Richard II
In the midst of all the RL madness (housebuying, sorting out First Small Person's secondary school place for next year, work...)
sensiblecat had very kindly used her RSC membership months ago to get priority booking for tickets for herself, me and the Resident Geek, so we arranged to meet up in Stratford in time to get a quick bite before the show. It was just as well the RG and I had decided to leave home fairly early, as the drive up to Stratford took half as long again as it should in theory do due to heavy traffic (and rain) - altariel tells me she still remembers our epic drive a few years ago when we went to see DT in Hamlet, when it took us more than an hour to get clear of Oxford, I couldn't persuade the new satnav to change route so we had to lock it in the glovebox and ignore it, and one of my brake lights packed up!
Anyway, we managed to park 5 mins walk from the theatre, and were only a few minutes late to meet sensiblecat . Thanks to her local knowledge we had a very tasty pre-theatre dinner in a bistro, and made it back to the new (and very swanky) Royal Shakespeare Theatre in good time.
I enjoyed the production enormously - it was all-round excellent in that very reliable RSC way. I commented during the interval that the RSC has a very strong, and consistent, visual and musical aesthetic - the way they design sets, quite stark and simple with just one or two props or lighting to suggest each location, is very effective and still reminds me of the RSC productions I used to see at the Barbican in my teens, without feeling dated. And RSC music (usually, as in this case, Paul Englishby's) is very characteristic, recognisable, and atmospheric. I loved the way this production opened: the stage turned into a vast, echoing cathedral-like space (meant to be Westminster Hall, I think), with the murdered Duke of Gloucester's black-draped coffin lying in state, and three black-clad women singing a plainchant Requiem Mass from one of the galleries. Spine-tingling and beautiful.
Excellent ensemble cast - just like Greg Doran's Hamlet, all the fuss is made about DT but in fact the whole cast is excellent and it's a strength-in-depth display of RSC talent. Oliver Ford Davies, bless him, is fantastic as the Duke of York - grumpy, loyal, a man of absolute integrity, deeply frustrated by the disloyalty and incompetence and backbiting all around him and by his own encroaching age and infirmity. Michael Pennington as John of Gaunt did a really moving job of the "precious stone set in a silver sea" speech. Marty Cruickshank and Jane Lapotaire were great as the Duchesses of York and Gloucester respectively. (It occurred to me afterwards what a fantastic play it is for good, meaty roles for older actors...) Nigel Lindsay makes a very pragmatic and rather thuggish Bolingbroke, in complete contrast to...
DT's Richard. Fey, irritating, narcissistic, arch. Rather like when I saw DT's Hamlet, I came away (particularly from scenes like the deposition, when he is forced to hand over the crown) feeling that he's more intelligent than the rest of the court put together (he runs verbal rings round Bolingbroke and the others) but has no realpolitikal sense whatsoever (all the verbal brilliance ultimately avails him not a jot, because he's alienated nearly everyone); a generally unsympathetic character shot through with touches of humanity and pathos. He didn't, to me, ultimately tug my heartstrings as much as Ben Whishaw's Richard from The Hollow Crown - but then I thought that was a barnstorming performance in terms of its ability to turn the viewer's sympathy around, and Whishaw's extreme youth may have helped with that aspect of it.
The camp boredom of the early scenes, mocking and steely by turns, was wonderful - DT retains that extraordinary ability to transform the mood of a scene in an instant at will, from making you laugh to making you shudder. You would never quite know whether this Richard was about to kiss you or have you executed. DT manages quite convincingly that very histrionic scene on the beach after Richard returns from Ireland, discovers he's lost his kingdom in his absence, and completely falls to pieces, because he's already got you to believe in this emotionally flailing, wildly vacillating character. And then there's the sad, pathetic end - Richard, rather like Hamlet, imprisoned by circumstances into having nothing to do but examine the inside of his own head, the impotent philosopher-prince. Doran gives his end an extra punch to the gut by having Richard murdered, not by a random nobleman introduced late on as in the text, but by Richard's erstwhile supporter and friend (and, Doran had hinted, possibly one of his gay lovers), York's son Aumerle, who is desperately trying to ingratiate himself with Bolingbroke...
As a production it really made me think - about the nature of kingship, the hollow crown, and the nature of identity. DT put across so powerfully the crisis of a man who has spent his entire life flamboyantly playing a part - the role of the king, the Lord's anointed, with the gorgeous clothes and the gold-painted nails and the bling and the absolute power - only to have it all taken away and be left staring into an abyss where he has nothing left, not even a name, and is forced to find out whether he has or is anything once the crown and sceptre are stripped away. And the political implications for Bolingbroke and the nobility of having decided that heredity is flexible, and kingship conditional, are left, like the departed spirit of Richard, hanging above them in the air...
If you get a chance to see one of the cinema broadcasts (I know Maia plans to) do go. Fan of DT and/or of Shakespeare or not, it will entertain you and move you and leave you thinking!
