The performances were apt to give rise to overcrowding and tumults

Control of dramatic performances in 16th century England

In the 16th century companies of players were attached to the court and to households of the nobility. Some of these companies travelled about the country giving performances at private houses and to the public. In addition, there were wandering troupes of miscellaneous players under no patronage. In the larger towns the guilds continued to present Corpus Christi plays, and similar performances were given sporadically in smaller places, but the performers of these probably remained amateurs. Some measure of control over stage performances was exercised in the interests of public order from about the middle of the century. The licensing of individual plays, in one form or another, began in 1549 if not earlier; and the subjection of players, unless 'protected', to the laws relating to vagabonds dates at least from 1554, and was probably enforced in practice even earlier. These measures were re-enacted in the reign of Elizabeth. By the Injunctions of 1559 [...] she directed that no interlude should be played unless previously licensed by the mayor of the town, or in the country by the lord lieutenant or two justices of the peace; and no plays were to be so licensed which treated of matters of religion or of the governance of the country. By an Act of 1572 all players were to be deemed rogues and vagabonds unless they belonged to a baron of the realm or person of higher degree, or were licensed by two justices. The mayor and corporation of London, who under the Injunctions of 1559 had jurisdiction over stage plays in the city of London, the chief centre of theatrical activity, were in general hostile to dramatic performances, partly from Puritan sentiment, partly because the performances were apt to give rise to overcrowding and tumults, and moreover tended to spread infection in the frequently recurring periods of plague. The court on the other hand, and Elizabeth herself, favoured the players, and the grant in 1574 of a patent to the Earl of Leicester's company, authorising them to play in all towns without hindrance by the local authorities, conflicted with the powers previously conferred on the corporation. The latter retorted with an act of Common Council requiring all players to be licensed by the corporation and all plays allowed by it. The conflict between court and city was keen and prolonged, and during certain periods the corporation prohibited all performances within the city boundaries. In consequence, the first permanent playhouse in London was erected in Finsbury fields, outside the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction.

- Margaret Drabble, 'Censorship & the law of the press', The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford, 1985, p.1105-6.

Measure For Measure

Photos from Saturday night's performance of Measure For Measure at the Pop-up Globe, Ellerslie, Auckland. A zesty cast in fine voice, playing a pleasingly un-Bowdlerised script.  

Matu Ngaropo as the Provost

Rebecca Rogers as Isabella

Iago, unrepentant

Haakon Smestad in last night's Pop-up Globe production of Othello, a most pluvial affair on an Auckland autumn evening.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit

The cast of Twelfth Night

On Saturday I was in Auckland for a theatrical outing to the Pop-up Globe with family and friends, for the performance of the First Folio Shakespeare comedy Twelfth Night. The local players in the all-male cast provided an accomplished performance, with some handling the comedic roles with the aplomb expected of an RSC cast. The plot being a knockabout confection of cross-dressing confusion – Shakespeare has one of the characters remark on its improbable fiction – players with a strong command of farce offered the most skillful performances. Particular mention should be made of the adroit comic skill of Paul Willis as the watermelon-hatted Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the camp Carry On excess of Daniel Watterson as Countess Olivia, Stanley Jackson's gurning Malvolio, and Adrian Hooke’s louche charm as Feste the musician.

An undoubted contributor to the success of the play experience is the venue itself, an ingenious concoction of scaffolding, plywood and corrugated iron that is modeled on the second Globe, erected in 1614. Hence it's a different size than the current replica Globe on the South Bank in London - the audience is closer to the stage and the groundlings' yard is narrower. The Pop-up Globe is a brilliant idea and I hope it's able to tour more broadly. I could envisage a continual circuit of Australia and New Zealand in the summer months, before being shipped to the US and Canada for the northern summer. A small New Zealand crew could manage the shipping, construction and management, while local theatre troups could handle the casting and productions. I'd love to be able to see a New Zealand production in the Pop-up every year, or perhaps two. Even better if it was in Wellington, but they'd have to test it thoroughly for wind resistance!   

See also:

Theatre: Antony & Cleopatra at the Globe, 6 June 2014

Theatre: Coriolanus at the Donmar, 24 February 2014

Theatre: Othello at the National Theatre, 20 October 2013

What manner o' thing is your crocodile?

This afternoon's entertainment involved taking in the RSC production of Antony & Cleopatra at the Globe, featuring the excellent Eve Best as the legendary Egyptian queen. I saw Best in the film of the Globe's Much Ado About Nothing a year or two ago and was taken with her performance then; it's great to know she's consistently that impressive. The whole performance was splendid, and I'm glad I've finally seen the play performed by the very best actors around.

It was my first visit to the Globe as a groundling in the yard, and while my feet did start to ache I had positioned myself at the fence so could at least lean against it. Many of the groundlings seemed to be young German visitors, and I wonder how much they understood of the story, given those of us with a lifetime of English sometimes struggle with the Bard.

Here's one of my favourite comic passages from the play, as Antony 'explains' the nature of a Nile crocodile to Lepidus:

LEPIDUS What manner o' thing is your crocodile?

MARK ANTONY It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.

LEPIDUS What colour is it of?

MARK ANTONY Of its own colour too.

LEPIDUS 'Tis a strange serpent.

MARK ANTONY 'Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.

