RSC Productions in Stratford and London, from 2009 and earlier

Julius Caesar
running until 2rd October 2009
at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford Blood and destruction shall be so in use 
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war.

That more or less sums up the problem with this play. In parts, it's very exciting: it's got some great characters, lots of beautifully articulated political manipulation and there's that wonderful speech by Mark Antony where he rouses the crowd to riot in spite of the censor (I'd love to see this set in communist Russia). But the second half can't live up to the structure of the first: it's just death, death and more death - a series of sketches of people killing themselves and each other, which, after the third or fourth event, starts to get a bit silly. This is entirely Shakespeare's fault, and not that of the cast and director, who brilliantly develop the chilling suspense and climax of the first half, and at least keep straight faces in the second.

The emphasis was on making it clear to the audience what a bloody and violent place ancient Rome must have been to live in. As the audience drifted chatting happily to their seats, two filthy, loin-clothed wrestlers steadily though exhaustedly attempted to kill each other on stage. This was reminding us of Rome's violent origin in the battle of Romulus and Remus, obviously - but what was interesting was the way it forced you into the position of the audiences in the Roman circuses. Here were two men fighting to the death, and because the house lights were up, we were cunningly inveigled into taking a casual attitude to it, rather than giving it dignity by watching with the respectful RSC hush. Very clever.

One thing I was initially dubious about was the use of cinema. It's very much to the fore in this production. The backdrop sky actually changes; crowds are created by overlaid footage projected on screens at stage level. This is always a very courageous choice for a director to make. It's about the most distracting thing you can do to your audience, and given the setting (and some of the footage chosen) there was a real danger of shades of Monty Python creeping in. However, as the play went on, I found that the technique lent the crowd scenes in particular an intensity and liveliness I haven't before experienced in the theatre. Instead of the usual slight effort to suspend your disbelief as seven or eight actors run around shouting a lot, this crowd felt hot and hectic and intrusive and oppressive, just like a real one. The feeling was synthetic, as film feelings are, instead of organic like the best theatre feelings, and yes, it continued to be distracting, but I had to conclude, reluctantly, that it was ultimately successful.

John Mackay's bitter, straightforward Cassius is the driving force of the first act, cutting through the personality of Sam Troughton's diffident, well-meaning Brutus like lemon sauce with suet pudding. A wonderfully balanced match and a great basis for the play - one thoroughly understands the reasons behind the plot. Greg Hicks creates Caesar in a remarkably dislikable rock star mould, which actually works rather well, and makes the ghost all the more sinister. Hannah Young makes a great impression as Portia: it's a small part but she delivers it with such passion and pathos that what happens to her later - which you don't even witness, only hear described - really hurts.

And is Mark Antony any good? Well, yes. Darrell D'Silva has a whale of a time with the riot speech and makes it as marvellous as the text deserves. In the immediate aftermath of Caesar's death - a little over the top perhaps? But it's a play of strong flavours and perhaps this is necessary to maintain the excitement.

That might go some of the way towards justifying the very, very strange decision at the very end. After the last line, everyone files on again in character, covered in blood, and without interacting at all, in total silence, one by one they keel over and "die". It's extraordinary, and not in a good way. I can't imagine why they did it. When you've got a play so overloaded with bloody deaths that you're already in danger of making your audience laugh, why ladle on a whole extra lot you're not even textually obliged to perform? It detracted hugely, I thought, from the seriousness of what had gone before.

Notwithstanding which, if you want to see some excellent performances in a sturdy production of a flawed yet brilliant play, this is a good one to see: the text is thoroughly alive throughout, which is more than one can say for the characters.

Miranda Rose (DI Staff), 23/06/09

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As You Like It
running until 3rd October 2009
at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford In Michael Boyd’s new production of As You Like It, the action moves from the frozen monochrome of a court in crisis to a forest less welcoming than a Siberian tundra. The comedy of Rosalind following her father into exile in the Forest of Arden is often portrayed as a play of riotous thigh slapping and lurid green sets, with plenty of opportunity for flowers, straw, and a strutting “Ganymede” (Rosalind’s male alter-ego; this being Shakespeare, she exchanges her skirt for trousers for much of the play). Instead, the latest Royal Shakespeare Company production finds both savagery and beauty in this beloved Shakespeare play. The result is a compelling exploration of the comedy’s dark heart.

Returning from the Histories season, Boyd and designer Tom Piper create a new aesthetic for the new RSC ensemble. From the blue-ochre blaze of the Histories sets, Piper has moved to a starker, colder look. Initially, the stage is spare, the back of the courtyard dominated by a gleaming silver-white structure of square panels. Its metallic sheen provides a static backdrop to the glittering, inhospitable court that Duke Ferdinand, Orlando and Adam, Rosalind, Celia, and Touchstone successively flee.

