3 posts tagged “penelope wilton”

Despite my initial reservations about Jude Law playing Hamlet, I was actually quite excited by the time Tuesday arrived. So I settled in my front row seat (benefits of booking 18 months in advance) with Jen to one side and Spike's empty seat to the other* and it was show time.
And Law didn't disappoint. He played his Hamlet with an anger that had veins pulsating in his neck, sweat pouring down his brow and spit flying from his mouth (the one disadvantage of being on the front row when he is delivering a soliloquy at the front of the stage).

His manic hand gesturing was a little too much at times but you can't fault him on clarity of delivery which is an achievement when some speeches can easily become incomprehensible rants. It was a moving performance especially when on a couple of occasions our eye-line matched and it was as if he talking just to me (I'm sure the actors see very little of the audience once the stage is lit up but it still feels good.)
And the rest of the production? Well Penelope Wilton nailed Getrude, Ron Cook as Polonius didn't milk the comedy in his part enough (although that may be partly down to cuts in his speeches) something the RSC did very well and Ophelia, played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw was the weakest link. Just didn't connect with the character at all. She was too sensible and straight in the first half to make her descent into madness in the second half believable. She has a beautiful sweet singing voice but I don't think that really suited someone who's properly lost their marbles.
There weren't as many theatricals in the production as the RSC's (cracking mirrors, playing king being hoisted up ghost like into the ceiling etc), the set of towering stone castle walls with huge sliding doors gave the stage a suitably cold and bleak feel and there was a shower of snow in one scene so convincing it made me shiver.
Michael Grandage, who directed, has trimmed the script back to make it shorter which I don't object to as I think Hamlet can be a little long.
But what is my verdict, Tennant/RSC or Law/Donmar? Sorry Law you were much, much better than I expected and very enjoyable to watch but I didn't come out of the theatre thinking I'd just seen something historic like Tennants.

And what did the pro's think?

Daily Telegraph: "Law...joins the modern pantheon of spellbinding sweet princes with a performance of rare vulnerability and emotional openness."
Guardian: "Law doesn't have the sardonic wit of David Tennant, or the philosophical fluency of Jamie Ballard in Jonathan Miller's recent Tobacco Factory production, but he makes a Hamlet who truly discovers himself."
West End Whingers: "The Whingers also found themselves getting very sad about their inability carry off a cardigan which Jude Law can do depressingly well." 

*Spike got stuck up in York where he'd been for work and because he had his ticket with him the box office couldn't resell it, which was frustrating not because of the money lost but because there was a long queue of people desperate for returns and it was such a good seat to waste. Fortunately a chap who'd been sitting somewhere up in the gods spotted the empty seat during the first half and snuck down during the interval and asked if he could take it. Jen and I were glad to oblige.:"

The Donmar Warehouse's Wyndham's season wraps up with Hamlet starring Jude Law which opened a couple of days ago.
I am desperately avoiding any reviews until I see it in July as I want to form my own opinion. At the moment Mr Law and the Donmar team has a lot of work to do to impress coming barely 6 months after the RSC's Stewart/Tennant production finished its London run.
So what's it up against?

Jude Law vs David Tennant
Jude Law is still a bit of a posh soap actor in my eyes, while his body of work looks quite varied he's just not one of those actors who stands out for me. He's also too old to play Hamlet. Arguably David Tennant was too but he compensated by bringing a youthful energy to the role. David Tennant, aside from his age, was a fantastic Hamlet as I wrote on this very blog after seeing it last year and I feel sorry for Law having to follow it because comparisons are inevitable.

Patrick Stewart vs Penelope Wilton
Well it's the entire company really but those are probably the two most familiar names. The RSC company was entirely marvellous, stand out performances from Mariah Gale as Ophelia (redeeming herself after Miranda in The Tempest from the year before) Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius too was exceptional bringing to the fore the comedy of the character and Stewart quiet and calculating...I could go on. Wilton I just can't visualise as a Queen at the moment but Ron Cook is potentially a superb Polonius as I think he has the skill to work the comedy in his speeches. The rest of the cast I'm not familiar enough with to judge.