Let me have war, say I

In the latest instalment of my National Theatre Live film-viewing, yesterday I shunned a hot Wellington summer afternoon to take in the Donmar Warehouse production of Coriolanus, featuring the movied-up golden boy Tom Hiddleston in the title role. Hiddleston was predictably watchable as the banished and wrathful Roman warlord Caius Martius Coriolanus, but the other castmembers were equally engaging, particularly Deborah Findlay as Coriolanus' glory-cherishing mother Volumnia, and Helen Schlesinger as the manipulative tribune Sicinia. Other familiar faces who performed creditably include Mark Gatiss (of League of Gentlemen fame) as the pompous potentate Menenius, and the elegant Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (from Danish political thriller Borgen) as Coriolanus' wife Virgilia.

Title quote: Coriolanus - 'Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men'. (4.5.238)

See also:
Theatre: Macbeth, 21 November 2013
Theatre: Othello, 20 October 2013
Theatre: The Taming of the Shrew, 27 February 2009 

When the river runs dry

Broken River (image via Bats)

Broken River
by Ralph McCubbin Howell
Bats Theatre, Wellington
23 November - 7 December 2013

Last night I caught a performance of the play Broken River at Bats, performed in what looks like a vacant shop premises on Victoria Street. Playwright Ralph McCubbin Howell has created an appealing and interesting glimpse of rural New Zealand for city-dwellers to ponder on, focused on the politics and emotion of water in a small rural settlement gearing up for a big irrigation scheme. The proposed dam might make some dairy millionaires, but it also sets the locals against one another as they debate what's to be gained and what might be lost. Into this environment comes researcher Nick (Paul Waggott), a 30-odd former local boy who has spent the past dozen years in London and is now returning to run a consultation process on the scheme. Pretty soon he discovers that things are not as he left them, with his old flame Brook (Erin Banks) having found a new partner and started a family. Intertwined with the modern-day tale is the tragedy suffered years before, in which Brook's brother lost his life in the town's river, and the appearance of a mysterious mute stranger in a white suit, whose motives are unclear and who generates plenty of suspicion in the insular community.

The cast gives a commendable performance, particularly Banks, who played a supporting role in Two Little Boys as Bret McKenzie's girlfriend, and Waggott, a Newcastle-born Englishman whose performance is reminiscent of a younger Simon Pegg (who also did a season with Bats back in the '90s). Equally big plaudits should go to the design aspects of the play. The performance area is dominated by a marvellous plywood art installation (or 'kinetic sculpture', if you prefer) mimicking a revolving crop irrigator, which arcs over the actors and provides a backdrop for all their scenes. It's plumbed with a water supply too, so several scenes in the play are liberally sprinkled with H2O - country rain, a sabotaged irrigation pivot, and a shower scene (not too Psycho, thankfully). Here's hoping the play is never performed in winter-time, or the actors will get pneumonia. The river is represented by scores of empty plastic milk containers, packed together and illuminated from beneath, which works surprisingly well.

Aside from the dramatic impact of the play, Broken River is also an environmental allegory about the perils of intensive dairying and non-sustainable water use. But it's not a preachy, townies-lambasting-cockies moral tale. The playwright (who must clearly be taken seriously because he has three names) grew up in Waikari in North Canterbury and knows rural life. Far more than I do, at any rate.

You should definitely investigate Broken River if you're seeking an interesting and well-crafted night of theatre for a mere few dollars.

See also:
Theatre: Macbeth, 21 November 2013
Theatre: Eigengrau, 1 October 2012
Theatre: White Cloud, 16 September 2012

Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

The trailer for the National Theatre production of Macbeth by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh, featuring Branagh as Macbeth and Alex Kingston as Lady Macbeth - seen last night at the Lighthouse Cuba here in Wellington. The performances were as strong as expected, and the staging in the deconsecrated St Peter's Church in Manchester was excellent, making full use of the nave, which was filled with clingy, rain-moistened turf. All the better to soak up the blood, I expect, particularly that of the cast-member who was reportedly struck by Branagh's sword and sent to hospital after one performance.

O! beware, my lord, of jealousy

This afternoon's entertainment was the very fine National Theatre production of Othello, featuring Adrian Lester as the titular Moor, Rory Kinnear as Iago, Olivia Vinall as Desdemona and Lyndsey Marshal as Emilia. The tragedy is played out in a modern setting, with all but one act played out in an army garrison in Cyprus. This allows the cast to meddle with the pent-up frustrations of service personnel with too much time and not enough warfare on their hands - time to fret and bicker, and to doubt one another's loyalty.

The cast are uniformly excellent. Lester and Kinnear work well together, with Lester offering a noble Moor of bearing and great emotional range, and Kinnear's Iago is a rough-spoken commoner who exults in the revenge of his most cruel deception. The versatile and wispy Vinall portrays the demands for Cassio's reinstatement coquettishly, but also shows Desdemona's anguish and growing panic as Iago's lies ruin her love-match with Othello. I had forgotten the extent of Iago's wife Emelia's role, and in this Marshal offers a steely portrayal of a misused pawn in a husband's Machiavellian plot.

The NT's stage design is superb, with sliding prefab sets emerging and reconfiguring seemingly effortlessly into wardrooms, bedchambers, offices, and even the officers' bathrooms. It was a pleasure to see the film screening here in Wellington; it's just a pity that we have to wait nearly a month after the live broadcast to see it. The everyday curse of a far-flung colony.