[Cross-posted at both LJ and DW - feel free to comment at either...]
sensiblecat had very kindly used her RSC membership months ago to get priority booking for tickets for herself, me and the Resident Geek, so we arranged to meet up in Stratford in time to get a quick bite before the show. It was just as well the RG and I had decided to leave home fairly early, as the drive up to Stratford took half as long again as it should in theory do due to heavy traffic (and rain) - altariel tells me she still remembers our epic drive a few years ago when we went to see DT in Hamlet, when it took us more than an hour to get clear of Oxford, I couldn't persuade the new satnav to change route so we had to lock it in the glovebox and ignore it, and one of my brake lights packed up!
Anyway, we managed to park 5 mins walk from the theatre, and were only a few minutes late to meet sensiblecat . Thanks to her local knowledge we had a very tasty pre-theatre dinner in a bistro, and made it back to the new (and very swanky) Royal Shakespeare Theatre in good time.
I enjoyed the production enormously - it was all-round excellent in that very reliable RSC way. I commented during the interval that the RSC has a very strong, and consistent, visual and musical aesthetic - the way they design sets, quite stark and simple with just one or two props or lighting to suggest each location, is very effective and still reminds me of the RSC productions I used to see at the Barbican in my teens, without feeling dated. And RSC music (usually, as in this case, Paul Englishby's) is very characteristic, recognisable, and atmospheric. I loved the way this production opened: the stage turned into a vast, echoing cathedral-like space (meant to be Westminster Hall, I think), with the murdered Duke of Gloucester's black-draped coffin lying in state, and three black-clad women singing a plainchant Requiem Mass from one of the galleries. Spine-tingling and beautiful.
Excellent ensemble cast - just like Greg Doran's Hamlet, all the fuss is made about DT but in fact the whole cast is excellent and it's a strength-in-depth display of RSC talent. Oliver Ford Davies, bless him, is fantastic as the Duke of York - grumpy, loyal, a man of absolute integrity, deeply frustrated by the disloyalty and incompetence and backbiting all around him and by his own encroaching age and infirmity. Michael Pennington as John of Gaunt did a really moving job of the "precious stone set in a silver sea" speech. Marty Cruickshank and Jane Lapotaire were great as the Duchesses of York and Gloucester respectively. (It occurred to me afterwards what a fantastic play it is for good, meaty roles for older actors...) Nigel Lindsay makes a very pragmatic and rather thuggish Bolingbroke, in complete contrast to...
DT's Richard. Fey, irritating, narcissistic, arch. Rather like when I saw DT's Hamlet, I came away (particularly from scenes like the deposition, when he is forced to hand over the crown) feeling that he's more intelligent than the rest of the court put together (he runs verbal rings round Bolingbroke and the others) but has no realpolitikal sense whatsoever (all the verbal brilliance ultimately avails him not a jot, because he's alienated nearly everyone); a generally unsympathetic character shot through with touches of humanity and pathos. He didn't, to me, ultimately tug my heartstrings as much as Ben Whishaw's Richard from The Hollow Crown - but then I thought that was a barnstorming performance in terms of its ability to turn the viewer's sympathy around, and Whishaw's extreme youth may have helped with that aspect of it.
The camp boredom of the early scenes, mocking and steely by turns, was wonderful - DT retains that extraordinary ability to transform the mood of a scene in an instant at will, from making you laugh to making you shudder. You would never quite know whether this Richard was about to kiss you or have you executed. DT manages quite convincingly that very histrionic scene on the beach after Richard returns from Ireland, discovers he's lost his kingdom in his absence, and completely falls to pieces, because he's already got you to believe in this emotionally flailing, wildly vacillating character. And then there's the sad, pathetic end - Richard, rather like Hamlet, imprisoned by circumstances into having nothing to do but examine the inside of his own head, the impotent philosopher-prince. Doran gives his end an extra punch to the gut by having Richard murdered, not by a random nobleman introduced late on as in the text, but by Richard's erstwhile supporter and friend (and, Doran had hinted, possibly one of his gay lovers), York's son Aumerle, who is desperately trying to ingratiate himself with Bolingbroke...
As a production it really made me think - about the nature of kingship, the hollow crown, and the nature of identity. DT put across so powerfully the crisis of a man who has spent his entire life flamboyantly playing a part - the role of the king, the Lord's anointed, with the gorgeous clothes and the gold-painted nails and the bling and the absolute power - only to have it all taken away and be left staring into an abyss where he has nothing left, not even a name, and is forced to find out whether he has or is anything once the crown and sceptre are stripped away. And the political implications for Bolingbroke and the nobility of having decided that heredity is flexible, and kingship conditional, are left, like the departed spirit of Richard, hanging above them in the air...
If you get a chance to see one of the cinema broadcasts (I know Maia plans to) do go. Fan of DT and/or of Shakespeare or not, it will entertain you and move you and leave you thinking!
[Cross-posted at both LJ and DW - feel free to comment at either...]