A Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare's Globe

A new Globe season. The start of the summer. (Only a little rain). And a new artistic director – with A Midsummer Night’s Dream the first production under Emma Rice’s leadership, and also the first production directed by her at the Globe.

She’s come from Kneehigh, and there were some familiar Kneehigh faces in this – particularly Puck (Katy Owen), who was very funny as the young servant Robert in Kneehigh’s wonderful Rebecca last year. She’s equally funny as Puck in this – mischievous, naughty, dangerous and fun, playing gleefully with both the actors and the audience. And Bottom (Ewan Wardrop) was another familiar face from Kneehigh who became an instant Globe favourite.

There were also echoes of Kneehigh’s style in the music, dancing, aerial work, and general air of irreverence in this A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Special mention to the Changeling puppet, which was quite beautiful too.

I can see what this production is intended to be – a riot of fun and colour and wildness. I’m thinking something like a Baz Luhrmann film live, on stage, in the Globe space. But it needed to be pacier to really achieve that wildness. I dare say the pace will pick up as the run goes on.

What worked particularly well were the scenes with the lovers. I really like the male Helena – ‘Helenus’ – the gender switch brought something new to the dynamic. And all four lovers had great chemistry and comic timing. They were recognisably of our world and our time (the Hoxton hipster references went down well, and I enjoyed the Beyoncé dance).

In fact, all the dancing was fabulous – from the fairies’ slightly terrifying moves right through to the joyous Bollywood-inspired jig at the end.

But am I allowed one quibble, as someone who goes to the Globe a fair bit? I know I probably sound like a bore, but I found the amplification of the actors’ speaking voices quite disconcerting. I didn’t mind it for the music, but for the dialogue it seemed unnecessary and took away from the intimacy of the Globe space. When you’re standing in the yard, sometimes actors talk directly to you - or sometimes someone tall is standing in front of you and you can’t see who’s talking, so you rely on your ears to tell you where to crane to look. When their voices are coming from somewhere other than their bodies, neither of those things work.

In a production that was otherwise really proudly physical – with some imaginative and brilliant movement – it seemed strange that the voice was treated as separate from that physicality. The voice is part of the body too.

But hey, that’s a minor quibble. It’s exciting to see new things at the Globe. New ideas, new approaches, new faces. And I really enjoyed A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which I saw at the matinée on 21^st May 2016). It was naughty, irreverent, imaginative and fun, and – most importantly for a comedy – it was funny.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the season!

Sunny Afternoon - Harold Pinter Theatre

People are often a bit snobby about so-called ‘jukebox musicals’. But Sunny Afternoon is not one that shoehorns songs into an unlikely story. It uses songs by The Kinks to tell the (loosely factual) story of the band’s experiences in the 60s. And it does it really well.

A lot of The Kinks’ songs have a narrative style anyway, so these work well in a musical. The band within the story also play songs onstage as a band. So nothing here feels forced or shoehorned in.

The show’s clearly aware of the danger, though, and makes no bones about the artifice required for a musical. It’s established early on that Ray Davies often thinks and communicates through song, and there’s a great line mid-song where his wife asks him to stop singing so they can have a proper conversation. But, often in this show, the ‘proper conversations’ do take place in song. Just see the wonderful a capella ‘Days’ or the moment of rapprochement between the brothers. The songs fold into the story as if they were written especially for it.

All of the cast of Sunny Afternoon play instruments (guitars, drums, trombones) as well as acting and singing. And the band’s instruments and mic stands are at the back of the stage throughout, ready to be used at any moment. It makes it an exhilarating performance – part theatre, part gig. In fact, like Orpheus at BAC, some of the audience are sat at tables in the auditorium, and everyone’s encouraged to get to their feet and dance at the end.

I suppose it’s one way to ensure a standing ovation at every performance.

The great thing about the cast in Sunny Afternoon, too, is that they don’t sing as if they’re in a musical. They sing as if they’re in a band. They give high energy yet nuanced performances which fit the style of The Kinks perfectly.