See also:
Theatre: NTLive The Audience, 14 July 2013
Theatre: NTLive This House, 17 June 2013
Blog: Stratford-upon-Avon, 24 February 2010

'May I speak freely, your Majesty?'

Last night I caught another instalment in the National Theatre's NT Live performances - this time The Audience, with legendary Dame Helen Mirren reprising her role as Queen Elizabeth II from the 2006 film The Queen - the film that won Mirren an Oscar, a Bafta and a Golden Globe for her regal performance. Peter Morgan, the writer of that film, has delved back into the monarch's long relationship with the 13 Prime Ministers who have served during her reign (12 who took office during her reign plus Churchill, who was Prime Minister when she took the throne), and who all make the weekly journey to Buckingham Palace to discuss the state of the nation and the world with the head of state. While The Queen was focused on the crisis surrounding Diana's death and the relationship between the Queen and Tony Blair, in The Audience, Morgan has turned the spotlight onto Elizabeth's other Prime Ministers.

Blair does not appear at all, which was an interesting choice - given that the Prime Ministers do not appear in chronological order, I was expecting him to turn up at the end for a comedic finale full of fawning and self-regard. But he is not particularly missed, and in their audiences Gordon Brown and David Cameron both hark back to his exploits - Brown greeting jokes at Blair's expense with a rueful glee, and Cameron recollecting how hard he was to budge during the Tories' long years in opposition. Of the two most recent Prime Ministers, Brown's character is portrayed in a more well-rounded fashion (and with marked skill by actor Nathaniel Parker, who has the jaw-drop mannerism down pat) and with touching vulnerability as his struggles with his inner demons. Perhaps David Cameron is too recent a figure to have as much resonance - and in fact, for a moment when he first entered I wondered if the striding sharp-suited figure was meant to be Blair.

There are other fine Prime Ministerial performances in The Audience. Richard McCabe appears three times as Harold Wilson, lending credence to the view expressed in the script that Wilson was secretly one of Elizabeth's favourites. He also features in one of the play's funniest scenes, in which he proudly promises to display his photographic memory and asks for a book. Elizabeth casts about the Balmoral drawing room and, finding none, has to resort to the telephone to seek something so resoundingly unfamiliar as a printed work. 'Yes, hello. I would like a book. Doesn't matter which'.

Paul Ritter (Major) & Helen Mirren
Pic (C) Johan Persson

Edward Fox is gnarled and fusty as an ancient Churchill, top-hatted and gold-chained, tut-tutting at young Elizabeth's desperate wish to take her husband's surname or at least to hyphenate to preserve his manly pride: 'Double-barrelled? No, your Majesty. It's common'. John Major (Paul Ritter, excellent in Friday Night Dinner) gets two scenes, one of gently comic despairing at his unsuitability for the top job, and another in which he relays the ill news of the irrevocable split between Charles and Diana. In the latter, he reveals he tried out his negotiation tactics gleaned from the Bosnian crisis, to no avail. Anthony Eden (Michael Elwyn) cuts a tragic figure, dapper but ailing, weighed down with the pressure of underhand and ultimately disastrous conniving that led to the Suez Crisis of 1956. And Margaret Thatcher (Haydn Gwynne, of Billy Elliott: The Musical fame) offers a real battle of wills between a Commonwealth-loving Queen and a supremely confident Prime Minister deeply sceptical of any idealistic and in her view naive attempts to pass sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa.

A few Prime Ministers are omitted to keep things rattling along. James Callaghan is almost but not quite left out - wreaking havoc with the chronology, he bursts on during Cameron's session with Elizabeth and in a brief but entertaining cameo, demands not to be forgotten - but despite leading the UK for three years from 1976 to 1979, he is perhaps little known today thanks to the political tsunami Thatcher unleashed. Douglas-Home is mentioned once in passing, as is the 'odious' Heath (but then the adjective was offered by Harold Wilson, who was hardly an impartial observer). And from memory, Harold Macmillan (1957-63) is not even mentioned.

The natural constant in the production is of course Helen Mirren. Her performance as Elizabeth across seven decades shows off the Queen's lively wit, sound judgement, and occasionally a flash of her conscience as she plays 'tribal chief in exotic costume' - the tribe being 20th century Britons - receiving and offering counsel to the often anxious, haunted souls who inhabit the Prime Ministerial office. The playwright Morgan suggests that in offering a (mostly) impartial and confidential ear to powerful individuals, the Queen has played the role of therapist to the Prime Ministers who pass on their most private observations about the state of the nation. And in their own way, the Prime Ministers helped Elizabeth to grow as a stateswoman and to gain a greater understanding of the pressures faced by a nation in relative decline for much of her reign. Through all this, Mirren is expert at portraying the various stages of Elizabeth's life, from a slightly timorous mourning-garbed girl in her 20s, to the mannerisms of the bluff, wry middle-aged Queen, to the gentle cynicism and profound devotion to lifelong duty that is exhibited in a woman in her 80s who has performed an exhausting job for 60 years and whose only true retirement will come when she dies.

Helen Mirren & Nell Williams
Pic (C) Johan Persson

Aside from the random dose of Callaghan, The Audience is also inventive in portraying Elizabeth's childhood by casting Young Elizabeth as a separate role that the adult Queen reminisces with and gently chides. In the cast filmed for broadcast the role of young Elizabeth was played by the excellent Nell Williams, who nails the ethereal circa-1940 accent heard in wartime regal wireless broadcasts and that seems so alien now.

