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

A Little Life – Harold Pinter Theatre

Anyone who has read the book will know what to expect or if you haven’t then there are enough content warnings to prepare you at least for some of what is to come in Ivo van Hove and Koen Tachelet’s stage adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. In practice it is a blistering experience that realigns the source material to create a more integrated theatrical experience using plenty of techniques that van Hove more usually applies to working with his Dutch company – long, overlapping productions that blend past and present, interior and exterior with multi-character perspectives of years, sometimes decades of human experience with multiple layers of story all happening simultaneously. van Hove knows how to direct an epic and A Little Life is certainly that, an astonishing and astonishingly bleak experience that builds across more than three and half hours of performance.

It is never easy to adapt a novel of this scale and particularly one that became a word-of-mouth hit when it was released in 2015 and many will be very protective about how it has been translated. It is not the same on stage and van Hove has taken a number of liberties with the running order of the novel as well as the compression or simplification of some of the surrounding material. Jude is given even greater centrality than even Yanagihara gave him but at the expense of Malcolm, JB and even to an extent Willem, whose characters are slimmed down. But van Hove’s most interesting choice is to scatter more of Jude’s trauma through the story from the start, allowing the audience into the abuse and sexual assaults far earlier than the novelist does.

It is a decision that works really effectively in this adaptation, removing some of the melodrama of the novel and giving it a raw power, constantly underpinning and shaping Jude’s behaviour and reactions in ways that vitally motivate the development of his character and the endlessly tragic cycle of his life. Revealed by degrees, it gives the audience a greater stake in what must be a visual story onstage, creating a scenario in which the viewer knows more than some of the characters and is thus able to understand the different emotional reactions and beat of conversations. The novel is able to ‘tell’ at great length but the theatre-maker must ‘show,’ and van Hove’s reworking of the original text negotiates that adaptive process really effectively.

Part of that comes from the staging choices, a continual flow of activity with no obvious scene breaks but a choreographed sequence of ongoing life in which Jude’s experience reveals patterns of behaviour and self-destruction that becoming horribly compelling. A Little Life is a deeply harrowing story to read and seeing it performed somehow makes it all the more intense. But the repetitive and compulsive cycles of Jude’s self-harm are presented with considerable clarity, and in reordering the flow of memories more completely into the present day trajectory of the central character, van Hove and Tachelet draw a more direct line between the two and their consequences. We see Jude unpack the razor and prep kit he squirrels away in the bathroom and use it, again and again and again. We see the release it gives him and the pressure he feels when prevented from cutting, and there is real impact when his damaged body is carried to the hospital bed on several occasions by his perplexed friends, all in the dark about his past and, largely his present as well. But in giving the audience this extra insight, it makes us as powerless to help as they are.

There are a mixture of quite interesting narrative devices in which the characters address the audience to summarise their own experiences to the viewer directly. van Hove and Tachelet use this as an opportunity to utilise the interior monologue of the novel and dramatise some of the things characters feel about one another but would never say in conversation, such as JB’s early explanation of feeling like an outsider in the group of friends, giving useful background to the falling out the men have over his painting of Jude. At other times characters describe each other’s actions or help time to pass, noting what they did individually or as a group over months or years as they move from their 30s to their 50s, talking about themselves in the past tense as they go, as though their existence together is already a lost memory.

There is also a dead, conscience-like character, Ana, who appears to Jude at times of crisis, of which there are many, to guide him, His former social worker given an expanded role here (and the only female one) to encourage him to talk to his friends about his life – a continual recommendation made in the play that Jude refuses to heed. But, again, Ana becomes a useful device for translating Jude’s internal monologue and reasoning in tangible ways for an audience that works quite successfully alongside the straightforwardly dramatic scenes of ordinary conversation and interaction.

Together the easy flow of the production and these varied storytelling approaches gives the show a magnetism that is hard to look away from. It is horrible and very hard to watch but at the same time impossible not to. And it is almost relentlessly awful as the unbelievably dark truth about Jude’s life is revealed along with his treatment by a series of predators – all played by the same actor, Elliot Cowan, in a shrewd conflation of characters. And van Hove doesn’t hold back any more than Yanagihara does with depictions of self-harm, rape and physical as well as emotional abuse all played with a seriousness that avoids mawkishness and instead focuses on psychological compulsion and the building of a character who believes he deserves to suffer.

