13-21 January 2006

Having thoroughly enjoyed the RSC’s “Jacobean” season in London in 2002-03 and its “Spanish Golden Age” season in 2005, my partner and I were delighted to learn last year that the RSC’s “Gunpowder” season would also transfer to London. Our delight was dampened, however, when we discovered that unlike the RSC’s previous two themed seasons, the “Gunpowder” season of four plays would not be performed in repertory but in sequence, meaning we would need at least two trips to London from Canada to see them all--an unfeasible proposition. As it happened, the two plays we most wanted to see, SIR THOMAS MORE and SEJANUS: HIS FALL could be seen within a week of each other. This plus the fact that MARY STUART was closing on January 14, determined the starting date of our eight full days in London.

As has become our habit, we took the daytime flight from Toronto to London on January 12 and settled into our favourite hotel in the Seven Dials area. Not only does Seven Dials have the feel of a real neighbourhood, but it is a 10-minute walk to most of the West End theatres and Soho and only a 20-minute walk to the National Theatre and the South Bank. Fully rested by the evening of the 13th, we set off to the Trafalgar Studios (formally the Whitehall Theatre) to see SIR THOMAS MORE. The play is interesting for a host of reasons. Anthony Munday (1553-1633) is credited as the main author although the play contains scenes by at least four more playwrights including, most notably, William Shakespeare, whose contribution constitutes the only surviving manuscript for a play in his hand. Written circa 1592 the play has the distinction of having been banned. Its vivid depiction of the anti-immigrant riots in London in 1517 and its sympathetic portrayal of the Catholic More, who cannot endorse a divorce for Henry VIII (who does not appear), dealt in topics too hot for Henry’s Protestant daughter. The RSC production is thus the first-ever staging of the work.

While we chose the play primarily for its curiosity value, it turned out to be an exciting work that does not deserve its obscurity. The subject of riots against “foreigners” who are taking jobs away from Englishmen gives the play uncanny relevance. It is also so well structured you would never know so many playwrights had a hand in it. The first half depicting the riots culminates in the sheriff More’s calming the insurgents and pleading for the rule of law and ends in the over-hasty execution of the rebels’ leader Lincoln (Ian Drysdale). This prefigures More’s rise and personal drama in the second half and his upholding of the rule of law in face of the king, even if it means his own death. By showing us more of the world of Thomas More before his rise, we felt the play gave a better-rounded portrait of the figure than Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons”. Nigel Cooke was well cast not as a saint but as a plain, ordinary man with an inviolable sense of justice, a folksy sense of humour and a real rapport with the common people. Director Robert Delamere created a palpable sense of danger in the riot scenes. His staging of the play-within-a-play in the second half, “The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom”, by an inebriated, over-the-hill acting troupe was hilarious. The scene where More and the Bishop of Rochester (Keith Osborn) greet the demand to subscribe to the king’s disturbing edict with prolonged silence was just one in a series of perfectly judged scenes that made this a memorable, invigorating evening.

The next night we went to the Apollo Theatre to see the final performance of Phyllida Lloyd’s highly acclaimed production of Friedrich Schiller’s MARY STUART in a pithy new version by Peter Oswald. Although I’ve seen the play twice before--once at the Stratford Festival in Canada and once at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin--this version was the most thrilling I’ve encountered, despite my previous knowledge, had me hanging on every word. Lloyd’s direction was swift and clear, cutting straight to the heart of every scene. Janet McTeer played Mary Stuart and Harriet Walter Elizabeth I in completely contrasting styles and both gave truly outstanding performances. McTeer expressed Mary’s vibrancy and love of life by delivering her lines as if they had just spontaneous occurred to her. Walter, in contrast, delivered her lines, even those in flirtation with Leicester as if every word were calculated for effect. In body language McTeer’s Mary was natural and expansive while Walter’s Elizabeth was artificial and restricted. Anthony Ward’s costuming emphasized this giving Mary and open bodice and short sleeves while cover every inch of Elizabeth’s body culminating in a stiff white collar that seemed to signify the complete separation of mind from body that animated her person while ironically pointing to Mary’s fate. Both Mary and Elizabeth were clad in period costume, Elizabeth more like a Japanese princess than the historical Elizabeth, while all the men were in modern dress. This seemed to show that the two great women were both of their time and out of their time, dealing in the 16th century with problems of sex and its relation to power and politics that still exist today. It was a brilliant concept. Paul Jesson as a sympathetic Shrewsbury, David Horovitch as an icy Lord Burleigh, Guy Henry as a slimy Leicester and Rory Kinnear as Mortimer, a religious fanatic whose promise of freedom for Mary seems more like a threat rounded out a superb cast. Lloyd’s notion of having the two queen’s climactic fictional meeting occur in a rainstorm was a brilliant stroke, linking Mary with the freedom of nature and Elizabeth with its instant cessation. It was a triumph for all concerned.