But then Boyd and Piper unleash destruction on the set: the wrestling bout between Orlando and Charles smears the panels with blood; an enormous ball of straw bursts through double doors—quite literally the forest of Arden. Inside is Richard Katz’s Touchstone, a man with the frizzy grey hair of a clown, with his legs strait-jacketed together. The square panels are opened, battered, or removed altogether, revealing a casual abattoir (a deer hangs from a meathook, coat glistening), dead branches, or a dusty, yellow light. Instead of elegant poems on parchment, Orlando’s sonnets are big black letters on scrappy placards, enormous cardboard panels suspended from the flies or pinned to the pillars and set. In this production, the concepts As You Like It usually conveys with charm - clown, forest, poetry - are pushed to their limits, creating visual shocks that alternately amuse and surprise.

At the end of the interval, Geoffrey Freshwater as Corin guts and skins a real dead rabbit onstage. Detractors may find it too gory, but even the decapitation (a flash of the cleaver while the audience braces itself) is remarkable more for its efficiency than for its horror. The moment is an effective metaphor for a production fighting audience assumptions about this cosy comedy. Boyd’s As You Like It refuses the notion that a big-budget staging has to look safe or beautiful.

Where other productions gloss the play’s darkness to foreground the comedy, Boyd and his cast address the psychological impact of the characters’ experiences. Katy Stephens’s Rosalind is, above all, a woman who has just lost her father, and her performance has the sharpness of raw grief. Rosalind’s love for Orlando is as painful as it is instantaneous, and in the intimacy of The Courtyard, it’s a shock to see her stand on the stage with tears in her eyes after the first wooing scene. Rather than looking the part of a wriggling schoolboy, when Stephens cross-dresses to become Ganymede, she turns into a dashing young man. She is the only Rosalind I’ve seen who convinces in the fainting scene, when Rosalind has to endure news of her beloved Orlando’s tussle with a lion, herself dressed as the male Ganymede (a slightly spivvy aesthete in Barbour and moustache). Usually, Rosalind keels over at the briefest flash of Orlando’s blood-stained handkerchief; here, she is forced to stand with the gory white scarf around her neck until the proximity of the blood becomes excruciating. Both of them are fighters, the extent of the blood indicating just how much Orlando had to bear.

Mariah Gale’s Celia is Rosalind’s junior, a princess full of an enthusiasm that renders her vulnerable. Celia is a problematic role: she tends to disappear into the trees as the Rosalind-Orlando relationship takes over. Her own last-minute love plot with Oliver is conveyed in a couple of sentences. Nevertheless, Boyd fleshes out the role with a bizarre, but enjoyable, dream sequence and a well-cast Oliver. As Oliver, Charles Aitken, a veteran of physical theatre companies such as Headlong and Frantic Assembly, echoes Stephens’s Rosalind by rooting his performance in trauma, which stems from a father’s death.

The most memorable performance comes from Forbes Masson as Jacques, the melancholic courtier who masterminds the utopian project of Duke Ferdinand’s exile. Masson plays a gin-soaked Goth with sneering blacked eyes and a purple velvet blazer, faintly ridiculous with his Cuban heels and ginger hair ruffled to the ends. Masson sings with intensity. His tenor is disarmingly icy, like Rufus Wainwright turned malevolent choirboy. There’s a hint of the jilted lover in his sneering, bitter relationship with Clarence Smith’s Duke Ferdinand, the exile who sets out to find “sermons in stones, books in the running brooks”. Ferdinand raises Jacques’s hopes of a utopia in Arden, but by the end of the play, those hopes are dashed. When Duke Ferdinand’s crown is miraculously restored, the company drops to their knees, while Jacques stays standing. His sense of contempt as Ferdinand takes the crown—the lure of power is just too strong for the exiled duke—is palpable; their sylvan dream is shattered. Jacques skulks offstage alone, leaving the festivities he can no longer enjoy.

The members of Boyd’s new ensemble have, in As You Like It, created an almost flawless conception of a fiercely flawed world. This company will perform together until 2011, opening the New Royal Shakespeare Theatre currently being built. Traditionally, acting contracts are much shorter, forcing actors into hothouse collaborations lasting only for the few weeks of rehearsal. The Long Ensemble, together since January, has time to develop intense relationships with one another and with the roles they will reprise in future seasons. The visceral emotion and fierce intelligence of this production suggests that summers in Stratford will be hot for years to come.

Sophie Duncan (Unverified), 14/06/09

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As You Like It
running until 3rd October 2009
at The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford Michael Boyd's production of As You Like It bursts into life, prologueless, introduced by the young and dashing Orlando. He has troubles with his brother. We then bound back to Court, in its most puritan and austere guise. The young princesses who love each other more than sisters curtsy prettily, their emotions as tightly repressed as their hair. But it's not long before everything collides, and everyone heads off into the forest, to exile and freedom.