Aside from the skilled cast, it is also worth mentioning the fine costumes and umpteen wigs, which help to portray the various stages of Elizabeth's life. In a gesture to the theatrical arts, two important costume changes are handled imperceptibly and almost instantaneously on stage. With some clever trickery that was almost completely invisible to the viewer (presumably involving double-sided costumes) Elizabeth is transformed from mourning black to a smart red dress in mere seconds while staff whisk effortlessly around her. The audience even gasped when they realised. You begin to see why Mirren was so cross when a parade outside the Gielgud disrupted her performance - because The Audience is a play and a performance truly worth savouring.
  

The oil in the wheels of Westminster

Last night at the Cuba Lighthouse I was fortunate to see a film version of the National Theatre's production of James Graham's play This House, about the turbulent politics in Britain from 1974 to 1979. During this time the Labour Party ejected Ted Heath's Conservative government but then struggled to maintain a majority in the House due to the shifting allegiances of minor parties and rebellious backbenchers. The four and a half years of the Wilson / Callaghan government saw economic crises, labour unrest, and rising acrimony in Westminster, and the play reflects this by focusing on those with arguably the hardest job in Parliament: the party whips, who cajole and corral allies into voting with the Government in whatever way they can. It's a comedy, certainly, but it also offers a strong dramatic portrayal of a hugely tense and frustratingly chaotic environment.

What's striking in the play is that despite the bitter partisan rivalries, many of the participants seem to feel a genuine sense of camaraderie for each other. This is particularly evident as the huge impact of mortality amongst Labour ranks in particular during the years the play covers. Labour lost 17 members out of around 300 during the term, which is huge when you think about it, and doubly significant because due to bad blood and accusations of Labour cheating, the Conservative opposition had withdrawn the pairing system that allowed the votes of sick and absent members to be counted. (This isn't a problem here in New Zealand since under Standing Order 140, MPs no longer have to be physically present to cast their vote).

This spirit of camaraderie, the lack of a partisan political preference evident in the script (all sides seem to be treated relatively fairly) and the strong focus on comedy interspersed with the politicking, allows Graham's play a sense of kinship with the legendary world of Yes, Minister, which depicted the world of Whitehall and Westminster with such wit and accuracy that many joked it was more of a documentary than a comedy. It's also closer to the spirit of the original than the current stage version of Yes, Minister, which is entertaining but suffers somewhat from a bleaker outlook than the wry, gently chiding tone of the original.

Part of the fun of This House is seeing the ensemble cast, many of whom play a multitude of roles. It was grand to see Charles Edwards playing the Tory Deputy Whip - he was tremendously Palinesque as Senor Benedick in last year's RSC production of Much Ado About Nothing. But my favourite was probably Matthew Pidgeon. His turn as Norman St John-Stevas, whom I've mentioned before (he was said to have 'boundless immodesty redeemed by self-mocking wit') portrayed the member for Chelmsford (my old manor) as a strutting peacock in a traditional mid-70s gold buttoned navy blazer. And there's his brief but hilarious cameo as the bouffant-laden Michael Heseltine, who in 1976 famously menaced his rivals with the ceremonial mace on the floor of the Commons 'during a heated debate on the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill'. (He was also rumoured to be a damn fine shot too).

As befits a playwright who wasn't actually born when the events in question took place, a few minor aspects of the play do feel a little like caricatures - but then so were many aspects of Yes, Minister at the time. For one, the excellent songs played by the live band at the back of the stage - two Bowies and one Sex Pistols - may evoke the era perfectly to us now, but at the time they would hardly have been relevant to many if any of the MPs. (And both of the Bowie tracks, Rock 'n Roll Suicide and Five Years, were actually from 1971, but who's counting).

The Wellington screening may have been a month after the live screening direct from the South Bank across the world to dozens of cinemas, but it was still a huge treat to see. I'll definitely be in line for future performances, and I can't wait for the Royal Shakespeare Company's offerings too. If only we could watch them live too!





See also:

Blog: Leonardo Live, 24 February 2012
Blog: Stratford-upon-Avon, 24 February 2010
Theatre: Good Kate, he is no gentleman, 27 February 2009

Lysistrata's gambit

Lysistrata, the title character in Aristophanes' bawdy comic play first performed in Greece in 411 BC, brought together the women of ancient Greece in a conclave to bring to a halt the ruinous Peloponnesian Wars. Her method: organising the women of Greece to refuse to provide sexual favours to their menfolk - not even the renowned Lioness on the Cheese Grater position - until they relent and end the war. Here she explains her reasoning to an angry magistrate, who demands to know why the womenfolk have seized and barricaded themselves into the Acropolis with the all-important treasury, without which the war cannot proceed:


Lysistrata: In the last war we were too modest to object to anything you men did—and in any case you wouldn’t let us say a word. But don’t think we approved! We knew everything that was going on. Many times we’d hear at home about some major blunder of yours, and then when you came home we’d be burning inside, but we’d have to put on a smile and ask what it was you’d decided to inscribe on the pillar underneath the peace treaty. And what did my husband always say?—“Shut up and mind your own business!” And I did.

Stratyllis: I wouldn’t have done!

Magistrate: [ignoring her—to Lysistrata] He’d have given you one if you hadn’t!

