Love’s Labour’s Lost – RSC

Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey announce their arrival as the new co-directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company with a year long season of work with serious star power, bringing the RSC back into the spotlight with canny marketing campaigns that stretch as far as London luring audience members onto the train to Stratford. Emily Burns’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost marks the start of a new era in Stratford in so many ways and much can be read into the approach taken to this revival and what that will mean for the promising year ahead. Setting out its stall with a show that is both frothy light yet with deep shade wrapped in a hugely enjoyable comedy package performed by a group of very fine young actors, there is a definite vigour and purpose in this new company that has set a high bar for the rest of the season.

Burns starts with a contemporary setting, a sometime hurdle for Shakespeare adaptations that can feel a little forced into a pointless period piece that may offer nice visuals but little substance in the morality and psychology of the play. But here there is a much clearer perspective on the layers of ingrained behaviour and entitlement that shape activities in Love’s Labour’s Lost placing the characters in a seeming haven, a retreat / luxury spa away from the political concerns and issues that shape their lives. But beneath the surface, there are class, wealth and nationality barriers that come between the characters in ways that act as subtle judgments leading to a more satisfactory conclusion to the play – Shakespeare’s original conclusion, but emphasising some of the play’s less savoury undertones and implications.

The primary commentary focuses on the relationship between the four couples who fall for each other in the few days they spend free from their wider cares. The men are scholars who reluctantly renounce women for a year to focus on their studies while the women are on a diplomatic mission to negotiate the return of some land, and while this seriousness of purpose drives the top layer of the play, the throwing off of these plans as inconvenient romance alters their intent becomes the comedy centrepiece. Burns’s approach does two quite interesting things, it gives the female characters, led by the spirited Rosaline and Princess, greater agency and self-sufficiency in the plot suggesting they may not reciprocate the ardent emotions expressed by their lovers, and then pushes the point further by making the men quite unworthy of them.

Love’s Labour’s Lost is quite a laddish play for a while with Berowne, King Ferdinand, Dumaine and Longaville party boys whose initial reluctance to forswear female company and excess in order to improve their minds is couched in ego. The group has charm but they brag and boast, assuming that all women must desire them and look to have a good time at the expense of others. And Burns draws this attitude out across the show as they use the clown Costard to set plots in motion, actively belittle and betray each other as well as treating the hotel’s largely international staff with some contempt, particularly scorning them during the Nine Worthies performance that anticipates the show’s finale. As they separately betray their vow of abstinence and reveal their secret attractions to the Princess, Rosaline, Katherine and Maria, the men club together, ready to prowl and certain they will get what they want. This is interesting work from the RSC company, placing what could be sympathetic characters in a slightly toxic light, making them seem shallow and perhaps more interested in the act of conquest than the fully-rounded women they may win.

One of the finest scenes of this interpretation uses Shakespeare’s highly comic scenario to reinforce this perspective. In overly romantic garb, dressed as knights in full metal armour performing an excruciatingly hilarious Backstreet Boys number, the four men are tricked into wooing the wrong ladies, deceived by the gifts they have sent ahead which have been secretly swapped to test their true feelings. That none of the men propose to the correct women makes perfect sense of the less edifying depiction of Berowne and his friend and the surface impression of love that they offer with its flowery verse and excessive demonstration of feeling that Burns’s production presents – how can they profess to love deeply when they cannot recognise their beloved in a crowd of four? With Shakespeare’s more ambiguous ending leaving the men ultimately unsatisfied and needing to prove their devotion, Burns’s show leaves the audience wondering if any of these not irredeemable but fairly shallow men will really remember this new vow in 12 months time.

What makes this such a successful interpretation is the equal strength of the female characters whose cool disinterest in their swains creates an aura of cynicism that suits the tone of the show. One of the ways that Shakespeare frames this story is having the men decide which lady they want and letting the ‘games’ begin, but there is never any suggestion in the text that the women necessarily desire the man that pursues them, as though they have no choice in the matter. So Burns’s production leaves plenty of room for ambiguity; perhaps they enjoy the attention or their heads are momentarily turned by the ardent verses they receive yet there is never a moment when the friends lose their hearts entirely, always conscious not only of their own personal value as a Princess and her retinue but also of the potential deception being acted upon them by young men who play at being in love. By the end, the interpretation even implies that for the women, these relationships merely passed the time or were part of a last hurrah before they return to their official political and monarchical duties.

Love’s Labour’s Lost also has two classes of character – masters and servants – who are given quite different characteristics and status in this production, largely interacting within their own groups throughout. The servants here are reimagined as hotel and spa workers, Jaquenetta a country wench becoming a maid while her beau Don Armado is the exuberant tennis coach who, along with their fellow workers, exist quite separately from the rich and pampered guests they take care of. It is subtle but adds a useful extra layer of narrative to the behaviours and divisions explored in the show, underscoring some of the entitled attitudes and thoughtlessness of Berowne’s group whose jauntiness and self-interest is nicely undercut by the suggestion of poorly paid and poorly used working characters they mock later in the story.

So while this new RSC production of Love’s Labour’s Lost is hugely entertaining there is some really interesting messaging sewn through the adaptation that slightly repositions Shakespeare’s text and draws out different contemporary resonance that takes the story through to a more poignant finale moment. This is a really strong conclusion, a sudden but successful change of tone that firmly ends the revels and takes the characters back to their real lives. As the bubble bursts, the management of these scenes is very effective, using a combination of music, lighting and performance to show how one life is shed and a new future adopted. There are quiet nods here to Henry IV and Henry V in the exploration of monarchical ceremony and persona, what it means to throw off a youthful glee and evolve rapidly into a more sober ruler. Burns’s staging of the final moment in particular is really thoughtful about the different dynamics that have worked across the play, where individual desire and satisfaction gives way to collective need and the excesses of the holiday spirit are consumed by dignity and authority that, perhaps, widens the gap between the would-be lovers even further.

