THE MERCHANT OF VENICE – REVIEW OF MASTERLY PRODUCTION AT SHAKESPEARE’S GLOBE

Jonathan Pryce as Shylock (left) and Dominic Maftham as Antonio (right). 

(Image: Manuel Harlan)

Reviewed by James Karas

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre has produced a masterly and memorable production of The Merchant of Venice that emphasizes the religious aspect of the play and does full justice to its comic side as well.

Most of the credit must go to Jonathan Munby, the director who has fashioned a production that is faithful to Shakespeare and at the same time expands our view with his brilliant interpretation.

The production boasts a stellar cast with some truly outstanding performances. Jonathan Pryce’s Shylock is a strong and confident businessman who has to put up with virulent attacks on his person by the good citizens of Venice. Their anti-Semitism is so ingrained that they are utterly incapable of realizing the depths of their inhumanity. When a Venetian spits on him Shylock calmly takes out a handkerchief and wipes the spittle off his sleeve. When he appeals to their humanity, they hear nothing. A magnificent and powerful performance by Pryce.

Rachel Pickup is an excellent Portia. She is entertaining as the woman who must allow some pretty odd strangers to bid for her hand in marriage by opening one of three caskets. She is very good when she must pretend she is a learned lawyer in the court scene. Shylock almost interrupts her several times during “the quality of mercy” speech which is not as effective as I would have hoped it would be.

Stefan Adegbola as Launcelot Gobbo simply brings the house down in the scene where he tries to decide whether to leave Shylock’s service. Munby has him grab two yardlings, one of them to represent his conscience and the other to act as the devil He questions them as to what he should do. It is a hilarious scene. Adegbola is entertaining throughout.

Munby gets lots of laugh from Portia’s suitors as they try to figure out which casket to open. Scott Karim as the Duke of Morocco and Christopher Logan as the Prince of Aragon are very funny.

Dominic Mafham as Antonio, Daniel Lapaine as Bassanio, Ben Lamb as Lorenzo and David Sturzaker as Gratiano are upstanding and well-acted Venetians who have a slight defect (the characters, not the actors) in their view of Jews.

In the courtroom scene Shylock forcefully asks for justice by having the letter of the law enforced. We believe him to be right despite the pleas for mercy by the anti-Semites. (By the way, for those interested in the enforceability of the bond, the answer is simple: the bond is not enforceable as a matter of public policy. Happily it is enforceable as a matter of dramatic necessity.)

When Shylock is about to claim his pound of flesh, Antonio stands up and his feet are tied up. He raises his arms and they are tied up to a pole and he appears crucified. His friends rush to him and they provoke laughter. He is no Christ.  

The final scene is a masterpiece. After the jolly recognition scene, the only thing remaining is for the three happy couples to start their married life with the proverbial honeymoon.      

At this stage Jessica (Phoebe Pryce) goes to the front of the stage, kneels, and starts singing a dirge.

A priest dressed in a white cassock and carrying a large cross appears. He is followed by a number of similarly dressed men, deacons I presume, who form a triangle behind him. Shylock, dressed in a white shirt, walks behind the priest as the procession proceeds solemnly to the front of the stage, beside the singing Jessica. The priest is about to christen the distraught Shylock and the deacons chant the baptismal service in Latin which includes asking the future Christian if he believes in the basic tenets of Christianity. Shylock, a man in agony, groans “credo” as he is completely deprived of his dignity and humanity. Water is poured over his head three times; he is duly christened and led off the stage.

Jessica, who is supposed to join her husband Lorenzo and continue her life as a Christian, walks to the back of the stage to join him. But as the door is about to close she steps back and turns towards the audience. She will not go on. It is a moment of redemption for a woman who betrayed and sacrificed everything that she was born to and raised with on the altar of anti-Semitism.

The whole scene is an incredibly moving coup de théâtre and a magnificent conclusion to this marvelous production.

