London—Here’s a small sampling of what’s going on at local theaters, but seemingly in smaller numbers. To boost business many theaters are now offering free seat delivery of drinks and snacks. Folded one-page menus are wedged between the backs of seats. Go figure.
Twelfth Night – National (Olivia): Gender-bending barely begins to describe what’s going on with casting Shakespeare’s canon these days—what with, most prominently, Glenda Jackson returning to the stage here (and apparently soon in Manhattan) as King Lear and Harriet Walter headlining Phyllida Lloyd’s touring troupe of three other Bard faves. These days it’s more like pretzel-twisting, perhaps dictated in this hectic transgender-focused time by directors finally taking revenge on the Elizabethan-Jacobean men-in-women’s-roles tradition.
Which brings us to Simon Godwin’s stunning (shifting architectural set by Soutra Gilmour) Twelfth Night, wherein Malvolio is now Malvolia and played by hilariously somber Tamsin Greig—hilariously somber, that is, until she appears smiling in yellow-stockinged, cross-gartered outfit and looking like a dizzy Pierrette. (It’s Gilmour’s show-stopping get-up.)
Notice that in this Shakespeare-liberties-taking era, there are two kinds of character shape-shifting on tap—women playing male roles and, as here, women playing male roles now transformed into woman’s roles. (Elsewhere, we’ve seen at least one Propera so far. Maybe some Queen Lears are headed our way. How soon will we get Romea and Julian?)
Included in the cornucopia of wonderful surprises from Godwin’s vision are a female Feste (Doon Mackichan) and a female Fabian, er, Fabia (Imogen Doel). Among those playing roles as written—and adroit at it—are Viola (boyish Tamara Lawrance), Toby Belch (shifty-eyed Tim McMullan). Sir Anthony Aguecheek (swishy Daniel Rigby), Orsino (macho Oliver Chris) and Olivia (dark-eyed Phoebe Fox).
If there’s an odd note in this flashy, very musical (lots of original Michael Bruce tunes) Twelfth Night, it’s that Olivia is depicted as a woman hardly in extended mourning for her deceased brother. Oh, well, that’s still part of the overall fun.
******************
A Clockwork Orange – The Park: Given that Anthony Burgess created a transformed English for the thuggish, milk-drinking young men of A Clockwork Orange, he’d already established a distance between them and their reading audience.
So it isn’t surprising that the ascending-rocket pace stage version for the Action to the Word company, set in motion by artistic director Alexandra Spencer-Jones, makes following what’s happening from moment to moment, from thrown fist to thrown fist hard to follow.
Staged not in the round but in the rectangle at the North London venue, this Clockwork Orange is nevertheless spell-binding, and it has everything to do with the cast of nine hyper-muscular young men. They’re actors, of course, but the way they move during the 90 minutes they’re on few also suggests that they’re either dancers or gymnasts.
They’re super-buff as they go through their machinations in the dystopian future world Burgess imagined. Their first foray is a gang battle, and from there on they become caught up in any number of destructive encounters that may or may not make immediate sense.
The most menacing figure in the exercise with its unmistakable homoerotic elements is lead “droog” Alexander DeLarge (Jonno Davies), whose destructive spirit is perhaps tamed before the end. He’s something to see, all right, but attention-getter that he is, he’s equaled by fellow whirlwinds Luke Baverstock, Sebastian Charles, Simon Cotton, Damien Hasson, Philip Honeywell, James Smoker, Will Stokes and Tom Whitelock.
******************
The Comedy About a Bank Robbery – Criterion: Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields look to be in a groove. The Play That Goes Wrong, the writing trio’s first click, is still at the Duchess (and is soon to open in New York City with the authors in the cast). It’s a honey about what it says it’s about. In it a group of bumblers attempting to put on a smoothly done drawing-room opus don’t connect in the most constantly untidy ways.
They followed that with Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which its predecessor, I didn’t see—but you can imagine the funny flying problems that pile up.
Now they’re sailing into their second year with this newest anointed mishmash of a farce. Escaped con Mitch Ruscetti (Gareth Tempest) and accomplices Caprice Freeboys (Hannah Boyce) and Sam Monaghan (Steffan Lloyd-Evans) set out to steal, Topkapi-like, a diamond the size of a baseball from a Minneapolis bank, run by Robin Freeboys (Sean Kearn) where the throat-choking gem is awaiting monarch Ludwig’s collecting it.
They go through with the plan, too, with perilous dangling-from-ropes action—but not until after all manner of comic verbal and physical action piles up. Early on, there’s a “Who’s on First?” variation that gets the spectators howling, and after that the fun times proliferate. Also participating in the non-stop risibility—directed with a sure hand by Mark Bell with Nancy Zamit for Mischief Theatre—are Jeremy Lloyd, Mark Hammersley, Miles Yekinni, Tania Mathurin and Christopher Pizzey.
Suspending disbelief is required throughout, but patrons are more than happy to oblige. One cautionary note: As festivities start, pickpocket Sam Monaghan asks if an audience member will lend him a wallet. Think twice before handing yours over.
******************
Hamlet – Almeida: During the first act of his modern-day spin, director Robert Ickes gives the impression that people today have low-level affect. He decided that they—we—speak in modulated tones, rarely reacting to any cue for passion, as William Shakespeare might have described us.
On a Hildegard Bechtel set appointed with sleek modern furniture, a computer and a back wall where monitors often carry videoed action (Tal Yarmen’s work), Hamlet (Andrew Scott) and extended family chat among themselves, despite the kerfuffle resulting from Claudius (Angus Wright), having murdered the older Hamlet (David Rintoul) in order to marry widow Gertrude (Juliet Stevenson). The decibel level remains so low that Hamlet lovers, who’ve memorized the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, might still mistake the words “sleep no more” to suggest they “sleep some more.”
Apparently, to imply that Hamlet’s fury is reaching pressure point and that the others, including Ophelia (Jessica Brown Findlay), are following suit, Ickes introduces second-act shouting and screaming—so much so that sometimes actions take precedence over garbled words. Included is possibly the loudest bedroom scene ever offered, during which gunshots go off—Hamlet slaying hidden Polonius (Peter Wight). Curiously, that noise rouses no one else in the vicinity. The third act is a mix of loud and soft.
Every once in a while throughout this annoying revival, there are admirable moments. Scott, not often helped by the direction, does from time to time meld with the troubled young man he’s asked to play. Rintoul is a manly ghost and amusing gravedigger. Findlay has some delicate scenes. Not surprisingly, Stevenson is the stand-out. Her reporting Ophelia’s death is shattering.
To see or not to see? That is the question. The answer isn’t too favorable.
******************
Ugly Lies the Bone – National (Lyttelton): female soldier Jess (Kate Fleetwood) has returned from an Afghan tour greatly disfigured and in constant pain. She is offered a newly developed cure, which involves giving herself over to a virtual reality process. At first, she resists, all the while interacting elsewhere with caring sister Kacie (Olivia Darnley), ex-boyfriend Stevie (Ralf Little) and Kacie’s new throb Kelvin (Kris Marshall).
Lindsey Ferrentino’s 90-minute drama is disturbing and utterly poignant—and Fleetwood, severely deglamorized with every ache visible on her skin-grafted face, is commendable. But in Indhu Rubasingham’s production, the intimate drama is minimized within the huge half bowl Es Devlin has erected and on which video designer Luke Halls throws monumental scenes of a snowy cosmos.
Sometimes, directors run into trouble when staging intimate works on the capacious National stages. This is one of those times.