In his first major leading role on stage, Luke Thompson gets to showcase the range that has underpinned his training in high-quality Shakespeare productions from Julius Caesar to Hamlet and King Lear. The comedy of Love’s Labour’s Lost and visual approach that Burns has used create opportunities for sparky word play and physical humour that Thompson manages with ease, capturing the comfortable machismo of his character, the arrogant charm that makes Berowne appealing but also overly certain of himself and his appeal to any woman he sets his sights on. Thompson’s gift as an actor has always been an ability to turn the tone of his performance in a moment and here Berowne’s applications to Rosaline are played as heartfelt and true, the brusk but witty barbs they trade leading into a sincerity of meaning beneath the florid language. And although Berowne’s protestations are not entirely believed, Thompson’s performance shows his progression across the story, a sense of his being struck and then chastened by the emotion that, of all the men in the play, has the greatest chance of lasting a year.

Ioanna Kimbrook is a very collected Rosaline, highly cynical about the relationships being formed and unwilling to betray too much of her own feeling. There are some enjoyable scenes of embarrassment on the golf course as a love letter is read out in front of her giggling companions and the comic timing of the exchange of tokens when the men profess love to the wrong person is a subplot that Rosaline orchestrates well and with clarity for the audience. A similar note of sincerity creeps into Kimbrook’s performance as Berowne’s persistence starts to make an impact, told through stolen glances, even though Rosaline is determined to remain aloof from him, and the chemistry with Thompson hints at a future Beatrice and Benedick.

Love’s Labour’s Lost is an ensemble comedy and there is great support all round from the Princess (Melanie-Joyce Bermude) and her retinue, Sarita Garbony and Amy Griffiths, taking agency from their character roles to create a collection of distinct and often very funny performances. Berowne’s pals Ferdinand (Abiola Owokonirna), Dumaine (Brandon Bassir) and Longaville (Eric Stroud) are a good match for their female counterparts and each get their chance to shine in the comedy – the Barbershop quartet of knights will certainly live long in theatre memory. Managing the diplomacy, Jordan Metcalfe’s Boyet slowly adjusts to the steamy atmosphere, ultimately representing the Princess but wanting to be one of the boys, while there is much to enjoy in Marienella Phillips role as Jacquenetta and Jack Bardoe’s excessively silly Don Armado.

Although a respect for and understanding of Shakespeare’s texts goes without saying, it is a bold start to the new management of the RSC, heralding a playfulness and willingness to innovate that will lure audiences back to Stratford once more and it is notable that the very first words spoken in this new era are not performed in English. Emily Burns’s Love’s Labour’s Lost has set a standard for the rest of this season with a zesty young cast delivering a hugely entertaining but thoughtful comedy. With more early career talent heading to Stratford including Alfred Enoch in Pericles and a much anticipated Hamlet from Luke Thallon, you may find yourself on the train to the RSC a few times in 2024.

Love’s Labour’s Lost is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon until 18 May with tickets from £8. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

London Tide – National Theatre

Brutish fathers, money and class, Dickens’s impression of London bisected by the River Thames is a dark and unforgiving place often lawless and filled with people yearning for a better life they will never have, at least not without considerable suffering along the way. Based on the novel Our Mutual Friend, Ben Power’s adaptation for the National Theatre takes the bare bones of a complex story and nicely whittles it down to three intersecting narratives that director Ian Rickson applies a representative semi-staging to, bringing forward the story of river corpses, murder and how untimely death alters the fortunes of the living. Where London Tide falters is in its musical element, forgettable songs by PJ Harvey that may sweep up some of the internal monologue that Power has necessarily excised from Dickens’s characters to bring this adaptation in under 3 hours of performance time (plus interval) but they stop the show in all the wrong ways, draining the tension and flooding the architecture with needless ballast that should be tipped overboard.

Dickens may be cumbersome to read but often makes for highly entertaining and often sprightly stage and screen translations. The central morality of Dickens’s stories, the lack of romanticism about the dubiety of human behaviour and the grotesque, often larger than life pettiness makes for excellent visual drama as well as promising opportunity for actors with meaty character roles and lovelorn but put upon leads. Part of their success is the necessary brevity that adapting such long works brings, taking dense passages of text and creating an image or shorthand that brings the action to the fore. Here, Power has done an admirable job of truncating hundreds of pages to draw out its key themes, balancing the requirements of character development with sufficient storytelling drive and atmospheric impressions of Victorian London across the very different, and differently dangerous parts of the city.

Power focuses attention on three key strands; first the trajectory of the Hexam family who open the show when father Gaffer discovers the corpse of John Harmon in the Thames which sets the rest of the tale in motion but has particular effect on his adult children Lizzie and Charley who at once cower in front of their hyper-masculine father but are also devoted to him. Taking their story beyond Gaffer’s discovery, Power retains Dickens’s interest in inter-generational taint, where the sins of the father stain the reputation of his offspring and shape their lives both in Limehouse where they live and the places that both Lizzie and Charley go to escape their own name. And there are some interesting themes here about working class aspiration, the role that education has played in traversing class boundaries and the expectations placed on young women to obey their menfolk regardless of their own feeling or better knowledge.

