Myer, Michael Grosvenor. "Shakespeare in
Cambridge, Lent Term 2001." Early Modern Literary Studies
7.1/Special Issue 8 (May, 2001): 20.1-3 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/07-1/revcamb.htm>.
Passing over a peculiarly uninspired and inept Twelfth Night by
a company of supposed professionals which had me creeping out of the ADC in
the middle of I.iii, and a well thought of Tempest which the fogs and
frosts of January sadly kept me away from, we started the Lent Term with a
Pericles. Now, you don't get many of them; I only remember one other
in the almost 50 years I've been going to plays in Cambridge. So I hoped for
a good one. And got it: the best sort of undergraduate theatre, where intelligence
and sincerity, together with a blessed ability to speak the verse to communicate
full comprehension of every single word which a lot of professionals might
envy (Duncan Thomas, for instance, bringing life to the not all that promising
part of Cleon by the purity of his verse speaking), overcame any slight deficiencies
of technique - and indeed these were but few. The somewhat intransigent Playroom
studio space was creatively used, and there was not a dud performance in a
lively, fast rendering: a genuine two-hour passage (including an interval,
which the original Globe R&J wouldn't have had). It was a clever idea
to replace Gower's plodding chorus by a trio of pretty young women who doubled
(trebled?) as various sailors, whores, pirates or whatever as occasion demanded.
The problem of some of the romantic absurdities was overcome by not being
afraid to play them for laughs (Ben Jewell's witty Simonides and Adam Seddon's
straying but brought-back-to-princely-virtue Lysimachus were particularly
effective); while retaining the poignancy of moments like Robert Donnelly's
Pericles' lament over his supposedly dead wife"s 'terrible childbed', or the
subtle, wordless smiles-and-tears of Joanna Hickman's sad Thaisa's reunion
with her lost daughter, the forcefully, and for once convincingly, virtuous
Marina of Camilla Cope. Chloe Nankivell's Dionyza was a beautiful but wicked
queen worthy of Snow White. The tableau which replaced the final chorus, of
her and her weak husband tormented by devils in hell, formed a fitting climax
to an inventive and pacy production which proclaimed Rebecca Mills a young
director to keep a careful eye on.
The Lent Term means the Marlowe Society at the Arts. Recent policy, says
the Senior Treasurer's programme note, of seeking out 'relatively unperformed
plays in verse or in a non-realist mode ... was rewarding artistically but
not financially'. (So what else is new?) Back, then, this year, to Shakespeare:
the Society's first Romeo and Juliet since 1952, when Dadie Rylands
directed John Barton, Peter Hall, Tony Church, Tony White, Mark Boxer... Well,
they couldn't quite match that lineup forty-nine years on. Nor, alas, could
they emulate that Pericles, whose bright ideas worked. This was one
of those well-meaning student efforts whose ideas were not quite bright enough,
tackled gamely but vainly by a company without the technique quite to bring
them off. Too much was cut: I feel ripped off without the Nurse's wormwood
on the dug and falling backward and saying ay. The production had its moments
- some well-arranged fights (though with more elbow work and kicks in the
bollocks than one feels the true duello could comprehend) - and some fair
performances: a Mercutio with energy and attack, and not as much of a bore
as he can be; a dignified, if rather youthful, Friar; a convincing Romeo,
and a lively and personable Juliet who will be a good actress when she learns
to keep head and hands still. The Prince, for some reason, was a young lady
whom one expected to pronounce Romeo's banishment with the information that
he had been voted Verona's Weakest Link.
The last Love's Labour's Lost most of us saw was probably Kenneth
Branagh's Porter-Gershwin-Berlin-Kern film musical, which was a lot of fun
but only at the expense of a grievously attenuated text; and whose climaxing
Courageous Statement Against The Horrors Of Modern Warfare would have had
more impact if that triumphantly distinguished Eyre-Loncraine-McKellen Richard
III hadn't been quite so fresh in the memory from only three years before.
I had hoped that Stephen Unwin's LLL for English Touring Theatre would
have taken the opportunity to go back to tradition just for a bit of contrast;
but it had, in fact, a disappointing number of points in common with the movie:
a female curate to match Branagh's female pedant, for instance, and a top
dressing of modern state-of-the-art technology. But, despite a programme defence
of Modern Dress Shax, cogent enough but a bit otiose and behind-the-fair at
this time of day surely (when did you last see a doublet-and-hose or a farthingale,
eh?; and can they really describe such a venture these days as 'an experiment'
without their fingers crossed? - though the linking of 'early modern' and
'postmodern' should have a certain resonance for readers of EMLS),
and despite all the mobile-phones and ghetto-blasters, high-speed lifts and
karaoke, this was, as so often happens, a straightforward, fluent and intelligent
reading of the text (the 'About the Play' section of the programme highly
commended); though it is a shame that one or two of those formulations one
awaits with pleasurable anticipation went for little or nothing: 'Stand aside
the true folk and let the traitors stay' dropped out of sight behind an unnecessary
property tree-in-a-pot, and 'A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that
hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it' likewise went down a black
hole; and these despite a satisfactorily sardonic Costard from Stephen Casey
(a richly comic Pompey in the Nine Worthies Masque), and Syan Blake's skilful
slinkily and sexily tormenting Rosaline. One of the production's virtues was
the tension between the romantic late-adolescent court of Navarre and the
fly French totty-troop who ran rings right round them. The standout performance
was, as it should be, Nick Fletcher's fastidiously euphuistic Berowne; though
what most haunts me in retrospect is the momentary bittersweet poignancy of
Anwen Hughes-Roberts' Catherine, recollecting the death of her deceived sister
for love of her own dearest friend's current suitor.
Responses to this piece intended for the Readers'
Forum may be sent to the Editor at L.M.Hopkins@shu.ac.uk.