In plot the play is somewhere between The Tempest, with a banished Duke living rough until his usurping brother repents, and Much Ado, with its young lovers or Twelfth Night where a lady yearns for a boy who is really a girl. To appease Elizabethan royalty the play is set in France, but the rural woodland is quite familiar. It's all quite fairytale-esque and straightforward, barring occasional lionesses, and appears one of the frothier of Shakespeare's plays. But it's not so easily dismissed from mind, and even in the rural paradise everyone carries a gun.

Rosalind drives the play. It's a terrific role, though I'm grateful the complexities of the original gender swapping (a boy playing a lady playing a youth) are simplified in these equal days. Katy Stephens does an exceptional job. Rosalind - Ganymede thinks fast, talks fast, playfully switching mood, and Stephens plays an energetic and compelling part. She's pretty convincing as a boy - not with hair up in unmanly bun but with loose cavalier locks, looking very like Orlando Bloom in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Her swagger and pencil moustache are just right too.

Jaques and Touchstone are also noteworthy, for their different sides of the wise fool, melancholy and comic. Forbes Masson introduces Jaques in a high, eerie contralto, mourning a deer the Duke has killed. He remains set apart in the midst of the action, abruptly stalking off during the high celebrations of the finale. Touchstone misses court life more than anyone, and Richard Katz is tall and mournful, doomed to speak wisdom and yet his genius go unrecognised. His anatomy of an argument (with gestures) is really nice, as are the machinations of his wooing unsuitable Audrey.

It seems to be an RSC fashion to add a scene after the interval, leaving the Shakespearean dialogue unchanged. Consequently Touchstone and the old shepherd Corin (Geoffrey Freshwater) skilfully execute a wordless and fascinating exchange. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but the vegetarians probably didn't enjoy it. The other actors I was most impressed by were the banished court chorus, whose improvisation and milling about were perfectly in-character, so much that I didn't follow all of the Duke and Jaques friendly argument, because I was watching the barbecuing in the background.

If somehow you were kidnapped and came to in the middle of this performance you'd know it was the RSC. The fabulous use of a thrust stage (which I hear they're keeping for the brand new theatre), the versatile and ascendable set, the anachronistic but eminently suitable costumes, the slickness (so much so, some rhyming couplets were all but swallowed by the new scene), the light audience participation, the full and properly conveyed exploration of the speeches, yes, it has all the hallmarks. You can relax, knowing you're in expert hands.

And if there's something of an odd contrast to watching the upper classes disporting themselves and slumming it in these current times, well the RSC can't help the zeitgeist. Touchstone steals Audrey from her more suitable suitor, Celia spontaneously buys the lands, flocks and cottage of Corin (with some spare cash) which Silvius was hoping to farm, the displaced rich carve poems on trees and lounge around strumming guitars. And somewhere there is the stormcloud of reality keeping out of sight. Even Jaques' best Eeyore impression can't quite burst the bubble.

Everything is sorted, competently, by Rosalind and it all ends happily. Or at least all the characters get what they wish for. Whether life will really be as they like it, ever after, is left satisfyingly ambiguous.

Jen Pawsey (DI Reviewer), 10/06/09

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The Winter's Tale
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford, until 3rd October 2009 Let’s face it: with The Winter’s Tale, it’s really all about the bear. Did they pull it off? Did the gobbling up of the luckless Antigonus receive suitably tongue-in cheek treatment? The bear is not only an interesting staging proposition; much like the plot of the play as a whole, it’s incredibly difficult - but also intriguingly unnecessary - to make it convincing, and we can gauge in our appreciation of it the essence of our reaction to the play – in short, is our disbelief properly suspended or are we so charmed that we don’t really care?

A story of jealous, tyrannical monarchs, false accusations, changeling children and young love, The Winter’s Tale is just that – a fireside story to while away the hours of darkness, to fathom the murky depths of human nature and to celebrate its generosity, and to send a pleasurable shiver down the listener’s spine. This RSC production explores the play as ‘fairy tale’ on a number of levels: the predominant costume theme is late Victorian, and the opening banquet scene has a festive, rosily Dickensian feel to it, and makes a great starting point for the dark and improbable story that unfolds. If Leontes’ Sicilia represents the first level of removal from reality, then in the pastoral scenes set in Bohemia we feel as if we have actually fallen into the pages of the story itself; sets and costumes are festooned with the leaves of illustrated story books. It’s an open invitation to enjoyment, to allow oneself to be beguiled by a fantasy which need not, on a certain level, be taken too seriously.

Of course, there’s plenty of matter for serious reflection in the play. We can’t help but question the appalling actions of Leontes, who unjustly accuses his wife of adultery with his boyhood friend and then condemns his infant daughter to death by exposure. His conviction of Hermione’s guilt seems so arbitrary, and his repentance, in spite of the afflictions which bring it about, so sudden, that you find yourself questioning your assumptions about human nature. Kelly Hunter trod a careful path as Hermione, finding the right balance between arch flirtation and steely virtue, making it just about possible to credit Leontes’ paranoia. The king himself (Greg Hicks) is full of pent-up energy, simultaneously imposing and pathetic, unreachable in his torment. Noma Dumezweni was electrifying as loyal, intelligent Paulina, and her scenes were both moving and poignantly humorous. The production’s light touches were good too. Gruffudd Glyn cut a dash as the Young Shepherd, while Brian Doherty’s Autolycus is rollicking, roguish and thoroughly entertaining.