Lizzie then becomes the stable basis of the Hexam family, providing a comfortable home for her father and helping brother Charley to believe in his scholastic potential, pressing him to pursue a career away from the river. Despite this, Power has successfully designed a shift in power that changes the Hexams and places Charley in a position of authority. And this trajectory becomes one of the most engaging as his misplaced trust in middle class professionals and credulousness in the face of greater learning is one of Our Mutual Friend‘s sharpest points, contrasting the worldliness and pragmatic knowledge of Gaffer with the erudite but ultimately mendacious education that Charley admires and advocates. Murky moralities are a Dickens hallmark and Power has shaped the Hexam strand to deliver a rounded perspective on this family’s life and how undeserving greater wealth and class can be.

The second core component of London Tide is Bella Wilfer’s story, the intended wife of complete stranger John Harmon who is consequently widowed before they marry and rails against the poverty of her own family, longing for the comforts that money can bring. Power’s Bella is a salty creation, ferocious, even rude at first and driven by a desire to for money that could be alienating for an audience who needs to invest in the show’s major love story. And they do with enough of Dickens’s original tale transitioning into Power’s adaptation to capture Bella’s change of fortune as she is drawn into the beneficence of Noddy Boffin and seems to become a far nicer and more buoyant young woman as a result. It is finely balanced writing and Bella could easily be insipid or unworthy (as too many Victorian heroines were), but like Lizzie, Power gives her plenty of spirit, a refusal to be constrained by the hand she is dealt and while it makes her selfishly neglectful of her family, Bella is also not willing to chain herself to men who may subjugate her.

Around her in this second strand, Power equally convincingly builds an upper class existence as Bella moves into Boffin’s circle – a tradesman who inherits great wealth and becomes a tool to satirise the effect that money has on the deference he is shown by others with large cash reserves. There are some sketchy but notable scenes about the dull conversation of the rich, returning again to the role of education as Boffin complains of their ignorance, while Bella is intoxicated by cafes, park strolls and theatre visits that define the leisured classes, clearly demarcating the characters in the story that work in manual occupations or household duties all drawn together by the river and everyday city life. Bella is saved by the growing affection of mysterious stranger John Rokesmith who comes to work for Boffin and like Gaffer Hexam is crucial to bringing the different story strands together. Power provides just enough to keep the audience interested and, for those who haven’t read the book, an important revelation midway gives greater purpose to the second half of the show.

The final thread brings together the secondary characters that feature in a murder mystery, several of whom become agents of justice in locating the killer and in determining how wealth and reputation are distributed among the other characters and connect them together. These are mostly well defined, impressions of lifestyle or activities that draws London Tide back to its central themes about money and its effect. Lawyer Wrayburn is a little bland but has a crusading determination to clear the Hexams and becomes a model of gentlemanly conduct when he crosses paths with tutor Headstone while the sinister Riderhood fresh from prison is a grizzly villain with little motive beyond money and self-preservation. This takes on a far more dramatic flavour in the second half of the drama as the various tides bring characters to their individual resolutions and, although these storylines are trimmed, Power stages enough of their tension to capture the broader canvas that Dickens represents as professionals, working class families and wealthy gentlemen consort side-by-side. In that cheek by jowl impression of London, this show successfully suggests the frequent and varied interaction of the classes in public and private spaces.

Power arranges all of this into half a dozen chapters, retaining the origins of this literary drama while placing narrative duties in the hands of different characters. Instead of the author’s voice guiding the drama, Power instead utilises a tag team of speakers who set the scene, speaking directly to the audience – a form of intimacy that mostly works – while giving individuals agency over their own experiences. Lots of plays do this, including the recent Northanger Abbey at the Orange Tree Theatre, because it retains the primacy of prose from the novel. Here in London Tide, the device works effectively with director Ian Rickson’s minimalist staging that focuses on character and the complicated layers of Dickens’s story, allowing newcomers to the plot to understand its machinations. Rickson opts for a representative approach designed by Bunny Christie, very Brechtian in the use of visible lighting rigs coordinated by Jack Knowles stretching across the stage. A hint of furniture transports the viewer between locations but Christie employs detailed costume to evoke the Victorian era of the source material.

But London Tide‘s biggest flaw is its songs with the music not only entirely superfluous to the production but actively at odds with the style and tone of Power’s adaptation. This conflict is never resolved so the many songs serve as stopping points that repeatedly pull the viewer out of an engaging play without justifying their role in storytelling or character development. Harvey’s approach has a folksy quality and is often unusual in the choice of scale and note that prevent the songs from becoming too grandiose. Yet for all their eloquence, foreboding and celebration of London, the lyrics never connect with Dickens’s novel or with Power’s textual adaptation: characters sing about a city that isn’t the one being represented on stage, creating a tension, even jarring quality where music in theatre should be interwoven and harmonious in the tone it creates between the different elements of the production.

The staging of the songs utilises a consistent stage language, so where Power allows his characters to narrate, Harvey has them sing, this is all presented in minimal fashion by Rickson whose actors direct their vocal to the audience just as they speak to them rather than each other. Yet the two ideas never meld, never take on a singular drive in the way that they should. Instead, they interrupt the engaging scenes Power has created, forcing music into a place where text alone was doing all of the work and ultimately distracting from it. It makes for a tricky audience experience, drawn in and pushed out of the story continually instead of carried away by the unity of whatever form is being applied. Removing all of the songs would make no difference to this show and, unfortunately, London Tide would have a stronger future as a play.