I’ve always appreciated The Kinks’ music – the witty melancholy of the lyrics combining with that distinctive guitar band sound. To me, as a nineties kid, they sounded like Britpop 30 years early. At the mid-week matinée I went to (on 25^th November 2015), I was one of the younger audience members. Most people there were of the baby boomer generation. Maybe for them the show was powered by nostalgia, but for me it was an exciting new show. In jukebox musical terms, it’s probably closer to Buddy than to Mamma Mia, but better than either as far as I’m concerned.

Very much worth seeing. I’ve been singing Kinks song ever since. (All day and all of the night, you might say).

Bakkhai - Almeida Theatre

Intense would be the word for this, I think.

Bakkhai at the Almeida (8^th August 2015): three male actors playing the main roles; a chorus of women speaking and singing in unison; a sparse set; no interval; words and music woven into some sort of spell of intensity.

It wasn’t all intense. There were moments of levity. Take Ben Whishaw’s androgyny contrasting with the sight of Bertie Carvel in drag, for instance, who was evidently playing it for laughs to begin with. Having seen Carvel in the RSC’s Matilda a few years ago, there was a definite hint of Miss Trunchbull lingering here.

I saw the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of The Bacchae (same story, different spelling) in 2007, and from what I remember, it was very different to this. That had a sense of spectacle, violence and exhilaration, while the Almeida’s Bakkhai was much quieter in comparison. More than being about excess, this was about control, in various forms.

Control and intensity and a sense of unease.

Rebecca - Kneehigh

I’ve not read the novel or seen any other adaptations of it, so I was coming to Rebecca fresh. But regardless of my knowledge of the book, it’s clear that Kneehigh’s stage production of Rebecca is a very inventive adaptation.

As soon as you see the set, you know you’re in for something special. Part grand house in ruins; part seashore; broken staircases running across the stage. And the boat looming centre-stage throughout the first half, reminding us always that Rebecca’s absence is a very real presence in the house.

If any of the audience at Eastbourne’s Devonshire Park Theatre (15^th April 2015) was expecting a straight adaptation, with ‘realistic’ sets and the usual period drama tropes, they would have been taken by surprise by Kneehigh’s Rebecca.

This is a much more stylised adaptation. Set, sound, lighting, puppetry and music all combine to tell the tale and draw out the themes. Such as the combination of jazz music on a gramophone and sea shanties being played by the actor-musicians: the clash of the sophisticated and the elemental.

Obviously if you’ve seen Kneehigh before, or know them by reputation, then you know that they’re nothing if not inventive. Rebecca features their trademark music, comedy and playfulness and ties these up in a full on, dark, ambitious production.

I remember seeing Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge in the cinema when it came out, and having to take a moment at the end just to recover from the force of the visual and aural whirlwind that had just swept around me.

I felt a bit like that at the end of Rebecca.

Very much worth seeing.

Shakespeare in Love - Noel Coward Theatre

Clever, fast-paced, energetically played and slickly mounted, this stage adaptation of the film Shakespeare in Love is worth seeing before it closes. I caught it on Saturday 11^th April 2015.

Like the film, the play is littered with references to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Other well-known playwrights and actors of the period feature as characters – as do monarchs, come to that. The audience is expected to know these references and to recognise them quickly. The pace does not let up for a moment.

Being a regular Globe-goer, I appreciated how the set on the stage of the Noel Coward Theatre cleverly mimicked the Elizabethan-style theatre. The scenes where we were watching the characters backstage (in the foreground) looking out onto the actors onstage were particularly well done.

(It perhaps goes without saying that I thought the way the play within a play was handled here was much better than in Peter Pan Goes Wrong).

With Elizabethan-style music and a jig at the end of the play, Shakespeare in Love consciously echoes the conventions of Elizabethan theatre. I couldn’t help thinking how fun it would be to see this put on at the Globe. Some of the cleverness of the set might have to be jettisoned, but it would bring the kind of immediacy and sense of fun to the production that is a struggle to achieve in a proscenium arch theatre.

