By Ralph Goldswain

Violence? What violence?

Titus Andronicus was hugely popular when it came out in 1594. Since then, until the twenty-first century, it was largely ignored, probably because its violence was too grossly over the top for the Victorians, who had developed narrow Shakespearean expectations, which this play simply didn’t meet. It’s an early play by an aspiring young playwright, trying his hand at working on a play on his own.

In the process of serving his “apprenticeship” with Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, two of the finest writers of his time, the young Shakespeare perhaps decided that he would imitate, and even outdo, their huge money-spinning plays, The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Jew of Malta, which are distinguished by their violence.

Titus Andronicus must surely be a parody of those plays, and in aiming for that Shakespeare certainly did go over the top, himself parodying their over-the-top violence. Hardly a moment goes by without someone being murdered or having parts of their body chopped off.

But the play retains all the humour and comedy one would expect of a parody and, indeed, the extreme violence contributes to that effect, simply by its being absurdly overabundant. And this being a play by Shakespeare, it has serious thematic directions –violence, race, revenge, family, war, cannibalism, rape and so much more – even babies! And so, it was a winner – violence for those who went to the theatre especially for that, and thoughtfulness for those who went to the theatre for mental stimulation.

Jude Christian’s all-women production cuts out the violence and turns up the comic tone. Even the method of replacing the physical violence – the torturing and murdering of candles – is funny, and from the first moment, when the cast present themselves as a chorus in a song that signals the disguised violence to come, announcing “torture porn, but more artistic” the audience begins their almost continuous two and a half hour laughing marathon. It is an accomplished performance by a team of talented actors with no weak links.

All Sam Wanamaker productions have one thing in common: they do not use stage lighting, but leave the producer to find ways of using candles. In this production, the candles themselves are central to the concept. The missing dimension of bloody violence is provided by the use of candles that represent the victims. Whenever there is a violent action a candle is chopped or broken, smashed with mallets or strangled. When a character dies their flame literally goes out.

The plot is complicated and quite difficult to follow, particularly as all the actors are dressed in identical silk cultural revolution-style pyjamas in a variety of colours, all women and all with their, mainly dark, hair in a long tail down their back.

They are energetic and speak clearly, and as they work their way through the byzantine plot they hone in on the comic opportunities, in a sense pointing to Shakespeare’s personal sense of humour where, as he so often does, he produces little jewels. At one point Kirsten Foster impersonates a fly, running about the stage buzzing until Marcus kills it.

The action stops as Titus reprimands his brother, reminding him that the fly probably had a mother and father, and saying:

“Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry!
And thou hast kill’d him.”

And when Marcus tells him that he killed the fly because he was:

“a black ill-favor’d fly,
Like to the empress’ Moor”

Titus takes a butcher’s knife and viciously squashes the dead fly. It’s funny and profound and shocking on many levels – and carried out with perfect comic timing by the actors. And in the incident where two of Titus’ sons fall into a hole in the ground – not an intrinsically funny episode –  it’s hilariously performed by Beau Holland, playing both sons in burlesque, amid side-splitting audience laughter.

The four songs composed by cabaret duo, Liv Morris and George Heyworth are lively and contemporary, and they brilliantly set and maintain the tone of the performance. The action is supported by a score, composed by Francesca Ter-Berg, in much the way that music does in a film, with sensitive mood-creating strains.

And what does this all add up to? Yes and no, really. To strip the Elizabethan raison d’etre for the audience pouring in to see this play takes quite some swallowing, and no matter how creatively it’s done it leaves the play almost naked. It’s entertaining but as the man in the Elizabethan street might have said, “It’s not what I came here for.”

By Ralph Goldswain

The Globe’s breathtaking Henry V.

This is a very intelligent working of Shakespeare’s text. That’s the first thing to say, and the second is that Oliver Johnstone’s performance as Henry is outstanding.

To turn a centuries-old interpretation of a Shakespeare play on its head without taking liberties with the text is unusual but it happens here. The English king who has the most claim to being a ‘good’ king and a ‘good’ man, a reputation gained mainly as a result of the depiction of him in Shakespeare’s play, becomes an angry and emotional toddler, weeping and screaming by turns. He terrifies his supporters with his instability and unpredictability, skating on the thin edge of sanity, and coming across as threatening and dangerous. The traditional view of him as a young man who becomes king after learning how to be human by scorning the trappings of regnal power and associating with the underbelly of London, thus emerging as a judicious, wise, humane adult, and therefore a great king, is subverted. In this production Henry is more like a Donald Trump than a Nelson Mandela.

How does Holly Race Roughan achieve this transformation?

First, she dispenses with the chorus, whose job is to praise Harry of England as the perfect English king, the king of kings. Instead of the Prologue’s rousing introduction with its extreme images of kingship and patriotism the play opens with the scene from Henry IV Part II in which the dying Henry IV wakes to find his son Prince Hal at his bedside, trying on the crown. The Chorus is subsequently omitted altogether from the performance. Occasions where patriotism is called for are accompanied by the ironic singing of ‘God Save the King’ by a court brutalised and constantly wrong-footed by their new monarch.

We see the ‘warlike’ Harry’s desire to attack France but he has no reason for it and it is only when insulted by the Dauphin – sending him a gift of tennis balls, suggesting that he’s not a serious king but more of a playboy – that he makes his decision, driven by the petty need to ‘get him back’ and show him what’s what than by anything else. In the text we see him ordering the execution of traitors  – a swift decisive, act – but here he personally strangles Scroop onstage with his bare hands. This unexpected and shocking execution is a breathtaking theatrical moment, but more than that, it conditions the audience to what is to come – instability, unpredictability and cruelty.

When anticipating going to see a performance of Henry V we usually look forward to two speeches in particular – two of Shakespeare’s best – and here the ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends’ speech is turned into a soliloquy. Not only that but delivered while crouching in a foetal position, all alone on the stage, instead of the rousing, morale-lifting encouragement to his troops it becomes a man having a panic attack, battling against feelings of insecurity. The St Crispins Day speech is delivered only to a small group of his inner circle and is transformed from a patriotic rally to a complaint about the inadequacy of his troops. So we do not have the two usual expressions of great leadership but just by changing the staging of the speeches, quite the opposite.