There is, however, a strong ensemble performance with several of the character sketches coming nicely into view across the production. Bella Maclean is an enjoyably wilful Bella whose voracious desire for the comfort of wealth is sympathetically portrayed as she explores an attraction to Tom Motherdale’s John, himself a remote and gloomy figure. Both Bella and Ami Tredrea as Lizzie are spirited and rounded women who refuse to accept their would-be lovers just to be safely married to someone, while both contend well with the problems of class and the opportunities it affords them to live how they choose. Peter Wright’s Noddy Boffin is sweet but also comical about the impact of being promoted through the ranks while the Limehouse characters have more layers than are often given to working class men, Jake Wood in particular doing well to make Gaffer Hexam more than just a potentially dangerous and intimidating one-dimensional father figure.

Rickson maintains a strong flow in London Tide which overcomes its intimidating running time to move freely around the stage and between its many locations while sufficiently capturing the key stopping points and themes of Dickens’s novel. It is a big show, a large cast with multiple characters to play, several years to cover and lots of miles to travel across and outside of London before its multi-stranded tale is resolved. It is an enjoyable adaptation as a result that has much to say about identity, the venality but also the benefits of money and high and low places that cities as complex as the capital have always interwoven. Without the songs London Tide could be tighter still.

London Tide is at the National Theatre until 22 June with tickets from £20. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Player Kings – Noel Coward Theatre

Every few years the Henriad becomes the latest theatrical mountain to scale with companies attempting the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V in order to shed new light on Shakespeare’s tale of dynastic conquest, monarchical aspect and the perils of succession. Most memorably in recent times, the RSC performed the entirety of the War of the Roses series while Radio 3 produced the Henry IV plays a pandemic length apart with Luke Thompson as Prince Hal. Now director Robert Icke presents a modern take on the plays in a freshly shorn and shunted version retitled Player Kings and refocused principally on the character of Falstaff. Lasting just under 4 hours, Icke has compressed Shakespeare’s story to a comparison of three men responding very differently to proximate power and the fatal hubris that sets them apart. A vehicle for Ian McKellen, Player Kings has impressive moments but the production lacks eventual purpose.

Icke is no stranger to Shakespeare having directed Andrew Scott’s Hamlet and has built a reputation as an innovative director using minimal but effective staging techniques that focus on strong performances. While Directors like Jamie Lloyd, Rebecca Frecknall and Ivo van Hove are more visionary, even radical in their approaches to classic text in ways that divide opinion, Icke opts for simplicity, never intimidated by performance length, which have often stretched to more than 3 hours, and tries to create flow between scenes, removing the declamatory style in which Shakespeare can be delivered, overcoming the lyricism of the vocabulary to reach a more human, emotional connection with the characters. And Player Kings often belies its extended running time, transitioning swiftly between scenes as the robust reign of Henry IV rails against rebellion and kingly mortality while the earthier but seemingly immortal tavern life enjoyed by Prince Hal and best pal Falstaff increasingly feed into each other as Icke stages scenes side-by-side as a light slowly being extinguished at court starts to dim Hal’s enjoyment of his more mortal life.

Yet, beyond this overarching vision and the coup of McKellen’s performance, Player Kings is less remarkable than it wishes to be. The splicing of Henry IV Parts I and II is largely achieved with an interval, Act One ending with the Battle of Shrewsbury that shores up the Lancastrian reign and continues after the interval with Falstaff, now a war veteran, using his elevated status to endorse an alcohol brand and pilfer what he can while the future Henry V begins his own journey to the throne and the ceremonial status of monarchy that he must adopt. With a little under 2 hours each way, much of the text is necessarily jettisoned to create two leaner although sometimes not always entirely clear story trajectories. To create additional space for the Falstaff character at the heart of the show, the is a natural reduction in the political and dynastic context to a few gatherings of men in rival suits laying claim to the throne and arguing with the King about broken promises. Anyone unfamiliar with the plays or the history may struggle to grasp the detail about who wants what and why which is skimmed here and this limits how well the play is able to convey some of Shakespeare’s big themes about the fragility of kingship, the humanity beneath the surface of command and the enduring flux emerging from civil wars that create stains on the legitimacy of the ruler who is never secure enough in their throne.

Icke stages the Battle of Shrewsbury as a fairly generic modern conflict, all khaki combats, explosions and wind machines but there just aren’t enough cast members to truly create the scale of the encounter. Two or three characters appear on stage together but underneath the wind machine and cliched debris, the faux ferocity is actually rather tame, lacking the danger that a greater understanding of the tenuous political position and the real threat that rival Hotspur poses both to the weakening physicality of Henry IV and in the ardour to win a crown in battle that makes him a comparison with the callow Prince Hal. Throughout Player Kings, the refocusing of the action around Falstaff is also evident here, Icke prioritising the combat-lite experience of the comedy character trying to avoid his duty and reaping the spoils, whose every lighthearted appearance shifts to a more playful tone – he is like Thernadier picking through the corpses on the battlefield of Waterloo but given prominence over Valjean in his own story. It should be a thrilling end to Henry IV Part I but somehow we lose the impact of the fighting and what it will mean for other attempts on the life of the King and a peaceable succession later in the show.

The central triangle is an interesting one and in the scenes that have been retained in both sections of the play, Player Kings establishes a link between Henry IV, Prince Hal and Falstaff, three men with much more in common than they suppose and the ways in which Icke has layered the presentation of their scenes is often interesting, particularly when illness, success or complication affect them simultaneously. There is an especially strong moment when the ailing Henry IV is attended in a chair by the fire while upstage in a similar position, Falstaff is fussed over by the Eastcheap crew, both of Hal’s father figures revealing their mortality despite the myths they create about themselves. But Icke doesn’t build on this to say anything particularly new or revelatory about these characters or their failure to recognise the limits of their power or the demands of respectable even spiritual authority that eventually none of them can resist. Instead, this is a comedy designed for McKellen, adding star power to a crowd-pleasing role but often undercutting its few moments of true darkness and meaning.