Shiny mirrors vs A traditional set?
The RSC production was simple but nonetheless impressive using mirrors as a back drop and the stage itself. Torches were used to clever effect and stage furniture was sparse which gave the production a modern feel - aimed I'm sure at the younger audience attracted by the presence of Dr Who. The Donmar's season at the Wyndham's so far has been impressive (although I missed Madame De Sade because I was poorly). I predict the Donmar will go for something a little less minimalist and maybe a bit more traditional, which worked very well for both Twelfth Night and Ivanov.

Have been meaning to write up my thoughts on Polly Stenham's That Face which I saw a couple of weeks back but I've been lazy. And I'm glad I was, because it means I can kill two birds with one stone and comment on last nights The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold too.
Both are about families and it is interesting to see certain parallels even though there is more than 50 years between their creation.

Stenham is the West End's hot new talented playwright. She penned That Face aged only 19 and after a successful debut at the Royal Court Theatre  it transferred to the West End.
She's got more writing talent in her little finger than I'll ever have producing such a rounded, well structured and well observed piece at such a tender age but if she is half as talented as this implies then I'm more excited about what is to come.
That Face is the story of a posh middle-class family, fractured by divorce and going into free fall. The mother is a drunken, vallium-popping recluse played with just the right amount of stagger and neurosis by Lindsey Duncan. Her son is trying desperately to straighten her out having dropped out of university to keep an eye on her but has in his immaturity becomes dependent on her neediness.
And the teenage daughter played by Skin's Hannah Murray has just gone a bit wild without the steadying parental influence and at the start of the play is in the process of getting kicked out of her posh school by drugging and torturing a younger pupil as part of a initiation ceremony.
It skips along at a merry pace exposing some foibles and failings in modern western society as kids try to clean up the mother before Dad arrives to cart her off to a clinic. Duncan's is not the only sterling performance in fact the only weakness was Murray who had a tone of voice that  just grated after a while and played the neglected spoilt teenager in the stiff-armed gesturing way that seems to have come straight out of drama school.
The ending came all to quick which was a sign of how enjoyable the whole thing was and the same can be said for the Chalk Garden at the Donmar.
It's the third play I've seen at the tiny theatre and interesting to see the stage fully dressed as the interior of a well-to-do country house from the 1950's. (The last play I saw there survived on four chairs and a newspaper.)
Bagnold, who is probably most famous for writing National Velvet, based the idea on her own experience. Once again a dysfunctional family is the central theme this time an eccentric Grandmother who, disapproving of her daughters remarriage has taken her teenage granddaughter in. It is a posh household with an aging, bedridden butler living unseen upstairs but always at the end of the phone voicing opinions, a paranoid man servant who was imprisoned as a consciencious objector during the war and the new Governess who is just quietly strange compared to everyone else.
Naturally the granddaughter is intelligent but completely wild and over indulged. In the story, the Governess has a secret to hide but her presence does more than make the family want to unravel her mystery, it also unearths a few painful truths about their own relationships.
It was refreshing to see a play that had a predominantly maturer cast led by the wickedly funny Margaret Tyzack who plays the Grandmother and Penelope Wilton who plays the Governess. I feel I'm doing a great disservice to Wilton when the one role she's had which I always remember is Sean's mum in Sean of the Dead. She is certainly an actress of far more depth and scope than that performance betrays.
Felicity Jones at 24 plays the 16 daughter and is one of those actresses who'll be pulling off characters 10-15 years her junior for much of her career. I was impressed by her in ITV's Northanger Abbey and had to google her when I got home just to check she really is in her 20's. Having those extra years of experience certainly helped in her performance compared with Murray in That Face but there was still a bit of the stiff-armed, precociousness going on.
The Chalk Garden is clever and brilliantly funny with some great one-liners. Several audience members felt moved enough to utter a very British middle class 'bravo' during the final applause and if I wasn't an oik and under 50, I'd have said 'bravo' too.