Peter Hinton and designed by Teresa Przybylski tries very hard to create a style of its own for the play. The costumes are beautiful, the sets elegant but unrealistic and the mode of expression deliberate. The result is a production that at one time or another can be described as slow, flat, pretentious and dragging.

After a display of beautiful gowns and fans, the curtain goes up like a box opening the left side of the stage. Hinton uses only the right half of the stage for the first part of the opening act. He does not want to rush us into the action therefore when the arrival of Lord Darlington (Gray Powell) is announced, Lady Windermere keeps busy for some time until he arrives from some distance away. Hinton wants Darlington to walk from the front door in real time.

This sets the pace for a slow, very slow, evening. I felt as if the stage were a vat of molasses into which the actors had to struggle to get any kind of speed in speech, movement or wit. Most of the lines fell flat and all one could think about was to scream “pick up the pace.”

The inability of Canadian actors to speak in any kind of aristocratic English accent is a matter of record and regret. They all try, of course. There is a way of delivering Wilde’s lines that demands a crisp, well-modulated English accent that suits the posh surroundings and expresses hauteur and elegance. You cannot just drop your r’s and hope you will sound like a Lord or a Duchess.

The accents here were within the usual parameters of the almost acceptable to the quite deplorable.

Marla McLean is attractive as Lady Windermere but not convincing. She opens her husband’s bank statement and discovers that he is handing out money hand-over-fist to a Mrs. Erlynne. Well, not surprisingly, she suspects him of infidelity.

When the Windermeres hold a ball, Mrs. Erlynne is invited. We expect her to be a beautiful woman, classy, magnetic, even gorgeous perhaps. Let your imagination and vocabulary wander but this lady has to be out of the ordinary. Tara Rosling does not quite qualify for such ascription. There is a surprise in store about the real identity of Mrs. Erlynne but I still hold that she must have attributes that would make a man run afoul of marital fidelity. Rosling fails to convince us that she is a woman with a past and a secret.

Martin Happer is an attractive Lord Windermere and has more of an aristocratic bearing than a lot of the others in the cast. He has a decent English accent but that only makes him an acceptable Lord Windermere.

The rest of the titled ladies and gentlemen and the not so noblessly-obliged suffer from the same malady – they were in a society and a world in which they could not convince us that they belonged. A disappointment.

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Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde run in repertory from May 9 to October 19, 2013 at the Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com 1 800-511-SHAW

TRIFLES – ONLY AT THE SHAW FESTIVAL EH? TWO ONE-ACT PLAYS THAT YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE

Reviewed by James Karas

Trifles is the title of a one-act play by Susan Glaspell and chances are you have not heard of the play or the author. A Wife for a Life is a one-act play by Eugene O’Neill and you have no doubt heard of the author but it is unlikely that you know of his first attempt as a dramatist.

Despair not for the Shaw Festival will alleviate your ignorance and entertain you for almost an hour with its current production of both plays at the Court House Theatre under the title Trifles.

Both plays involve unhappy marriages. In Trifles, a man is found dead in his bed with a rope around his neck. If we were in England, the setting would be a large house in the country and a snooty butler would be the prime suspect. In Trifles, the action is set in the kitchen of a lonely farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere, U.S.A.

The County Attorney (Jeff Irving), Sheriff Peters and his wife (Graeme Somerville and Kaylee Harwood), and neighbours Lewis Hale and his wife (Benedict Campbell and Julain Molnar) arrive to examine the scene of the crime and gather evidence. The wife of the dead man has already been arrested as a prime suspect and we never see her.

As the men search for clues, the women look around the kitchen and reveal a great deal about the dead man and his wife. The suspected wife was the unhappy and abused victim of a brute who, among many other sins, no doubt, wrung the neck of her bird. The women talk of “trifles” according to the men, but we know better.

The performances are first-rate. Benedict Campbell is the rough-hewn, rather garrulous farmer. Molnar is his decent wife who is much smarter than she appears. Harwood is the better-educated and more sophisticated city woman while her Sheriff husband and the County Attorney are officious bureaucrats.

The ending is very satisfactory.

Trifles morphs into A Wife for a Life without a break or change of set. The lonely farmhouse kitchen becomes a prospector’s lonely cabin. Jack, a young man played by Jeff Irving tells an Older Man, played by Benedict Campbell, about a woman he fell in love with in a mining town in South America. She was married to a much older man who was a brute. She reciprocated Jack’s love but stayed with her husband until he left her.

It turns out that the Older Man is in fact the husband of the woman that Jack loves and we will soon find out the meaning of the play’s title. Old Pete, the third character in the playlet, is a miner played by Jeff Irving.

A very interesting playlet, again, done well. Meg Roe directs both pieces and she takes advantage of the similarity in place and people by having the plays acted without interruption.

The performance takes about fifty minutes starting at 11:30 in the morning. The choice of plays is brilliant because one-act plays are produced infrequently and opportunities for seeing these two again are probably non-existent. If I can borrow the words from the old tea commercial, the applicable phrase is “Only at the Shaw Festival, eh?”

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Trifles by Susan Glaspell and A Wife for a Life by Eugene O’Neill run from May 29 to October 12, 2013 at the Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.