The audience has come to see an exceptional performance and they certainly get one, only it’s not McKellen’s. It is in fact the ever-excellent Richard Coyle’s Henry IV that provides the evening’s most affecting and genuinely revelatory experience by finding a decency and honour in the usually cold and remote King that is both authoritative and moving in turn. Coyle brings a real nuance to Henry, a figure who is often austere and remote, the bad father who cannot understand his son and all but pushes him into the arms of the Eastcheap set, and there are undertones of this in Coyle’s performance. But it is the burden of kingship that weighs heavy on him, the pressing need to provide stability in a divided country that eats away at him as ferociously as the cancer that is taking a grip on his physical body. There is a rage, sometimes explosive fury in this Henry who demands the, perhaps unearned, respect of others setting down mutinous noblemen with the same cool determination that he directs towards his disappointing eldest son but, like Henry V to come, Coyle expands our understanding of the character and the seriousness with which he takes the sobering responsibility and dignity of his office, knowing that power means providing governance and symbolism for others rather than enjoying the vanities of the throne.

Coyle brings this notable gravitas to Player Kings, one that contrasts with the lightness of the Falstaff construction around him, with an intensity and focus that raises the quality of the production considerably whenever he is onstage. He speaks the verse so well and the course that Coyle plots through Henry’s trajectory becomes increasingly affecting as the signs of his illness take their toll. The King smokes throughout, a nice touch that anchors his eventual demise, one that brings his sons back into his orbit, and Coyle nicely conveys the frustration of Hal’s waywardness but also the underlying care for his succession, trying to pass on some wisdom. A scene in which the enfeebled Henry observes Hal placing the crown on his head too soon is riven with inevitability, a hereditary ritual necessitating the older man’s death, but also with a flicker of competition, two generations sadly acknowledging that control is finite, and Coyle’s Henry is one of the most roundly sympathetic and human that we have seen.

But it will be McKellen that most people will be here to see and he delivers an audience-focused performance that creates plenty of laughs from Falstaff’s scheming even if he is never quite the dangerous rogue that Shakespeare intends. There is an awkwardness about actors in fat suits, a mockery there that sits uncomfortably and while much of that is Shakespeare’s responsibility with frequent references to Falstaff’s weight, the underlying premise that a thin actor in a fat costume is intrinsically funny feels mean spirited. McKellen is beloved but how different would the reaction be if another actor did the same thing? The transformation is well done with Hildegard Bechtler’s costume design finding the grimy, unkempt perspective that post-war develops into a touch of respectability in Falstaff’s physical appearance at least, but it can’t quite muffle concerns about why this was necessary.

As Falstaff, McKellen plays to the room and in being given greater centrality in this interpretation there is much stage time for a receptive audience and McKellen himself to enjoy. His Falstaff is the centre of every room, regaling his entourage with tall tales and cheekiness, filled with expectations that his needs will be catered for, a mini-king of his tavern world. McKellen paints a picture of entitlement, even hubris that eventually destroys him when his hoped-for influence over the young Hal wanes. McKellen is good at the shenanigans but doesn’t dig deep enough into the nastier side of Falstaff, the willingness to use violence and manipulation to serve his own ends with little care for others – quite the opposite of Coyle’s Henry who is all duty and paternal sensibility, even if that means strong-arming the country for its own good. This Falstaff is much the same at the end of the play as the beginning. McKellen entertains but Falstaff doesn’t develop enough to command the attention this version of the story gives him.

Toheeb Jimoh offers an interesting interpretation of Hal, a young man hiding from his responsibilities but also completely ill-equipped for the future that is coming for him all too quickly. Seeing Hal stand back, revealing his greenness when called upon to fight for his father is a notable contrast with the valiant Henry V we know he becomes, and a split second decision in his decisive confrontation with Hotspur reveals a boy who learned to fight in tavern brawls rather than the applying the honour of the soldier. In Part II, Jimoh doesn’t continue Hal’s evolution and the play ends with him looking uncertainly at the trappings of royalty. This is a mistake from Icke, Part II is Hal’s slow absorption into his royal self and by the end of which he must become the man who in a short while will launch a major foreign campaign and respond thunderously to the Dauphin’s tennis ball jest. Yet, Jimoh takes Hal almost back to where he started, yet after the events of the two plays and the bruising encounters with his father, he is no longer the fearful Prince but a reflective young monarch who understands far better the responsibilities of Kingship and the figurehead he has become.

Player Kings has some interesting ideas but across the near four hours of performance has relatively little to say about Shakespeare’s plays and their central themes. Nor does Icke’s production offer much in the way of visual and theatrical innovation to set this apart from the many versions of this play that have gone before. Fans of Ian McKellen surely won’t be disappointed with the stage time given to the actor, so while there is certainly chemistry with the auditorium there’s little with Hal, and while there are moments of inspiration there is little you’ll remember once you’ve left the theatre.

Player Kings is at the Noel Coward Theatre until 22 June with tickets from £20 followed by a UK tour. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Long Day’s Journey Into Night – Wyndham’s Theatre

Eugene O’ Neill’s 1939 play set in 1912 is the ultimate American family drama that created the mould for others to follow finding corruption beneath the seemingly perfect surface. The Tyrones are a successful family of some means headed by patriarch James whose acting success has created both a lifestyle that his family take for granted and resent in equal measure, making James a sometimes monstrous leader who dominates his two sons unable to live to the example he sets. This sense of disappointment with his family is only the starting point of O’Neill’s 3.5 hour marathon taking place across an afternoon and evening as family reckonings are superseded by illness and the echoes of their shared history returning to haunt them. The past is present, James’s wife Mary exclaims and on this day, it catches up with the Tyrones.