Some of this emerges within the physicality of the performance which uses nudity sparingly but to quite powerful effect. Jude’s body becomes a kind of battleground, something apart from himself which is used and damaged by others that turns him against his own flesh, so much so that harming it becomes his only form of control over a corporeal self that disgusts him. The audience is reminded early on that Jude is a character who doesn’t like to undress because of the scars on his body and he is raped twice while fully clothed. So when he is naked in this production, Jude is frail and terribly vulnerable in scenarios controlled by others who coerce or threaten him and inflict suffering on his body. But in that too is a kind of compulsion, exploring the events that are shaping his reaction to his body and the uses it has been put to, so hard-wired that he cannot escape them even with best friend Willem.

There are moments of happiness that temper this, of friendship and love with Jude finding acceptance with Harold who adopts him aged 30 and later in a serious relationship with Willem that, at least at first, is full of innocent goodness. But across the hours of this production, van Hove slowly increases the stakes, the destructive cycles get closer together, Jude recoils more and more from the interference of others, the ghosts of the past intrude more frequently, the levels of harm Jude needs to inflict on himself become larger, building and building to a poignant moment when it all has to end, where something finally snaps and all of the characters know there is nothing they can really do to prevent the inevitable. It is hard to watch but also hard not to.

van Hove has considerable experience with managing tone and the slow reveal of information as well as the building of inevitable tragedy over many hours, here applying similar techniques to his earlier Dutch language productions like Age of Rage that lasted for four hours at the Barbican which mixed Greek tragedies together in a singular story arc, as well as a similar approach to Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies before that. Notably, A Little Life was first developed and performed by the International Theatre Amsterdam at last year’s Edinburgh Festival, although it has lost more than 20-minutes of its running time in the move to London and into English. But this ability to balance staging effects, monumental storytelling and the management of audience engagement over long periods of time is really impressive, and the time flies by.

The show takes place in a minimalist living room and kitchen set designed by long-time collaborator Jan Versweyveld, a confined, intimate space that cuts the Harold Pinter stage into traverse with audience in front of and behind the action. It must feel claustrophobic, especially with actors on stage for long periods depending on how large a role they play in Jude’s life at the time. To the side, architect friend Malcolm has space to sit and design, artist JB paints while Willem, an actor, often sits at the back reading a script – all performing activities from their ‘real’ lives going on in the background of Jude’s struggles. In the centre, a free-standing sink that is the bathroom where Jude performs his harming ritual, and there is a sense of ceremony about it, as well as a space that becomes hospital rooms, the abbey, cars and everywhere the action needs to be. Versweyveld has created a compact but evocative space that feels like Jude’s life is continually and inescapably pressing in on him.

And it wouldn’t be a van Hove production without some use of film, here providing scenic backdrop of streets in New York that give location context on the side walls of the stage. But the slow running film never depicts the glamorous TV New York, but a fairly drab series of roads and buildings, endless and largely grey. Also designed by Versweyveld, the pressure Jude feels before cutting fuzzes and crackles through the screens, as though reality itself is distorting until the release brings a pink-tinge to that real world as it slowly returns to normal. An evocative device supported by live music that demonstrates the physical process that Jude goes through, almost immersive in its ability to help the audience to better understand his perspective and the forces driving him to act.

James Norton may not quite be the Jude of the novel but his performance of cumulative and eviscerating trauma is outstanding. His character sets himself apart from everyone else right from the start, always holding back and not fully able to engage. As van Hove takes Jude through a complex sequence of scenes taking place at different stages of his life, Norton moves seamlessly between the broken and destructive present and the childlike clinging of the younger Jude, deeply scarred by his experiences. The damage is palpable in Norton’s performance who seems to disintegrate as the story unfolds, physically bearing the effects of all those cuts and attempts to end his life on his blood soaked shirt. But the effect emerges through the body too and Norton’s Jude shrinks into himself more and more as the performance takes shape, curling inwards and entirely destabilised by the happiness on offer which is moving and deeply tragic.

Luke Thompson is just as impressive as Willem, Jude’s best friend who spends almost as much of the play on stage as the lead. Willem is a good person, kind and generous, supportive of his roommate in all things but Thompson shows the developing affection between them, which has a lovely innocent honesty about it, not seedy or coerced like the other relationships in Jude’s life but somehow purer. Yet that relationship eventually becomes extremely complicated and although Willem could have been quite a bland character, the difficulty of being with and constantly supporting Jude takes its toll in what is one of Thompson’s performances, eliciting a despair and frustrated desperation that is beautifully managed. The contrasting desire to support Jude and the rage at his own helplessness is engaging and painfully real.