As it is, though, Shakespeare in Love has a pretty good go at recreating that atmosphere, and it’s undoubtedly a clever, witty show.

Farinelli and the King - Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe

I went to see the last performance of Farinelli and the King at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on Sunday 8^th March 2015, and I haven’t had much time to write about it since. So sorry this is rather short!

This was a strange, sad little play – both humorous and melancholy. Musing on the relationship between dreams and reality, madness and reason, the physical and the metaphysical, the court and the forest, private and public.

The dual casting of Farinelli – singer (William Purefoy) and actor (Sam Crane) playing the same role – only heightened this sense of duality. The voice as separate from the man.

And surely the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is the ideal setting for this play. Close, candlelit, intimate, but with obscured sightlines meaning you could only ever see part of the action. A wonderful acoustic, too – important for the music.

It was my first visit to the Globe’s indoor theatre and it felt a little strange coming to the Globe and not worrying about the weather. It’s another magical space, though. And it’s always a pleasure to see Mark Rylance do his thing. Especially here.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - The Royal Ballet

Is there a better start to a performance than the sound of an orchestra tuning up? That single A note and then the rest of the instruments joining in… And then the conductor comes on and we all applaud and we’re off!

The Royal Ballet’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (at the Royal Opera House Dec 2014) has all the trappings of a traditional ballet, which it at once subverts and enjoys beautifully. The music and choreography feel as if they would fit in one of the classics, at times nodding to ballets such as Swan Lake in an affectionate pastiche.

The notorious multiple curtain calls of a ballet are also in some evidence here – but they are lampooned by the Queen of Hearts’ unashamed milking of the audience applause at the end of her solos.

It’s interesting that the Queen of Hearts (Zenaida Yanowsky) is the only one to break the fourth wall and acknowledge the audience’s presence mid-story. Twice, still perfectly in character, she encourages the audience to applaud more – and then signals when to stop. Perhaps inevitably, she’s the dancer who gets the biggest cheer of the night at the final curtain call.

But then who would have thought that a classical ballet could be so funny? The Queen of Hearts, in particular, is a great comic creation, but Alice (Sarah Lamb), the White Rabbit (Ricardo Cervera), and others all prompt laughs too. It’s all so perfectly choreographed and performed, it seems effortless in managing to be both funny and beautiful, traditional and new.

And it’s imaginatively put together besides the actual dancing and music too. The use of projections and puppetry in telling this dreamlike tale are incredibly effective, the floating Cheshire Cat is inspired, and the costumes (particularly the tutus in the shape of suits of cards) are very clever.

The story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been adapted to fit a ballet style and structure in this production. So we have the usual characters and set pieces like the Mad Hatter’s tea party (in this ballet the Mad Hatter tap dances!), but we also have a framing narrative (or two) and a bit of a love story as well. We see roles being doubled up – along the lines of Hook/Mr Darling in Peter Pan, here we have Queen of Hearts/Mother – and the bringing of part of the story into the present day provides another fresh angle.

All of this draws on and feeds into the sense of Alice in Wonderland as a sort of modern myth or folk tale. Like Peter Pan, the story and characters are so well known that they can be shaped and pulled any which way and still feed back into the myth. The ‘original’ almost ceases to matter when a story has permeated the culture to such an extent. Alice is like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty now – she’s in a book, a Disney film, a ballet. A story that gets retold. Re-imagined. And surely that’s the best any story can hope for?

Bleak House - The Pantaloons

Full of fun, full of pathos, full of character. This adaptation of Dickens’ Bleak House by The Pantaloons (performed at Eastbourne’s Underground Theatre on 25^th October 2014) was a treat from start to finish.

In the vein of their comprehensive(ish) The Canterbury Tales, The Pantaloons promised to present all 67 chapters of the novel Bleak House on stage. And, although they sometimes forgot which chapter number they were up to, they did not disappoint. With some scenes lingered over and some chapters dispatched in a sentence, the cast of five swept us through the story and the multitude of characters with charm and flair.