The diplomatic negotiations are also transformed. Henry’s deal-making is like Don Corleone’s, making the French king an offer he can’t refuse. But the piece de resistance is the courting scene with Princess Katherine. What we have enjoyed in this scene before is a charming and gentle Henry and a flirtatious and interested Princess. Without any alteration of the text, we now have Henry as a bullying, frightening sex fiend who actually makes an unwanted sexual attack on the princess, and instead of a delighted, receptive young woman, what we see is a terrified victim. It’s a remarkable and shocking scene, effected by two superb actors.

In Shakespeare’s history plays it is the story and the condition of kingship that has interested him up to this point but in Henry V he is interested in both the condition of kingship and the character of the king rather than only the story and the ideas it produces. And so, from his pen comes an apparent story of a thoughtful and judicious king who takes kingship seriously and is able to avoid the mistakes and pitfalls of his predecessors. Henry does that but encounters different problems. In the traditional way of looking at it he deals with all that and emerges as the master of kingship, but in this production his personal weaknesses – his insecurity and narcissism – make him an unpleasant dictator that we would run from rather than follow.

This interpretation requires the highest quality of acting by the main character. Congratulations to Oliver Johnstone as one of the best that the Globe has offered for a long time. He builds and maintains a totally convincing portrait of this complex character.

The supporting players are all excellent although one, Josephine Callies, as Katherine, stands out. In her, we feel what it’s actually like to be the victim of a cruel, merciless attacker. One could say that the huge list of characters being played by such a small group, constantly changing rolls, becomes a bit confusing, but in the scheme of things, in such a fascinating performance of the play generally,  and with the focus so firmly on the central character, that’s relatively unimportant. What is important is Ms Roughan’s demonstration of the universal nature of Shakespeare’s work, which defies anyone to pin down a definitive interpretation of even such a sure bet as his Henry V.

By Ralph Goldswain

If kids love a show written and staged for kids then it doesn’t matter what the grown-ups think, and while Splendid Productions’ Midsummer Mechanicals confused at least one grown up – this reviewer – the kids were laughing and shouting and providing the sound effects by answering prompts to make thunder and wind, and even abstract things like fear, and silent things like snow. They were also offered circus and pantomime effects like clown acts and the opportunity of shouting “He’s behind you!” repeatedly when a bear came on and the actors pretended they couldn’t see it.

Three of the rude mechanicals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Peter Quince (Jamal Franklin), Nick Bottom (Kerry Frampton) and Francis Flute (Sam Glen), plus Patience Snout (Melody Brown), a new character introduced by writers, Kerry Frampton and Ben Hales, gather in the woods outside Athens to prepare a play to be performed at the first anniversary celebrations for the Duke, Theseus and the Duchess, Hippolyta. Their play, Pyramus and Thisbe having been well received a year before, they are full of enthusiasm and confidence, but not any more competent than they had been during their previous production.

Although it was slightly difficult to follow because of all the interaction between the players and the audience of children, it penetrated a child’s imagination with great effectiveness. It does have a clear story, however: it’s an episode in the parallel, half-told story in Shakespeare’s play, of the life of the Fairy King and Fairy Queen’s marriage – the intervention in that by a human, Weaver, who has strayed into the woods. The first half is the rehearsal, and when you come back after the interval you can sit back and enjoy the hilarious performance.

The genius of this production is that it doesn’t matter whether children, of any age, follow the story. There is enough for an afternoon of fun anyway. Both halves are packed with invitations to the children to participate. In addition to the sound effects, children are invited to shout out comments and questions, which the actors respond to with their improvised replies. The Company composer, Ben Hales, has provided several songs, which the cast sing, playing a variety of instruments. Something striking and mysterious is how kids manage to sing along with songs they have never heard. There was a lot of that, and congratulations to Ben Hales for writing songs that have that characteristic.

Apart from the comedic antics of the cast, there are other moments when raw, immediate Shakespeare is introduced. Shakespeare loved name-calling and his plays are full of some of the most colourful insults anywhere. When Peter Quince invites the kids to supply insults for the main character – Weaver – played by Bottom, and the Fairy King, to throw at each other the kids become very excited and creative. When one of them shouts (BUTT!) it renders Quince speechless, while the audience rolls about.

One of the interesting moments was when the mechanicals get towards the end of the casting. They are left without anyone to play the Fairy King. Patience (Melody Brown) steps up and says she’ll do it. The others reject that flat out. A child shouts “A woman is not allowed on the stage” and the cry is taken up by others. The rustic actors discuss that and decide that it’s only illegal if you don’t get caught, and when the very female Patience comes out as the Fairy King, she is the most masculine figure on the stage, and gets the kind of acclamation all actors dream of. But how do little kids know about sixteenth century theatre conditions?

The decision to stage this performance in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse was a good one. Its intimacy is perfect for the desired atmosphere – not too big and not too small for a good dose of audience participation.

Every member of the cast deserves a standout credit and it would be an artificial exercise to single any one of them out. The astonishing thing to this reviewer is the level of energy applied to each performance by each of the actors. Just thinking about it is exhausting. But the result is something special.

By Ralph Goldswain

Bravo, bravo and double bravo!

This is not only one of Shakespeare’s greatest entertainments with its almost continuous music, including several songs, its magic, lots of belly-laughing comedy, including slapstick, and with an engaging romance at its centre: it is also a profound essay on power in all its forms and, perhaps most interesting for our times, very much about the colonialism that was beginning in Shakespeare’s time and which the developing world is still trying to work out of its system.  But a director can’t emphasise all of those things when presenting the text as a play on the stage and has to make choices. If you want everything at the same level of intensity you should read the text.

