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The University American Stage Tour returned
to the ADC as usual at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term.
Their The Winter's Tale was a neat touring production.
Director Jeff James's watchword appeared to be "keep it
simple", with no sets and minimal furniture, and only eight
actors with intelligent doubling; the largely interchangeable
courtiers and shepherdesses being quite acceptably rendered
by the use of faceless puppets held up by whichever actor was
free to speak the lines at that particular moment. (I wonder,
in passing, whether the director had seen Avenue Q ,
the Toni-winning Broadway musical in which half-length glove
puppets feature so prominently - and, occasionally, so astonishingly
raunchily.) Among the doubled roles, Ed Martineau's Leontes/0ld
Shepherd and Owen Holland's Antigonus/Autolycus were notably
successful. Mr Holland's well-picked 5-string banjo was a pleasing
feature also, and his duo with the ukulele of Camillo (Joseph
Ambrose Evans), to provide the accompaniment to a lively cleverly-mimed
sheepshearing square-dance, brought an agreeably active element
to what was a generally intelligent, but sometimes somewhat
static and deliberate, rendering. Altogether this was a performance
that one could contemplate going to represent the university
in far-off places with equanimity and sufficient pride, which
has by no means always been the case. Occasionally, however,
projection and articulation, especially from some of the female
players, were a bit weak for so late in the tour.
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The Marlowe Society has been celebrating its
centenary with Cymbeline directed by distinguished ex-member
Trevor Nunn. Unfortunately, due to my having been caught on
the hop by their moving the usual Spring production to Autumn
in honour of the occasion (but why? something to do with Sir
Trevor's availability I would guess), and to my having been
deprived by some sort of blip in the Arts Theatre marketing
office of my usual copy of the season's press-info pack, it
passed me by. So what should have been a record of an important
Cambridge Shakespearean occasion will be forever lost to readers
of EMLS. Lackaday...
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Another I missed for the same reason was Mark
Rylance's I Am Shakespeare , which I gather is a fantasy
based on the authorship question. Can't say I regret that one
all that much: it's not a controversy to set my pulses immoderately
racing. I was surprised to learn recently, though, that among
the doubters was Mark Twain: he who, writing of a similar longstanding
dispute, came up with the formulation, "The poems of Homer
were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name
living at the same time."
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I did, though, contrive to hear about English
Touring Theatre's production of Middleton and Rowley's The
Changeling arriving at the Arts. It's one of those blood-tragedies
which can really leave you feeling wrung out. But, despite a
sufficiently bloody climax, this version was surprisingly uninvolving.
That indefinable but unmistakeable frisson of horror
was lacking. It was a sort of regression-to-the-mean production
- the madhouse sub-plot and the hard-to-take-nowadays virginity-test
trick were less tiresome than usual, but the main plot distinctly
underpowered. It was played Jacobean: a couple of rather self-conscious
anachronisms - fumbling round the castle in the dark with the
aid of an electric torch; a bundle of banknotes where the text
specifies gold coin - came over as half-heartedly trendy rather
than as emblematic of anything in particular.