Lysistrata: Exactly—so I kept quiet. But sure enough, next thing we knew, you’d take an even sillier decision. And if I so much as said, “Darling, why are you carrying on with this silly policy?” he would glare at me and say, “Back to your weaving, woman, or you’ll have a headache for a month. Go and attend to your work; let war be the care of the menfolk.”

Magistrate: Quite right, too, by Zeus.

Lysistrata: Right? That we should not be allowed to make the least little suggestion to you, no matter how much you mismanage the city’s affairs? And now, look, every time two people meet in the street, what do they say? “Isn’t there a man in the country?” and the answer comes, “Not one.” That’s why we women got together and decided we were going to save Greece. What was the point of waiting any longer, we asked ourselves. Well now, we’ll make a deal. You listen to us—and we’ll talk sense, not like you used to—listen to us and keep quiet, as we’ve had to do up to now, and we’ll clear up the mess you’ve made.

- Quoted from Lapham's Quarterly, 24 November 2012

A messy lust quadrilateral

Michelle Blundell (c) Bats

Eigengrau
by Penelope Skinner

Bats Theatre, Wellington

Ends 6 October 2012

English playwright Penelope Skinner has prepared a deftly constructed glimpse into twenty-something life in Eigengrau, a play that takes its name from the technical term for the colour the eye perceives when you're in perfect darkness - not black exactly, more a darker shade of grey. (It's a German word; in English it's 'intrinsic grey'). This is possibly both a nod towards the moral ambiguity of the play's characters and their various dilemmas, and perhaps also a wink in the direction of the mega-selling slash fiction doyenne E.L. James.

Instead of a typical love triangle, perhaps it's more accurate if not particularly illuminating to refer to Eigengrau as a 'messy lust quadrilateral'. It's predominantly a black comedy based around the relationships of two pairs of London flatmates - feminist activist Cassie lives with airy dreamer Rose, while thrusting young exec Mark shares his bachelor pad with his loser Uni friend Tim. Briefly, Rose has a fling with Mark and now decides she loves him; Mark isn't returning her texts and is instead eyeing up Cassie and busily reading up on Germaine Greer; Tim, on the other hand, is besotted with Rose and moping over the death of his chain-smoking Nan.

As a comedy Eigengrau succeeds - while there are flashes of close-to-the-bone humour designed to make the audience uncomfortable, there are also plenty of examples of deft comedy writing. Mark's attempts to seduce the principled, strident Cassie are particularly entertaining, as he professes to be swept up in enthusiasm for her feminist beliefs, and neither the audience nor Cassie can quite believe him. He even makes an appearance in a 'This is what a feminist looks like' t-shirt, as sported by Bill Bailey a few years ago.

The local cast of four does a good job with Skinner's material. The various English accents were genuine enough for my ear, including Cassie's Sloaney drawl and posh bastard Mark's impeccable diction.  The young cast worked together well and their performances benefit from plenty of stage and screen experience. Chelsea McEwan Millar, who apart from having 50 percent more names than most people also played the principled, uptight Cassie, has previously appeared in Go Girls and Under the Mountain; Michelle Blundell (Rose) essayed a memorably tragic karaoke performance in this play but is perhaps better known for her 2012 appearances on Shortland Street, plus roles in Go Girls and The Almighty Johnsons (as Frigg); and RADA-educated boy wonder Calum Gittins (Mark), son of the play's director Mark Gittins and LOTR screenwriter Philippa Boyens, has credits for none other than The King's Speech and LOTR: The Two Towers. The fourth cast member, Simon Ward (Tim) perhaps has a less starry background but gives a likeable performance as a mopey loser, and he can boast that one of his self-written plays has been recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio Merseyside.

It must have been interesting for Gittins to play in Eigengrau given that his father was directing the play. Without going into too many details, one scene simulates a rather personal consensual act of a sexual nature. How do you take direction from your dad in that situation? 'No, that was too quick. Next time make it last longer. Quite a bit longer, please - and don't forget, lots of energy!'

Clarity begins at home

White Cloud
by Tim Finn & Ken Duncum
Bats Theatre, Wellington
12-22 September 2012

Stephen Lovatt & Dena Kennedy
via Theatrereview.org.nz

Last night I went with CP to catch the penultimate performance of Tim Finn and Ken Duncum's very New Zealand play, White Cloud, at Bats Theatre. I've only been to Bats once before, many years ago for a Jo Randerson play, so a return visit was long overdue. The selling point for White Cloud is that the narrative is stitched together from memories and imagined tales attached to old family snapshots; Finn's original songs are interspersed, including the title track, which re-emerges throughout the piece.

The stories are performed by two actors, whose monologues shift in and out of various characters and the snippets of their lives, sometimes overlapping but mostly distinct. Stephen Lovatt is assured and confident in the male role, successfully blending drama and comedy, and Dena Kennedy is likeable too as the female lead, particularly in the whimsical and counter-culturally optimistic 'Have Faith' and when she is quietly affecting in recounting poignant tales of elderly New Zealanders.  

Musical accompaniment is offered by a five-piece band, with lead vocals shared by the talented Ben King (formerly of Goldenhorse and currently of Grand Rapids, and whose solo album I enjoyed a few years back) and Lisa Crawley on keyboards with a dash of clarinet and whistling thrown in. The songs were excellent - memorable melodies and well performed by the band, with deftly handled harmonies. I particularly enjoyed the title track and a puckish number about national identity that offered a chorus something like 'If you're not quite sure who you are / then you're quite possibly a Pakeha'.