It used to be that there was no theatre to be seen on Sundays in London, but that has all changed. “As You Desire Me” in the West End offered a Sunday matinee as did several pub theatres. If our goal had been to cram in as much theatre as possible in a week we would certainly have seen the Pirandello. But after two outstanding shows, especially the emotionally draining MARY STUART, we really felt we needed a non-theatre day to savour them more fully. We headed over the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern for a wander through Rachel Whiteread’s enjoyably enormous installation of piles of white boxes titled “Embankment” watching kids old and young playing hide-and-seek in it and through the museum’s equally chaotic exhibits of modern art.

By Monday night we were ready for yet another superb play about political machinations, Ibsen’s PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY in the Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre, in its first major professional production in London since a centennial production 1977. Unlike Ibsen’s more claustrophobic plays such as “A Doll’s House” or “Hedda Gabler”, this play requires a cast of 19 which is probably also the reason it is not staged more often. In analyzing the politics of a small town Ibsen manages to make critiques of the use and abuse of power that are so pertinent today the play could easily have been done in modern dress instead of period costume. The small town’s fears of being connected to the outside world via a railway are like present day fears of globalization. The central character, Karsten Bernick, claims to do all for the public good while lining his own pockets. Sound familiar? The power of Karsten Bernick, and tangentially that of four town elders, rests a lie that involves both Bernick’s his finances and his pose of morality. When the two people involved in this lie return to town from America, his world falls apart.

In Marianne Elliott’s imaginative production, Bernick’s world literally falls apart. His fabulous mansion had always looked like a big box set, but, just after the first revelations are made, the legs at the edges of the set fly up revealing the empty stage area around the “walls” and the structures supporting them. From then on we have the intriguing view of events taking place in the main box of the set as well as in the areas to either side of it that were previously hidden. It is a brilliant theatrical metaphor in itself as well as an apt metaphor for what is happening in the play. Ibsen seems to set the action on a course of melodrama in the second half but instead deliberately pulls away from it for an ending that more ironic (and more contemporary) than melodrama ever would be. For the third time in a row, we had an absolutely flawless cast. Damian Lewis played Bernick with a kind of pantherine intensity both in delivery and movement. Lesley Manville as Lona Hessel created a character both proud and expansive who still held an aura of mystery throughout. Joseph Millson, who was such a fine comic actor in the Spanish Golden Age season, showed a deeper, more troubled side as Johan Třnnesen. Geraldine Alexander played Bernick’s wife Betty as if she were a forerunner of Nora in “A Doll’s House”. Elliott even gave her an amplified door slam when she leaves the house finally to take matters into her own hands. Michael Thomas evoked both laughter and pathos as the schoolteacher Rřrlund, a pious archconservative who loves a woman young enough to be his daughter.

The next show on our list was ONCE IN A LIFETIME, a comedy from 1930 by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, in the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre. We had missed the play somehow when the Shaw Festival in Ontario staged it, and since the Shaw seldom revisits plays by Shaw’s contemporaries, we thought we’d better not miss it again. We were also curious to see David Suchet in a comedy. In the event the production was the least successful of the week. The main problem with the show is the play itself. The single point of its satire of the movie business is that Hollywood is run by idiots who waste bundles of money (no news there!). Compared with other Kaufman plays like “You Can’t Take It With You” (1936) or “The Man Who Came to Dinner” (1939), the dialogue is punchy but without ever being witty or clever. Edward Hall’s huge-scale production, complete with live music, film excerpts and interpolated song and dance numbers, only underscores the flimsiness of the story and lameness of the dialogue. The magnificent two-storey Art Deco staircase of the Hotel Stilton that spirals upwards from the revolve is a showstopper in itself. It’s too bad nothing that happens on it matches its grandeur and whimsy.

Luckily the show is anchored by three fine performances. Victoria Hamilton as Mary Daniels, a former vaudevillian who overnight becomes an elocution teacher for silent movie stars, brings real charm to the role and makes her the only character you really care about. Adrian Scarborough, as George Lewis, an unworldly, wide- eyed innocent whose very dim-wittedness leads to his rise in Hollywood, makes George believable by playing him absolutely straight. David Suchet was perfect as the powerful movie mogul Herman Glogauer, rather like a comic, blustering version the Augustus Melmotte he played in “The Way We Live Now” but without the cunning underneath. Suchet and Issy van Randwyck in the smaller role as Hollywood’s premiere gossip columnist Helen Hobart were the only two in the show who seemed able to make Kaufman’s dialogue work. In contrast Serena Evans as Glogauer’s clueless secretary and Tim McMullan as a monomaniacal Erich Von Stroheim-like director didn’t seem to have much of an idea what to do with their parts. Kaufman’s comedies tend to pile improbability on improbability until they end in wild comedic chaos. This is exactly what happens in “Once in a Lifetime”, but Hall’s unenergetic pacing and pleasant though unnecessary interpolations means we didn’t get the full power of an increasing build-up and bang that a less grandiose production might have provided.

