The Motive and the Cue – National Theatre

Hamlet is the most endlessly beguiling play and we cannot get enough of it – the profound reflections on life and death, the relativity of the human condition and the ways in which individual action have consequences for collective experience. This play reveals new secrets all the time as different actors and productions find something new to say. Is Hamlet a tragic son cheated out of his birth right and consumed by grief for his beloved dead father, is he a madman picturing phantoms that drive him to paranoia and destruction or a misogynist spoiled brat who subverts the emotions of others to give his own needs priority? Any way that you see this play, there is a Hamlet out there for you, an estimated two hundred thousand known Hamlets in fact as Jack Thorne’s rather brilliant new play reveals. And if there is anything as fascinating as Hamlet himself, it is the process an actor undergoes in order to play him.

The Motive and the Cue, directed by Sam Mendes at the National Theatre, is set across a month in the 1960s when Richard Burton rehearsed his Hamlet with the eminent Sir John Gilegud directing him. A terse and difficult production that provides just enough of the behind-the-scenes theatrical scandal to entertain the audience with catty exchanges between the two great egos. But Thorne also finds intense vulnerability in these men manifesting in different ways at different points in the process that say much about the instability and insecurity of their profession as well as the ways in which Hamlet as a text forces the performer to engage with its big existential questions, getting under the skin of both men in ways that Thorne shows never leaves them. Who these men and actors are before they play Hamlet and after is one of the big themes of this piece.

But there are also plenty of important ideas in here about performance more broadly, integrated into the month-long rehearsal period taking place ahead of the show’s Broadway opening – a production that theatre history states went on to considerable and record-breaking success. But Thorne is most interested in the craft of acting and directing in this play, how do you take a piece of writing and turn it into something fresh and full-blooded and at what cost to those involved. There are lots of different things happening, mostly subtly, across The Motive and the Cue – what does it mean for a revered screen actor like Burton to not only take on one of the most challenging roles of all time, one that actors measure themselves against, but to relinquish the control of himself and of the prestige his fame has brought to be directed within the intensive theatre process? The debate rages beneath the surface of this play about the difference between screen and stage actors and what their training and methods bring to the process of character excavation and discovery. And while Thorne is reasonably even-handed about this with both Gielgud and Burton coming in for equal shares of criticism and celebration, the ask of Hamlet for different kinds of actor is a compelling debate within the play – and one, incidentally, that Sam Mendes is uniquely placed to address through the combination of theatre and cinema within his work.

The Motive and the Cue is also a play about theatre history, about the unique place this role holds in it and the many times and ways it has been played before. The character of Burton is deeply challenged by the idea of ‘his’ Hamlet and what that should consistently be across the rehearsal period and within the performance. But Thorne situates this in the context of all the other Hamlets that have gone before, and most particularly with Gielgud’s, and to a lesser extent Olivier’s, arguing that the latter’s on screen incarnation sets a kind of impossible template for others to follow. Thorne stages numerous clashes between the actor-director Gilegud and Burton who argue about interpretation, energy and Hamlet’s state of mind at any given moment, Gilegud floundering in the face of Burton’s muscularity within the role that removes doubt or reflection while Burton endlessly resents the feeling that he is being led towards a version of Gielgud’s own Hamlet, erupting at notes and suggested line readings that ultimately get neither very close to the production they wanted to create.

Thorne too is fascinated by the shifting tides for actors explored in this play, the joy of a new generation finding fresh meaning and purpose in Shakespeare’s text, but also the quiet tragedy of a baton being passed, of a former ‘great’ feeling (realistically or not) that his time and relevance is ending, that he is out of touch and out of favour with less declamatory, more earthy styles of acting so vitally alive in front of him. But it works the other way around too, and Thorne shows Burton struggling with the classicism he so desperately wants to master, to be revered and respected for the enduring creation of great art as Gielgud and Olivier are before him, but failing to reconcile his inexperience in this instance with the hope of producing that memorable, eternal performance that this play in particular demands that an actor aspire to.

Within this, Thorne is able to neatly explore the vulnerability in both men, Gielgud an elder statesman but ultimately alone, an isolated figure in another country miles from the comfort of an absent and much missed partner, feeling irrelevant and attacked by forces of modernity. Burton meanwhile grapples with memories of his parent in a play that sees father-son configurations throughout – in Hamlet and Hamlet Senior, Burton and his wayward miner father, and even in Gielgud and Burton. Trying to understand Shakespeare’s character leads both men to similar confrontation in their own lives, and one of Thorne’s most deft accomplishments is aligning extracts from Hamlet with the emerging drama of the rehearsal room and its environs.

The Motive and the Cue is structured around the days of the rehearsal with the audience dropping in at irregular intervals as preparations progress. Each chapter title has an associated quote from Hamlet relevant to the scene that is about to be played and Thorne doesn’t always select the most obvious ones. Sometimes scenes begin with large sections from Hamlet performed as though on stage in Burton’s eventual production but these merge back into the rehearsal room. At other times, Thorne follows three of his cast members into their real lives – Burton himself at home with his new wife Elizabeth Taylor and separately Gielgud who exists in a small break room and once in his own lodgings. There is something temporary about the state in which they all live, part of the actors’ life perhaps but it is also rootless, even possibly soulless, empty beyond the playing spaces where they are most fully alive. But these emotional depths and vulnerabilities shape and are brought into their conceptions of Hamlet.

Sam Mendes is the ideal director for a production like this with his rare ability to suggest the epic and the intimate concurrently. In The Motive and the Cue, Mendes applies this simply and subtly but to considerable effect, melding this illustrious history of Hamlet in performance that so troubled Burton with the very pressing and fractious concerns of this specific production and indeed of this one actor finding his way roughly to the part. Mendes’s staging choices capture this entirely, the insignificance of this Hamlet among the two hundred thousand but also its urgency and the personal deconstruction that it brings to these people in this moment. Mendes has long blended his experience of film and theatre, and here uses intersecting horizontal and vertical curtains to frame scenes in different ways to create intimacy and scale in the most cinematic sense – much as Robert Icke did with The Red Barn on the same stage – small and tight shots for external scenes, zooming out to wide lens for the capacious and intimidating emptiness of the rehearsal room that so oppresses Burton and Gielgud to a degree.