There is strong support from the remainder of this small cast, particularly Zubin Varla who brings gravitas to the role of Harold, a kindly father figure who also finds himself at a loss to help his adopted son, as well as Omari Douglas as JB and Zach Wyatt as Malcolm, although neither gets as much stage time as their novel counterparts would suggest. Ultimately van Hove and this team have done great things with a tricky, enormously wide-ranging and imperfect novel, turning it into a tough and unremitting but quite breathtaking and powerful stage production.

A Little Life is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 18 June and then transfers to the Savoy Theatre fro 4 July-5 August. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

Tikkun Olam – Riverside Studios

Political theatre most often means governmental and national politics, exploring the structures of leadership, the top level functions of parties and, usually, the life of the Westminster set. David Hare’s stage and television dramas like I’m Not Running and Roadkill are about the machinations of leadership, while even Netflix’s adaptation of Sarah Vaughan’s novel Anatomy of a Scandal looked at the consequences of a rape allegation made against a cabinet minister. So, the world premiere of Teunkie Van Der Sluijs’s Tikkun Olam performed simultaneously in the small studio theatre at Riverside Studios and live streamed to an international online audience, offers something a little different, a community-focused story about the building of a Holocaust memorial which stirs up local protest and questions the integrity of a Labour candidate running for their seat. With a focus on identity, privilege and the extent to which history is imposed upon us, Van Der Sluijs’s 90-minute play has much to say about the local / national balance.

Part of Riverside Studio’s mini-festival of new writing in partnership with Original Theatre Company, showcasing the three shortlisted contenders for the Originals Playwriting Award, each performed once over three nights, Tikkun Olam is the last to take to the stage as a script-in-hand reading. The drama establishes three sets of character perspectives – Labour candidate Steve Alexander and his researcher Dan championing the memorial for ambiguous, possibly entirely point-scoring reasons, influencer and activist Leah who they to convince to support them and Mary who heads the community protest group hoping to save their small plot from redevelopment.

For much of the play, these groups interact in clearly demarcated ways, combinations of which establish the political and personal dramas that emerge as a Public Enquiry into the build looms. It is conventionally structured with scenes taking place in domestic or office locations primarily, and requires some speechifying to establish the opposing positions. But Tikkun Olam‘s subject matter proves the starting point for a number of knotty debates that morph across the period of the play, continually shifting perspectives on the memorial, its meaning and its consequences.

Though perhaps the least fully explored, the initial focus is on the nimbyism of local residents objecting to the proposed Holocaust memorial largely, it seems, because it is being built in their park which, due to its proximity to the Houses of Parliament, is interpreted as a form of political profiteering, making a local space into a national tourist attraction. With statues already celebrating the Suffragettes and acknowledging the slave trade within their small patch of greenery, Mary’s views are eventually made to feel narrow and obstructive, protectionist in all the wrong ways.

But it doesn’t start that way and Van Der Sluijs tries to give them more depth as the story unfolds, creating a balance in the text that openly explores the appropriateness of a commemorative monument to an international event when Britain fails to acknowledge others in the same way. Van Der Sluijs, it seems, is working through these varied arguments for himself including the propensity to build on the few remaining spots of green land and through Mary (played by Diana Quick), he also looks at the pressure of urbanisation in large cities where space is precious so residents like Mary with no gardens must reconcile themselves to losing outdoor recreational areas for the greater good. It is this part of the play that is most concerned with the local, micro perspectives in which concerns about facilities and access are pitted against big society requirements and political party game playing.

In testing these views in the mouths of his characters, it is not long before Van Der Sluijs decides that Mary’s perspective must fall away, sidelined towards the end and curdling into a failure to recognise she is living in a different kind of present. It creates a more cliched view of local protest driven by bigotry, lack of compassion or understanding and a desire to cling to antiquated notions of a Britain that never was, championing achievement rather than choosing to look at an ever-present reminder of death as Mary argues. It is almost too easy to reduce and typecast the character in this way and to dilute these local concerns by equating them entirely with intolerance. Perhaps in a future draft Mary could be just someone who doesn’t want to cut down trees to build anything, and perhaps giving her a companion would even-up the stakes a little. Extremism may be more dramatically entertaining but winning over the moderates is the hardest part of local politics.

The bulk of Tikkun Olam focuses on the relationships between Steve, Dan and Leah instead as they join forces to make a case for building the memorial. And here it is Leah, played by Debbie Korley, who is the driving force of the drama, the person who needs to be convinced to harness the power of her social media following to back the campaign and to emerge from the safety of her own online anonymity to stand up for the things she believes in. There are a couple of quite interesting layers in Leah’s story, the first exploring the value of internet activism and its effect on political decision-making, something which the politicians hope to harness initially to pressure decision-makers into approving the memorial plans but also to bolster’s Steve’s profile ready for the next election.