On Wednesday we allowed ourselves two shows because we thought they would be different enough they would work together--one brand new, the other familiar, one a ballet, the other Shakespeare, one EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, the other THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. It was a wonderful day that left us totally exhausted and thinking, “Is it possible to have too much fun?” “Edward Scissorhands” was the fifth ballet by Matthew Bourne we’ve seen after his “Swan Lake” that got us hooked back in 2000, “The Car Man” also in 2000, “Nutcracker!” in 2003 and “Highland Fling” in 2005. I’d say now that “Scissorhands” was our second favourite of these five just after “Swan Lake”. What is so marvelous is how Bourne makes the story of the 1990 Tim Burton film is own. He gets to the heart of this modern fairy tale and presents it as the parable of the artist in society, an observer, permanently outside of it, who can communicate with it only through his works or art. Composer Terry Davies has created a soaring score from Danny Elfman’s themes for the film. Bourne gives the Inventor’s creation of Edward a backstory and changes the movie’s miscellaneous gaggle of mostly female neighbours into six regimented four-member families--wife, husband, son and daughter--to focus more attention on the theme of conformism in society. Women’s sexual attraction to Edward is still there but focussed almost solely on Joyce Monroe (Michela Meazza), whom Bourne also makes the Mayor’s bit on the side.

In terms of dance the subject sets Bourne the challenge of how to choreograph pas de deux for a character who cannot use his hands. This he accomplishes with panache in the climaxes to each of the two acts. Act 1 ends with Edward’s fantasy pas de deux with Kim (Kerry Biggin), with real hands able to lift and caress, while the two are accompanied by a topiary garden come to life. It’s beautiful, touching and joyful. Near the end of Act 2 is Edward’s second pas de deux with Kim, this time with his “scissorhands”. Here Bourne’s seemingly inexhaustible devises hold after hold between male and female that do not involve quite dangerous-looking hands. This, too, is beautiful, but conjures up an overwhelming sense of pathos. As in the film, the ballet is presented as an older Kim’s recollection of her youth. Unlike the film she has no child. Thus, at the end of Bourne’s version, both Edward and Kim are left alone and yearning. We felt a real lift in spirits to see such an imaginative work so wonderfully performed. This being a matinee, the audience included lots of schoolchildren, who applauded the cast, and especially Sam Archer as Edward, as if they were rock stars. We couldn’t help feeling that it’s a ballet like this, rather than so many stale “Nutcrackers”, that will really turn kids on to dance.

We would normally not go out of our way to see THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. It’s hardly Shakespeare’s best work, consisting really of just a single joke doubled and extended to evening length. This RSC production at the Novello Theatre (formerly the Strand) was, however, directed by Nancy Meckler, who made “House of Desires” by Sor Juana de la Cruz so exciting last year. I never have seen so successful a production of this work, one that found depths in it I didn’t think it had. One key is that she made the carnivalesque atmosphere of fair that begins the play extend throughout the entire action. Meckler presents Ephesus as a world upside down. Here nothing matches anything. Patterns and periods clash in individual costumes. The Duke of Ephesus’s throne is a barber’s chair. That this somehow works and is fun rather than seeming just an ill- assorted mishmash is a credit to the keen eye for unifying colour and shape of designer Katrina Lindsay. The two sets of identical twins thus come to represent, more than is usually the case, the sense of an order lost that must be restored. Human action to restore order only leads to more chaos. Luciana’s speech to Adriana at the start of the play that Adriana should have patience, becomes a key to understanding the play--a stance that looks forward to Shakespeare’s more mature comedies and romances where it is only time that can heal. Meckler’s second innovation is not to have the characters play out repeated cases of mistaken identity for comedy. We may laugh, but the characters themselves are genuinely perturbed. This attitude itself lends greater weight to the play. Line after line that ordinarily are thrown away in bluster, here make sense and form pre- echoes of Shakespeare’s work to come.

The two Dromios (Jonathan Slinger and Forbes Masson) each a flaming redhead with a high quiff looked and acted almost interchangeable. In contrast the two Antipholi were sharply differentiated. Joe Dixon, Antipholus of Syracuse, conjured up the disorientation of being in a dream that rapidly turned to nightmare and madness. Christopher Colquhoun, Antipholus of Ephesus, was slick and pompous and an argument for how nurture dominates nature. Unlike so many productions of “Errors” that emphasize farce above all else, the play’s ending was genuinely moving in the way that I had thought only reunion scenes of “Twelfth Night” or “The Winter’s Tale” could be. It was a fine production that tapped the magic and sense of wonder in the story in a way I’ve never seen before.