The style that Mendes employs here is like a behind-the-scenes, making-of theatre documentary, putting the audience in the position of the camera observing the creative process. The layers of a director and a director-character are really interesting, leading to plenty of theatre insights about control and purpose in the rehearsal room, the kind of support different actors need and how all the pieces have to fit together. This play reveals the hugely exposing process of creating a performance and the stakes for all involved if the piece fails, and Mendes gives space for all of this elliptical discussion while still providing momentum and meaning in both the Hamlet and Hamlet production sections.

The only possible false note here is the presence of Elizabeth Taylor as little more than a device for Burton to interact with outside his work, and while Thorne is accurately reflecting their life together at this time, giving her some very funny lines, she never quite feels like a whole person and never really like Elizabeth Taylor either. It creates a major female role in the drama, explores her parallel experience particularly with Gielgud as both found fame at a young age, but there is little development for her, nor is her presence entirely integrated within or modeled on the Hamlet sections in the way that other characters are. It also takes time away from the wider cast who despite a starry list including the painfully underused Janie Dee and Luke Norris – referencing perhaps the famous faces playing smaller roles in Burton’s Hamlet just for the honour of working with Gielgud – but we get too little of their struggle in the context of their lead actor and director’s destructive bickering.

Johnny Flynn gives a quite astounding performance as Burton, capturing the clamorous insistance of his vocal intonation and the very particular pace and timbre of his voice. But this is considerably more than an impression, ranging from certainty that the character exhibits in early rehearsals and a relaxed ease with his fame hoping that others will respect but accept his groundedness, through to the drunken rage and sulkiness that stems from Burton’s fear of the very vulnerability he requires to truly inhabit this role. Flynn makes his Burton awful and charismatic at the same time, erudite and instinctual as an actor but fighting demons – his past, his fame, his Hamlet – that consume him.

Mark Gatiss’s Gielgud is both more easily sympathetic but also more guarded, carrying around the weight of his eminence like a millstone. This Gielgud is adrift, struggling to find meaning and purpose, looking for it in the wrong places and only feeling more disconnected from the life he has lived and what it all meant as the acerbic relationship with Burton takes its tolls. Gatiss has always been particularly good at quiet despair, and it serves him well here with acres of feeling emanating from his pained loneliness as he grapples with new actors and new Hamlets in a rapidly changing profession.

The Motive and the Cue is a layered and engaging piece about the process of theatre, the things that evolve and the things that don’t, how performances are created and thrust into the world and why it feels so transient and eternal at the same time. Mendes and Thorne celebrate a play that test us all, audience, director and actor, a four hundred year old enigma that has been played two hundred thousand ways and will surely be played two hundred thousand more. Burton may or may not have found his Hamlet, but Thorne’s play shows why it remains an actor’s greatest and most rewarding challenge.

The Motive and the Cue is at the National Theatre until 15 July with tickets from £20. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Othello – National Theatre

It’s an interesting decision for the National Theatre to tackle Othello again when their last production in 2013 still looms large in the memory even a decade on and available via subscription service, National Theatre at Home. But it was a lifetime ago in theatre terms, under a previous Artistic Director that existed in a quite different cultural and political context to Clint Dyer’s equally contemporary but far darker perspective on a play about systemic racism and the social system stacked against not just Othello but the women of the play as well. And this is a production that recognises its place in the history of performance, scattering the stage with a digital montage of Othello posters and playbills across the centuries including the RSC’s notable version in 2015 with a black actor playing Iago and interpretations from all around the world. Co-designed by Nina Dunn and Gino Ricardo Green, as the audience take their seats, it’s clear that Othello continues to reinvent itself for every generation and that its central messages matter more than ever.

There are a number of striking decisions in this new production designed to emphasise how greatly the scales are weighted against Othello as his rise to power is stymied by jealousy and racial denigration. It may take some time before the audience see them all but the National has deliberately eschewed diversity in its casting making Giles Terrera the only person of colour in the cast, a decision that reflects Othello’s isolation in the play and must have created some interesting tones in the rehearsal room, particularly for the lead actor exploring the unusual position of this character, a self-made man who rises to a position of influence in a world that views his race with suspicion and disdain – and we note early on that the Duke of Venice happily takes advantage of Othello’s military prowess but pointedly refuses to shake his hand.

And Director, Dyer digs deep into this notion in an attempt to deconstruct the inevitability of Othello’s decline despite his soldierly successes. In a brief scene that could have been lifted from Coriolanus, Movement Director Lucie Pankhurst choreographs a sequence in which Othello is successively cheered by the crowd and then jeered as his popularity rapidly wanes. Over the course of the show, Dyer then expands this concept, inserting a bank of silent characters known only as the ‘System’ who become a physical manifestation of the status quo with a vested interest in destroying Othello. They lurk like malevolent spirits behind Iago as he unfolds his dastardly plans to the audience, showing signs of joy and rapture as he derails Othello’s marriage and unbalances his mind, while leaning in hungry for the drama as the tension rises.

It works very effectively, adding both a broader sense of the Venetian society that Iago and Othello represent, mirroring the Duke of Venice’s willingness to use the title character but abstain from him, while drawing out the feeling of an Establishment closing ranks, actively keeping people like Othello on the outside, destroying them if need be. Dyer arranges his intimidating Chorus around Chloe Lamford’s dramatically tiered stage, who, perhaps like the witches in Macbeth, may be driving the action or merely observing it. But the stillness of their chilling presence also speaks to the growing confusion in Othello’s mind, almost becoming the physical representation of the poison that infects him when the sinister System bears down on him in the final portion of the play as he feels a kind of spiritual possession take hold.