This is a robust production of a difficult play, a story potent with fairytale magic but curiously without supernatural elements. Fun, by turns heart-wrenchingly emotional and winningly light-hearted, cleverly staged and visually pleasing, the production zips along like a good yarn ought to. This bear, in summary, was most satisfactory.

Susie Cogan (DI Staff), 15/05/09

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Hamlet
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, to 15th November 2008 The first thing to note was that when we arrived, at least an hour early, there was already a small queue of people, seated and waiting patiently for returned tickets. A hint that this production is a little out of the ordinary, shall we say. The second is that we had both managed somehow to forget that such a figure as Patrick Stewart was playing Claudius. Reminders both, as if we needed them, that a certain modern actor would be taking the lead.

So we cannot pretend that there are not two separate questions to be asked: “How is this production?” and “How is David Tennant as Hamlet?” But fortunately the answers are more or less identical: “Accessible, enjoyable and resisting excess pretty much entirely.”

Tennant looks young. Indeed, during the phase where he’s moping about the place and people are trying to figure out why, he seems, in his jeans, bare feet and red t-shirt, for all the world like a teenager who won’t leave his bedroom to meet the guests because, well, you wouldn’t understand.

There are flashes of Doctor Who, inevitably. His mockery of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Polonius has that same flavour of reckless joy masking a serious purpose, that same sense of being the only one who has the important knowledge and responsibility and is set apart thereby. His appearance at the play, in dinner suit, and, again, bare feet, offers a distinctly Hoovian image of formality not quite sustained. And he could perhaps have been a little more careful to avoid the duplication of some vocal mannerisms from his most famous rôle, but as they all happen during the funny bits, it’s easy to forgive.

In fact, one of the strengths of this performance is that it really makes the most of the comic potential of the script. Without undermining the tragic inevitability of it all, it manages to show clearly that the characters, especially Hamlet himself, had the capacity for happier, more ordinary lives, which adds a touching poignancy to proceedings.

And the rest? It was all really rather good. There were no weak scenes, no weak performances. The ghostly stuff was properly scary, the gravedigger was hilarious, Polonius (Oliver Ford Davies) was loads of fun, and Ophelia (Mariah Gale) was genuinely alarming in her distress. It was peculiar to see Patrick Stewart play such a weak character, and it's not obvious whether his Claudius was an individual interpretation, but it certainly gave generous space to the other actors, which worked nicely.

The staging was sparse, for most scenes, and allowed, ahem, the play to be the thing. I still find such anachronisms as condoms and helicopter noises jarring and completely unnecessary, but their appearance was mercifully brief, and in no way prevent me from recommending this production unreservedly. Wait patiently for returned tickets if that’s the only way.

Ian Threadgill (Unverified), 03/09/08

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The Merchant of Venice
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, to 27th September 2008 Romantic comedy, updated folk story, or a deeply moralistic cautionary tale, The Merchant of Venice is a play which operates on many levels, and for this reason as much as for its anti-semitic overtones, has often been regarded as one of Shakespeare’s more problematic plays. A traditional love story, where Bassanio must win Portia’s hand in marriage by choosing the correct one of three caskets, is juxtaposed with the dangerous pact which makes his suit possible: the agreement of his friend Antonio to borrow money for the voyage against a pound of his own flesh, from Shylock, the Jewish money lender who hates him. We’re never quite sure where the fun ends and the tragedy begins. This production has been directed with an unusually light hand, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions about Antonio’s behaviour towards Shylock, and Shylock’s implacable demand for revenge.

It’s definitely a fun production, offering laughs, drama, elopement, surprisingly engaging group dance, and lots of macho male embracing (well, this is Venice). Angus Wright makes an imposing Shylock: stalking the stage with feline grace, he is icy, clear, and full of pent-up energy and bitterness; a heroic, vindictive headmaster plagued by spoilt schoolchildren to whom he feels superior, but who occupy a sphere of privilege which he can never reach. Like said feline though, he remained, for me, disappointingly inscrutable: director Tim Carroll on this occasion has decided not to unravel Shylock’s ambiguous motives for us by bringing him down firmly on the side of either good or evil, a hands-off approach to the text which is evident in many aspects of the performance. It’s a valid strategy, demanding a lot from an audience accustomed to being spoon-fed palatable modern interpretation and slick solutions, but it does rather detract from, well, the drama of the situation. The courtroom scene, which can reach peaks of feverish intensity, never quite got there this time, though it’s still undoubtedly edge-of-the-seat stuff. This did mean that there was a chance to notice some smart repose acting. Jack Laskey’s winningly wide-eyed and dishevelled Bassanio provided the exaggerated gestures of petulant male youth in the background throughout, and his friendship with Antonio (James Garnon) was really touchingly displayed.