I read Bleak House when I was at university, and I watched the BBC’s rather brilliant 2005 adaptation not long after reading the book, so I inevitably started the evening with that version in mind. But it didn’t take long for me to forget all about it.

Dickens’ larger than life characters suit The Pantaloons’ style perfectly – and we were treated to some classic performances in Bleak House. Ross Drury in the guise of Krook, Hortense or Guppy only had to walk on stage to get a laugh, and the Smallweed family were another characterful highlight.

But it wasn’t just the broader characters who made the evening so memorable. The quieter parts and more poignant moments were equally well played. As the deaths mounted and truths unravelled in the second half, the transitions between comedy and pathos were seamless.

The background music and songs helped build this atmosphere: sometimes haunting, sometimes used to comedic effect, and sometimes with self-referential lyrics telling us how many chapters until the interval. My favourite chapter from the book (the spontaneous combustion scene, obviously) was also a great moment on stage; the tension building – with help from the music and lighting – to a comedy-horror climax that ended the first half.

Finally, I really ought to give a mention to the audience, who – as always in a Pantaloons show – played a big part in making the evening an entertaining one. (It was very sweet of the cast to comment on as much at the end of the performance too – always nice to feel appreciated as an audience!).

The Pantaloons are experts at audience interaction and during the course of this performance of Bleak House they good-naturedly poked fun at two particular audience members: an ‘inebriated actor’ who had also been in the audience at their History of Britain in the summer, and a man called Owen. When the time came in the plot for a murderer to be revealed, a dramatic pause was left. With perfect timing, an unknown audience member called out: “It was Owen!”

I enjoyed that, and The Pantaloons seemed to as well. And the same goes for the whole of Bleak House. A treat from start to finish.


The Pantaloons are currently on tour with Bleak House - visit their website www.thepantaloons.co.uk for more info.

Once - The Phoenix Theatre

All these productions requiring actor-musicians; one wonders how actors who don’t play an instrument find any work at all...!

Once is not your average musical. There are no show tunes. No jazz hands. It’s not full of noise and spectacle. If you came to this expecting a Hairspray or a Wicked, you might go away feeling a little disappointed. Or you might go away unexpectedly delighted, depending on your musical tastes.

I had some idea of what to expect, as I’d seen the film of Once (before it was turned into a musical). I knew it was a very understated film – and it has been translated into a very understated musical. I liked it – but I know a few musical theatre fans who would probably not enjoy it so much.

The music is all slightly folky, slightly indie. I was reminded of Damien Rice: the lead actor’s delivery was similar; the female harmonies layered on top were reminiscent of his tracks; and the songs themselves had the same kind of low-key, bittersweet, melancholy kind of feel. I can imagine this musical attracting quite a different audience from a lot of West End shows.

But whoever the audience was, at the end of the matinee performance I saw on 16^th November 2013, they gave the cast a substantial standing ovation at the end of the show.

I heard people commenting on how much like real life it was (not something you’d associate with most musical theatre). And, for all its theatricality, it did feel like Once was striving for a sense of authenticity.

On the incoming, audience members bought drinks from the onstage bar. They milled about in their coats on the stage as the cast started playing in a folk jam session, well-choreographed to appear spontaneous. As the audience members were gradually ushered to their seats, the jam session seamlessly turned into the start of the play. The lights went down only after we’d all already fallen silent, and the bar remained the set for the whole piece, regardless of where the action was supposed to be taking place.

Somehow this acknowledgement of its own artifice – this very lack of fourth wall-style realism in the set – this somehow added to that sense of authenticity. As if, just like the audience, the characters were real people treading those boards and in that same bar.

That the actors were playing instruments on stage helped too. When several strings on the lead actor’s guitar went during a song, it felt raw and powerful and real.

Of course, Once is every bit as scripted, sculpted and choreographed as any other musical – but it does feel different. The story, the music, the performances, the set – Once seems to speak in a different language from most musicals. In some ways, you could see it as doing something similar to what The Beggar’s Opera did a few hundred years ago: putting recognisable characters from the here and now on stage and telling their stories with music from the here and now.