They reach their apotheosis with the final deal done over the bodies of the dead. And it adds to the tragedy that, knowing the truth about Iago’s game, no one is then sorry about or for Othello. Here, quite the opposite, after the frenzy of that multiply-murderous scene, the remaining white men forget about the dead laying before them and merely offer new jobs to one another with congratulations. The final insult to Othello that his death, like his life, means nothing to those in the System because power is restored to those who always have it.

Although it may be Dyer’s intention to point the effects of the System towards Othello, the final section of this production also makes clear its effects on the play’s three female roles – Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca – who also suffer its suffocating strictures (quite literally in Desdemona’s case). Women in Othello are treated little better than ‘The Moor’ himself and perhaps even a little worse in some ways. They are routinely disbelieved, suspected of treachery and wantonness and called ‘strumpets’. The plot is built around Desdemona’s supposed adultery and her vibrant sexuality which Shakespeare writes about often in graphic terms, referencing her body and her lusts first for her husband and later for multiple men either accused with or coveting her. She is pitched as a betrayer from the start, deceiving her father to run off and marry Othello which causes a parting between them and after which he dispatches a warning to her new husband about her trustworthiness, a warning that hangs over her character throughout the play.

Notable too is the additional domestic violence subtext that Dyer adds to this production, making Emilia, wife of Iago and maid to Desdemona, a quiet victim of abuse. Appearing with a bandaged elbow at first but later with bruises, her deference to him becomes an important motivational device in which Emilia becomes enmeshed in Iago’s plot against Othello. But it lays the groundwork for Othello’s own acts of violence towards his wife, creating a model for male brutality against women that leaves them with no recourse to justice. Pointedly, no one believes in the virtue of either woman until it is too late.

Bianca too, though featured only briefly, endures taunts about her own chastity and decency, hauled away by soldiers before she can reveal the truth with Shakespeare equally uninterested in what happens to her. The presence of the System is then a multi-layered one that seeks only to protect its own, showing no grief or care for the fate of the people it tramples over so long as it triumphs and is sustained. These harbingers of fate separate this Othello from the National’s 2013 version, reflecting very contemporary concerns about social justice and the inbuilt biases of modern power structures that ultimately deflect and deter even the smallest incursions.

Dyer and Lamford’s vision is a gloomy one, a world of shadows in a classical meets dystopian-utility design that draws out the embedded political processes stacked against Othello and the women, dwarfing and enclosing them even when they think they are the height of their power or happiness. Lamford has created a tiered set, almost ampitheatrical that nods to Greek and Roman democratic tradition upon which the System imperiously sit, watch and guide the action like Olympian Gods observing their instrument Iago. There is something solid and unshakable about the design, a stone edifice that seems carved into the stage representing millenia of stable, unmoving and unchanging power resting with the elite, one that by default creates a pit or arena at the stage level where individuals from outside the System contend for victory and place. Yet, before the story even begins Lamford’s imposing structures shows us that they will always lose.

Michael Vale’s costumes dovetail very neatly into this concept, using military uniforms for men and women as a base but making them feel like everyday wear, a utilitarian consistency in how everyone must dress that suggests a rigid right-wing despotism of the kind that George Orwell might have written. The most obvious allusion is to fascist blackshirts which underpins the racial tension in the play and Vale exclusively uses blue and black in his colour scheme, combining 1930s tailoring with the simplicity of futuristic and orderly design to enhance Lamford, Dunn and Green’s notions of a sad timelessness in which the story of Othello plays out again and again. Vale gives the protagonist only one moment of true power in the play, when he appears after his wedding wearing a tunic that suggest his cultural heritage – also in midnight blue – matched by Desdemona as the pair are momentarily ascendant and in sync before their attempted conformation and assimilation consumes them.

Dyer controls all of this really nicely and while there is no sense of urgency in the performances – with a three hour running time – the methodical destruction of Othello by degrees unfolds with precision, giving space and clarity to all of the complex crossover plots and devices that Shakespeare uses. Iago’s plan are complicated and multi-dimensional with no pre-determined direction at the beginning of the play. Instead he tries a few things out on Othello and others to see if his venom will work and when it does amplifies his plan accordingly. This production is very good at making those moments particularly clear and marrying together the emotional manipulation and linguistic tricks that Iago employs with the trail of physical evidence he creates as the decisive handkerchief is passed between characters. Notable too is Iago’s influence on others and his ability to coerce not just his wife but Michael Cassio and Roderigo which are well presented here.

Terera’s Othello is a complex figure, a doomed tragic hero unable to account for the very different forces that assail him, not recognising the gradations of difference between his own internal jealousy, and the external influences of racism and the System willing him to fail in marriage, job and status. It makes his Othello extremely trusting, taking things at face value be it his wife’s professions of love or Iago’s words, and as a consequence he slips very easily into paranoia which soon consumes him. And Terera charts that descent confidently, creating a sense of the voices plaguing him as doubts and fears drive him to a form of insanity. That this then connects to the masculine aggression for which the Venetians use him makes sense and Terera feeds this into the production’s take on domestic violence and the effect of male rage acted upon female bodies and reputations.

Paul Hilton’s Iago is given leave to be a big, bombastic villain that seems to suit the grandiosity of Lambert’s surroundings, making his character something of the graphic novel baddie. Hilton relishes every word of Iago’s speeches, enjoying the mischief he makes and even when finally caught out, laughing dismissively and with great self-satisfaction. Hilton nonetheless makes his Iago tangibly intimidating, using every inch of his height to tower over Tanya French as the cowed Emilia and dominate any space he is in. That this Iago can choose to stand unnoticed in the shadows while equally forceful when he needs to be be makes him doubly dangerous, leaving the audience in no doubt of the physical strength that matches his vicious oration.