The extent to which Leah’s head is turned by the power she has is well managed across the 90-minutes, and while Van Der Sluijs doesn’t explicitly ask questions about her vanity or desire to influence – Korley plays Leah as a rather sober, straightforward creation – her (slightly unconvincing and sudden) proximity to Dan in particular starts to blur the boundaries of her integrity, although the romance subplot adds very little to the overall story. Why she is so easily convinced to help them is unclear, is it that she trusts their sincerity or is merely won over by the appearance of it, the relationship with Dan may overcome her objections or perhaps it is just a cause she wants to fight? Nonetheless, as they form a coalition, the play does raise some unanswered questions about the cost of that for Leah in the period after the Public Enquiry and whether any of it was worth putting her reputation on the line.

Leah also asks some valuable questions about the nature of identity and how far these are aligned to physical geographical boundaries, as well as cultural and religious commonalities. As a black, Jewish woman, the concept of singular heritage that Mary, and to an extent Dan, cling to are challenged by the different experience that she brings and how it reflects on the collective symbols of history all around us. Much of this is a deliberate counterpoint to Mary’s arguments, and where she sees a lack of connection or culpability between the Holocaust and her leafy grove in Westminster, Leah gives voice to notions of silent complicity and memorialisation as a reminder of inactivity both during and after the Second World War, asking the age-old question of who and what are these monuments for – a focal point for bereaved survivors and families, a national symbol of sacrifice and tragedy for those who weren’t there or a prod to the conscience and understanding of future generations.

And this leads neatly into Steve and Dan’s motivation for championing the creation of a Holocaust memorial, something which remains ambiguous for much of the play as political cache contends with career ambition and the demands of constituency politics, and Van Der Sluijs is interested in that interaction between Steve’s personal beliefs and values with his immediate plans for advancement, using the memorial project as a springboard to greater things. Yet, Jake Fairbrother’s Steve is probably the least explicit character, held back for much of the play and hardly revealing his motivations that give the actor little to work with beyond the gravitas of authority. There is much more that the writer could say here, not least about the fleetingly referenced Antisemitism within the Labour Party that should have far more space in the text given the subject matter, expanding Steve’s own reference to allowing the Party to use his race to get onto the ballot and the effect of Steve’s position as a candidate rather than an elected official seeking endorsement throughout could add valuable contrasts to a character who largely sits on the surface.

Dan is quite a different proposition, more fully formed than Steve but a junior party member open about his lack of interest in the memorial other than as a tool to get them noticed. Dan’s trajectory is perhaps an unexpected one given his early enthusiasm for the project, his kindness and the developing relationship with Leah, but Dan comes to typify a self-aware white privilege, one that proves equally toxic. Played by Luke Thompson, his Dan is as quietly ambitious about the future as Steve and potentially dangerously under-invested in his role. He is competent, kind, even likeable and Thompson, in his first contemporary play for some time, is at ease with Dan’s humour and fast-talking amiability, lulling the audience into believing Dan is innocuous before a few gasp-inducing comments prove that beneath his charming and decent surface he is ultimately just as out-of-touch and uninterested in the constituents as Steve – Van Der Sluijs’s most savage comment on the hot-housing of politicians and their successors.

It is significant that a new writing competition has been given an important online platform by a theatre company who have specialised in innovative filming and streaming techniques in the past two years – particularly as most other efforts to share content online have been quietly forgotten. Simply staged by Director Michael Boyd using a series of chairs and benches, Tikkun Olam does have a lot to say from the enclosed, issue-based dissent of local communities to identity formation, how selective history is memorialised and represented, the alignment of political campaigning with digital outlets and platforms, and how all of those issues meld together. At heart this is a play about the intersection between local and national politics, and the ways in which elected representatives both use and ride rough shod over constituents if they think they know better, and clearly it has a much long life ahead and probably in an expanded form where more of its arguments and characters can be fully developed. Whatever the outcomes of the Originals Playwrighting Award, and in addition to his Artistic Development work for the Young Vic, we can expect to see more from this first time playwright.

Tikkun Olam was performed at Riverside Studios and streamed online on 2 July as part of the Originals: Live at Riverside series. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog.