Sean Holmes gets it right. He does what Shakespeare would have done – present the text as sheer entertainment, as a very funny comedy. All the serious considerations that inform this great play are still there but by placing the antics of the three comedians, Stephano (George Fouracres), Trinculo (Ralph Davis) and Caliban (Ciaran O’Brien) at the centre of the drama he hits the nail on the head. He manages to embrace those big themes in the performance of those three, expressing them through the comic centre of the production.

Holmes gives the audience their money’s worth of entertainment, as Shakespeare strove to do in his productions. The scene where Ariel distracts the two shipwrecked royal servants from their insurrection with a collection of fashion garments while Caliban almost literally explodes with frustration, is about as funny as anything could possibly be. And even among three outstanding performances, George Fouracres once again shows his unmatchable mastery of comic acting and consolidates his place as a top Shakespearean comic actor.

 The Tempest is very much about power. The absurdity of the sophisticated European politicians, marooned on a remote island from which escape seems unlikely, dressed in the clothes of courtiers, – sharp yuppie suits –seriously conducting a coup, is underscored in high comedy by the ridiculous bumblers playing out their own insurrection.

All this is done under the gaze of the cruel, autocratic Prospero, who, having been deposed by his brother fifteen years before, has all the power now, and most important, the power to forgive and redeem. Wearing only bright yellow Speedos, in contrast to the European power figures in their expensive suits, the well-endowed magician controls everything through his magic until, at last, he abjures the magic, dons an executive suit and re-enters the world of human politics. Ferdy Roberts plays the role well but in his dealings with Caliban and Ferdinand, and also Ariel, misses the iron-hard side of Prospero’s character by using an almost kindly tone in language that calls for a much harsher delivery,

The Tempest is full of magic, and Holmes has decided to underplay that. Although it’s still there, it is partly done with an unreal dreamlike set, where everything is vividly coloured and weird, from huge yellow crates and plastic props – a blow up duvet and armchair, bright green palm trees and water bottles, instead of magical effects. The magic is in the language and the situations, and it comes through in the high quality of the actors’ delivery, which is how Shakespeare would have done it.

Holmes has an interesting take on Caliban, a character that is always difficult to present on the stage. Described in the dramatis personae section of editions of the text in language like “a savage and deformed slave” producers present him as something not quite human, with scales, hunch-backed, with horror masks, always essentially ugly and very unappetising. Ciaran O’Brien’s Caliban achieves immediate sympathy by being completely human  – an ordinary young man whose only distinctive feature is his obvious depression. This works because it forces us to see his point of view. He complains of having had his country stolen from him and his having been turned into a slave. Even though we laugh all the way through his scenes with Stephano and Trinculo we sympathise with him as they bungle his chance of taking back his territory. When that chance arises he rejoices in the freedom that is coming, in song. When he invites the audience to join him in celebrating it’s a triumphant moment. They raise the non-existent roof with their response as Caliban leads them in a deafening chant of “Freedom!” It’s a wonderful moment in the theatre.

The romance between Ferdinand and Miranda doesn’t work all that well. Apart from being something of a distraction from the comedy there is something not quite right about the casting of Olivier Huband as Ferdinand. He is too old for the part of the young prince. His instant zooming in on the innocent 15 year-old comes across as slightly distasteful. And Shakespeare certainly didn’t intend Caliban to be more attractive and more age-suitable than the young prince, as he is here. In Shakespeare’s text Miranda comments both on the beauty of Ferdinand and the physical repugnance of Caliban and there is a sad mismatch in both cases here.

The Tempest is full of music and in this production the audience is treated to Cassie Kinoshi’s remarkable score, which includes new settings for Shakespeare’s famous songs. The music in this play has an important dramatic function, alternating with thunder and the different sounds of a tempest. In the text, both the music and the thunder are conjured up by Prospero and Ariel, according to the mood of each moment in the play, and continuous, as in a film soundtrack. Holmes misses that, as if he had used the music and other sounds in that way it would not have interfered with his comic interpretation and may well, in fact, have enhanced it.

However, nine out of ten for Sean Holmes and all the cast and everyone involved in this production.

By Ralph Goldswain

King Lear has been called Shakespeare’s greatest play. It has also been said that it’s impossible to make it work on the stage. Those contradictory statements may both be true.

On the one hand, if the text is studied as a work of literature, which it is in many introductory Shakespeare courses in colleges and universities around the world, one can only marvel at Shakespeare’s genius. The poetic unity, the characterisation, the dramatic structures, are all master classes in creative writing, even to the invention of stream-of consciousness – four centuries before James Joyce – in Lear’s ravings on the blasted heath, and to several features of .twentieth century postmodern fiction.

On the other hand, as a stage play, it threatens at every turn to fall apart. Like most great literary and dramatic works, such as Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, A Long Day’s Journey into Night and the film, The Godfather, it is a family drama – in this case, two family dramas. They are both fascinating stories and the action moves almost equally between the two. Each one is a powerful story that focuses on the family’s father. Each story is crammed with deep and serious issues and they are presented in instalments, with an instalment of the Lear story followed by one of the Gloucester stories, then back each time to the other story. Plays work by making an emotional impact on the viewer but in this case it is emotional confusion. Lear is out on the blasted heath. We have just caught up with him but now we are to put him on hold as we get back to Gloucester’s story. And then to be left up in the air with Gloucester to return to Lear. Each one builds audience emotion up then moves away to another build-up, allowing the emotions to cool on the other one. Confusing. How does a person respond? It’s difficult in a play. It works in novels but in plays? Does it?

It is the director’s job to resolve that structural problem and Helena Kaut-Howson hasn’t. That makes it difficult to identify with Lear. And it is that question of emotional identity that may be the cause of the failure of this production. Given that difficulty, the actors playing Lear and Gloucester also have a big job to do to find ways of making the play work. It is that issue that should be the main conversation between director and actors as the performance is being developed but it doesn’t look like it was discussed at all.