Among the rest of the cast, Rosy McEwen does her best with the fairly thankless role of Desdemona, a little too giggly in the first half perhaps but certainly demonstrating a fighting spirit in the second. French is suitably ambiguous as Emilia who well presents the symptoms of abuse that appear as devotion to her husband but she is ruled by fear, while Joe Bolland makes much of Roderigo as a creepy chancer chasing Desdemona and Rory Fleck Byrne makes a dignified patsy in Cassio. Together with the Ensemble who flesh out the System, the cast convincingly create a sense of society keeping Othello at bay using gesture and body language consistently to isolate and ultimately shape his destruction.

This is a production that has thought very carefully about the things it wants to say and, particularly, what Othello has meant at different points in its performance history. Dyer’s perspective, which has its Press Night this week, is not on fire just yet but it soon will be, bringing a meaningful reflection on Shakespeare’s tale to the stage while clearly distinguishing it from all of those that have come before. Othello continues to resonate not only for its jealousy themes but because now, as in 1604, while the System remains, those on the outside of it will never be safe.

Othello is playing at the National Theatre until 21 January with tickets from £20. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog.

The 47th – Old Vic

Cultural reimaginings of the past are fairly commonplace; Robert Harris’s Fatherland wonders what the 1960s would have been like had Germany won the Second World War, Stephen Fry supposes the direction of the twentieth century had Hitler never existed at all in Making History while Dr Who is forever warning his or her companions of the consequences of meddling with historical timelines. But playwright Mike Bartlett has made a bit of an art out of notions of the counter-factual future, an oxymoron perhaps as those facts cannot possibly exist yet, but in Charles III and now in The 47th at the Old Vic, Bartlett grounds his flights of fancy in the knowledge of institutions, people and political tides rooted in the past and present, asking not only from what vantage point should we study contemporary events but when does the future become history?

The 47th is a both a parody and a warning about that future, and while fictionalised Donald Trump’s decision to run for re-election in 2024 may lend itself to easy spoof, Bartlett sets himself the same challenges as he did with Charles III, setting almost the entire play in iambic pentameter and drawing on grand Shakespearean structures to shape this story of dynastic rivalry, power, war and hubris. Capulet vs Montague, The Wars of the Roses, Egyptians vs Romans, Republican vs Democrat, Bartlett creates two great houses through which to explore his themes, deftly moving between camps while building anticipation for a decisive meeting between the rival leaders.

But Bartlett also finds layers of subterfuge, betrayal, resentment and vengeful desires within the family unit, placing the subtle but decisive effects of anguish and rivalries within The Trumps that have classic Shakespearean consequences. Like Richard III and his brothers, Lear’s daughters and Hamlet’s step-father-uncle issues, The 47th draws on tools and structures that Shakespeare employed to unpick the darker underbelly of family relationships in which loyalty and obedience are demanded by blood but rarely given without resentment. And it is this creation of different waves of activity, subplots and themes working through the grandiose framework that bring character depth and gravitas to a play that deals with a man who has become a caricature in an imagined future scenario.

The use of iambic pentameter is distinctive and, like Shakespeare, it is most noticeably spoken by those with elite status, defined by their membership of the inner circle – either as politicians, advisors or intellectuals. A handful of scenes set among the ordinary American Trump supporters use prose as well as stylised and choreographed movement to distinguish the different perspective and vocabulary of these encounters. Although audiences are more used to verse in contemporary plays since Charles III premiered in 2014 with recent successes like Cyrano de Bergerac‘s spoken word and street forms levelling the use of poetic rhythm and vocabulary to convey meaning across an entire show, Bartlett’s writing remains conversational despite the linguistic structures underpinning it, only occasionally ringing a duff note and stiffly drawing attention to itself.

Bartlett also plays with snatches of the Shakespeare canon, lifting concepts or scenarios from specific works, leaving the audience to spot the references. In one of the earliest scenes when Trump is choosing his heir, the writer of course looks to King Lear for an equivalent scene as each Trumpian child states their case for inheriting the mantle. Later Trump himself briefly reaches for the glorious rhetoric of Mark Antony’s funeral speech when he predictably betrays Ted Cruz and turns his audience into a baying mob. There are nods to Macbeth and again to Julius Caesar in the subsequent curse of Cruz’s wife Heidi that brings with it a driving destructive inevitability that defines the rest of the play, while the same influences feed into a Joe Biden sleepwalking scene filled with subconscious trauma. Trump’s own behaviour leans into both Iago and Richard III as his desire for self-preservation brings betrayal upon betrayal. Bartlett employs these nods subtly and sometimes comically, creating confederacy with the omnipotent audience who becomes increasingly complicit with the writer.

Trump himself retains the same ambiguous position in the show that he did in political life, a figure of fun much of the time whose delusions of grandeur offer a warped perspective, but nonetheless a powerful and dominating personality. Regardless of whether anyone in the play respects him or even agrees with his decisions, Bartlett finds the menace that he poses, the straightforward and disruptive charm that appeals to his voting base as well as the tricks of the orator whose bullish approaches to conversation, which rarely require a second voice, demand status. He may be ridiculous but you cannot ignore Donald Trump. The audience may laugh but that’s how he gets in.

And this is how Barlett takes the audience into this imagined story, looking at the morality of political decision-making and the extent to which Trump’s detractors can only truly defeat him by employing the same shady tactics as the 45th President. For those in public office, where should you draw the line between upholding an ethical and decent approach to problem solving and making dubious sacrifices for the greater good? The challenge that Barlett’s Democratic Party members face in The 47th is whether to heed Shakespeare’s advice in The Merchant of Venice – ‘to do a great right do a little wrong’ – and compromise themselves in order to save America.

The context for this within the story is instigated via another big thematic question about the nature of democracy and its protection. This plays out first through Trump’s insistence on throwing out the rule book at every turn, defying debate protocol and tearing up political structures to install cut-throat business practices in their place. His early betrayal of Cruz, the carving-up of the family fortune and his single-minded pursuit of a personal agenda that concentrate wealth and power in his own hands, tearing at the foundations of American public life including the two-term limit for Presidents are all traits grounded in behaviours and opinions expressed by the real Trump in the last six years. And Bartlett doesn’t aim for cheap laughs here, recognising the allure for the powerless of a man who wants to bring a whole system crashing down even if the one he builds in its place is closer to despotism. The notes on equivalent antidemocratic tendencies in Britain’s current Government do not pass unnoticed.

