6 posts tagged “rsc”

First time I've seen images of David Tennant as Hamlet. Did I mention how excited I am about seeing this at The Courtyard Theatre in Stratford in August?

When I booked the tickets for the RSC's King Lear back in summer it seemed like an age to wait but in the blink of an eye the months have passed. Arriving excited with anticipation at the New London Theatre there were posters warning us that the play contained loud gun-shots and brief nudity. J and I both joked that as long as it wasn't Ian McKellan who was getting his kit off, that would be fine.

McKellan plays the aged King who decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters and with the usual doses of jealousy, plotting and misunderstandings sprinkled with a bit madness and violence it all ends tragically.
I'm fond of good tragedy and in particular Shakespeare's but this storyline didn't really move me and left me feeling that most of the characters got what they deserved. Perhaps it was the way it was played and that is no way a criticism of the acting which was generally superb.
It sounds like I didn't enjoy it but I really did and almost entirely because of McKellan who's performance was mesmerising. He is a true King of Shakespearean acting, put him and Patrick Stewart on the stage together and the rest of the cast might as well stay in their dressing rooms.
Other notable performances came from Sylvester McCoy who played The Fool and was unceremoniously and rather shockingly hung just before the interval. (His 'body' was retrieved by stage hands during the interval which some in the audience felt deserved an applause.)
Frances Barber who I've seen playing Mrs Coulter in the Dark Materials at the National was an excellently selfish and manipulative Goneril, the eldest daughter.
The jury is still out on Romola Garai (seen recently in the film Atonement) who played the youngest daughter Cordelia and the chief victim of the tragedy. Many actors have said baddies are more fun to play and maybe it's because she's a goody that she didn't get the chance to shine, I don't know, I'd have to see another actress play the part to really judge.
This probably only makes sense to me but while the story didn't move me in the same way that say Hamlet or Othello does the performance itself was utterly engaging.
And oh yes I nearly forgot, the nudity. Well it wasn't what I'd describe as brief and despite the warning it was far more shocking than Equus . What I will say is that Gandalf's is bigger than Harry Potter's.

Show us some tickets you bought for an upcoming event.

This is my most recent purchase and I've got to wait until next August before I can redeem it. But it was definitely worth getting the ticket early because David Tennant (Dr Who, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Casanova) is playing Hamlet and Jen and I will have front row seats!

Hamlet is my favourite Shakespeare play and it will be refreshing to see quite a young actor in the role. I've always felt the lead should be played by someone youthful so as to best represent the turmoil and indecision that inevitably comes with someone of a young age having to deal with such dramatic events in their life. There is also an element of 'me, me, me' in the character which is tinged with teen.
But this isn't the only production of Hamlet planned for the big stage. As Tennant finishes his run, Jude Law (Closer, Talented Mr Ripley) takes up the reins for the Donmar Warehouse in London.
Now Jude Law has never struck me as a particularly outstanding actor. Indeed one colleague, and fellow lover of the stage, commented on hearing the news that Law was play the great Dane: "You might as well throw a tea bag on the stage".

I've subsequently heard that Law is a fairly accomplished stage actor and has been treading the boards since his teens. It will be 2009 until I get to decide which is the closest assessment because I certainly plan on going to see it, if only to compare the two performances.

Haven't even had time to get really excited about seeing Ian McKellan in King Lear at Christmas when the RSC goes and dangles yet another tantalising play/actor combo before my very eyes.
I've just received advance purchase details for their 2008 summer/autumn Stratford season and not only is one of the plays going to be Hamlet - my favourite Shakespeare - but none other than David Tennant aka Barty Crouch jnr/Dr Who is taking the lead.
It will be nearly a year before I get to see such a pairing but I'm already excited about what he is going to bring to the role. My money is on quietly energetic...

Despite years of studying Shakespeare at school, college and Uni I'd never been to Stratford upon Avon until yesterday. It is quite picturesque, as you'd imagine, but seeing a play was the primary reason for the visit.
I went with my best friend Jen.
We first became friends 20 years ago as we were in the same A-level English class, united by the brilliant, yet formidable old spinster that was our teacher Miss Egan.
The last time we went away together was when we were 21, Jen was still at Cambridge and I was working in my first job in London earning peanuts. We went to Amsterdam on a very cheap, overnight coach and stayed in a grubby, shared room of a hostel in the red light district. We did go to a gallery, I think, but spent pretty much the whole time off our faces.
Fast forward to yesterday when we stayed in a pricey little hotel in a beautiful Cotswold's village, drank champagne and nice wine over dinner and went to see an RSC production of Richard II.
The play itself was superb. Helped by the fact the the costume was predominantly, and refreshingly, 16th-century in style and influence and the fact that it was Stratford, the production had an air of authenticity about that I've never felt before watching Shakespeare.

The director captured the pomp and ceremony of the Royal Court so beloved by King Richard from the start, dressing him in fine, light clothing which would starkly contrast with Bolingbroke's more informal and yet dark and quietly powerful appearance and persona.
Richard was played imaginatively and flawlessly by Jonathan Slinger with a slightly effeminate manner emphasising his vacilating and egocentric nature by quickly switching his tone from quiet contemplation to spitting rants and dismissive asides.
It is a play about the deposing of a King deemed by some ineffectual, misguided and weak. In history, or so I learnt yesterday, Richard was the last of England's undisputed monarchs and Bolingbroke seizing the throne was to set the country on a 200 year path of civil discontent and war. The issue of who has the right to be king is central to the theme.
There was some excellent staging with the Bolingbroke and Mowbray's duel played out on saddles mounted on frames and hung from the gods so that the actors could swing towards each other, lances in hand. Richard's post deposition soliloquy was spoken from beneath a stream of sand that was eerily lit. And his brutal stabbing made explicit by the slowly forming pool of blood from beneath his white-clothed body. The mess remained on stage through the final scene as a reminder to Bolingbroke of the price he'd had to pay for the crown.
Jen and I loved it and have vowed to make Stratford and annual event. And I'm sure Miss Egan would improve.

There are rumours that Dr Who (and Barty Crouch Jnr) actor, David Tennant, is negotiating with the RSC to play

Hamlet. I can't but help get an image in my head of him loafing around the stage with his hands in his pockets, like in this picture, spouting out 'to be or not to be?' in that slightly nonchalant way.
Actually, I think he'd bring a different kind of energy to the role, a certain manic madness I suppose. Will definitely be rushing out and buying tickets if it proves a true story.