The action at Portia’s Belmont house had much of the force which seemed to be lacking in the Venice scenes. On one level Portia is a bit of a Girl’s Own heroine, or one of those Agatha Christie rich totty characters who drive around in a ‘motor’ having adventures; on another, she’s a disenfranchised commodity preyed upon by fortune-hunters, very much to be pitied. Georgina Rich’s version of the plucky heiress is compelling: by turns vulnerable, reserved, confident and passionate, she dominates the stage with a blend of nervous intensity and sharp wit. I’m not sure it’s good to dwell on the appearance of the actors, but Portia and Bassanio are attractive as much because of their mannerisms and their relationship as actual physical charm, adding a vital and potent element to their performance.

This was a great production which I would gladly see again, but I can imagine it wouldn’t delight everyone quite as much. There’s so much to engage the attention in The Merchant of Venice that people have high expectations on the entertainment front and don’t always expect to work as hard as they might with certain other Shakespeare plays. Do take a chance though - this lower key production is subtle, moving, and challengingly open to interpretation.

Susie Cogan (DI Staff), 26/05/08

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A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, to 13th November 2008 This is a slick and atmospheric staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with seamless and coherent direction, delightful acting and loads of inventive physical theatre. Shakespeare's best-known and most surreal comedy is given a whirl in the dustbin-lid-and-sequin style: a tangle of the earthy and the ethereal.

From the beginning, and in all their scenes, the lovers make a fabulous quartet: their vividly-realised personalities collide in an exquisite balance of pathos and comedy. They played for (and got) some of the biggest laughs of the evening. Just a few brushstrokes of modernity in their costumes and bearing serve to make their wildly seesawing passions timelessly relevant. The geeky Demetrius (Edward Bennett) and urban hippy Lysander (Tom Davey) are hilarious if hammy in their besotted competitiveness, and the fight scene between bookish Helena and spoilt Hermia (Nathalie Walter and Kathryn Drysdale, respectively) bubbles with shared years of pent-up emotion.

The faeries (definitely that spelling, this lot) were one of the highlights for me: dusky, glittery, shadowy creatures of the bog and the night. Their curiosity and casual, uncomprehending cruelty really came across. Titania and Oberon (Andrea Harris and Peter de Jersey) were straight classical in their costumes and interpretation, with some twinkly, low-key magic and some airborne acrobatics. Strangely, their battle over the changeling boy was the only piece of real tenderness in the play.

The labouring players were very funny. An eager, hapless, mutually-supportive amateur drama group from a deprived urban area. The earthiness of the humour was exploited to the max, but distinct and endearing personalities were developed for each of the characters, which gave depth to their pieces, and made the play-within-the-play at the end - always a dangerous bit to act, because the plot is basically over - as sweet as an impromptu junket. The props were imaginative and appropriate. Joe Dixon in particular had the audience on a string from the beginning, as a beat-boxing Bottom with a beer belly and a soiled vest.

The production thoroughly explored the doubling, tripling and quadrupling in the text - not only in the set, with its mirrored backdrop and host of starry lights, but also in the use of spoken echoes among the faeries and the players. This was really cleverly done, and brought the text totally alive, rather than, as so often happens, leaving these groups to hang around as a dumb chorus. Perhaps this emphasis on copies and mirroring was the root of the decision to make Puck (Mark Hadfield) so relatively unmagical. The calm at the eye of the storm, Puck is the only one who is completely individual: he has no twin, no other half, no reflection. He was a bit arch at times, but otherwise, despite his satyresque hairy trousers, he was grubbily human, like a small sad comic on a rural circuit. This was an unusual move, given how thoroughly explored every other aspect of the play seemed to be. I think I would have liked to see a more traditionally manic, fey Puck, but perhaps I'm missing something here.

The music was truly remarkable. Unintrusive, supportive and rather beautiful, it created atmosphere exactly as and when needed. The lighting was spectacular and mesmeric: simply, sensibly and probably expensively designed.

Altogether, it was a beautifully balanced and cohesive production: Gregory Doran's direction gives no ill-proportion'd thought his act: everything works together for the benefit of the whole. This will probably be the best Dream you'll see all summer - perhaps all decade. It's only about an hour away from Oxford: you can nip down after work for a taste of another world.

Miranda Rose (DI Staff), 22/05/08

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Henry VI part iii
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, to Saturday 15th March 2008

Here aptly subtitled ‘The Chaos’, the final play in Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy is a breathtaking scrummage of machination, battle, politics, and allegiance-switching, ushering in (and out) four kings (three English, one French), three crown princes (all called Edward), two queens, one scheming hunchback, sundry vengeful psychopaths and a host of wavering nobles.