In this performance Diego Matamoros’ Gloucester emerges as more convincing, emotionally, than Katheryn Hunter’s Lear. His pain, his suffering, his realisation of the condition that has afflicted him as the patriarch of his noble family is convincing. “I stumbled when I saw” he admits as he reviews his life. Gloucester has an unbeatable moment, perhaps unbeatable in all of Shakespeare, when he has his eyes pulled out by Cornwall. Matamoros’ performance doesn’t suffer by the inexplicable audience laughter at that horrific event. It’s difficult to understand what there was in that moment that evoked it but surely playing it for laughs wasn’t planned by Ms Kaut-Howson or any of the actors in that scene? If it wasn’t it is something for them to look at for subsequent performances. If it was deliberate it’s inexplicable.

Also difficult to understand is what statement, if any, Helena Kaut-Howson, is making in directing this play. At this stage of theatrical development in the UK we expect a statement, but we don’t seem to have one here.

Kathryn Hunter is a huge star and netting her is a coup for The Globe, and after such great anticipation Lear’s entrance is promising. Lear, the all-powerful absolute monarch, arrives at court in a wheelchair and he’s very old, as directed by Shakespeare, and he’s pale, sickly-looking and tiny. When he stands up his daughter, Regan, helps him and she towers over him like a giant. It looks like anyone at court could lift him with one hand and fling him over their shoulder. Interesting: after all, political and personal power does not depend on physical appearance and size. Look at Napoleon and Hitler – both small men. How wonderful it would have been if Ms Hunter’s Lear had the charisma that the text clearly demands, in spite of her physical stature. It’s no wonder actors are in awe of the role. They have to present a convincing combination of charisma, narcissism and dementia with immense emotional power. That seems to be out of Kathryn Hunter’s reach.

What we have is a pathetic old man. The rage and passion and angry questioning called for in the text are just not there. Shakespeare has provided the language for those things by writing the loudly uttered emotions of a man already frustrated by dementia, but that bountiful gift is wasted. For example, the ‘nothing’ interplay between Lear and Cordelia is a swelling duet that gets louder and angrier until in an apoplectic rage Lear banishes his favourite daughter, but it is underplayed here to become a quiet casual incident with the banishment seeming like an evenly judged, considered decision. And then, on the blasted heath, Ms Hunter’s delivery doesn’t convey the extreme emotions the language asks for.

Lear gives everything that makes him a king away without the wisdom to understand that if you do that you can’t expect to keep control of things, and people are not going to treat you as they did when you had all the power. He has lived his whole life in hiding behind things like position, power and wealth. Now he doesn’t know who he is and he keeps asking the question, howling against a deafening storm. Who and what he is is what he has to learn.  He doesn’t know how to react. He undergoes a huge mental storm with a lot of raging and shouting, and then there is a complete contrast to that as he wakes to music to find the noise of the storm gone from his brain. He emerges with an understanding that eluded him when he held power. Without the trappings of power he is now, personally, “every inch a king.” It’s like a Beethoven symphony, with noisy violent passion and then a resolution – lightness and harmony, and catharsis. There’s none of that contrast here. One cannot say that Kathryn Hunter has misinterpreted the role but one can certainly say that her interpretation doesn’t work – she does not connect with the emotions of the audience. That is not helped by inadequate voice projection, where she can hardly be heard much of the time, a difficulty shared by several of the cast.

Generally, this is a, traditional presentation of the drama, without anything innovative apart from the squeezing of humour from the text and adding things like making the first impression of the frail, demented Lear of him playing a child’s tune on a whistle, with laughter from the audience. The actors are all competent, none standing out, apart from Matamoros, and Michelle Terry as the Fool who, made up as Joker in Batman, provides a physical agility and mental sharpness that contrasts effectively with Lear’s frailty and vulnerability as she artfully manoeuvres herself around his mental condition. A special word for Max Keeble as Oswald as he is struck, kicked, tripped up and thrown about the stage. And congratulations to the choreographer.

By Ralph Goldswain

It’s easy to say, as the Globe’s publicity for this production does, that the play was written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher “in collaboration with Hannah Khalil.”

But four centuries distance between Ms Khalil and the other two writers makes the notion of a collaboration absurd. Historical context aside, the other two are long dead, so could not have had anything to say about her contribution – no feedback, no suggestions – allowing her to do whatever she wanted to with their text.

In any case, even a collaboration between the two original writers was difficult. Shakespeare was in retirement in Stratford, two day’s ride from London, during the time that this play was being written and his friend and protégé, John Fletcher, was very busy running the Kings Men and The Globe in his place. There was no internet, no Zoom, and yet they were doing it, but in highly unfavourable circumstances.

The logistical difficulties made for a below-standard text but also, in choosing to write about Henry VIII Fletcher was hunting too close to home. It was a politically dangerous project. Unlike Shakespeare’s great history dramas, set far in the past, Fletcher, for some inexplicable reason, chose to write about the tyrannical father of the recently late great Queen. That meant the mirror that Shakespeare held up to life – his objective observation of life – was distorted by the dangers of still active political tensions, and the play was a failure, suffering the fate of other sub-standard Jacobean plays. It has been rarely performed and if it hadn’t been associated with Shakespeare it may have been placed in the same category as hundreds of Jacobean plays never performed in subsequent centuries. It’s surprising that Shakespeare agreed to do it.

But the two great writers were at least responding to the era in which they both lived, and which is like a different galaxy to us. Hannah Khalil’s contribution is heavily seasoned by the context of her own era and in years to come, when we look back at 2022 and study the art and literature of that time we will probably see a huge compensatory drive towards everything feminine. That will pass, and future eras will have their own preoccupations. Ms Khalil’s brief from the Globe was “to sculpt the play into an exploration of the female experience in this world,” thus taking the text right out of its context.

So how did she do?