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The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare opened on April 30 and continues until June 7, 2015 at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 21 New Globe Walk, London, England. www.shakespearesglobe.com

A MAD WORLD MY MASTERS – REVIEW OF ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

 Ellie Beaven as Mrs Littledick and the cast of A Mad World My Masters. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Reviewed by James Karas

A Mad World My Masters is an exuberant theatrical entertainment that grabs whatever it can from a number of genres to generate energy and sheer fun. It has enough singing and dancing to quality as a musical. It has elements of farce, slapstick, raunchy and boisterous comedy to keep the audience thoroughly regaled.

A Mad World was written by Thomas Middleton in 1605 and the current production by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the English Touring Theatre is billed as “edited by Sean Foley and Phil Porter.” Don’t believe it. It is like saying that Shaw’s Pygmalion is “edited” be Lerner and Loewe to make My Fair Lady.

Foley and Porter have moved the action to seedy, lively, bawdy, hooker-happy Soho of the 1950’s. They have changed many of the names of the characters from incomprehensible Jacobean to juicy modern ones: Sir Bounteous Progress, the rich old knight who curries favour with the nobility is renamed Sir Bounteous Peersucker. The jealous Shortrod Harebrain gets the more colouful name of Mr. Littledick.

With names like Dick Follywit, Penitent Brothel, Spunky, Sponger and Sir Andrew Fondlewife you know you are in the world of sex comedy where references to and puns about reproductive organs, to put it politely, will abound. And boy, do they.

Between the singing by the marvelously-voiced Linda-John Pierre, the pratfalls, the occasionally overdone slapstick and the aforementioned linguistic free-for-all, there are several plots that require significant comic talents to do them justice.

Ian Redford is the rich old fool of New Comedy who has a young mistress called Truly Kidman (Sarah Ridgeway) and a poor nephew in Follywit (Joe Bannister). Redford provides considerable comedy as the doddering fool who is robbed but never loses his adoration of nobles.

Bannister as the wily and agile Follywit pursues his uncle for money and the “virgin” Truly for other things. Truly’s pimp and mother (played by Ishia Bennison) has sown up Truly fifteen times back into virginity in the hope of getting her the proper husband.

Sarah Ridgeway as Truly Kidman and Ellie Beaven as Mrs Littledick. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Moving right along, we have Mrs. Littledick (Ellie Beaven) who wants what her jealous husband (Ben Deery) cannot provide but what Penitent Brothel (Dennis Herdman) can and does. While Littledick is listening and misapprehending what his wife is doing, we see her and her lover perform a shadow sex show behind the sheer curtains of a bed.

The actors interact with the audience quite frequently from pointing at people in the theatre, to engaging spectators in the front row, all to good effect. 

The singing and the dancing are well integrated into the plot. The scenes from Soho bars to street scenes to interior sets are done efficiently and the frantic, joyous atmosphere is always maintained. There are frequent references to current events but much of Middleton’s text is retained.

Kudos to Sean Foley who directs the production in addition to “editing” Middleton’s text. He is able to inject life and energy in every scene and show abundant comic inventiveness.

There are some sequences that seemed overdone – the falling into the garbage can continued long after it ceased to be amusing - but overall this entertainment reaches from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century with gusto and flamboyance.     

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A Mad World My Masters by Thomas Middleton, edited by Sean Foley and Phil Porter, opened on April 29 and will run until May 9, 2015 at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London, England. www.ett.org.uk or  www.rsc.org.uk

DEATH OF A SALESMAN – REVIEW OF ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

Alex Hassell (Biff), Harriet Walter (Linda Loman), Antony Sher (Willy Loman) and Sam Marks (Happy). Photo: Ellie Kurttz

Reviewed by James Karas

The 100^th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Miller seemed like a good excuse for the Royal Shakespeare Company to produce his masterpiece, Death of a Salesman.

Gregory Doran, the RSC’s Artistic Director assigned the play to himself and gave the leading role to Antony Sher, one of the best classical actors in the business. The result is an outstanding production of an iconic play.

Death of a Salesman is about a person, a family and a national dream. Willy Loman, the salesman, lives with his wife and two sons in a small, mortgaged house in Brooklyn where everything seems to be purchased on the instalment plan.