Henry IV: Part One – Drama on 3

Shakespeare’s Henriad trilogy comprising Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V is one of dramas greatest studies in character development, taking the young and flighty Prince Hal from rebellious, tavern-dwelling rascal to warrior king. Against the backdrop of one of the most formative periods of English history in which the Plantagenet dynasty solidified its power, setting down attempts to overthrow their dynastic control, while sewing the seeds for the York versus Lancaster battles that are the foundation of our modern monarchy. It is little wonder that the role of Prince Hal / Henry V has attracted many of our finest actors from Alex Hassell for the RSC to Tom Hiddleston for the BBC and Timothee Chalamet for Netflix. Just as attractive, the role of Henry IV himself has been played by many illustrious performers on stage and screen including Patrick Stewart and Jeremy Irons, while Hal’s great friend Falstaff has been Simon Russell Beale, Joel Edgerton and  Anthony Sher.

Now Drama on 3 adds to this distinguished group with a radio production led by Iain Glen, Toby Jones and Luke Thompson. Henry IV – Part One is a play about transition in which the central characters are forced to accept their own destiny, to see themselves truly for the first time. And while much of the attention is on the partying prince learning the error of his youthful exuberance and foolish friendship, in focusing equally on Falstaff and King Henry, Shakespeare has much to say about the indignities of ageing, the taciturn nature of monarchy and the nature of public image.

Sally Avens’s radio drama, contained within a two-hour running time, expends some of the broader historical narrative to really develop the idea of Hal torn between two seemingly different but mutually disappointing father figures as he subconsciously attempts to hide from his duty as heir apparent. It is a production in which military endeavour becomes the means through which an estranged son is reconciled with one father while starting to see through another.

As with Emma Harding’s excellent Othello a few weeks ago, Avens’s Henry IV – Part One finds an intimacy with its central characters, drawing them metaphorically and audibly into the foreground to explore their quite different characters, as well as their inexplicable hold over one another. And whether attention is focused on any of Shakespeare’s three character sets – the Court, the Eastcheap Group or the Rebels – the clarity of their purpose and the complexity of their motivation is given prominence. The overall effect is to clearly see how loyalties within the tetralogy (Richard II and the three Henry plays) are shaped over time, changing as political fortunes ebb and flow.

The creation of place once again becomes crucial to managing the three strands of the story before the cataclysmic intersection of these parties at the Battle of Shrewsbury. The murmur of voices and revelry that make up the Eastcheap Tavern suggest plenty of happy afternoons for Prince Hal and Falstaff in the cosy but not overwhelmingly busy confines of their favourite drinking establishment. There is a warmth and welcome in this soundscape that does so much to add to the atmosphere of the pub. Likewise, the cold and formal austerity of the court has a faint echoing quality suggestive of grand medieval stonework and the reverent silence of its architecture. Meanwhile the homely countryside residence of the Percy family has a foreboding quality, of happy family life soon to be disrupted, the calm before the storm.

The use of sound effects comes into its own in the play’s final sequences set in the midst of the battle, and while TV budgets mean these scenes can look a little sparse – often a handful of men meant to look like thousands, or worse clunky CGI battalions – using audio effects alone better creates the chaos and energy of combat, richly conveyed here using layers of sound including clanking swords, whinnying horses and the physical exertion of engaged men across the battlefield as exhausted but exhilarated soldiers contend.

And this becomes crucial as the battle marks a watershed in the wider play, both in terms of the various political machinations that have threatened Henry’s throne as well as marking a sea change in the characterisation, setting-up some new behaviours as well as the notable decline of the old ways that dominates the atmosphere in Henry IV-Part Two, which in turn subsequently makes way for the outward facing foreign policy programme and dynastic consolidation of Henry V. Consequently, the Battle of Shrewsbury feels climactic and decisive in several ways, and Avens’s production has some sense of the completeness that Shakespeare intends when he left this play without a cliffhanger.

Instead, the rebels are crushed, Hal proves his worth while reconciling with his father and Falstaff’s mendacity is finally the cause of a severence with the young prince. This Drama on 3 version slims the text in a way rarely seen on stage, but nonetheless manages to take the characters through their story arc and deposit them creditably at the point of ultimate military and personal conquest ready for the wheel of fortune to turn further in Part Two.

Falstaff is one of drama’s most memorable comic creations and his presence dominates what is essentially a dynastic story of political stability played across a number of father-son relationship. In most Shakespeare plays it is relatively unusual for the humorous sideshow characters to dominate proceedings, although recent versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge Theatre and Wilton’s Music Hall emphasised the Rude Mechanicals and built their vision for the play around them. Yet Falstaff alone has long held the cultural imagination.