Her part in the “collaboration” was to tweak the language to swerve the play in the direction of her world view and to add another female character. She told her mother that she wasn’t going to try and write new, iambic pentameter dialogue, but why not? She couldn’t have done worse than Fletcher, who never mastered the technique perfected by Marlowe and Shakespeare – the delivery of poetic magic that imitated everyday speech. That’s how it’s easy to see which bits were written by each of the two writers respectively. Fletcher didn’t really have the knack: Hannah Khalil may have been better at it.

So instead of writing new dialogue, Ms Khalil pinches bits and pieces from Shakespeare’s other plays and poems and, of course, not having been written from her own experience and emotions, they don’t really work when shoved into the mouths of characters from a completely different play. That’s particularly so when she includes some of Shakespeare’s most famous lines like “uneasy is the head that wears the crown” and “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” They jar like a sudden electric shock.

Her creation of a new character, Katherine’s daughter, Mary, is odd. It should be clear to her why the two writers did not bring the Catholic Bloody Mary into their drama. She was politically toxic and the families of Jacobean audiences would still be suffering the wounds of her reign, many having relatives who had been burnt at the stake, while she would still have had some supporters. So, in a real collaboration Ms Khalil would not have been allowed to do that. But having done it, the question is why. It’s hard to see what the character adds. Mary has no dramatic function and wanders about, contributing to a wayward kind of commentary with the help of two peasants sitting on blow-up swimming pool armchairs.

What is good about this production, though?

It is a play with two stories – the story of masculine power and political manipulation and the story of two women and a baby girl. In tampering a bit with the women’s language and roles she highlights their story. The already strong, courageous Queen Katherine, magnificently played by Bea Segura, becomes the beating heart of this version of the play. Janet Etuk Anne Boleyn (Bullen here) could have been better realised in this aspect of the story. However, the theme of female suffering is very clear.

What works well is the lighthearted comedy. As part of the feminist theme the men are shown, by a range of comic effects, to be pathetic. Henry, played superbly by Adam Gillen, in particular, is pathetic. The slightly-built physical opposite of the iconic image of the historical Henry VIII, he whines and whinges like a teenage loser, sulking when the expected baby turns out to be a girl and behaves badly in the face of Anne’s goading him with a display of pink, including a large shiny pink pram, impetuously bursting the celebratory pink balloons. He is also the Wizard of Oz, a small man hiding behind the curtain of rank, sexually obsessed but basically impotent, unable to father a male child, compensating with sex toys – a strap on and giant golden blow-up genitals. A lot of fun but definitely a lot of misandry too.

What makes this visit to the Globe worthwhile, however, is the music. Maimuna Memon is without doubt the star of the production. Her songs are superb, and beautifully sung by Genevieve Dawson and Natasha Cottriall, who also plays Mary. One’s instinct is to approach the Globe and offer a further collaboration with Fletcher, Shakespeare, Khalil and Memon in “All is True – the Musical.” Less dialogue, more music, and a few more songs by Ms Memon, and Bob’s your uncle (or aunt, rather!) – a new West End style musical – a new hit for The Globe.

By Ralph Goldswain

With a cast of only eight actors, bringing this great play, which has some of Shakespeare’s major roles and scores of minor characters, with battle-ground and civil crowd scenes, to the stage is a sleight of hand, which Diane Page effectively manages.

That’s largely due to the flexibility and fine acting skills of the supporting cast. Cash Holland and Amie Frances as Portia and the innocent bystander mistaken for Cinna the poet and having to absorb the mob’s anger, respectively, deserve a special mention, with Amie Frances, particularly, putting everything into being beaten to death. The prize though, goes to Omar Bynon as the cobbler who starts the ball rolling, bringing the audience into the action from the word go, prompting them to shout “Pompey is pants” as he conducts them. Audiences love that, and here, too, being given the opportunity to cheer Marc Antony on when he addresses the crowd. Ms Page blurs the lines between stage and real-life by extensive use of the audience in that way, the audience yelling out its fickle political allegiances, and it works beautifully.

It is the power tug-of-war – tyranny, freedom, war and peace – as it manifests four centuries after the play was first performed that interests Diane Page. Her preoccupation with any classic is what that story means to us now, she tells us. “I wanted to repurpose Julius Caesar to challenge what power looks like now, especially for women,” she wrote. So the question is, how successful has she been?

Dickon Tyrell’s well-rounded Caesar exhibits Trumpian characteristics, both in public, in military uniform, and at home in his dressing gown, with some very fine acting, able to bring out Caesar’s unwillingness to heed advice, his vanity and the chink in his armour, a fatal susceptibility to flattery, in spite of his having to rush through it in the context of a speedy pace for that section of the play.

Samuel Oatley’s interpretation of Marc Antony is interesting and refreshing. Behind the serious, power-grabbing politician is a fun-loving laid-back human being, always threatening to inject humour even into his great “Friends, Romans, countryman” oration. And he performs that speech, with all its cynicism and manipulative skill, to perfection.

There are also some nice touches that meet Ms Page’s intention, such as the Trumpian Caesar’s ‘cancelling’ by the removal of his statue, like the felling of that of Sadam Hussein and the removal and dumping of Edward Colston’s in Bristol harbour.

It is in the later, post-interval, section, where the relationship between Cassius and Brutus is developed, that Ms Page’s interest really lies, though. She has invested heavily in reinventing the characters as women – Charlotte Bate as a lean and hungry-looking Cassius and a more serious better-fed Brutus, played by Anna Crichlow, and it’s there that things begin to fall apart.

By changing the gender of the two characters Ms Page has the obligation to think her decision through, and convince us, and here, possibly lies a problem. These are two very masculine characters, speaking the macho language of two men more involved in violent acts than in anything else. Putting it in the mouths of women somehow doesn’t ring true. Mixed into that are some unsatisfactory loose ends, such as Brutus being in a same sex marriage. Interesting, nothing wrong with that, but where does it go in this production? And there are suggestions of a sexual attraction between the two characters. Nothing wrong with that, but where does it go as regards the meaning of the play? That aspect is introduced but not explored.