In some senses a good old-fashioned revenge tragedy, the play makes a study of the self-perpetuating nature of killing: Lord Clifford avenges the death of his father with the gruesome murder of the defenceless Rutland, and the outrage provoked by the slaughter of this innocent is later echoed by Queen Margaret when Rutland’s brothers despatch her young son. And that’s not the least of it: this production leaves little to the imagination in terms of gore and the culmination of three hours of on-stage stabbing and gouging leaves the stage smeared with the blood of the godly, guileless King Henry. The interlinked noble preoccupations of honour, power and family trap the characters into a futile cycle of internecine war, where the main players are pitted against their own relations, and ordinary families are split between warring factions according to their various allegiances. While I’m as wary as anyone of potentially gimmicky modernisation, you could imagine this one successfully updated in the style of Mario Puzo. Not a message which loses potency over time.

Chuk Iwuji brings a gentle dignity to the character of the potentially irritating King Henry. His reflections on the burden of his position are poignant; his forgiveness of his enemies at once inspiring and exasperating. His queen, Margaret (Katy Stephens), makes quite a contrast: driven by a hunger for power born of pride and desperation, she is strong, charismatic and utterly implacable. Jonathan Slinger as the future Richard III is a revelation: it’s astonishing that you can still get away with this twitching, shuffling version of evil, but he does – magnificently. From his initial appearance as a rather merry psychotic, through rages simultaneously funny and frightening, to a final promise of future infamy, Slinger dominates the stage with demonic magnetism, and succeeds in presenting a Richard both humorous and human without diminishing his delicious, hackle-raising badness.

While the pace of the action occasionally left us a bit bewildered, and the valiant attempts to keep the battle scenes interesting sometimes misfired, this is a production undoubtedly worth seeing: clever, disconcerting, and dramatic.

Susie Cogan (Unverified), 19/02/08

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Richard III
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, to Sunday 16th March 2008

This was a bold and powerful production, which seemed much shorter than its three and a half hours. It was sustained, as it must be, by a central performance of enormous vehemence from Jonathan Slinger as Richard, the hunchbacked villain. His presence was commanding, his crippled movements convincing, and his speech had great force and perfect clarity, showing an understanding of the text that allowed him to nuance each line as he pleased. A number of scenes stood out, among them his seduction of Anne beside the body of her husband, his coronation, twitching leg and all, and his negotiation with an apoplectic Elizabeth for her daughter’s hand.

But two aspects of this production are likely to be discussed over and above the individual performances. The first is the perennial question of the balance between comedy and tragedy. This performance was very funny, making the most of Richard’s asides to the audience, and absolutely milking the scenes involving the two assassins of Clarence.

But the flippancy about such topics as murder and betrayal needs to be contained within, or be seen at all times to stem from, the person of Richard. That he can do such deeds and speak of them with such shameless glee must be an aspect of his astonishing private monstrosity rather than part of the tone of the production, his ability to coax others into any kind of complicity even more so.

Otherwise, for all the grief of the bereaved, - and Katy Stephens as Margaret deserves a special mention for the mesmerising cursing scene - there develops an atmosphere of “what does it all matter, a few more deaths here or there?” And here this rather detracted from the gravitas, the necessary dignity and importance of Richard’s downfall and the play’s resolution, as, unfortunately, did a less than commanding turn by Lex Shrapnel as Richmond

The second point of contention will be the modernisation. People tend to have strong feelings about this, and will either find it bold and invigorating, or intrusive and unnecessary. Whilst the overall strength of the production was not unduly compromised, I’m afraid I incline to the latter view. Balding nobles in dark business suits become a little interchangeable, helicopter noises and indeed firearms must be very carefully handled in a story where the loss of a horse will be significant, and the digital camera, while amusingly used, is jarring in itself and detracts from the sinister atmosphere that needs to be maintained.

I sympathise with the wish to be innovative and relevant and to stamp the script with knowing nods to modern tyranny and media manipulation. But Shakespeare is already relevant. Shakespeare’s plays, to state the excruciatingly obvious, are about people and what they can become, and they reveal people, in beautiful and accessible language, wonderfully woven. Fortunately this production, for all these quibbles, still offers this magic. Do go and form your own opinion.

Ian Threadgill (Unverified), 19/02/08

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Richard II
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, till Thursday 13th March 2008

Richard II is a story of treason, real and fabricated, of rebellion, and of the deposing of a weak monarch: the vain and feeble king who milks the land entrusted to his care for every possible penny, exiles his popular cousin, and rejects the sober council of his aged uncles for the self-interested encouragement of flatterers. The plot is simpler than those of the better-known romantic plays (this is history, after all) but Richard’s forced abdication of his position and identity is a compelling and troubling journey, and the play contains some of Shakespeare’s most poignant lines. Richard’s line "For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings" is delivered, at the moment of final defeat, with heart-wrenching humanity by Jonathan Slinger, suddenly noble in defeat after his previous vanity and hysteria.