Toby Jones might struggle to be cast onstage bearing as little resemblance to the portly alcoholic of description as the tall, slight Matthew Needham did to the physical heft of Stanley Kowalski, but radio offers much greater casting fluidity for actors and Jones is superb as the verbose, flustered and evasive merrymaker who prizes his own comfort above duty, loyalty and most importantly truth.

Using just his voice, Jones vividly conveys the shabby untidiness of the man, a very bodily implication of lumbering dishevelment that has tones of his recent (and sadly truncated) performance as Vanya. Falstaff lies with disarming ease, mixing outright falsehoods with exaggerations and misdirection in an attempt to increase his own sense of importance, making his achievements grander and more daring than they really were.

With considerable skill, Jones doesn’t go looking for the comedy but allows it to emerge naturally from the characterisation he builds, strongly suggesting how little control Falstaff has over these aspects of his personality which come more from a disordered fluster than a malicious desire to deceive, at least in his tavern-based bragging, a drunken desire to tell the best story. It is only when he is really in danger at the Battle of Shrewsbury where his self-preservation instinct becomes more poisonous in Jones’s interpretation, nicely creating the conditions for the rift with Prince Hal that follows in Part Two.

Luke Thompson builds on his growing portfolio of Shakespeare performances, giving his Prince Hal a playful quality, a young man enjoying his freedom and the company of men that on one level he finds ridiculous. The cheeky and teasing tone that Thompson employs when talking to Falstaff in particular and the enjoyment of practical jokes and impressions is tempered by a hint of mockery, the lightest touch of disdain that suggests that this ‘young Harry’ never forgets his superiority of birth, intelligence and manner in which his thoughts are already turning to life beyond Eastcheap, even as the play begins.

Soon, then, the various and obvious exaggerations of his companion are met with exasperated irony, as though the shine is coming off the friendship. Thus, when Hal is recalled to Court to help set-down the brewing rebellion, Thompson’s heir apparent is ready to move into his public role, to finally assume the responsibilities of adulthood that mark his progress through these three plays. Although Part Two will see this resolve waver slightly, here in Part One, the final confrontation with Tom Glynn-Carney’s Hotspur on the battlefield is climactic and decisively played by a prince at once defending and assuming his birthright.

There are further theatre stars among the extended cast including Iain Glen adding a wonderful gravitas at Henry IV, the monarch who conquered his way to the crown, sober and grave but regal and dignified in his management of the court. The stately rage he summons to address his former comrades marks a clear separation between the man he once was and the king he has become – foreshadowing Hal’s own transformation in this trilogy – and the dismissal with which he treats Hotspur clearly ignites the ire of the Percy clan.

But it is the relationship with Prince Hal where Henry IV’s stoical reserve is most tested as Glen intriguingly navigates a sharp disappointment and frustration while retaining a deep affection for the son he physically and emotionally fails to inspire. The lengthy speech on reconciliation addressed to Hal is a wonderful example of inspirational chastisement in which Glen stirringly advocates the transforming soberness of monarchy and the exchange of person for symbol that he hopes Hal will replicate, while shaming him with tales of the fiery exploits of Hotspur.

The stunted rebellion, led by the Percys, is often the least considered aspect of the story despite mirroring Henry IV’s own belligerent ascent to the throne, but there Avens carves this story into three, alloting equal time to their cause, suggesting how the once allied family lost faith in the man they previously helped to make a king. Tom Glynn-Carney is a determined Hotspur, barely able to conceal his temper when the Percy name is seemingly disrespected by Henry IV, and implying a close family life with Mark Bonnar’s Worcester. The various extended relationships with the Welsh and Scottish insurgents remain as confusing as Shakespeare wrote them but John Nicholls music lends their conversations plenty of conspiratorial atmosphere.

This Henry VI-Part One is at heart a character-study rather than a historical epic, and Avens brings the recording of soliloquies forward in the soundscape to create intimacy and insight. It gives this fine collection of theatre actors a chance to really explore the inner life of their characters and bring them fully and roundly to life in this enjoyable radio dramatisation. Whether just this first portion of the Henriad trilogy was commissioned or lockdown has delayed recording of the rest, let’s hope Radio 3 can gather Jones, Glen and Thompson together soon for Henry IV-Part Two and Henry V , although when our theatres reopen we may yet see it staged.