Loman is an ordinary man who drives to stores around New England selling goods. But he has big dreams about himself and especially his children. He has illusions and delusions about the past, the present and the future. Reality is a phase that he refuses or is unable to face.

Sher is a small man and his size is quite suitable for the pathetic Loman who is beaten down by reality but keeps slugging and grasping for his dreams like a battered and bloodied boxer vying for the championship. But he cannot escape the shallowness of his thinking and his ambitions. Being “well liked” is not a formula for success. His wise and humane neighbor Charley (Joshua Richards) gives him money but Willy accepts it only as a loan and he intends to pay it back. And he believes it and he means it.

Sher as Loman is garrulous, offensive, annoying, pathetic and endlessly optimistic against all odds. Sher captures all the negative aspects of Loman’s character but he also grasps his humanity as the guilt-ridden little man tries to come to terms with his own life. A simply outstanding performance.

Harriet Walter as his wife Linda is the woman of strength and perseverance who knows it all, who sees his goodness beneath the bombast and the illusions but can do nothing about it. Walter strikes the necessary balance between the suffering wife, the knowing woman and the strong mother.

Loman’s sons are fascinating characters because they are the product and victims of his illusions and delusions. Biff (Alex Hassell) buys into his father’s dreams and illusions until reality comes crashing down on him. Hassell plays the young, handsome, shallow, arrogant and mendacious Biff as if he were born to play the part. His brother Happy (Sam Marks) is just as delusional and he learns nothing from his father’s and Biff’s experience. He intends to make it.

Loman’s brother Ben appears like a figment of Willy’s imagination. He is a man who went into the forest and came out rich. He has fulfilled all if Willy’s dreams but he is not real.  

Death of a Salesman is in part a memory play with flashbacks to the past but the memories may be no more real than Loman’s illusions and delusions.  Designer Stephen Brimson Lewis has set the Loman house between high rise buildings that are choking it. For the restaurant and hotel scenes furniture is elevated from below stage. The light changes from the grim tenements of the present to sunbathed buildings of the past when we go back in time. Effective work by lighting designer Tim Mitchell.

Doran has produced an extremely effective production. From the minor players to the lead roles and the overall design he has captured the essence of the great play. It is a paean to American drama and to the great playwright on the centenary of his birth.                      

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Death of a Salesman  by Arthur Miller runs until May 2, 2015 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon and transfers to the Noel Coward Theatre, 85-88 St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4AU from May 9 to July 18, 2015. www.rsc.org.uk

THE JEW OF MALTA – REVIEW OF ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

Jasper Britton (Barabas) and Catrin Stewart (Abigail). Photo: Ellie Kurtz

Reviewed by James Karas

The Royal Shakespeare Company has produced a vibrant and engaging production of Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. Director Justin Audibert paces the performance well and Lucy Cullingford who is credited with movement has indeed choreographed part of the performance to the energetic music of Jonathan Girling.

Audibert directs with a light and at times enthusiastic touch and the production has the feel of an action-packed play with a plot of many twists.

The Jew of the title is Barabas (Jasper Britton), a rich merchant in Malta during the siege of the island by the Turks. His property is confiscated by the Christian Governor Ferneze (Steven Pacey) in order to bribe the Turks. This sets in motion a series of intrigues, murders, poisonings, treacheries and blackmails to make your head spin.

The most notable performance is given by Britton in the lead role. Barabas is unscrupulous, devious, tough and murderous to be sure but he has panache as well. This puts him in a different class of villainy. He is not only shameless and amoral; he enjoys what he does and you find yourself almost rejoicing in his vengefulness. Examples? He hatches a plot to eliminate the governor’s son Don Lodowick (Andy Apollo) and his daughter Abigail (Catrin Stewart), her suitor Don Mathias (Colin Ryan) and a bunch of nuns and more. A superb job by Barabas as an avenger and by Britton as an actor.

The Anti-Semitism of the play is blatant but Marlowe is true to the word of Machiavel (Simon Hedger) who in the prologue states that “I count religion as but a childish toy.” Childish but toxic and murderous. Friar Bernadine (Geoffrey Freshwater) and Friar Jacomo (Matthew Kelly) are venal, selfish and hypocritical under the cowl. The two actors do a fine job in illustrating Machiavel’s view of religion.