Using Shakespeare’s structural model, Bartlett uses public disorder, violence and chaos as the culminatory vehicle to explore democratic systems as off-stage events shape the actions of the political elite. Like the climactic wars in Antony and Cleopatra, Richard III and particularly Coriolanus, Bartlett creates opportunities for characters on both sides of the political divide to reflect on the causes, consequences and unfolding drama of civil unrest incited by Trump to smooth his path to power. Crisis meetings, plots and plans are mixed with movement pieces featuring riotous Americans led by a shaman that explore the role of mob rule and public protest in the rapid breakdown of democracy. The consequences of populism and Trump’s Joker-like enjoyment of the mayhem he unleashes would have seemed all-too fantastical a few year ago but after the events of January 2021, Bartlett warns that democracy is as fragile as ever and destructive forces are ever-ready to unleash.

Staged by Rupert Goold at the Old Vic, The 47th transforms its traditional proscenium arch into a jutting circular stage that evicts the first few rows of seating and brings the action into the auditorium. While the character of Trump needs little help in drawing attention to himself, Goold brings balance, giving space to other characters who are democratically given soliloquies, asides to the audience and opportunities for political speechifying. On Miriam Buether’s set with its walkways, staircases and back offices, it evokes the feel of the oval office and the complex corridors of power as well as the very public platform that the characters have to speak to the nation. And its big enough to drive on the full scale golf cart that opens the show.

With Barlett’s interest in the boundary between public and private, particularly within the Trump family, Goold frequently employs phone camera technology projected onto the back wall in grainy, distorted black and white as scenes are captured and relayed through social media, an instrument of public goading and insurrection given energy by Adam Cork’s composition and Neil Austin’s atmospheric lighting design. And as these wider elements unfold, the spotlight that Trump claims for himself slowly shifts as Goold brings the decisive figures of Kamala Harris and Ivanka Trump into focus.

Tamara Tunie’s Kamala Harris is the rational, reasonable epicentre of the show and truly Bartlett’s focus. A background figure as Vice President initially treated like a ‘flunkey’ by Trump, The 47th is really about Kamala grappling with duty and the dirty side of power. Tunie is superb, slowly assuming a central position in the play, charting the rise of Harris that brings a feeling of order, calm and rationality to the havoc both within the political system and on the streets of her country. Whether she will succumb to the temptation to use Trump’s methods against him, as the only means of defeat, is a question Bartlett poses on several occasions but Tunie’s dignified and collected performance is really the one to watch.

Lydia Wilson’s Ivanka faces that exact quandary as she too faces the impact of her father’s actions and the testing of her own limits of power. Ivanka is an ambiguous figure for much of the story, a clear killer instinct that quickly dispenses with her rival brothers (a good comedy pairing of Oscar Lloyd and Freddie Meredith as Donald Jnr and Eric) to assume the role of heir, but in later heeding her oldest brother’s warning, the ways in which Ivanka’s approach to dispensing authority and the most legitimate path to power drives a wedge between her and Trump. Wilson takes those cues to create a character who may also be underestimated but will allow little to stand in her way.

Bertie Carvel has taken on two of the biggest political figures of the last 50 years and after winning plenty of plaudits as James Graham’s version of Rupert Murdoch in Ink, his Trump goes beyond a surface imitation to look for the drivers beneath. While there are no surprising revelations – a competitive nature, a blatant sexism and disregard for other opinions and a degree of self-assurance that even Narcissus would baulk at – Carvel finds the switch that makes him so popular, eliciting plenty of laughs from the audience that explain Trump’s appeal entirely. Wearing facial prosthetics and a wig created by Richard Mawbey, it is the kind of extraordinary physical transformation usually seen on film, but Carvel’s Trump has Lear-like rages and a certain inevitability to his trajectory (certainly with Heidi Cruz’s curse hanging over him) but why ordinary people support him is exactly the button Carvel is able to push.

The 47th does have a Shakespearean predictability but when the time comes it slightly fizzles out, and having built a context of conflict and disorder, the conclusion is far smaller in scale than Shakespeare would have chosen. The subplots also suffer as a result, particularly James Cooney’s political aide infiltrating the opposition with Earl of Gloucester overtones. Bartlett is perhaps making the point that for all Trump’s bombast, the conclusion of this story may well be far more muted than dramatic cliché might suggest, but the end does feel a little underpowered on stage. Nonetheless, the race to be the 47th President is just around the corner and Bartlett’s plays distils the events of recent years and encourages us to think carefully about their consequence. In homage to Shakespeare, Bartlett’s smart counter-factual future is a great piece of theatre and while its predictions may seem hopeless, it offers a few surprises along the way.

The 47th is at the Old Vic until 28 May with tickets from £12. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Henry V – Donmar Warehouse

Henry V is the greatest war play ever written and is the template for all literary responses to conflict since produced. It is the perfect mix of diplomacy gone wrong, of kings and princes vying for conquest, of the burden of leadership and the price of betray. Shakespeare’s play is an exploration of causes and consequences of war, of heritage and dynasty, of honour and glory in the field while being honest about the violence and havoc it causes to civilians, their homes and the landscape. But most of all, Henry V is a play about how war affects all social classes within the army, from the fears and questions of conscience that afflict the boys and private soldiers at the bottom through the commanders and to the man who made it all happen who in one person represents both the terrible and the human face of war.

And its influence is inestimable. It is impossible to avoid the direct connection between Wilfred Owen’s vivid descriptions expressed in the evocative vocabulary of damage and destruction in his First World War poetry and the haunting scene-setting of the Chorus on the night before Agincourt as the ‘creeping murmur and the pouring dark’ descend like a cloak of gloomy anticipation over the English soldiers. And that opportunity to contemplate the soul as men await the terrible events ahead, common to the representation of conflict in popular culture, begins with Henry V and that all-too-recognisable concern about a just war.