‘Love’ is a major theme in the play. In Shakespeare’s text it’s essentially about the Roman concept of love, which is about friendship, respect by one man for another, and patriotism – love of country – so when Brutus says he loved Caesar but he loved Rome more it’s about all those things, and when he addresses the crowd as ‘lovers’ he’s appealing to their patriotism. And Marc Antony also means that as he proclaims his love for his assassinated friend. However, when Cassius and Brutus have their big row Charlotte Bate wails “You love me not,” in a very feminine way, she’s interpreting the line as a complaint by a woman abandoned by a lover, thereby losing some of the main themes, or at least, warping them, and substituting a Page-invented theme that goes nowhere.

In Shakespeare’s theatre all the female roles were played by boys and young men. Audiences were used to that and with the boys in appropriate costumes the suspension of disbelief came quite naturally. In many present day productions women play male roles, as men, in appropriate costumes, and the same applies. However, changing the gender of a Shakespeare character can raise questions that have nothing to do with the meaning of the play. And that’s what’s wrong with this production – too many untied-up loose ends, particularly in the second part of the play, which is often a somewhat shrill, over-emotional shouting rather than Shakespeare’s punch-by-punch, carefully sculpted, argument between an angry man and a better composed, also male, adversary. While the acting of these two actors is competent, to play these two major Shakespeare males, using the carefully crafted masculine language, is a big ask. There’s a frequent mismatch between the masculine rhetoric and the female physical gestures and mannerisms.

The questions of power and authority are clear and evident in Shakespeare’s text. They are already thoroughly relevant to our lives today. There is some valuable highlighting of issues of our time in this production, though, such as the difficulty women have in gaining access to power.  Also, the way the two women, as Cassius and Brutus, go beyond the pure power grabbing we see in the three men – Julius Caesar, Octavius and Marc Antony – to more of a philosophical concern with that naked power drive as a detriment to civil life. Ms Page has the right to explore those things, and to stretch Shakespeare’s text. It’s the done thing in Shakespeare performances these days. But she dilutes the action and plays loose with the rhetoric, twisting it to her purposes.  It doesn’t quite work, but three cheers for her for trying.

By Ralph Goldswain

The Globe has opened its summer season with an energetic, very funny and all-round entertaining Much Ado About Nothing. It’s a conservative treatment that pays close attention to Shakespeare’s intentions and brings out all the shades of light and dark that are in the text, with a particular emphasis on its comedy.

Lucy Bailey moves Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing setting from Messina in Sicily to Veneto in Northern Italy just days before the final liberation of Italy in April 1945. There seems to be no advantage in making that point, but wherever it is set Joanna Parker’s design is wonderfully Italian, creating the feeling that one is inside the Corleone compound in celebration mode. That is particularly so for the groundlings, right inside the set as the stage encroaches on their space, curving around it, bringing the action right into their midst and creating the opportunity of audience participation at selected moments. Outdoor dining and leisure activities take place in the garden of the governor’s ivy-clad mansion while soft accordion music accompanies and punctuates the action, reflecting the emotions in the way music does in films.

The gangster impression is strengthened by the pervading presence of Olivier Huband’s Don John, dressed as the stereotypical movie gangster. The costumes, supervised by Caroline Hughes, are a delight throughout: the characters change their outfits several times, different clothes for different activities, and it’s like a 1945 fashion show. That creates an interesting dimension to this production, emphasising the comfortable, fun-loving and wealthy lifestyle of the community the play depicts.

The difference between success and disappointment in a production generally boils down to the quality of the acting. In this one the acting is high quality from top to bottom. Beatrice and Benedick, being Shakespeare’s finest romcom pair, the actors playing them are always subjected to strong critical attention, and here Lucy Phelps and Ralph Davis score very highly.

Lucy Phelps has great comic timing, using all her resources – tone of voice, hand gestures, head and eye movements – to bring out the humour in the situation Beatrice encounters. We love her feminist commentary, and we strongly identify with her because the things she says resonate with our  generation and also, in this production, we delight in her because of Ms Phelps’s ability to wring the humour out of every line.

Ralph Davis is a cool Benedick, pulling off a difficult transformation – that of the sudden change from the confirmed bachelor to the doting lover – by being less of the confirmed bachelor, making his interest in Beatrice clear from the start. When he is being gulled by his friends Davis also exhibits a talent for slapstick, creatively using every possible hiding place the garden offers, simultaneously hiding and being close to the conversation, even crouching right behind them, keeping the audience in waves of laughter throughout the scene.

In Shakespeare’s text the other couple move in the shadow of Beatrice and Benedick and there’s not much the actors can do about it. However, Nadi Kemp-Sayfi as Hero puts colour into what is basically a character lacking that by exuding a sunny personality, while Patrick Osborne’s Claudio is convincing as an unlikeable lightweight. We don’t take to him from the beginning and certainly don’t begin to forgive his frankly unforgivable cruelty during the romantic resolution.

One of the glories of Much Ado is Dogberry, the corporal leading the scrappy band of Keystone-like cops. George Fouracres, a great comedian, evidenced by his superb Sir Andrew Aguecheek in last year’s Twelfth Night, is always someone to look forward to and he doesn’t disappoint as Dogberry. He’s a wonderful mixture of pomposity and ignorance, bringing Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau to mind.

Lucy Bailey has mercifully chosen not to follow the current insistence on filling as many male roles with female actors as possible but she has made an exception in casting Katy Stephens as the central figure, Leonato, who becomes Leonata, the mother rather than the father, of Hero. Although a very fine actor, the downside of Lucy Bailey casting her is that it changes the play somewhat: she is a charismatic actor and dominates the action, throwing the production’s balance slightly off because of that, but the main objection is that she brings a sexuality to the role that isn’t in the play, and not imagined by its author. She constantly flashes her legs and flirts with Don Pedro and even with Claudio. It’s difficult to understand what Lucy Bailey was thinking of if she directed, or allowed, that. In spite of Ms Stephens’ performance, it doesn’t work and Lucy Bailey would have done well to complete her conservative approach with a more traditional casting of the role.