The Turks do not come out any better. Calymath (Marcus Griffiths) and Callapine (Nav Sidhu) are representatives of the Ottoman Sultan in the style of rapacious and arrogant conquerors.

Governor Ferneze and his retinue are no better and no worse than the other Christians, the Muslims and the Jews. Lanre Malaou has considerable latitude to show his acting talent as the slave Ithamore and he takes advantage of every opportunity.

With the men occupying the center of evil and immorality, the women have less scope. Catrin Stewart is lovely and sympathetic as Abigail, Barabas’s daughter, but converting to Christianity because of her father’s evil may not resonate as well today as it did in Elizabethan England. Beth Cordingly makes a fine Bellamira, the courtesan and Matthew Needham is pimp Pilla-Borza to be reckoned with.

The set designed by Lily Arnold consists of marble steps behind the open area of the stage. A clunky trap door is useful for throwing people in jail or getting rid of dead bodies and there is a small fountain for baptisms at the front of the stage.

The light-handed, fast-paced approach adopted by Audibert works well and serves the play with its numerous plot twists and rather sketchy attention to characterization nicely. It is not a play that is frequently produced and this production is well worth the effort.             

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The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe runs until September 8, 2015 at the Swan Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. www.rsc.org.uk

LOVE’S SACRIFICE – REVIEW OF ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY PRODUCTION

Catrin Stewart and Matthew Needham. Photo: Helen Maybanks  

Reviewed by James Karas

The Royal Shakespeare Company has staged Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford in Stratford-upon-Avon. I venture to say that the likelihood of most of us having heard of John Ford or seen any of his plays is slim. The play was written in 1633 and falls in the genre of revenge tragedies. The RSC has a program of producing almost forgotten plays from that era and this is one of them.

The production is in the Swan Theatre directed by Matthew Dunster. It is done in Elizabethan costumes and Dunster generates considerable energy as he gives us a fine example of the bloody genre that the audience in the days of Charles I enjoyed.

The play is about love, uncontrollable passion, intrigue, treachery and, of course, revenge. Let’s take the subplot. The dashing courtier Ferentes (played by the appropriately named Andy Apollo) seduces three ladies of the court with extravagant expressions of love and promises of marriage and fidelity. He gets them all pregnant. During a masked ball they open their bodices and we see videos of babies projected on their stomachs. The three women gang up on Ferentes, tie him up and execute him in public. That is sweet revenge.

The main plot involves the Duke of Pavy (Matthew Needham) who marries a beautiful commoner named Bianca (Catrin Stewart)/. The Duke’s friend Fernando (Jamie Thomas King) falls in love with Bianca who initially rejects him but then falls in love with him. Fernando is troubled with his betrayal of his friend the duke. The affair is NOT consummated but the two are found out. What revenge will be taken on the two lovers? That is the question that holds you in your seat to the end.

Needham plays the Duke as an erratic, weak, dictatorial and perhaps psychotic man. Stewart as Bianca is lovely, strong and passionate. She is just the opposite of her foolish husband and a delight to watch. King as Fernando is just the type of heroic lover you want to see – passionate but moral.

Colin Ryan as Giacopo and Matthew Kelly as Mauricio. Photo: Helen Maybanks 

Matthew Kelly gets the juicy role of Mauricio, a foolish and conceited old courtier who is very funny in his idiotic conduct. Colin Ryan is his patient sidekick and is very entertaining.

D’Avolos, the secretary to the Duke, played expertly by Jonathan McGuinness, is a creepy schemer, the epitome of the evil man in revenge tragedy.

The nobleman Roseilli (Marcus Griffiths) is an interesting character. He is in love with the Duke’s sister Fiormonda (Beth Cordingly) and he disguises himself as a fool so he can be near her. He was banished from Pavy because of the advances he made to her. She is bad news and he is even worse in the end. A couple of interesting characters done well by the actors.       