Henry IV – Part One is available via the BBC Sounds website for at least twelve months. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook: Cultural Capital Theatre Blog

King Lear – Duke of York’s Theatre

Our collective theatre memory is full of remarkable performances, whenever a show is revived someone in the production or at least one of the critics will refer to a definitive performance they once saw from a great actor of the past, a benchmark for every subsequent version we see. This is particularly true for Shakespeare, so as we continue to revere Olivier, Gielgud and the rest, audiences may begin to think they will never see anything to match them. It’s all nonsense of course, the stand-out performances in any era are often only judged so in retrospect and modern theatre offers much that will be remembered. But once in a while you know you’re in the presence of greatness and Ian McKellen’s King Lear will be talked about for years to come.

Shakespeare’s plays are eternally relevant, whatever the external socio-political circumstances of the times, they fit, and thus King Lear comes around with considerable regularity. It’s a difficult play to pace correctly and can sometimes feel overly ponderous or meandering. By extension the star power of whoever play’s Lear can also drown out the surround cast, diluting the important political and dynastic machinations that drive the plot.

No such worries in this carefully controlled and cohesive transfer from the Chichester Festival Theatre, the latest of their programme to come into town, in which Director Jonathan Munby gives equal weighting to the three elements of the plot, tempering the extraordinary charisma of his leading man by generating interest in the play’s contingent storylines – the grasping power of Regan and Goneril, and the destruction of Gloucester’s family.

The corrupting nature of power and its association with ensuing madness are frequent themes across many of Shakespeare’s political and tragic plays. Macbeth violently seizes power and loses his sanity, Hamlet’s balance is disturbed by his Uncle’s equally aggressive dispatch of the rightful King, while Coriolanus’s delusional obsession with his own popularity leads to tyranny. This version of King Lear uses his faulty decision to share his kingdom as the very essence of his madness. The poor use of power is a symptom of what’s to come rather than his subsequent rejection, placing the monarch in a web of intrigue that seemed always waiting to ensnare him.

With so many shouty Lear’s in recent years, it’s refreshing to see an interpretation that’s considerably more varied, drawing out the sensitive and gentle aspects of lost identity to temper the fewer, and here more unexpected, moments of rage and cruelty. There is a real honesty and sensitivity in the way Lear’s madness is presented, and, as anyone who has lived with dementia sufferers will know, there is huge variety in mood and interaction across any single day. Moments of perfect lucidity are common, intermingled with calm loops of memory and confusion about timelines, while the flashes of bitter anger and frustration pass as rapidly and vigorously as they emerged.

You see all of this in McKellen’s performance, and as he gives away his lands there are couple of small contortions of the face in which Lear struggles to retain his train of thought, and overwhelming emotion tries to force its way up his throat like reflux. This Lear does rage but only rarely, when he is unable to process the responses of those around him or his own feelings. The bitter curses he heaps on Goneril are all the more shocking for seeming to come from nowhere, one minute a reasonable conversation, the next an invective on sterility, before fading once more to a quieter resignation. You see this change of weather pass across McKellen’s face, a clear and subtle impression of those shifting faculties in his mind that become increasingly pitiable, rather than the result of his hateful tyranny. This is a Lear who cannot control what is happening to him and the result is very moving.

This softer approach also makes sense of the notion of injustice that plagues the King throughout the play, and the obsessive way his mind returns again and again to the clawing ingratitude of his two eldest daughters, reiterating the idea of this as a trigger rather than the sole cause of his decline. The melancholic sorrow with which McKellen’s Lear references the cause of his undoing implies the personal loss of a father’s deluded love for his ungrateful children rather than the more bombastic approaches to the character that emphasis the loss of sovereignty. This Lear sees the Duchesses of Cornwall and Albany for what they really are, and it breaks him.

McKellen is so quiet as Lear, with so much of his performance and emotion expressed in small contained movements, a tiny and frail human unable to fight against the elements and fates stacked against him. This stripping of kingship to reveal the fallible man below is something Shakespeare explored many times – not least in Henry V’s pre-battle qualms – and McKellen draws on that to considerable effect to show the easy ruin of a man whose anointed greatness is no barrier to pain, destitution and lovelessness.

McKellen is so memorable in this role because he slowly introduces Lear’s metamorphosis, cracking the surface of the monarch so chinks of confused mind start to show through the performance until only fragments of the true Lear are left, disparate and near unreachable. When early on he lingers a beat too long on a comment about treating Cordelia badly, it is so small a remark you almost miss it, but it reveals everything about the slow tearing at his heart and conscience that McKellen uses to rake across the mind of his character, a constant sense of thoughts in flux and flutter.