Writer Ken Duncum hopes 'this short season is the first step on a longer journey for White Cloud, but we are very happy that it is starting here at Bats Theatre, and look forward to your response as the first audience to see it'. Songsmith Tim Finn reckons the play 'should feel like a family gathering, with all its intimacy and awkwardness, where the ones who are no longer around are toasted and remembered'.

Salvage something that we need to remember
From the wreck of history
Family images of fading splendour
Where they lead I'm following

Oh, and Jemaine Clement was in the audience too, two rows in front, with his lady friend. He wore a natty hat that made him look all New York-y.

No pickle, no performance

[Harold Kennedy's] book [No Pickle, No Performance] is dedicated to actress Renee Taylor, who refused to come on stage during a play's opening night until she got a pickle with her sandwich, as she had during the previews. The coffee shop that had provided those sandwiches was closed, and the curtain was held while a prop man got in his car and went searching for the holy pickle. It arrived seven minutes after the advertised curtain time, and the show went on.

Unknown to Taylor, the stage crew was so enraged by her antics that they performed "a little ceremony" with the pickle before giving it to her. Gloria Swanson later said: "Poor Miss Taylor. Can't you see her shopping around to every delicatessen in New York complaining that she can never find a pickle to match the caliber of the one she had in New Jersey."

- Max Millard, interviewing Harold Kennedy in 'TV Shopper', 22 July 1978, compiled in 100 New Yorkers of the 1970s.


[Cross-post from Very Friday Blog]

I lost my hair in the service of my country

Yes, Prime Minister

Gielgud Theatre

Shaftesbury Ave

Last night I met my quiz-teammates from the Bank of Friendship Thursday night pub quiz to attend the stage production of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s famous 1980s political sitcom Yes, Prime Minister.  The TV version, now regarded as a modern comedy institution, solidified the fame of Paul Eddington, who appeared as the hapless Minister (and later Prime Minister) Jim Hacker, and gave rise to a classic comedy performance by Nigel Hawthorne as the archetypal Whitehall mandarin, Sir Humphrey Appleby.  With much residual goodwill from the success of the TV series, would the stage version live up to the high standards of the earlier incarnation?

The play updates the characters to 2010 with a quick nod at the current coalition environment, and throws in a Blackberry joke or two.  But it’s the same grand game of indecision and obfuscation that viewers enjoyed onscreen 25 years ago.  Hacker is still alarmingly less on top of the political game than he should be; Sir Humphrey is still effortlessly disarming and fond of lengthy and verbose orations signifying absolutely nothing; and the long-suffering Bernard tries to skirt the perennial middle course between the two competing worldviews of his political boss and his bureaucratic boss.  A new character is introduced, Claire, the PM’s special adviser, to feed Hacker handy hints to undermine Sir Humphrey’s machinations.

The stage performance is enjoyable, and there’s plenty of humour inherent in the continual ramping-up of crises onto Hacker’s shoulders as he flails for a solution to all his many problems.  Chief among these is the general economic downturn and the impending failure of a European summit that he has called, but which is spiralling to failure.  A dodgy Central Asian oil deal might rescue matters, but comes with plenty of strings attached.  The oil deal contains what is perhaps the best visual joke of the play, when the pan-European solution for an oil pipeline route is displayed on a huge projection screen, with the route snaking endlessly through every single EU nation, thereby ensuring plenty of pork-barrel political dividends for all concerned. 

The cast does a good job with the material, if seldom attaining the polished excellence of the TV cast.  Henry Goodman is appealingly smooth as Sir Humphrey, and pulls off his signature soliloquys with aplomb.  Experienced theatre actor David Haig, perhaps best known for his small role as Bernard the groom in Four Weddings and a Funeral, is very different in delivery to Paul Eddington, offering a more frenetic portrayal as the pressure mounts, but as a bald man he does get to utter the treasurable line, ‘I lost my hair in the service of my country’.  RSC actor Jonathan Slinger does well with the betwixt-and-between Bernard, and acts as the moral compass of the piece.  He has a moment of delightful physical comedy when the PM instructs him rather firmly that ‘we’re all casual here’, and Bernard reluctantly swings his suit jacket over his shoulder and pretends to be relaxed.  (Sir Humphrey refuses to go even that far; he merely pops his pocket handkerchief down in his suit pocket, out of view, in the merest concession to informality).  Emily Joyce, who appeared opposite Ardal O’Hanlon in My Hero, is assertive and striding as the political fixer Claire, offering Hacker the confidence and know-how he seems to lack.  Claire’s lack of moral scruples is a useful if potentially risky counterpoint to Bernard’s comparative morality.

The substance of the play follows the same story arc as the TV episodes conformed to, with the smokes and mirrors of policy-making and political horse-trading to the fore.  But while the TV series wore its cynicism lightly and benefitted from a skilled comic touch that imparted sympathetic qualities in all its main characters, the 2010 version of Yes, Prime Minister, is darker fare.  The central dilemma that Hacker must decide upon is the demand of the Central Asian republic’s foreign minister for an under-aged girl for the night, which is a subject matter far removed from the spirit of the TV version.  Perhaps the writers have become more cynical since the 1980s, or perhaps they have been influenced by the brilliant if nihilistic portrayal of the political sphere of The Thick Of It and In The Loop, in which anything goes and matters of right or wrong are eternally fluid, particularly if you can get away with something on the QT.  I’m not so naive as to believe that this sort of political crisis doesn’t happen in real life, but its inclusion paints a much bleaker picture of the characters than the TV series, and ultimately undermines the ability of the audience to sympathise with them.