American family dramas are predicated on the notion that nothing is what is seems and that the gathering of people together is the trigger for the disintegration of a facade that appears much thinner than any of its members imagined. While the setting of O’Neill’s play precedes notions of the American dream, the hollowness of that impression of self-made success bringing happiness is skewered by the writer who draws a direct line between James’s career and the multiple issues that affect his family in this story, undermining any notion of contentment emerging from wealth and fame. That death and addiction haunt the Tyrones is a fascinating indictment of their fractured connection, and across four meaty Acts in this play, O’Neill charts their individual struggles against their own ailments as well as the collective experience and consequence of their demons on the family unit, a bond that feels both solid – reinforced through the action of the play – and immensely fragile in which a sudden jolt to the status quo (however testing that may be) could fracture it forever.

O’Neill spends some time establishing that family connection in some detail in the early part of the play, giving the audience three Acts of complex family dynamic that sets out the competing needs of James, Mary and adult sons Edmund and Jamie as well as the hurriedly returning past that will come between them and define their impactful final encounter in the middle of the night when each of them will allow their own addiction to consume and hold them. These early scenes all set in the same living room space contain a wealth of information not only about how the Tyrones see the world and each other but also the loathed summer house that seems to aggravate their troubles, despised by Mary in particular who feels cut off from the local community and notes several times that she is without friends, feeling adrift – a symptom of the malaise that descends in one way or another on the men as well who lack both status and purpose in the world, all searching for an intangible loss. Initially this comes with a concern about the surface of things, from Mary fussing about the arrangement of her hair to the whisky bottle that is repeatedly topped up with water to prevent James from noticing anything amiss. In keeping with the American Dream fiction then, Long Day’s Journey Into Night presents a picture of what things should be, things that may seem ideal at first glance but are not what they appear.

Jeremy Herrin’s production at the Wyndham’s Theatre applies a simplified staging with no tricks to allow O’Neill’s text and character creation to take precedence. In a spartan blonde wood room designed by Lizzie Clachan, the traumas of the Tyrones circles like ghosts, hiding in the shadows in the daytime but fully emerging in the darkness. Herrin takes us slowly but with gripping deliberation into their personal sorrows, building the scenario and letting the hints of what’s to come linger momentarily before drifting away. The past becomes an additional character here as conversations repeatedly circle back, reinstating itself as the dominant force in the household – more so than Edmund’s illness or even Mary’s morphine addiction – all of it part of their shared past and its effects. Much of this comes from Mary’s scattered reflections that are given prominence in this Wyndham’s production as her personality dominates the first three scenes. Here, she recalls meeting James as a handsome young actor, fantasies about their perfect wedding but tinges the whole thing with false promise as she tortures herself with the memory of their dead baby son for whom Edmund becomes, for her, a doom-laden replacement whose consumption is part of the same prophesied punishment for that earlier death. That the ever-presence of this feeling that Mary has been cheated by life invades the drama on this one day is nicely played by Herrin as the crucial fourth Act sinks the family.

This is an extraordinary piece of writing by O’Neill and an incredible challenge for the actors performing the crucial fourth Act that last for more than an hour, much of it a two-hander between James and Edmund who reveal themselves and their fears to each other for the first time. The way O’Neill stages this is in waves of conversations, elegantly constructed to give each character an opportunity to speak for themselves and to hear home truths spun back towards them. The way the conversation bends and evolves from light domestic concerns about the household, card playing and general chatter to more soul-exposing understanding and appreciation for who they really are is masterful from O’Neill, and by the end of this impressive excavation, the family have been true with one another for the first time. And it is no coincidence that James spots the watered down whisky in this scene, as though the Tyrones can no longer go on pretending that the image they present is enough.

But there are also lots of really tender moments here too, a closer bond between father and son, and between brothers as they develop a growing appreciation of the others’ contribution to the world, their point of view and a respect or support as well as important revelations about self-worth and their hopes for redemption. It is the most important and defining conversation in the play, and the interpretation must indicate whether the outcome is a hopeful one or ultimately leaves the characters to be consumed by their cycles of destruction. Herrin offers a level of ambiguity here, a possibility that Edmund may present a new future for the Tyrones but only if he overcomes the physical and metaphorical disease eating at him and his family.

Herrin creates room in the staging for all of these possibilities to co-exist, for individuals to showcase their own personalities, position in the family and potential for growth as well as letting the dynamic between them emerge from that interaction – one that shifts across the day as they spend more time together. It is a stationary drama in many respects, but one that is never static, actors moving around in believable patterns on the stage without seeming too contrived in their movements. It also demands a great deal of concentration and attendance from the audience because of its slow burn nature, and there are important moments and information drip fed throughout the drama that Herrin uses to draw the viewer in despite its length. The energy rarely flags across the 3.5 hours and part of its success is the strength of the three central performances who, at different times in the play, dominate the action and give space to each other to take ownership of particular sections of the story, waiting patiently and supportively for their own moment to ‘lead’ the play.

Patricia Clarkson is first to shine as Mary, initially a slightly fey woman whose family life is devoted, she is attentive to her husband and sons, even if there is a low hum of unhappiness or limitation that hangs in the air around her. But across the course of the day, Mary’s morphine addiction takes hold and Clarkson is superb in charting the gradual shifts in behaviour, a flightiness and nerviness that becomes a complete withdrawal from daily life, thinking only of more ‘dope’ as a way to numb the pain. Described later in the play as a ‘ghost’ of herself, Clarkson’s Mary is tortured by the past, slowly breaking through the surface before it floods her altogether bringing a deep and unendurable pain that she seeks release from. And Clarkson is astonishing in the important second and third Acts where the addict tries to conceal the little deceptions and games she plays to hide her behaviours from a family who know her patterns too well.