A folk opera for our times, perhaps. Or an indie musical. Either way, it’s quite a trick to pull off.

Harlequin Goes to the Moon - Rude Mechanical Theatre Company

Thursday 1^st August 2013. Outdoor theatre was made for evenings like this. How often does it happen, in England, that you don’t need to put on a coat or wrap yourself up in a blanket even after the interval, when the sun has gone down?

I chose a good night to go and see the Rude Mechanicals perform their latest play Harlequin Goes to the Moon.

This was the second piece of theatre I’ve seen recently that was about love, loss, and travelling into space. (See also Something Very Far Away at the Unicorn Theatre). The idea of travelling far away to find what is lost was central to both pieces. It’s an effective theme; implicitly connecting the personal with the universal.

In Harlequin Goes to the Moon, the character of Paglia believes that all the lost things are kept in bottles on the moon. His idea is dismissed by others, but this hopeful little play suggests that lost things can be rediscovered. Characters who seemed beyond hope find a way to be happy in the world. And yet there is also the poignant acknowledgement that not everyone can get what they want. Some things remain out of reach, on the moon.

A few years ago, I was at a music festival, and there was a ‘tree of lost things’ on the site. On paper tags, people wrote down what they had lost (some literal, some philosophical), and tied them to the tree. These tags became like leaves on the tree, and it remains one of my most vivid memories of the festival.

In the programme for Harlequin Goes to the Moon, the audience is encouraged to do something similar. We’re asked to write what we have lost on a slip of paper and put it into one of the bottles that hang from the trees on the stage.

I must admit, I didn’t see anyone doing this from where I was sitting, but it was an invitation that tied in with the Rude Mechanicals’ idea of community. Beyond the audience interactions and the cast improvising around local distractions (eg. being upstaged by a cat wandering across the set), the Rude Mechanicals seem to work hard to build relationships with their audiences and with the communities they visit.

Another note in the programme tells us that the company doesn’t search for venues by thinking “this would be a good place to have a show”. Rather, they start by thinking who the audience will be and which venue would be best for that audience. They say: “What matters is that it is where that community meet and do things.”

It’s rather strange to think of a group of commedia dell’arte inspired actor-musicians performing in a modern recreation ground in the south of England. And yet apparently it works for the Rude Mechanicals.

As with The Pantaloons and Little Bulb, the Rude Mechanicals ask a lot from their actors. And they’re a multi-talented bunch: acting, singing, playing instruments, improvising about cats... Even the stage manager has a speaking/playing part in this piece.

So I’m glad that the sun has been shining more than usual this summer. Hopefully it means that more people will get a chance to see them.

The Rude Mechanicals are on tour until August 11^th so catch them while you can! http://www.therudemechanicaltheatre.co.uk/

Gabriel - Shakespeare's Globe

On Saturday 20^th July at 2pm, I went to see Gabriel at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was billed as ‘An entertainment with trumpet’ and that’s exactly what it was. It was entertaining. There were trumpets.

Gabriel is a new play, which came about because the trumpeter Alison Balsom wanted to play at the Globe. Or that’s what I read in the programme, anyway. The play featured a cast of Globe actors (most of the same cast as were in The Tempest) alongside musicians from the English Concert, and music was very much at the heart of the piece.

The play was structured as a series of miniature stories from the period when William and Mary were on the throne and Purcell was writing music for the trumpet. While the cast brought all the characters vividly to life, I did feel that it could have done with something apart from the music to pull the stories together.

I’ve seen ‘compilation’ shows like this before (The Pantaloons’ Canterbury Tales and Grimm Fairy Tales spring to mind), and these sort of pieces seem to work better if the audience is given a clear reason for the bitty structure. Why are we hopping from one tale to the next? Why should I care about these new characters? What has this tale got to do with the last one?