At the end of April, still somewhat wintry, two and a half hours sitting unmoving at the Globe is a bit of a challenge but the warm tone of the production and the summery set compensate. What was good enough for Shakespeare’s audience in the same English climate – perhaps even colder – should be good enough for us. A very worthwhile visit to the theatre whether the weather or not, and as the cool spring gives way to what we hope will be a gorgeous English summer, theatre-goers are in for a treat.

By Ralph Goldswain

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse’s Hamlet could be termed “a play by Sean Holmes, based on an idea by William Shakespeare” for all the connection Holmes’s production has to Shakespeare’s text and the spirit of his text.

If accepted in that way it is a pleasant, if too extended, evening at the theatre. It is full of fun and jokes, including one from the gravedigger about COVID parties in Downing Street.

Holmes seems to have scoured the text for comic opportunities, of which there are many in the original text, such as Hamlet’s goading of Polonius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the hilarious scene with Osric. However, strangely, he plays those scenes down – cuts some of them and rushes through what he has left of them. The result is that the scene with the ridiculous Osric – probably the most fully realised of all Shakespeare’s minor characters – is virtually bypassed.

Holmes downplays all the dramatic scenes, like the scene in Gertrude’s room and the killing of Polonius, the scene in the graveyard where Hamlet and Laertes fight over the body of Ophelia (which at that point is not a body but ashes in a crematorium urn), and, most of all, the final scene. Generally, Death lays a very light finger on this version of the play.

Instead, Holmes wrings the text for laughter. But even there, apart from the scene with Osrick, although the gravedigger scene is very funny in Shakespeare’s text Holmes dismisses it all and has the gravedigger, joined by a straight man, a modern priest smoking a cigarette, treating the audience to a twenty-first century stand-up comedy act, devised either by Holmes or the actor, Ed Gaughan, and nothing whatsoever to do with Shakespeare. Gaughan also entertains us throughout the performance, singing while strumming on a guitar.

But even if Holmes’s approach of using the Shakespeare text as a jumping-off place for a new play were acceptable – which it could be if well done – a lot of it doesn’t make sense in this production. Why does Holmes swap Ophelia’s final words for extracts from Romeo and Juliet? Why does Hamlet, unlike his mother and uncle, his friends and companions, his father’s ghost, have a broad Brummie accent? Why does every character who dies have to be put down a well and emerge soaking wet? What is the logic of the costumes? They range from the ghost’s Roman soldier outfit, through Claudius’ and Gertrude’s Renaissance royal garments, to Ophelia’s jeans and shorts and Hamlet’s emo selection. You can’t get an understanding of any of that from the dynamic of the Holmes text or the performance – you would have to ask Sean Holmes.

George Fouracres, last seen in one of Shakespeare’s best comic roles – Sir Andrew Aguecheeck – at the Globe, made an indelible mark with a brilliant performance in its Twelfth Night last year. He is the consummate comic actor and, as such, saves this production, which, with this concept, would otherwise be in danger of failure. He is engaging, and reveals what is there in the Shakespeare text – the high intelligence and sense of humour of the protagonist, something that Hamlet can’t suppress in the Shakespeare text, even in his darkest moments, and he entertains us throughout. And he is unfailingly funny.

The darkness in the Shakespeare text is not there in this production though. Not on the stage anyway. Instead of the profound questioning of existence that Shakespeare’s protagonist goes in for, most of which is embedded in the soliloquies, Fouracres distances himself from it, even making jokes in the middle of the most serious and profound musings ever written, as though not wanting to share his inner self with the audience as Shakespeare intended. Instead, he covers the walls with graffiti – detailed outpourings – while we are not looking. We come back from the interval to find that he’s been busy doing that. Accomplished actor as he is, Fouracres is nevertheless not fully comfortable in this part, seeming to be going along with Holmes’s experiment somewhat against his better judgment.

It’s a pity that Rachel Hannah Clarke, another accomplished actor, is not allowed to actually play the part written for Ophelia – much of her role has disappeared and all her “best bits” have been cut out. Polly Frame’s Gertrude is also somewhat curtailed but she asserts herself in the final scene by being drunk. Claudius– a potential tragic protagonist – loses his menace in Irfan Shamji’s portrayal of Claudius as a fun-loving lightweight, missing the opportunity of making the “O my offence is rank/ it smells to heaven” soliloquy hit the spot. John Lightbody is a cool, younger Polonius whose pomposity is replaced with a quiet dignity that belies his underlying nastiness.

The main question raised is – why? Why rewrite Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Or why rewrite Shakespeare’s Hamlet and call it Hamlet? Many films, plays and novels have used a Shakespeare play as inspiration for the author’s own creativity and given it a different title. And many of them have become classics. So why rewrite Hamlet and advertise it as a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Why not a new play by Sean Holmes with its own title?

It’s impossible to make a judgment about this production because it’s hard to know what it is. However, it is fun. Audience laughter ripples throughout and the calls for audience participation are irresistible. But after three hours and we are not even in the final scene one is beginning to think about bed and wondering whether the tube will still be running by the time one finally gets out of the cramped (although beautiful) theatre.

By Ralph Goldswain

Joel Coen’s 2021 film “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is a tale of two stories – Shakespeare’s and Coen’s – and the result is a remarkable film. If the point of thousands of directors and actors telling the Macbeth story over the course of four centuries is that there are always new things to see in new productions and that directors and actors have the opportunity to reveal them, this film hits the mark.

Shakespeare’s story is about an ambitious young military superstar who, with the help of a perhaps even more ambitious young wife, overreaches himself by killing his king and benefactor with the aim of succeeding him, then, tortured by fear and guilt, descends into a personal hell that ends in his being defeated by those he has sought to marginalise. Coen’s story starts from a completely different place.