Max Webster’s new production for the Donmar Warehouse, set in modern dress, understands the wide-ranging themes of Shakespeare’s play and, across a very swift three hours, triumphantly balances the unstoppable march to war with character development and some of the playwright’s richest verses filled with potent symbolism and stark imagery. Staged on tiered golden steps that become increasingly tarnished by the bloody business of fighting, Webster’s show is a powerful experience, filling the gaps between Shakespeare’s words by providing just enough context to bring the play to life and on the audiences’ ‘imaginary forces work.’

It opens with lights up as Millicent Wong’s Chorus beseeches the viewer to suspend their disbelief and pretend events are really happening before us, a feat that proves easy to achieve as Webster’s production ensues with a thriller-like pace which barely slackens. The first piece of context comes almost immediately with the addition of a scene from Henry IV – Part II in which the drunken Prince Hal carouses with his friends at a nightclub before hearing of the death of his father and leaving his lowly pals for good. It’s a trick Kenneth Branagh employed in his 1989 film version to quickly provide backstory in what is here a standalone play, allowing anyone unfamiliar with the earlier works to instantly understand some of the decisions the new King Henry V will shortly make about his former compatriots.

Important innovations include the decision to play all of the court scenes where no English characters are present in French with subtitle boards providing a translation. It is an insightful choice, one the really underlines the ‘otherness’ of the enemy here while bringing extra credibility to the scenes in which Catherine learns English – during a boxercise session – and in which the awkward lovers attempt to communicate in the broken phraseology of each other’s native tongue. Andrew T. Mackay’s choral and operatic score is also superbly atmospheric and integral to the story, working with the modern conflict design to make it feel as epic and grandiose as Shakespeare’s text while also providing a haunting bass note that opens up the emotional impact of the battle scenes.

Webster also makes swift work of the complex speech in which Jude Akuwudike’s Bishop explains the Salic law that validates Henry’s claim to France. Presented as a (slightly fancier) PowerPoint presentation, this crucial contextual information that justifies military action is shown in family trees and maps that skip along without weighing down the energy of this early part of the play. The extent to which the King of England is right is immediately muddied by the entrance of the Dauphin’s messenger with the infamous tennis balls and, clearly here in the Donmar’s production, Henry’s perhaps impetuous decision-making haunts him and his army for the rest of the play.

Shakespeare largely sets battle scenes off stage so how much time should be given over to recreating some of that action can be difficult for a production to pitch. Here, Webster’s choices emerge from a close reading of the text and the sequence of events within the two major confrontations with French forces. Shakespeare puts the audience in the middle of the action at Harfleur as Henry whips his men into a frenzy as they advance ‘once more unto the breech’. Fly Davis creates a gantry that lowers into place amid the frenzy of smoke, low light and bodies pouring through a gap in the rear wall to emphasise this key moment in which the newly inspired English regroup. But Webster retains most of the impact of these techniques for Agincourt itself and a longer sequence of warplay.

Shakespeare structures this pivotal battle in waves of action interspersed with discussions and discoveries that tell the audience how the fighting unfolds, creating greater drama and suspense as the audience wait to see who will win. Benoit Swan Pouffer creates some tight but evocative movement pieces as actors dressed in flak jackets with guns move in formations around the space to indicate the different stages of the chaotic and immersive battle. It never looks like dance but it is precisely coordinated, reinforcing the prestige of the English tactics in the creation of a distinctly stylistic but nonetheless physical encounter between the opponents.

Scene setting established, Webster’s greatest achievement is to fully excavate the complex and changing dimensions of the King’s character, and while earlier interpretations may have emphasised his unimpeachable glory and heroism, Webster’s show mines Shakespeare’s actually rather ambiguous hero to create a far more satisfying and ultimately tarnished novice monarch desperately trying to assume a mantle of kingship that fits perhaps more easily than he would like to admit.

The character of Henry and his true motivation is one of the play’s biggest mysteries. We fully believe he has thrown-off his youthful ardour for a more sober, responsible form of kingship yet Shakespeare presents a protagonist whose moral compass allows him to be deeply merciful when he needs to be but also phenomenally cold, even cruel when required. At Harfleur he talks the governor into surrendering by threatening rape and pillage if the town fails to concede, passing the fault and blame for that course of action onto the Frenchman. Later, he swiftly calls for the brutal death of an old friend accused of stealing, insisting on a contrasting moral code in which civilians and their property should remain unharmed. Is Henry willing to carry out his threats or, is he merely posturing and politicking for effect – and is either a credible quality?

We see the same swift sense of justice when he discovers the murder of the boys guarding the baggage train at Agincourt – an act that defies the protocols of war – prompting a shocking response that even his own men argue is not only ethically wrong but disproportionate. His subsequent ‘rough wooing’ of Princess Catherine is equally ambiguous, taking on a demanding entitlement which begins as inept soldierly love but becomes something far more toxic. Suddenly, Henry’s response to the disrespectful gift of tennis balls in Act One that questions his kingship may not be quite so clear cut. Is he a merciful or merciless man or something in between.

Unlike other Shakespearean protagonists, crucially, Henry is given almost no opportunity to account for himself or commune with his soul alone on stage. For three acts, the audience sees Henry only in the company of others or by their report, so while Hamlet and even the murderous Macbeth have unpacked their hearts and troubles over and over by the equivalent points in their own stories, Henry has been remarkably silent. Only on the eve of Agincourt is he given one lone soliloquy in which to explore his conscience and reflect on what it means to be a man and the burden of kingship when so many lives rest entirely in his hands. And even here, Shakespeare has primed the audience to once again question the legitimacy of his war through one of the private soldiers he speaks to before this singular moment of self-reflection. The next time we see Henry, he delivers the famous Saint Crispin’s Day speech and he never considers his actions again.