The chance to see Ben Jonson’s Roman tragedy, SEJANUS: HIS FALL, was one of the prime reasons for our trip, and it did not disappoint. The common argument that the play is “too academic” to succeed on stage was obviously made by people who had never seen it on stage. Under the taut direction of Gregory Doran, who has an obvious affinity for this period, the play was absolutely gripping. The 1603 play is very much like a Roman version of “Richard III” but seen from the point of view of Buckingham. Sejanus is the lowborn favourite who has risen so high in power under the Emperor Tiberius (reigned AD 14-37) that the senators murmur that he virtually rules in the Emperor’s stead. Barry Stanton was superb as Tiberius making him a kind of Sidney Greenstreet in a toga, fastidiously tip-toeing around a pool of blood left on stage after a senator commits suicide to preserve his honour. Yet, this aura of decadence hides a cunning mind. Sejanus thinks his is manipulating the Emperor, but we soon see that the reality may be just the reverse. William Houston plays Sejanus as if her were demonically possessed. In his soliloquies his wild eyes, hoarse voice and taut physical stance make it seem as if the force of evil itself were speaking through him. This is not the only way this part could be played. In reading the play, I had previously imagined Sejanus as subtle Machiavel who may exult in his power but is playing a game of wits with Tiberius. Houston’s performance has the merit of adding an overwhelming intensity to the action since this Sejanus is so clearly a bomb ready to explode.

What made this production an eye-opener was Doran’s ability to create the sense of fear that pervades police state that Rome has become where everyone is spied upon, where all conversations have to held in hushed tones, where speaking or writing the truth, as in the case of the historian Cordus (Keith Osborn) whose books are burnt is a capital offense. The relevance to current debates about government intrusion into privacy was unmistakable. Jonson’s Rome is a place where an even crueler toady like Macro (Peter De Jersey) can rise and where and even more decadent emperor like Caligula (Jon Foster) will soon reign. Though played in togas, the play seemed chillingly modern and Jonson’s clear, uncluttered verse full of trenchant insight into politics and man’s baser instincts. This the first major production since Jonson’s day, made one think the work deserves to be performed at least as much as Shakespeare’s Roman plays.

For our final play we chose something completely different, the Young Vic’s production of HERGE’S ADVENTURES OF TINTIN at the Barbican Theatre based on Hergé’s 1960 comic book “Tintin in Tibet” adapted by David Greig and director Rufus Norris. What drove us to chose this was the fact that the same creative team that produced the marvelous “Festen” was in charge, and we wanted to see how they would treat such very different material. As it turned out, the show was an utter joy. It was the perfect example of what a show for the whole family should be. It had an exciting story that children could get caught up in, but was executed with level of theatrical and wit so high that only an adult would be able fully to appreciate it. Ian MacNeil’s set sloping off in multiple directions suggested both the Alps and the Himalayas where the action is set. His use of a large frame within the proscenium gave numerous scenes the sense of Hergé’s cartoon panels come to life. Joan Wedge’s costumes faithfully reproduced those of Hergé’s characters. As one might expect, the one notable exception was Tintin’s dog Snowy. The play began by using a real dog. When the action shifted to Katmandu, a puppet was cleverly substituted and thrown off stage only to roll back in as actor Simon Trinder, significantly not in a dog costume. He was all in white-- boots, baggy pants, long sweater--with his hair in short white spikes. Trinder gave a fantastic performance. The scene where Snowy debates with himself whether to drink a bottle of whisky in terms of whether he is a “good dog” or a “bad dog” was absolutely hilarious. Sam Cox was wonderful as the blustering Captain Haddock and Russell Tovey played Tintin with a wide range of emotions giving Tintin an idealism that struggles with doubt as he persists in his belief that his friend Chang is alive despite all the evidence.

The show consisted on one highly imaginative scene after the next, whether it was Tintin’s surreal nightmare that opens the show; our first glimpse of bustling Katmandu full of hawkers and bicycles; the superbly mimed staging of the mountaineering crew trekking through deep snow, Haddock rushing to the lead, then falling behind; Tintin and crew, including Snowy, rock-climbing an invisible mountain from the stage floor to above the proscenium; the cave of the Abominable Snowman or most chillingly the scene when a wrecked airplane section appears from below, dead passengers still strapped in their seats and singing in Tintin’s mind about how cold they are. This encounter with death that closed Act 1, gave the play a sense of depth in its exploration of the value of friendship that helps us cope with life, its trials and its brevity. Greig and Norris’s adaptation thus went far beyond anything that might be called a “children’s play”. I was merely hoping for a pleasant entertainment. I didn’t expect to be so amazed or so moved. Thus, ended one of the most varied and enjoyable theatre trips to London we’ve ever had.

(Christopher Hoile - e-mail: c.hoile@sympatico.ca)