Although they are very good in the early sections of the play, both Brian Cox as James and rising star Laurie Kynaston as Edmund give Clarkson the space to dominate because Act four offers both a chance to showcase their skills most prominently. Cox is a less ebullient James than Jeremy Irons who last performed the part in this theatre in 2018, Cox bringing a more thinly held dominance of his family and less assured sense of himself as James. Instead, Cox leans into the miserliness of the character who hires only cheap doctors but wastes money on terrible property like the hated summer house this story takes place in, but money is something he can control. Yet a directive blame for his family’s troubles grows as the story unfolds and contrasts nicely with his initial self-importance. There are hints of wider troubles, of an affair that his wife later lies about that undermine any moral superiority James may feel from his stagey career, and the gruffness Cox brings evolves into a greater self-acceptance and more meaningful connection with Edmund in the crucial final Act.

Kynaston’s Edmund is equally impressive, the third actor attached to this role but delivering a quietly considered performance that proves a match for Clarkson and Cox. His Edmund is more than a tragic figure afflicted by disease but a young man struggling with alcoholism and the moral turpitude that he feels he almost deserves. Kynaston’s characterisation is subtle, finding empathy for Edmund, a poetic soul in a fraught household buffeted between his overbearing father and a mother who loves him but cannot quite forgive him for replacing an earlier child, yet he also embraces the opportunity that death brings, barely able to muster a fight against the inevitable forces even though his different perspective offers a flicker of hope for the future of the Tyrones.

Jamie is less well written than the other characters and absent from the house for long periods, giving Daryl McCormack less to draw on but there is a strong scene in the final Act with Kynaston that suggests Jamie’s abandonment of self and willingness for the corruption to take him. Building to a poignant finale as the Tyrones face their ultimate reckoning, is this really the end or will they wake up tomorrow and do it all again? This gripping production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night lingers long after the curtain comes down.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is at the Wyndham’s Theatre until 8 June with tickets from £25. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

The Divine Mrs S – Hampstead Theatre

April De Angelis’s last play – the contemporary Kerry Jackson at the National Theatre – failed to set the stage alight, so for her latest piece premiering at Hampstead Theatre she turns to an important period of theatre history, to the formidable Sarah Siddons, here at the height of her power as a stage performer, holding Theatre Royal Drury Lane audiences in thrall but bored by the material she is given and finding her life on and offstage constricted by her gender. A rather jolly experience, The Divine Mrs S has a biting wit, largely set in Sarah’s dressing room before and after performances, it explores the blending of career challenges with the demands and pressures of being a moral guardian of public decorum, bereaved mother recovering the loss of a beloved child, frustrated sister and controlled wife, all the while being adored by the public, critics and burgeoning playwrights who wish to harness her talents. Kerry Jackson may have struggled to truly represent modern women but De Angelis’s version of Sarah Siddons certainly does.

Although set principally in one location, The Divine Mrs S is filled with the world of the theatre, and the industry loves nothing more than turning attention back on itself, looking at the process of performance, the construction of playmaking and the customs associated with a life on the stage. And putting a woman at the centre of these stories creates opportunities to consider the dual pressure to be an actor who is never allowed to forget her gender and her domestic obligations no matter how potent her star power. Back in town, Ivo van Hove’s new show Opening Night offers an equivalent proposition, an actor unable to connect with the role she is offered and finding her age, marital and childbearing status greatly affects how the rest of the company responds to her. van Hove’s may be a contemporary story but de Angelis notes how Siddons was placed in an analogous situation exacerbated by her lack of status offstage – a breadwinner whose profits are consumed by her husband and whose brilliance is frequently tarnished by her jealous brother, the actor-manager Philip Kemble.

“Like a man but better,” the substance of De Angelis’s play is these eternal restrictions placed on a woman who can be at once a divine creature of fantasy and a piece of property controlled and restricted by patriarchal forces. What The Divine Mrs S does so well, so strikingly captured in Rachel Stirling’s performance, is to take the myth of Sarah Siddons and make her a flesh and blood woman, an actor and person with agency who also becomes far more than the author’s instrument. The character and scenario De Angelis has created is a focal point for these contrasting views of women across history and the illusion of theatrical freedom. Yet Sarah, more than any of the female creations in this plays, springs to life, motored by her desire to find a role worthy of her abilities and bringing a fresh perspective to the people in the dark looking for emotional release with and through her performances. De Angelis thus gives her directive purpose, allowing the character to narrate some of her own stage directions, talking directly to the twenty-first century audience in a moment of confederacy. Crucially, here, what she narrates and what Sarah actually then does are not always aligned, emphasising her relative powerlessness to effect the kind of change outside that exists within her. A woman out of time perhaps or a representation of all the things women have ever been if not allowed to express, reiterating De Angelis’s point that even a goddess of the stage could never be her true self even there.