There are many turns to the plot. There are seventeen characters in the play not including guards, friars and nuns. It is a pot boiler that is worth seeing for its own virtues as well as an example of the drama that flourished during the reign of Charles I until the theatres were closed.

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Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford continues until June 24, 2015 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. www.rsc.org.uk

MAN AND SUPERMAN – REVIEW OF NATIONAL THEATRE PRODUCTION

Ralph Fiennes (Don Juan) & Indira Varma (Ana). Photo: Johan Persson

Reviewed by James Karas

Only the bravest and best-funded theatre company would risk producing Bernard Shaw Man and Superman in its uncut version. Including the play-within-the play, Don Juan In Hell, you need a healthy three and a half hours on stage (more if you do at a less than brisk pace), not mention a stellar cast that can deliver Shaw’s arguments intelligently.

England’s National Theatre is decidedly one of those companies and its production of Man and Superman with Ralph Fiennes and a superb cast directed by Simon Godwin succeeds triumphantly.

Man and Superman is a brilliant play but its verbosity can get to even the most dedicated Shavian if the play is done by a merely competent cast without an outstanding director.

Shaw takes on English society to task with lengthy forays into morality, relations of the sexes, marriage and his overriding philosophy of the Life Force. All of it can be interesting, thought-provoking, entertaining and quite funny. But it can also feel like an endless discussion.

This production brings out all the virtues of the play and evades all its vices. The main ingredient is the cast. Ralph Fiennes as John Tanner and Don Juan in the scene in hell is a flamboyant actor who delivers his lines with flair, conviction and humour. He is a delight to watch and hear as he emits his astounding number of lines with such relish that you forget the length of the play.

Colin Haigh (Anarchist), Naomi Cranston (Sulky Social Democrat), Tim McMullan (Mendoza), Arthur Wilson (The Rowdy Social Democrat), Nicholas Bishop (The Frenchman). Photo: Johan Persson

He has good company. Indira Varma, as Ann Whitefield in the play and as Ana in Hell is a perfect antagonist and secret plotter for Fiennes’s Tanner. She is a self-assured, very intelligent, and conniving young woman who knows what she wants and how to get it. She can manipulate people as if she were moving rooks on a chessboard and induce her best-armed antagonist into matrimony. A marvelous performance.

No production of Man and Superman can succeed without a chief bandit who also doubles as the Devil in Hell. Tim McMullen delights in the role of Mendoza in the mountains and Mendoza the businessman and the Devil. He and Fiennes have carriage of the scene in hell with Ana playing a relatively minor role and Roebuck Ramsden (Nicholas Le Prevost) providing contrast as a man condemned to heaven. McMullen’s performance is excellent in hell and on earth.

The sniveling Octavius Robinson is played splendidly by Ferdinand Kingsley and there are fine performances by Elliot Barnes-Worrell as Straker, Faye Castelow as Violet, Nick Hendrix as Hector Malone and Corey Johnson as Malone.

Godwin establishes a brisk pace and maintains it to the end. But this is not a race to blurt out the lines and get it over with. He gets outstanding performances from the cast and one never feels that he is rushing through the script.

Designer Christopher Oran opts for translucent walls lit from behind which look austere and metallic. The first scene has bookshelves and there is a mound for the scene in the Sierra Nevadas. There is bright red lighting to indicate the fires of hell but the scene is mostly lit by white lighting. The set left me indifferent but the production as a whole can only be described as a great night at the theatre.         ___________

Man and Superman by Bernard Shaw opened on February 25, 2015 and continues at the Lyttleton Theatre, National Theatre, South Bank, London, England.  http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/  

THE HARD PROBLEM – REVIEW OF STOPPARD PLAY AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE

Parth Thakerar – Amal, Vera Chok – Bo, Lucy Robinson – Ursula, Rosie Hilal – Julia, Olivia Vinall – Hilary, Damien Molony - Spike in The Hard Problem

Reviewed by James Karas

Tom Stoppard has provided more mental gymnastics and burned more cerebral calories than many playwrights put together. Since 1966 when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was produced, he has never failed to fascinate, entertain and intellectually challenge. The Hard Problem, his latest play, does all of those things and the mental exertions leave you exhausted, entertained and somewhat in the dark.