In Coen’s story Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are a couple who have already passed retirement age. When we first see Macbeth he is completing another – surely his last – military mission, putting down a serious rebellion, and although regarded by others as a hero, to him it’s all part of his day job, something he does without an adrenaline surge these days. Lady Macbeth is much more passive than we usually see her: she is the weary wife in a long marriage, supporting and encouraging her husband in a project he wants to engage in rather than the sharp, thrusting, highly ambitious woman we think we know, who pushes her husband hard with every trick in the book, harder and harder as he wavers, unremittingly merciless, until her mind finally breaks. In Coen’s story she is a prop for her husband rather than a goad.

Coen’s interpretation is expressed by a team of three, Joel Coen himself, Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, working together to tell that story.

Washington is a somewhat tired Macbeth, playing down the passion in Shakespeare’s language, which is edited by Coen to allow that. He presents a man who, rather than looking towards a future as a dazzling young king, all set for a lifetime of wealth and power, is looking at his last chance to achieve that golden round – the crown – as though he deserves it after all he has done.  As though it’s his turn. He plays it as a man who owes it to himself after a long career of service. He does it without passion, almost with resignation.

Francis McDormand is not recognised as one of America’s greatest film actors for nothing. Because of the screen rather than the stage mode of this production the camera is one of the keys to our understanding of her interpretation. Her close-up facial expressions and body language are a major aspect of this drama. We see sympathy for her husband, affection, disappointment, shock, disillusion, all on her face, on a track that accompanies the text. By using that combination of physical activity and his editing of the text Coen is able to fit Lady Macbeth’s character into his interpretation. In the banquet scene, where Lady Macbeth gets impatient and cross with Macbeth in the text, it is underplayed in the film and we have sympathy and support for her husband instead. And possibly the most haunting and memorable image of the film is that of Lady Macbeth, just before her suicide, standing alone on the battlements watching as Birnam Wood advances on the castle. It is an image of sheer disappointment, the very picture of terminal sadness. In this version she dies, not of madness caused by guilt, but of mammoth disappointment in the way their final project has turned out.

Denzel Washington handles the dialogue better than some of the “great” actors of the past in that he understands what Shakespeare is doing with iambic pentameter and exploits its flexibility to suit his interpretation of the role. In meeting and working with Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare picked up the technique of writing poetic dialogue that used the rhythm of natural speech, and developed it to the point where an actor could say the lines in a way that communicated with audiences as effectively as vernacular language while at the same time spinning its poetic magic in the back of the mind. Washington masters that and it contributes to Coen’s vision of a less passionate assassin. The “If it were done when tis done” soliloquy for example, is full of yearning, straining, brimming with youthful physical vigour but, without changing a word, Washington dampens all that and emphasises the mature, philosophical aspect of the soliloquy with his calm, reflective world-weary delivery.

It seems clear from more usual interpretations, and also from Shakespeare’s text, that Macbeth holds the sympathy of the audience until, in the middle of the play, his murderers kill a child onstage – an outrageous, shocking moment. It is then that we realise that Shakespeare has been taking us slowly away from our identification with him. With outside reports of his barbaric behaviour and language like “butcher,” “tyrant,” the references to birds of prey etc. we begin to see him through the eyes of his victims. After the murder of the child we are on the side of his opponents as they hunt him down and we applaud them as they corner and behead him.

Coen’s story is different. We stay with Macbeth throughout. There are enough glimpses into his soul in Shakespeare’s text, to allow us to stay there, like the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy. Coen skims over most of the references to Macbeth as a bloodthirsty tyrant, spares the blood and language about blood that characterises the text, and usually drenches stages and screens, and he ignores most of the signs of the Macbeths’ disintegrating marriage. In the film we follow Macbeth in sympathy throughout and the result is that we accompany him, rather than his opponents, in his downfall. In that way Coen turns the play into something of an Aristotelian tragedy, where a flaw in the tragic hero causes him to make a misjudgement that results in his downfall, which the audience follows, experiencing pity and terror, and finally, catharsis, as the hero’s life ends with partial insight into the fault that has brought him to that point.

In the Shakespeare text we have something not as purely Aristotelian. We have, instead, an exciting  murder thriller with a manhunt and a final showdown between the good guys and the bad guy, who is now Macbeth, in which the bad guy pays for his crime and, instead of the Aristotelian catharsis, we have the satisfaction of seeing the good triumph over the bad.

Those are two very different visions for the tragedy of Macbeth.

The film’s stark black and white is reminiscent of Lawrence Olivier’s “Hamlet,” with the action taking place in a bleak castle. Here, though, the castle’s interior is more like that of a large house built by a progressive modern architect, with plastered walls and tiled floors. Characters emerge as though materialising out of a white mist and disappear back. Ravens fly everywhere, including inside the castle rooms. The witches transform themselves into ravens and the ghost that only Macbeth can see turns out to be a raven trapped behind closed windows, frantically trying to escape.

One of the most enjoyable things about this film is the array of fine, and well known actors playing the minor characters, from Brendon Gleeson as Duncan to Miles Anderson as Lennox. A special word must be said for Coen’s presentation of Ross, played by Alex Hassell. Ross is a mysterious enough figure in the Shakespeare text and Coen turns that up and offers an interpretation of him as an unearthly character, fitting no type and operating on both sides of the political divide. He appears at different times, sometimes unexpectedly, and that, together with his being more outside the action, like an observer, but sometimes manipulating the action, than a traditional character acting within the story, lends a postmodern feel to the film.

Apart from Washington and McDormand, the standout performance is by Kathryn Hunter as all three witches. She uses physical contortions and distinctly different voices. She twists her body into a variety of shapes, using her limbs to create the kind of images that appear in horror films as monsters. The combination of those exercises and creative camera work make for the most frightening and memorable of witches.

Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” will join the landmarks of Shakespeare films and will become important in the discourse around the performing of Shakespeare. And how wonderful it is that along with such Shakespeare film performers as Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, Denzel Washington’s and Francis McDormand’s performances will be preserved for all time.