Forget Jon Snow or his earlier theatre work because this is easily Kit Harrington’s finest career performance on stage or screen with a deep and nuanced understanding of these complexities in Henry’s personality and presentation. Harrington is an incredibly controlled Henry (and certainly Harry no longer), calmly and coldly appraising situations before striking a fatal blow with a quiet but distinct menace. There is a deep rage in this Henry that is largely held in check yet in delivering the political speeches and negotiations with the French messenger, with the unseen Governor of Harfleur and even with Catherine, Harrington has a panther-like vocal style, a slow, directed speech pattern that is fluently conversational with the verse while finding all of the imagery and beauty in the text. He delivers demands initially as pleasant and reasoned requests before becoming short-tempered, building to a firmer, formidable insistence in even love.

As a character, Henry appears only in moments across the first three Acts and Harrington is a commanding presence both in the battle scenes where he delivers all the famous speeches with just the right degree of rousing purpose and in political discussions where he seems quite at ease with his public decision-making authority. Yet, Harrington gives his Henry greater depth, the odd look that suggests he is a man struggling with the precepts of duty and responsibility, deeply concerned about his religious and social obligations and wanting to be seen to do the right thing even as he must subdue flickers of personal pain. Delivering that one truly introspective speech, Harrington is extremely good, holding the room entirely alone for the first time and showing his Henry as a man evolving, almost building a carapace around himself as the story unfolds, so while he may feel as keenly as an ordinary citizen, the experience of war and the needs of ceremony harden him forever.

The small supporting cast is very fine playing multiple bilingual gender-blind roles with distinction and providing the soundtrack. Akuwudike is a grand French King eventually humbled by defeat while Oliver Huband is excellent as his entirely objectionable and swaggering Dauphin. Anoushka Lucas gives Catherine more purpose and depth than often seen, while Danny Kirran as Pistol, Melissa Johns as Mistress Quickly, Claire-Louise Cauldwell as Bardolph and Steven Meo as Fluellen make the comedy characters far more integral to the singular direction of the story and less distracting than they can be.

More than a collection of electrifying speeches about Englishness (despite its Irish and Welsh characters in the army), this production really digs deep into Shakespeare’s beautiful verses to link the motivation for and experience of conflict to a very meaningful character study of a monarch we never quite read. A story of leadership and transformation, Henry V is the greatest of war plays and Max Webster’s production really does it justice.

Henry V is at the Donmar Warehouse until 9 April with tickets from £10. The play will be broadcast via NT Live on 21 April. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

From Cruise to Cabaret: Changing Theatre in 2021

It has been another complicated year for theatres with venues unable to welcome in-person audiences for more than five months of 2021 and the tail end of the year returning to enforced closure and performance cancellations as Covid once again affects lead cast members, their understudies and backstage crew. In spite of a returning familiar dread, there is, however, cause for hope as we end the year in a more interesting position than we started it with greater representation of all kinds of voices and experiences on our biggest stages, the effects of hybrid theatre continuing to expand audience accessibility and the transformation of the musical with several major works receiving a ground-breaking twenty-first century rethink.

New Voices and New Work

The long closure of theatre buildings has had far reaching consequences, and while the 2020 lockdowns and birth of hybrid forms gave regional theatres a national platform that transformed engagement with their work, promising much for future audience reach, in 2021 the eventual reopening of auditoria from May meant that any fears producers would only bet on safe, cash-generating productions with established performers in well-known plays were partially allayed.

In fact, one of the most inspiring trends this year was the refreshing arrival of fringe productions at major West End venues, a charge led by producer Katy Lipson through her Aria Entertainment company who brought Public Domain and then the brilliant Cruise to temporarily abandoned playhouses usually taken up with long-running shows. Cruise, which began as an online monologue, is one of the shows of the year, an outstanding one-man piece by Jack Holden about living through the Aids epidemic in 1980s Soho – a story that entirely deserved its West End platform representing as it did an essential period of modern British history. Lipson also oversaw the hugely acclaimed transfer of The Last Five Years from Southwark Playhouse to the Garrick where its stellar central performances from Molly Lynch and Oli Higginson played to packed houses. Shows that would almost certainly have been denied a transfer in the pre-Covid West End proved to be a shot of adrenaline, demonstrating a need to keep thinking differently about the shows that can attract audience and critical respect if given this wider platform.

Concerns that new plays and voices opening directly in major venues may be overlooked were quickly stamped out by super-producer Sonia Friedman who was among the first to promote new writing at the reopened Harold Pinter Theatre with the Re:Emerge season, a triple bill of plays from playwrights debuting in the West End – Waldren (though the weakest) was later filmed for a cinema release, the lively J’Ouvert set at the Notting Hill Carnival had a digital pre-life in the BBC’s Lights Up series and the superb Anna X was also filmed for Sky Arts and screened over Christmas. The latter in particular used innovative video design to underscore its central premise about the fluid nature of contemporary identity and image creation.

Established writers also offered plenty of challenging new work including Bess Wohl’s Camp Siegfried which simultaneously proved to be a fascinating political piece about the thoughtless extremism of youth while providing one of the biggest treats of the year by uniting two of theatres most luminous rising stars Luke Thallon and Patsy Ferran in a memorable theatre moment. Likewise, James Graham’s Best of Enemies was an absorbing exploration of current political debate, tracking back to the late 1960s to chart the origins of celebrity-focused and sensationalist news media in the entertaining but deeply thoughtful style that has become Graham’s trademark

Dramatic Revivals and Hybrid Approaches

But new work was not the only place where theatremakers applied novel interpretations, and several impressive productions offered fresh insight into well-known plays. The National Theatre’s revival of The Normal Heart became a companion piece for Cruise in its first production for more than 30 years. This significant staging was notable for its strong performances including an emotional central character for Ben Daniels, another increasingly fascinating choice for Daniel Monks and an accomplished role for Luke Norris, collectively finding meaningful dimension in a play that not only reasserted its position as a modern classic but also its credentials as activist theatre.