Similarly, an outburst of curious climate-scepticism from Sir Humphrey is unquestioningly treated as gospel, when the writers are clearly aware that such theories have little scientific merit.  It’s convenient as a plot point, so for the purposes of the play global warming is a hoax.  Which is taking something of a liberty with the facts!

Fans of the TV series will welcome the opportunity to delve back into the world of Yes, Prime Minister, and as one of those fans I can recommend it as an enjoyable evening’s entertainment, despite my qualms.  Perhaps, despite the stated inclination of the writers not to go through the TV writing process again, the play will even generate enough interest to spawn another incarnation of the sitcom on British screens.  Certainly the public’s view of the political environment is every bit as cynical as it was in the 1980s, so audiences may be receptive.  If it does, perhaps Jay and Lynn would do well to remember that the original series worked so well because it was in essence an affectionate behind-the-scenes portrait of the political environment, rather than a cynical critique.

See also:

Notes to the Principal Private Secretary (Sir Humphrey blogs)

Good Kate, he is no gentleman

The Taming of the Shrew
Royal Shakespeare Company
Novello Theatre, London
12 February - 7 March 2009

[Pic: Tristram Kenton, Guardian]

Last night I attended an excellent Royal Shakespeare Company performance of The Taming of the Shrew at the Novello Theatre in Aldwych. I have to admit that I am no great theatre-goer, but was instead drawn in by that decades-old tactic of casting someone famous from the telly in a leading role. Michelle Gomez was brilliant as the melodramatic and put-upon footballer's wife Janice in The Book Group, and menacingly unapproachable in the hospital comedy Green Wing as the psychotic Sue White:

... a staff liaison officer employed to listen and respond to the problems of East Hampton's staff. However, Sue, a Scot, is perhaps the least suited person for the job. She is the most eccentric member of staff in the hospital; abrasive, cruel, foul-mouthed, obsessive and, seemingly, a sociopath. Her office is a place where the impossible tends to happen, and anyone who enters is normally treated with a mixture of verbal abuse and psychological torture. The only person she treats with any affection is Mac, whom she loves to the point of madness, but Mac, like everyone else in the hospital, sees her as beyond the edge of insanity. Anyone else who attempts to get involved with Mac is treated with contempt and hatred by Sue, in particular Caroline, whom Sue attempts several times to murder.

Unsurprisingly, Gomez is superb as the titular shrew, Katharina, from the zest with which she torments her poor sister Bianca and her suitor Petruchio, to the resigned and weary acceptance of her fate implicit in the famous speech at the close in which she entreats her fellow women to be obedient wives. This latter speech, its unalloyed subjugation still shocking to today's sensibilities, is performed straight without irony, and Gomez invests it with a clear and resolute power that would have been easy to undermine with a flicker of insincerity, given the anachronistic sentiments being expressed.

The advantage of seeing an RSC performance is the quality of the broader cast. Stephen Boxer is remarkably watchable as the contemptible Petruchio and even turns his hand to strumming a ditty on the lute late in the piece. I had recognised pretty Amara Karan, who portrays Bianca, from somewhere but I had to look her listings up to be reminded that she appeared in Wes Anderson's excellent The Darjeeling Limited - she is a name to watch for the future. I also recognised some faces from an RSC performance of Timon of Athens last summer, and was pleased to see their touch for comedy on display again, particularly Peter Shorey as Gremio - his witty performances are replete with top-notch timing.

The performance contained many enjoyably comedic devices. Keir Charles' Tranio displays a playful confusion of accents: the cockney servant drops his tees and aitches but then has to pretend he is his own lord Lucentio, so essays a Cockney version of a posh accent. Later, he has to mimic the Pedant who he has enviegled to pose as Lucentio's wealthy father Vincentio, who in this production is West Indian and speaks with a broad Jamaican accent - so it's a Cockney trying to sound both posh and Jamaican. When Tranio - who is pretending to be Lucentio - offers Bianca a 'small packet of Greek and Latin books' for her studies, his boy Biondello carries forth onto the stage a looming tower of tomes perhaps eight feet high with an internal wire holding them together so they can threaten to engulf the front rows of the audience (at which point Gremio mutters to the audience, sotto voce, 'Cheap joke'). There's also a bounty of licentious and bawdy by-play in keeping with the boisterous spirit of Shakespeare's comedies, particularly when Lucentio and Bianca consummate their lust (both fully-clothed, mind).

New Zealand readers might have noticed a recent story from the Independent, reprinted in its stablemate the Herald, about the opening scene of the production in which a roistering crowd of revellers perform a drunken version of Ka Mate, the All Blacks' haka:

[The play] opens with a rowdy stag party. As the men stumble out of a strip club (still clutching a blow-up sex doll), they perform a dance inspired by Ka Mate haka – as performed in all international matches by the All Blacks rugby team. In an unfortunate variation, the stage version ends with the dropping of trousers down and the audience being “mooned”.

...