But despite this little niggle, Gabriel really was very enjoyable. The bawdy humour was fun. I loved the ‘true stories’ told by the waterman (Sam Cox) in the first half and enjoyed the acting lesson given by Kate (Jessie Buckley) in the second half. The reference to A Midsummer Night’s Dream was nicely done, and I did giggle at the cardboard cut-out London landmarks being run across the stage to signify a boat’s progress along the Thames.

And the music was beautiful. It was all so evocatively played and sung that it seemed to bring a real stillness to the Globe. When, near the end, the actors shared out and passed sheets of music around the stage, it was a wonderful symbol of the sense of sharing that comes from experiencing music and theatre in a space like the Globe.

We went to the Talking Theatre afterwards, which featured Jessie Buckley and Richard Riddell from the cast, and which was almost as entertaining as the play itself. The talk started as a formal question and answer session, where the cast members spoke (amongst other things) about the unique experience of performing at the Globe, and how theatre is all about ‘sharing stories’.

And then somehow this sense of sharing seemed to spread out amongst the audience, and stories were shared amongst the Talking Theatre group. We heard from a lady who’s been to see this year's production of The Tempest 12 times, from a young boy who’s learning to play the trumpet, and from an 84 year old lady who has been going to the Globe as a ‘groundling’ since 1997. She’s giving a talk at her local WI about her Globe experiences, apparently. I kind of want to go.

So my experience of going to see Gabriel ended on a communal sort of note, with the audience just as important as the cast in making the afternoon what it was. Sharing stories. I like that.

Orpheus - Little Bulb Theatre / Battersea Arts Centre

A re-telling of a Greek myth. An evening of gypsy jazz in a Parisian music hall. An afternoon in the Grand Hall of the Battersea Arts Centre.

That’s already quite a lot of layers, without throwing in silent movies, ballet, food, choral music and all sorts of other things too.

I went to see the matinee of Little Bulb Theatre’s production of Orpheus at the Battersea Arts Centre on 20^th April, and came from the London sunshine into a Parisian-style bar/cafe area before reaching the Grand Hall itself.

Like Secret Cinema, this piece of theatre was not going to be confined to the stage or even to the auditorium. Yes, most of the music and acting took place on or near the stage, but the menu of French cuisine being served – and the accompanying wafts of garlic across the room – meant that the audience could not only watch and listen, but also smell, taste and touch the Parisian music hall setting.

We were lucky enough to be shown to a table in the auditorium that was pretty close to the stage. In our cabaret-style seats with our drinks on the table in front of us, it felt almost more like going to a gig in a pub than to the theatre.

In fact, there was a moment after the interval – when the cast were showing off their impressive musicianship in the ‘Musical Interlude’ – that I almost forgot I was at the theatre at all. This was suddenly a gig – a very good one at that – and I’d have happily listened to their gypsy jazz all afternoon.

Except, no I wouldn’t, because then I’d have missed Orpheus.

Perhaps I should explain. The central premise of this production is that Django Reinhardt, the legendary gypsy jazz guitarist, is cast in a Parisian music hall production of Orpheus. So we are told the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as if it is being presented to us by French musicians and performers of the 1930s.

Apart from the music, the story of Orpheus is largely told in silent movie style, with exaggerated mime acting and large captions projected on the stage. Orpheus/Django himself (Dominic Conway) never utters a word throughout the whole piece, using only gesture and guitar to communicate. I heard more than one audience member say that they were reminded of the film ‘The Artist’.

Our Edith Piaf-alike Eurydice (Eugenie Pastor) compères the evening, and the two leads are supported by a cast of actor-musicians who throw ballet parodies, French stereotypes, puppet animals, and some accomplished choral singing in to the mix as well.

Aside from the gypsy jazz (vibrantly played by the whole cast), one of the highlights for me was the mesmerising counter-tenor vocal of Persephone (Tom Penn), which suddenly ramped up the emotional factor and reminded us that we weren’t just here for the jazz.

Lastly, I want to give a mention to the front of house staff at BAC, who were friendly, warm and welcoming, and who really seemed like they were enjoying themselves and enjoying the production.

This wasn’t just a remote piece of theatre on a stage but a living, all-encompassing event.