Similarly, Lyndsey Turner’s reworking of Under Milk Wood also at the National proved extremely meaningful in a frame by Sian Owen uniting father and son to overcome memory loss with beautifully pitched performances from Karl Johnson and Michael Sheen. Antony Almeida made an equally distinct impression with his English Touring Theatre production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opening at Curve Leicester that proved a fiery and gripping portrayal of self-destruction that relished Tennessee Williams’s heat-oppressed classic.

And while the reopening of theatres in May has reduced the availability of streamed content, playmakers have continued to respond creatively to the possibilities that digital theatre offers. A major highlight was Athena Stevens’s binge-worthy drama Late Night Staring at High Res Pixels, a fascinating multi-part duologue released in daily 5-8 minute doses in February that used exquisite visual design to enhance its story of coercive relationships, toxic masculinity and female culpability in a memorable and genre enhancing collaboration with the Finborough Theatre – notable that smaller venues are still making big leaps in helping the industry to broaden its creative approach to storytelling and engagement.

Likewise, the National Theatre’s productions of Romeo and Juliet as well as the latest instalment of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s Death of England series Face to Face, took advantage of the empty Lyttleton to rethink the presentation of theatre stories. Working in partnership with Sky Arts and making these works available for free on the channel to a worldwide audience as well as selective cinema releases, they were filmed in usually unseen backstage areas, blurring the boundaries between stage and screen. These works continue to experiment with alternative staging models, thinking differently about theatre buildings, as well as how and where playing spaces can and should exist – a train of thought that should continue to evolve as the balance between audience engagement in specific rooms and wider forms of international engagement continues to expand.

A New Golden Age of Musicals

Throughout the pandemic, musical theatre responded best to the hybrid opportunities presented by theatre closure and, throughout 2020, it was notable how rapidly the industry reacted with new work, concert sessions and anthology shows like The Theatre Channel taking advantage of sophisticated filming techniques long before their drama counterparts. In 2021 two key themes dominated the year – promising new work performed in streamed concert try-outs and the rethinking and reimagining of classic musicals for a twenty-first century audience, picking up on a thread from 2019-20, by setting aside performance history and returning to the original text and songs.

Linnie Reedman and Joe Evans’s Gatsby: A Musical was a digital highlight of the 2021 lockdown, performed as a streamed concert from Cadogan Hall in February, focused on Daisy Buchanan in the years after Fitzgerald’s story. This elegiac and smart reimagining became a full staging at Southwark Playhouse that runs into next year. In the same month, Ricky Allan premiered an early working-version of Treason: The Musical, also streamed from Cadogan Hall, which promises much as the creators continue to work on their potentially explosive Gunpowder Plot story, even releasing a selection of teaser songs on 5 November. The development of this show is one to watch in 2022.

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre has led the way with fresh takes on classic shows in recent years with reworked version of Jesus Christ Superstar and Jamie Lloyd’s production of Evita. This year, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel was given a contemporary shakeup, tackling the issue of domestic abuse head-on by allowing barker Billy Bigelow to feel regret but denying him the happy and heavenly redemption arc his creators intended. This darker vision of the story set in a Lawrencian working class community proved a welcome counterpoint to the bubbly Hollywood version that had dulled these themes, helping audiences to engage with the show’s troubling underbelly and behaviours.

Equally revelatory, Chichester Festival Theatre produced a thrilling retelling of another Rodgers and Hammerstein masterpiece, South Pacific directed by Daniel Evans that addressed the story’s racial stereotyping while excising the romanticism from the arguably coercive and exploitative relationships between American soldiers and young native women. Choreographer Ann Yee found meaningful ways to express the concept of occupation and invasion – of which the American forces were equally guilty – to create a more forbidding adaptation that allowed South Pacific to confront its demons. The show will be streamed for £15 on New Year’s Eve, followed by a UK tour and residency at Sadler’s Wells in 2022 ensuring this significant restaging will reach a much wider audience.

But this astonishing year for musical theatre was not quite done with two late additions cementing a new direction for the genre. The Almeida’s Spring Awakening, opening in mid-December, has an extraordinary youthful vigour generated by its enormously talented early career cast who have found a deep maturity in this coming-of-age tale of doomed romance and disaffection. As fresh and purposeful as theatre can be, choreographer Lynne Page created some of the finest work of the year in a powerful and definingly simple version of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s show that is testament to everything musical theatre can be.

And defining is precisely the word for Rebecca Frecknall’s breath-taking reworking of Cabaret, one of the greatest shows of any year. If a single production can exemplify the combined advances and visionary approaches applied to theatre in 2021, then Cabaret has distilled them all by entirely reconsidering its source material and offering a more representative cast particularly within its two dance crews. Frecknall – notably a drama director – has brought an incredible new resonance to the story, exploring the shadowy tones of Isherwood’s original novella to bring an added emotional and social depth to Kander and Ebb’s version of Cabaret. This innovative interpretation will certainly affect future engagement with this piece which is everything you want a successful revival to do.

So what does this mean for theatre in 2022? There are positive signs that if venues can remain open then the variety of work we are seeing, how it is cast and, crucially, the platform it is given continues to change while engagement with hybrid styles have a significant role to play as venues commit to streaming some evenings across the run, while looking to innovative television and film partnerships to make work more widely available. The work itself is likely to continue the pre-pandemic trend for simplified staging which will help classic play and musical revivals to mine their original text for greater emotional, political and social resonance.

With big productions of The Glass Menagerie staring Amy Adams, Aaron Sorkin’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the resumption of Jamie Lloyd’s season including a return for Cyrano and The Seagull, as well as Kit Harington in Henry V for the Donmar, Taron Egerton and Jonathan Bailey in Cock directed by Marianne Elliot at the Ambassadors, and a further collaboration between Ruth Wilson and Ivo van Hove (The Human Voice) at the Harold Pinter, there are plenty of major shows lined up all with the capacity to rethink approaches to these plays for contemporary viewers. This year has demonstrated that West End audiences are more open to a broader selection of shows, voices, experiences and performers representing different communities and identities. So the message for 2022 is a simple one – just keep making room.

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