Matiu Rei, a Ngati Toa spokesman, said yesterday: “That certainly isn’t an appropriate use of the haka. If it was just for effect and used in a gratuitous manner – which it sounds like it was – then I would be very disappointed. I’ll consult with my chiefs and we’ll see what they decide on what further action to take.”

Karl Burrows, a Maori living in the UK, runs a company which promotes the tribe’s culture. He was furious yesterday about the RSC’s casual use of the sacred ritual. “Everybody from our culture would resent that because it’s just not appropriate. When we see our haka performed in a way that’s disrespectful it hurts us as a people.

At the performance last night there seemed little that could give offence. Certainly, the haka is performed by drunken characters, but the verse is clearly audible and seemed accurate enough, as were the gestures performed to accompany the chant. A couple of the actors did have their trousers hitched down to display their boxers but didn't moon the audience. It was reminiscent of many a pub scene in London with inebriated males putting on a display, and it's not as if many New Zealand males haven't done the same thing in the same situation. (Not me though - shouting is bad manners! And as Daniel Vettori said, 'skinny white men with glasses shouldn't do hakas')

Foreigners are not familiar with the reverence Maori imbue in the haka; indeed, many overseas observers perceive it as slightly comical. They cannot be judged by the same standards as we New Zealanders, who know the importance of the ritual. This rendition is not exploitative or gratuitously inaccurate, and those who are quick to take offence where none is meant should bear that in mind. My opinion of the hasty dash to take offence is to offer the famous Oscar Wilde epigram: 'the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about'.

My favourite joke in Spamalot

On Saturday night I met Steve, Fiona and Mike, an old work chum from the SCO, to enjoy Eric Idle's Monty Python musical, Spamalot. I've been wanting to see it for ages, and as it turned out that Mike, who is visiting London for the first time whilst travelling for work, is a big Python fan, the deal was sealed. It's staged at the Palace Theatre in the heart of the West End: Cambridge Circus at the corner of Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. The imposing brick theatre started out in life as the Royal English Opera in 1891.

Spamalot, which is 'lovingly ripped off from the classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail', has been running at the 1400-seat Palace since October 2006, with a range of actors playing the lead role of King Arthur, including Tim Curry who transferred from the show's initial Broadway run; the former Dr Who, Peter Davison; Alan Dale from Neighbours and Ugly Betty (and Onehunga High School, my old stamping ground!); and in the past few weeks, the new Arthur has been Sanjeev Bhaskar of Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No.42 fame.

While the musical includes a large number of songs from the Python movies, I was just as interested in the new material slotted in around them, and in particular the way in which these were used to take the mickey out of the West End / Broadway musical genre, and which appealed to my somewhat juvenile sense of humour.

(Spoiler alert!)

The performance of the Lady of the Lake is a well-crafted recurring joke that pokes fun at the seemingly mandatory narrative devices that are thrown into musical numbers to give the audience what they expect, which is generally a love story, even if it has to be shoe-horned in rather artlessly. Witness the stirring ballad, The Song That Goes Like This, which is a duet between the Lady and Arthur:

Once in every show
There comes a song like this
It starts off soft and low
And ends up with a kiss
Oh where is the song
That goes like this?
Where is it? Where? Where?

A sentimental song
That casts a magic spell
They all will hum along
We'll overact like hell
For this is the song that goes like this
Yes it is! Yes it is!

Now we can go straight
Right down the middle eight
A bridge that is too far for me

I'll sing it in your face
While we both embrace
And then
We change
The key... [and so on]

And after the interval, the Lady returns with her heart-felt grievance resulting from being out of the spotlight for too long, in the song Diva's Lament:

What ever happened to my part?
It was exciting at the start.
Now we're halfway through Act 2
And I've had nothing yet to do.

I've been offstage for far too long
It's ages since I had a song.
This is one unhappy Diva
The producers have deceived her.
There is nothing I can sing from my heart.
Whatever happened to my part?

My love life is a mess
I've got constant PMS
I'm fed up to the gills
They hate me there backstage
They say I'm too old for my age
And they're trying to replace me with Heather Mills!

Oh the ignominy! Well, she shouldn't complain too much, because the diva Nina Soderquist won the role of the Lady in a Swedish reality TV sing-off. (She is great in the role, mind). But my favourite theatre joke in Spamalot is probably the silliest, and it's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it affair. In the controversy-courting but good clean fun of You Won't Succeed On The West End (If You Don't Have Any Jews):

You may have dramatic lighting,
Or lots of horrid fighting,
You may even have some white men sing the blues!
Your knights might be nice boys,
But sadly we're all goys,
And that noise that you call singing you must lose.

So, despite your pretty lights,
and naughty girls in nasty tights,
and the most impressive scenery you use...
You may have dancing mana-mano,
You may bring on a piano,
But they will not give a damn-o
If you don't have any Jews!

...which is the cue for a showstopping Jewish-themed hoofing replete with foot-stamping and loud exclamations. As this is proceeding, and a dozen singers and dancers are whirling around in a carefully-choreographed maelstrom of sequinned medieval tabards, one showgirl emerges from stage right, pulling a small trolley full of straw. Just as she reaches centre stage, the entire cast stamps their feet and points to the trolley, shouting:

Hey!!

Or, if you prefer, 'hay'. I did say it was rather juvenile!


(Pic taken by Fiona after the show)