When the lights go on in the small Dorfman Theatre at the National Theatre in London, you see a jumble of cables overhead. They are lit in various circular shapes and they look like the nerves of the human brain. There are also vertical wires which are lit in a kaleidoscope of colours.

The mental exertion required by the play reminded me of the physical demands on the body of a reasonably healthy individual who has not run a few kilometers on a treadmill or used machines that promise to change his glutes, biceps, triceps, abs and other parts of his anatomy that he does not know that he has into muscular bundles of Herculean proportions. 

A very attractive young woman named Hilary (Olivia Vinall) and a handsome young man named Spike (Daniel Molony) are discussing the subject of goodness or being good instead of hopping into the bed that is readily available.

She thinks that there is such a thing as good, altruism and doing an act of decency for its own sake. He argues that all of that is merely an evolutionary development that is simply self-serving. Good exists as a result of a cost-benefit analysis.

Now this is like getting on a treadmill and running at a leisurely pace. You understand and feel that it is doing something good for – all that panting and sweating – and your monthly donation to the gym seems justified.

Things get tougher. Hilary, the brilliant psychologist, prays to God and wants to do a study on something like Nature-Nurture Convergence in Egoistic and Altruistic something-or-other. What? You have gone to a machine that requires strength beyond your ability to muster and try to exercise something that you don’t even know you have and you move quickly away.

Hilary wants to be accepted by the Krohl Institute for Brain Science. Spike describes what the Institute does and you only understand the part about organic vegetables and free Pilates. Spike throws even mother love into the utility bin. What is left, if you understood Spike’s high fallutin’ lingo, is just a bunch of nerves or wires or whatever the brain is made up of that work like a fancy machine!?

By now you are drenched in perspiration, your heart is pounding and you are not sure what benefit you are deriving from all those fancy and exhausting exercises. Nevertheless, you want to continue in the hopes that bulging muscles are within reach.

But as far as Stoppard is concerned that is just the beginning. The hard question of what we are is partly belief or faith - belief that we are creatures that have evolved over millions of years into what we are and partly faith that there may be more than evolution or at the very least more than we can explain. Oh God or goodness!

Stoppard does not dwell on intellectual arguments alone. Hilary gave up her daughter for adoption when she gave birth to her at age 15. She is haunted by her memory and her prayers for a miracle are connected to her child.

Stoppard takes a few shots at the financial industry which is obsessed with numbers and logarithms and the use of which made Jerry Krohl (Anthony Calf), the financier of the Institute, a “squillionaire”. There are other scientists like Leo (Jonathan Cloy), Ursula (Lucy Robinson) and mathematicians Amal (Parth Takerar) and Bo (Vera Chok). The play is humanized by a domestic scene with Jerry and his daughter as well as the presence of Julia (Rosie Hilal) a school friend of Hilary’s and, unlike the intellectual superstars, a Pilates instructor.

Nicholas Hytner’s directing fits the tone of the play which is to say brilliant. Bob Crowley’s design is Spartan. A bed and a desk in the opening scene, a stark office, a kitchen table and a hotel bed make up the rest of the sets.

I saw The Hard Problem in a movie house in Toronto and it worked very well. The small stage transferred well onto the screen and we could have done even with fewer camera angles. The close-ups were of some utility but the Dorfman is such a small theatre that the benefit was limited.           

The benefits of going to the gym or seeing plays by Stoppard deserve further consideration. With the former, you risk injury but may get the concomitant benefit of better health and longer life. If so you should consider the mental gymnastics provided by Stoppard as a possible aide to improving the health of the uppermost segment of the anatomy which may rarely be doing vigorous pushups.

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The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard opened on January 28, 2015 and continues at the Dorfman Theatre, National Theatre, South Bank, London, England.  http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/ It was shown on April 16, 2015 at the Cineplex VIP Don Mills Shops at Don Mills, 12 Marie Labatte Road, Toronto Ontario M3C 0H9 and other theatres. It will be shown again on May 16, 2015 at various theatres. http://www.cineplex.com/Events/NationalTheatre