This production combines comedy and tragedy as Elizabethan recipes mingle sweet and savoury - with reckless abandon. A great deal of the comedy is inextricable from the text, but the company takes this tendency and runs with it: Jonathan Slinger’s glib, camp and sarcastic Richard is cruelly funny, queening it over his simpering court favourites Anthony Shuster, Forbes Masson and Nicholas Asbury, who support him admirably. Lines all over the place are are unexpectedly played for laughs. While this makes for an entertaining evening, it’s a strategy which can backfire: some the play’s more tragic moments seem to lack force as a result. The scene was more reminiscent of a playground quarrel than high politics as a petulant Richard surrendered his crown like a tired and stroppy child facing up to his bullies. By the time Richard gets serious – about 2/3 of the way through – it’s a bit late: we’re used to the farce and it’s hard to get involved with the small sad man, impressive though his voice and presence is.

But the atmosphere of nursery antagonism is shot through with real drama. Katy Stephen's brief appearance as the bereaved Duchess of Gloucester was a point of genuine tragedy, and Clive Wood's burly, somewhat jaded Bolingbroke, ending the play and starting his reign by kicking aside a couple of rebels’ heads to mount the makeshift throne above his murdered rival’s corpse produced a chilling and thought-provoking effect. Richard Cordery was an excellent York, struggling with his conflicting loyalties, but, again, some of his scenes developed a distinct element of farce, as his Duchess (Maureen Beattie)’s pleas for her treacherous son Aumerle were (successfully) played for laughs.

It was performed, as is fashionable, in almost-period costume with one or two leather coats and lots of sweeping about – for this production, and particularly this small but very open space, this conceptual style worked rather well, partly because the actors seemed so comfortable with it: it didn’t feel as if a point about costume was being made but rather as if a story was being told with spare visual elegance. This also allowed for some clever and spectacular special effects, especially the jousting, which was done on saddled swings dangling from the 40-foot high ceiling. It all looked very dangerous and is peculiarly honest and believable. The choreography (Liz Ranken and Terry King) was slick and the music was exquisite - the voice of Andrea J Cox hovering ominously over tonal percussion.

The only problem was that occasionally a combination of the music, the echo (if actors faced away from the audience) and the rapidity of speech (especially, regrettably, in the case of Clive Wood's Bolingbroke) made it rather hard to hear chunks of some scenes. Which was a shame.

The tragicomic interpretation of a sometimes slightly dry play keeps it upbeat, engaging, and makes for a great night, but in the mingling of styles the play loses a little of its emotional power. It is, however, an opportunity to see a company of seriously gifted actors working together with a communal coherence and individual flair which is beautiful to see. Well worth the journey.

Miranda Rose (DI Staff), 18/01/08

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Henry IV parts I & II
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, till Friday 14th March 2008

The RSC is currently staging the whole History Cycle, with the same cast for each play. It's unusual but it seems so sensible to do it this way, highlighting the continuity and thread of history. There are times you can see the whole cycle (Richard II, Henry IV parts I & II, Henry V, Henry VI parts I, II & III, Richard III) in 48 hours, though not in order. All you need is the stamina... Two plays in the same day, particularly plays as gritty as these, was a challenge, but it was not reluctantly that we returned for part II.

The main performance space for the RSC is currently the Courtyard Theatre, just down the road from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Swan, due to the total rebuilding of the former and refurbishing of the latter. You can currently see right through the RST, and there are plans for what it will look like eventually up in the Courtyard. Meanwhile the staging is all in the round, in temporary-feeling but extremely comfortable surroundings, and to get in and out of your seat you get to walk past the props cupboard, kindly left open for the nosy, and the makeup station, with ample supplies of gore. The ceiling is full of technical jiggery pokery which is used to great effect, not least in the banditry of part I!

Henry IV is almost a misnomer, since these plays really follow Prince Henry Percy (Hal), the future Henry V. We see him first in the taverns, drinking sack and stealing purses, consorting with the notorious character of Falstaff. Gradually we realise this is a show, that his father's fears for Hal are unfounded and his wish that Henry Monmouth (Hotspur) were really his son ultimately foolish. While Hotspur seems the more princely, he is too quick-tempered to rule wisely, and Hal proves the greater man.

Much of the story is taken from Holinshed's Chronicles, but arguably the most famous elements are added in by Shakespeare. Hal and Hotspur were not contemporaries and it is highly unlikely Hal led such a wild life. But they're necessary to explore notions of chivalry, of styles of ruling, of courage and ambition, and possibly even of familial love - with a father like Henry IV is Hal's fondness for Falstaff and his disreputable "family" a surprise? The transition from his tavern kith to his real Royal family and advisers is part of his maturation and fitness to rule. Perhaps this is why part II is painful - because of the shedding of his familiars.

