(no subject)
So I have just booked my first play of 2011... gosh that's a scary thought (As You Like It at the Camden Roundhouse when the RSC come and do their winter season in London *g*)
Anyway it's reminded me I've got five reviews I "owe" LJ or at least I owe myself because I like having complete records so I'm going to try and do them over the next couple of days even if they end up being quite short.
The first one goes back to the end of May which is kind of shameful *hides*
Henry VIII @ the Globe
So Henry VIII is another Shakespeare play to tick off my list (well half Shakespeare *g*) but I can kind of see why it isn't often played. It felt a tiny bit like a history lesson rather than a play perhaps because I know the "story" so well or... well I'm not entirely sure.
It's a very weird mix of public and private space bits jumping from the court scenes as Henry tries to divorce Catherine to little flirtatious bits with Anne etc. and I have to say the Globe had come up with a genius little device to make that work.
The main stage had a red carpet running round its edge that acted as a "corridor" so you could have a scene in a room in the middle of the stage and then someone would run out of the "door" and could have a whispered conversation or gossip out there.
They admitted in Talking Theatre afterwards it was somewhat inspired by the West Wing and they're walking and talking scenes <3
Dominic Rowan made a great Henry. He's a very commanding presence which helps and he knows how to treat a Globe audience I think. None of the performances were bad actually and I am HUGELY looking forward to seeing how Miranda Raison's Anne Boleyn here differs from when she gets to play her again in Howard Brenton's new play later in the season.
The pageantry was wonderfully done, all of the ceremony and the gorgeous costumes contrasting with (for example) Catherine's hideously painful death.
It's just that I'm still not sure it works entirely as a play... which really doesn't help.
It also, incidentally, rained on me again making it two Globe performances in a row I had to go dry off before Talking Theatre. It was MUCH less wet than Macbeth though thankfully.
In the Talking Theatre we had Dominic Rowan and Miranda Raison and Jessica Swale who was an Associate Director (? or whatever it is they called her, she helped Direct it mostly I think to learn for when she gets to be the actual Director for Bedlam later in the season)
They talked a lot about trying to make the private and public spaces seem different and about playing to a Globe audience (and how scary it is and how invigorating it is which are things that always come up *G*) Miranda Raison said she was really glad to be on stage and that although she enjoys all acting... well there was a definite drift towards her preferring stage I think though she did say it was scary.
And then there was a bunch of discussion about which bits are Fletcher and which bits are Shakespeare and Miranda and Dominic admitted that the cast had slipped into an in-joke where any line that was difficult to say or that someone forgot was immediately blamed on Fletcher *g*
Dominic said, and I haven't checked this, that they think Shakespeare did a lot of the "set up" dialogue and Fletcher got most of the soliloquies and he thought Fletcher had a bit of a tendency towards overly long sentences that made them genuinely quite difficult lines to say. He also pointed out that by this point in his career Shakespeare had a very good feel for how people speak and how actors work so he thinks claiming the "easy to play" bits as Shakespeare is actually very sensible.
(one review down and four to go!)
Anyway it's reminded me I've got five reviews I "owe" LJ or at least I owe myself because I like having complete records so I'm going to try and do them over the next couple of days even if they end up being quite short.
The first one goes back to the end of May which is kind of shameful *hides*
Henry VIII @ the Globe
So Henry VIII is another Shakespeare play to tick off my list (well half Shakespeare *g*) but I can kind of see why it isn't often played. It felt a tiny bit like a history lesson rather than a play perhaps because I know the "story" so well or... well I'm not entirely sure.
It's a very weird mix of public and private space bits jumping from the court scenes as Henry tries to divorce Catherine to little flirtatious bits with Anne etc. and I have to say the Globe had come up with a genius little device to make that work.
The main stage had a red carpet running round its edge that acted as a "corridor" so you could have a scene in a room in the middle of the stage and then someone would run out of the "door" and could have a whispered conversation or gossip out there.
They admitted in Talking Theatre afterwards it was somewhat inspired by the West Wing and they're walking and talking scenes <3
Dominic Rowan made a great Henry. He's a very commanding presence which helps and he knows how to treat a Globe audience I think. None of the performances were bad actually and I am HUGELY looking forward to seeing how Miranda Raison's Anne Boleyn here differs from when she gets to play her again in Howard Brenton's new play later in the season.
The pageantry was wonderfully done, all of the ceremony and the gorgeous costumes contrasting with (for example) Catherine's hideously painful death.
It's just that I'm still not sure it works entirely as a play... which really doesn't help.
It also, incidentally, rained on me again making it two Globe performances in a row I had to go dry off before Talking Theatre. It was MUCH less wet than Macbeth though thankfully.
In the Talking Theatre we had Dominic Rowan and Miranda Raison and Jessica Swale who was an Associate Director (? or whatever it is they called her, she helped Direct it mostly I think to learn for when she gets to be the actual Director for Bedlam later in the season)
They talked a lot about trying to make the private and public spaces seem different and about playing to a Globe audience (and how scary it is and how invigorating it is which are things that always come up *G*) Miranda Raison said she was really glad to be on stage and that although she enjoys all acting... well there was a definite drift towards her preferring stage I think though she did say it was scary.
And then there was a bunch of discussion about which bits are Fletcher and which bits are Shakespeare and Miranda and Dominic admitted that the cast had slipped into an in-joke where any line that was difficult to say or that someone forgot was immediately blamed on Fletcher *g*
Dominic said, and I haven't checked this, that they think Shakespeare did a lot of the "set up" dialogue and Fletcher got most of the soliloquies and he thought Fletcher had a bit of a tendency towards overly long sentences that made them genuinely quite difficult lines to say. He also pointed out that by this point in his career Shakespeare had a very good feel for how people speak and how actors work so he thinks claiming the "easy to play" bits as Shakespeare is actually very sensible.
(one review down and four to go!)