Despite his considerable star power, McKellen’s collaborative approach keeps the play perfectly in balance, leaving room for the intricate parallel narratives that reflect his own trajectory and allowing other characters equal space to shine, not least Luke Thompson’s Edgar driven to feign madness away from Court when his reputation is maligned by his base-born half-brother. Thompson’s star has been steadily rising for some time with notable roles in numerous classical productions, including a fresh take on Laertes in Robert Icke’s 2017 Hamlet where his approach mirrored the fatal indecision of Andrew Scott’s protagonist.

The role of Edgar can sometimes be too overplayed, to exuberantly mad when he assumes the name of Tom. Instead, Thompson uses his experience of Hamlet to provide a counterpoint to Lear’s decline, but with more stage time than his previous roles, this part gives him scope to display a range of skills. First seen as a clean-cut hero in appropriate military dress, attending on the pomp and ceremony of Lear’s Court, the panicked Edgar hides himself in the believable feigned madness of Tom, adopting three distinct accents to delineate the various personalities he assumes, including a very passable Scottish brogue as Tom.

There is also a vigorous and well executed fight scene in the play’s final moments as Edgar tries to disarm his knife-wielding brother in hand-to-hand combat, while Thompson also brings to bear all the tenderness and emotional sensitivity that Edgar feels for the destroyed parallel figures of his own father, Gloucester, and his plagued former monarch. He credible assumes the role of saviour, a good honest man whose moral rectitude and kind heart wins the respect of the audience and his kingdom.

There is a semi-religious concept of morality that runs through Director Jonathan Munby’s production, and aside from Edgar the only core player left standing is Anthony Howell’s Albany (who previously worked with Thompson on The Globe’s Julius Caesar), a man betrayed by his wife but presented as upstanding enough to retain his life and presumably the country. Claire Price as Goneril and Kirsty Bushell as Regan deliberately make the sisters initially more reasonable and less caricatured than other productions often do. They both appear modest and stately in declaring their love for their father, but power corrupts them. Price is a despairing country gentlewoman exasperated by her cantankerous parent, while Bushell’s more glamorous Regan has a potent sexually charged relationship with her husband (Daniel Rabin) that seems to quite naturally tip into sadism.

Like Hamlet, King Lear is a double tragedy and both plays show an ordinary family destroyed by its proximity to the throne, innocent casualties of wider political games. The Gloucester subplot is often the most poignant, particularly when the Royal Family are portrayed as unlikable tyrants, and Danny Webb’s Gloucester carefully draws-out all the emotion and sympathy the role can offer. The famous eye gouging scene is brutal as ever, but the clifftop despair and regret for his mistakes are made quite tenderly. As his scheming bastard son, James Corrigan is suitably villainous and calculating, easily pulling the strings of those around him to serve his own advancement.

Munby’s production is still a lengthy affair at around three and a half hours, but all the elements of the story are so well knitted together that it takes on its own momentum, even with a lengthy two hour run to the only interval. But there is a consistent vision for the show which balances and reflects the pitch of the performances, presenting a semi-military Royal state, not dissimilar from our own, that revels in its Court rituals as well its country pursuits. Designer Paul Wills surrounds the stage with a semi-circle of Jacobean panelling, and, in Goneril’s house, presents a dinner party full of men in country tweeds, a macho shooting party that looks, and behaves, like The Riot Club.

The first part of the show is performed on a blood red circle of carpet that becomes soaked in rain water which the actors must slosh around on, as though wading in their own wickedness. Events reach their crisis in an abattoir complete with carcasses and severed animal heads where Gloucester loses his eyes before the interval, but later as redemption and moral correction dominate the story, the circle is made white and the panelling peels back to reveal white walls. The carefully considered symbolism of the staging is subtle but reveals the slow unravelling of privilege, a monarchy wiped out and evil purged from the land.

Unusually, there is still more than a week of preview performances before Press Night, but this Chichester transfer has hit its stride early. After the scramble for tickets earlier this year, hour-long queues, having seats selected for you based on pay bands and crashing websites, just getting to the checkout may have seemed like a miracle, but it was worth it.  King Lear has long been a test for actors of a certain age, but the focus on the star playing the declining monarch can under-power the rest of the story. It’s a relief to see a production that tightens its core, with Munby giving equal weight to each strand so as to build proper momentum. A memorable interpretation with a theatre superstar giving one of his finest and most generous performances.

 King Lear is at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 3 November and tickets start at £25. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1