Part I is the more satisfying play, better known, and when we were there considerably better attended. In it the light relief of Hal's dissident lifestyle and friends is much more integrated into the plot, than the comic yokels of part II. In part I Hal is pitted against Hotspur, and part II feels the lack of this fiery rebel, replacing him with the cold Archbishop of York (Antony Bunsee with piercing glare). The events of part II are strikingly similar to part I: the tricking of Falstaff, a battle against the rebels, the rebel chiefs reneging on their promise of help, Henry IV despairing of his son, Hal proving his worth. They seem lesser copies - the battle is smaller and led by Hal's younger brother, for instance. And yet part II provides the conclusion to the tale of Hal growing into his title. It bridges a historical gap, and if it lacks in entertainment it makes up for it in emotional depth.

Hal (Geoffrey Streatfeild) is the single best thing about this production. He flits beautifully between jesting in the tavern and doing his duty, and is always, ultimately, in charge. He is believable and heroic and compelling. I can imagine he is fabulous as Henry V, as majestic and familiar as he is throughout these plays. His Falstaff (David Warner) is also brilliant, and the scenes with the two together crackle. The appropriately named Lex Shrapnel as Hotspur is beautifully frustrating, his anger leaking out in all directions, and he seems to feel injustice so keenly that he nearly inspires sympathy, particularly when pitted against the cold-hearted King.

The performance is pacy, and dashes along. The ubiquitous tavern/royal bed appears so swiftly scenes almost overlap. The only downside to this is that the first scene is rushed and some of the lines become garbled. Clive Wood as the King is the chief culprit here, and I began to feel that either he or the director did not love the poetry of the King's speeches as much as I do!

It's not sparkly Shakespeare, but it's a very good solid production. The costumes are essentially historical. The set is large and rusting, like the hull of a wrecked ship. After reading the somewhat misleading first article in the programme, comparing Civil War in England and Sierra Leone, I was beginning to think we were in for a production set in Africa, but this is not the case. What you do get is a sense of a great historical story, which did make us question how Henry IV got there, and want to see what happened next! In this, I would say, the production most certainly does its job.

Jen Pawsey (DI Reviewer), 07/01/08

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Henry V
The Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon, till Fri 14th March 2008 Much more than a retelling of a famous English military triumph, Henry V is a play of contradictions, where comedy mingles provocatively with tragedy, where the flipside of loyalty to one’s country can be the betrayal of a friend, and where a young king emerges from an unorthodox apprenticeship as a thoughtful and charismatic ruler leading a victorious army in a cause of dubious worth, only for negotiation and matrimony eventually to resolve a situation where war has carved the path.

This season’s RSC production of Henry V has all the right ingredients: there is prominent celebration of the Tudors’ Lancastrian ancestry in a gutsy portrayal of the giant-killing at Agincourt, while the subtleties of the King’s meditations on the demands of friendship, kingship and diplomacy are poignantly interspersed with the experiences of his enemies, captains, and erstwhile companions. Comedy is amply provided by the likeable, if not exactly loveable, rogues Pistol (Nicholas Asbury) and Bardolph (Julius d’Silva), by the alternately mild, pompous, thoughtful, combative Captain Fluellen (brilliant delivery by Jonathan Slinger), in a delightfully foul-mouthed francophone interlude, and by the King himself, particularly in his soldierly wooing of the Lady Katherine (Alexia Healy). The set is minimal, industrial; a nice backdrop for the young Henry’s unpretentious approach to kingship; while the battle scenes, adroitly avoiding the potential embarrassment of an understaffed cardboard-sword-waving army, are even - dare I say it – a bit scary.

There’s a beguiling atmosphere of low-key patriotism: we’re invited to admire the English, but not in such a way as to embarrass a sensitive modern-day audience. Henry and his entourage are brave, straightforward and restrainedly macho, and while the French are quite clearly a dodgy bunch in comparison (turquoise velveteen and sparkly earrings? - don’t trust them), they’re nonetheless quite unmistakeably a worthy foe with their own code of honour, and if they do have a dusty-looking king who is perambulated onstage like the mechanism of a majestic cuckoo clock, their princess is still good enough to marry the King of England. They’re funny too: John Mackay’s marvellous Dauphin, posturing, petulant, and sporting a splendid head of bubble-curls that would have made Shirley Temple weep with envy, gives the scenes in the French court a piquant humour, backed up by Antony Bunsee as the deliciously smooth Constable of France.

Loud bangs, bloodied corpses and on-stage urination aside, the true strength of this production lies in understatement. Geoffrey Streatfeild’s restrained, authoritative Henry inspires confidence even when he appears to be making the wrong decision, and emerges as a multi-dimensional personality with quirks, charm, and a temper - and if he also seems a little calculating, that only adds to his allure. It’s a great feat to make a champion human without damaging his epic credibility, but this is a production that achieves it heroically. Well-paced, witty, and truly absorbing.

Susie Cogan (DI Staff), 01/12/07

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