Central to The Divine Mrs S is the relationship between Sarah and long-term co-star and brother Philip, referred to throughout as Kemble, whose sense of superiority dominates her choices of play and part which are underpinned by his refusal to acknowledge he is a lesser talent. He snipes at her, pays money directly to Sarah’s feckless husband living with his mistress elsewhere and sends her on thankless tours around the country to undermine her position with London audiences when he feels her becoming too popular. To further amplify himself, Philip forces Sarah to play devoted mothers and grieving widows, limited, samey parts that confine her talents and make space for him – although she still outshine shines him – but Philip then refuses to see her offstage as a real being, thoughtless about her own real emotions when demanding her return to the stage days after her daughter’s death at the start of the play and careless of the impact of leaving another sickly child to tour Ireland. Sarah as an emotive, expressive actor continually clashes against male expectations of women as incapable of true, deep feeling in real life. Philip’s envy is given shape by the public and press response that subsequently blames Sarah for these actions, labeling her unfit to be a mother and a harlot when she obeys the patriarchal obligations decided for her by the men in her life. And this becomes one of the play’s most arresting themes, how women are confined and blamed by men in their real life for the very things she is beloved for onstage.

The plot of The Divine Mrs S is a loose one, only coming properly into view at the start of Act Two when Sarah articulates her desire to find a play written by a woman that has all the range and impact of Hamlet, expressing her real inner life in three dimensions. The obstacles to this provided by her brother and the censor who must grant a license, drive this part of the story and give De Angelis’s central arguments greater shape. Act One, by contrast, is more enjoyably impressionistic, scenes of post-performance malaise, rehearsals and the treadmill of acting a season that nicely, if loosely, establish theatrical traditions and eighteenth into nineteenth-century business practice for the Hampstead Theatre audience. The concept of the actor-manager, the rise and fall of ticket prices and the experience of backstage life in dressing rooms is all laid out with a series of visitors dropping in endlessly to people the broader theatre culture – a clever shorthand of critics, fans, writers and influential patrons who contribute to the success of an actor’s career and an individual theatre’s business model. De Angelis plays all of this with affectionate humour as both the burden and the substance of being a star in a transitory life, performing one play while looking for the next thing to be.

And the writing is consistently sharp creating a through line in the play as the brother-sister rivalry (although it is never rivalry to the superior Siddons) takes on new forms throughout the story, De Angelis enjoying the representation of backstage life and the lack of grace displayed by her characters. Sarah certainly turns on the charm with critic Boaden or with the censor’s dominant wife Mrs Larpent and there is much to enjoy in the faux fawning that accompanies these scenes. But in creating Sarah as a rounded character, the writer places the public image of the actor in the more human context, presaging the need to ‘perform’ to these endless intruders with Sarah’s less gracious, earthier disdain for the structures of eighteenth-century theatre and the tiresome need to charm. The scathing banter between brother and sister as well as Sarah’s dismissive frustration with the wider company during rehearsals is lots of fun, so while the plot meanders the impression of her life that De Angelis creates is lively and engaging.

Central to that is Rachel Stirling’s delightful titular performance that fills out the reality of her character while also finding the moments of vulnerability and confinement that drive her behaviours in the play. Stirling brings some of the savagery from last year’s performance of Private Lives at the Donmar Warehouse, of which she was easily the best thing in a strange and unsuccessful interpretation, channeling some of Amanda’s ready wit and quick-fire dialogue in this similarly intelligent and confident woman. Her Sarah is the sharpest person on stage and De Angelis’s dialogue rattles away, Sarah rarely out-thought or bested in conversation which Stirling manages particularly effectively as she fires volley after volley at her tiresome companions. And it is infectious to see an actor so clearly enjoying their role.

But there is far more to Sarah than entertaining conversation and Stirling also explores the interplay of her character’s certainty about her performance capabilities, the illustrious reputation she has established with the public and belief in her own talent to play any kind of role and the limitations placed on her by the social structures in which she lives. While Stirling’s Sarah is never arrogant in the way her brother Kemble is, pleasingly she is a woman who knows her own strength and its effect on others, using her abilities on and off stage to try to create the opportunities she wants to develop her career – whether that be calming a public riot in the playhouse or manipulating the influential Mrs Larpent into approving seemingly scandalous material. But there is vulnerability here too, a quiet despair when she is outmaneuvered by patriarchal forces that take her money or send her off to inhospitable places, while in the final scenes of the play Stirling captures the clipping of Sarah’s wings as she is forced to make a choice between her reputation and her own satisfaction as an actor.

Dominic Rowan puts in an excellent comic performance as actor-manager Kemble, totally reliant on his sister’s allure to balance the box office but riven with petty jealousy and neediness for praise of his own more meager talents. It is a big, bombastic performance in many ways, Kemble lofty and self-aggrandising, filled with pomposity about his opinions and insight into the plays he performs which leads to numerous hilarious exchanges in Sarah’s dressing room and excellent chemistry with Stirling. But Rowan suggests the unspoken fear underneath that his sister is just better and more beloved than him, that he will be forgotten, making Kemble try all the harder to be admired with amusing consequences, often stooping to misdeeds to claim the spotlight.

Other characters in The Divine Mrs S are less well-drawn and while the parade of other actors, critics and theatre personnel can be lightly caricatured to suit the tone of De Angelis’s play, there is more to draw from Anushka Chakravati’s role as dresser Patti, a newcomer to Sarah’s service who escapes an unwanted marriage proposal and fends off the expectations of other men in the story. She becomes Sarah’s confident but like the maid in a Restoration Comedy, Patti could play a stronger role as the instrument of the drama, bringing her further into the story. Likewise, Eva Feiler’s Joanna Baillie is a light role as a rare woman playwright having to hide her gender to get a play staged and there is more to say about her life beyond Sarah’s and how her own trajectory plays out. Together the three central female roles need to better demonstrate that Sarah was not alone in being held back by her times and they are all looking for a life beyond the one handed to them.

The Divine Mrs S is at the Hampstead Theatre until 27 April with tickets from £35. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog