Preview: 'Hamlet' Illustrated by Harold Copping.



When I was just old enough to understand the stories my father would read to me as I was going to bed, my first exposure to literature was from two giant story books which he’d been given as presents when he was very young. ‘Long, Long Ago…” collected the Greek myths and “Grimm's Fairy Tales” included the original versions, those with the nastier endings that Stephen Sondheim appreciated (cf, Into The Woods).

They were both being printed on quite rough paper (having been published during wartime) but inside were brightly coloured watercolour plates illustrating the action, of Perseus confronting Medusa and pigeons pecking out Cinderella’s stepsisters' eyes. Older eyes might have considered these a bit naïve and of the kind you’d see in the storybooks that introduce classic Disney films, but I investigated those pictures for hours, even days, as they transported me away from my drab seventies existence.

So it’s with some nostalgia I flick through the pages of Arcturus Publishing’s lushly printed new edition of Hamlet, which intersperses the text with paintings and drawings by the late Victorian painter Harold Copping, wondering if my interest in Shakespeare would have developed far earlier if I’d been given this to read too. This is Hamlet presented in a similar storybook style poignantly reflecting backwards to those simpler times.

Copping, who was taught at the Royal Academy before completing his training via a Landseer Scholarship in Paris, is perhaps best known for his work on the best selling Copping Bible (which he researched by visiting Palestine), but he worked on literature too, various Dickens, "Little Women", and as I’ve discovered, this play. The paintings and engravings reproduced here were originally published in 1897 by Raphael Tuck and Sons, both as a book and postcards.

The artist presents Shakespeare's characters in a similar fairytale style to those old books, Claudius and Gertrude the very figures of a medieval king and queen, Hamlet a prince charming with golden locks. Copping’s background in Bible illustrations only really reveals itself in his depiction of a Polonius carrying a staff and sporting a gloriously whispy beard which wouldn’t look out of place on Charlton Heston’s Moses.

These pictures won’t be to everyone’s tastes; there is an element of kitsch especially in the image of Ophelia’s madness where Hamlet’s ex stares vacantly off the page as the King and Queen concernedly huddle together in the background. The illustration of her ensuing suicide owes much to John Everett Millais and I’d say that if you hate the Pre-Raphaelites with their romantic notions you’ll hate these too.

But I like the Pre-Raphaelites and I like these very much too. The visions of Hamlet Snr greeting first Horatio then his son on the battlements is genuinely spooky and the gravedigger is exactly as I imagine him, a wizened old man with an earthy face. In just three images we see the death of Polonius, first skulking behind the arras, next on the floor behind the curtain Hamlet nearby sword in hand and then out in the open having later been abandoned by the prince.

There is one curious drawing though (on page ninety-four) of what appears to be Hamlet drinking from the poisoned cup, which could be Copping misunderstanding the story or perhaps using artistic license (as so many have before him and since) and showing a moment during his final speech in which he hastens death having seen how quickly the concoction works on his mother. Or at least, that’s what the younger, more imaginative version of me might have decided.

'Hamlet' Illustrated by Harold Copping will be published on 1st September 2009 by Arcturus Publishing.
ISBN 978-1-84837-368-6

Money to burn?

Commerce Money to burn? Presently on sale at Amazon:
1 Used & new from £1,000.00


THE MUPPET SHOW - The Very Best of guest actors & comedians - 3 Disc DVD Box set Ed. ~ John Cleese, Star Wars, Steve Martin, and Roger Moore (DVD)

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1 Used & new from £915.00

Space Precinct - Vol. 12 [DVD] [1995] ~ Ted Shackelford, Rob Youngblood, Simone Bendix, and Jerome Willis (DVD - 2001)

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1 Used & new from £873.61


Liar Liar/Bulletproof [DVD] [1997] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC] ~ Damon Wayans, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, and Maura Tierney (DVD - 2003)

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Bargains galore, I'm sure you'll agree. I mean I love The Muppets, but a grand?

links for 2009-08-21

can't take part

Plug! I was sent the following today. I can't take part because I'm in Liverpool and working but it could be quite entertaining if you're in the area:
STREETDANCE
Feature Film – Extras Needed

StreetDance, the UK’s first ever feature film about Street Dancing, is filming right now and we need a crowd of 500 people for a huge Street Dance competition scenes. The scene is the grand finale to the film and an integral part of the plot. We are especially keen to hear from street dancers, crews, poppers, lockers and breakers who think they will look good on screen.

The filming will take place in London on 8th 16th 17th 18th 19th & 25th September BUT you don’t have to be available for all dates. You need to be 17 or over to apply and we don’t mind if you dance alone or with a crew. We are also happy to hear from non-dancers who are into the streetdance scene and will look the part.

Filming days are long and there is no pay, but it will be a fantastic experience and you will be looked after. You will be part of the first ever UK Street Dance film in as well as the first ever UK feature film to be shot entirely in 3D. You will also be in the company of some of the best dancers in Europe.
So if you want to be part of this groundbreaking film (and possibly see yourself in 3D on the big screen) please send your details and a recent photo of you and/or your crew to:

extras@streetdancethemovie.co.uk

Please include your contact details and which dates you are available. Please include the words 'Extra September' in the subject line of your email.

tipping over into psychosis



Film There was a bit of gap between watching Stage Fright and Strangers on a Train; having seen the Patricia Highsmith adaptation before and found it uncomfortable I wasn’t looking forward to watching it again, even in sequence, so I kept setting it to one side. Parts of it make me physically ill; not because it isn’t a powerful, well directed piece of work, but because of Robert Walker’s presence. He reminds me of the bogeyman I used to conjure up as a child, that initial misanthropic kindness tipping over into psychosis. Sure enough, I found it extraordinarily difficult to sit through so I suppose it had the right effect, since the director often said that he was in the business of unsettling his audience and often he achieved that through performance alone.

Performances are also the key to I Confess, in which a young father of the religious kind, Montgomery Clift, who looks like Tom Cruise morphing into Mark Harmon, spends most of the film in mute contemplation as after taking confessional from a murderer, he’s fingered for the same crime. His religious conviction is shattered since he can’t speak up to defend himself without jeopardising his sacred compact. Shakespeare covered similar themes in Measure for Measure – to what extent should your faith interfere with your mortality? Some preview audience members were dissatisfied because they couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t talk, though that misses the point. The man has a code and he’s unwilling to break it, because it wouldn’t just reflect badly on him, but also the organisation he works for. Why would anyone else trust him with their secrets if he’s liable to blab them to everyone afterwards?

Doctor Who Greatest Moments.

TV It will be quite some time before the future implications of the Krollgate scandal will be fully understood. The revelation in an editorial by Doctor Who Magazine editor, Tom Spilsbury, that he sent three thousand one hundred and fifty copies of the rare Target novelisation, The Power of Kroll, to be pulped simply to save on the cost of some storage space after they failed to be given away as freebies will have sent a chill down the back of those fans who scoured WH Smiths looking for a copy of issue 397 with Terrance Dicks’s novel attached in order to complete their mini-collection of The Key To Time season, only to come up against Galaxy Four over and over and over again. With lunchtime vigils being arranged on the grass verge opposite the Panini Towers postal address and Chinese food shops selling out of the dried squid which fans are planning to send to Spilsbury in protest, this is one scandal which will not be going away soon.

Luckily, those of us who can’t make it to Tunbridge Wells could find some solace in tonight’s opening episode of BBC Three’s filler, sorry, special series Doctor Who Greatest Moments. With little time to revise the show to reflect today’s events, we’ll never know what Georgia Moffett thought of the part two cliffhanger of Kroll where Harg is dragged away by the creature’s tentacle to a gruesome fate. Instead, Greatest Moments concentrated on the new series, offering analysis of some, err, moments, that people might remember, with the stars of the show offering insight into what they thought those moments were about. Each of the episodes is themed around a different element of the series, and tonight’s looked at The Doctor, which mostly meant five parts David to one part Chris, with Jo Whiley’s slightly disconnected voiceover bridging the all too obvious subject headings like ‘The Past’ and ‘The Future’

A potentially pleasant way to spend an hour probably, rather like a visual version of one of those DWM articles which picks an arbitrary topic like money and lists all of the elements of the franchise which sort of match it. In general the moments seem to have been chosen based on who was available and not necessarily quality. So we had Tracey Ann-Oberman talking about Yvonne Hartman’s face off with the Doctor in Army of Ghosts and the surprisingly knowledgeable (hello to) David Morrissey on Jackson Lake’s face off with the Doctor in The Next Doctor and Ryan Sampson (oddly looking like he’d just got back from an audition for a Blake’s 7 remake) talking about his face off with the Doctor in The Sontaran Stratagem and Georgia talking about being timelord spawn in The Doctor's Daughter and the relevant clips slotted in between their words, the whole thing edited like one of those late (lamented?) Channel 4 chart shows.

For anyone who’s sat through every episode of Doctor Who Confidential, never missed an issue of Doctor Who Magazine or its specials and read all of the BBC Books ‘non-fiction’ releases, revelations were thin on the ground. In other words, us fans. The Ninth Doctor was a guilt-ridden soul. Check. The Tenth Doctor can be funny and dark often at the same time. Check. He’s a lord of time and understands how time works. Check. He wears very long coats. Yes, he does doesn’t he? If the purpose was the remind the viewer of how multi-layered and clever the new series is then it succeeded. If it was pleading with us to go back and rewatch the past four and a bit seasons in preparation for Tenth’s final showdown, it achieved that too. At one point I even began looking forward to giving New Earth a fifth look.

But throughout the hour I longed for something more substantial, something perhaps akin to the era reviews which appear on the classic series dvds (cf, The Beginning), picking over the making of the series from a fresh perspective looking at the challenges of the early days, perhaps touching on what really went on between Eccleston and Keith Boak. I know it’s too soon to deal with Krollgate, but that (rumoured, alleged) bust up was five years ago. Some of the interviews, particular Mark Gattis where undoubtedly good value and genial and the letterboxification of much of the footage looked gorgeous. To be fair to the Confidential people they probably had a brief to work to ("Right lads, hows about knocking out three special clip shows dealing with The Doctor, Companions and Monsters? Can you get them ready for August?"). But much of the time, Greatest Moments was like watching a best of compilation of the montage sequences often used to bulk out episodes of proper Confidential which are clearly under running. Oh how I longed for them to drop in a random clip of Peter Davison frowning in his beard or Tom saying the word ‘mercurial’ or suggesting Pertwee looked like a light bulb.

not always the

Elsewhere I've reviewed tonight's Doctor Who (not always the) Greatest Moments.

links for 2009-08-19

Twenty!

Elsewhere I've posted the Hamlet review. Twenty!

20 Stephen Fletcher



Hamlet played by Stephen Fletcher.
Directed by Max Rubin.

Before I start the review proper, I should mention that my opinion is probably affected by the fact that I spent most of the show distracted by a bored ten year old sitting next to me who'd been dragged along by his parents and older brother. Out of the corner of my eye I constantly saw him rocking about, sighing, swinging his legs, looking up, looking down and at one point shifting his ticket backwards and forwards on the wooden floor with the tip of his toe, sweep, sweep, sweep. Only during the fencing match at the end did he seem to pay any attention to the show.

During the interval I overheard his mother asking him if he was enjoying it.

"No." he said.

She was obviously crestfallen.

"I'm bored. I don't understand what they're saying and it doesn't make any sense to me."

Well of course you don't and of course it doesn't. You're ten. I hated Shakespeare when I was ten as well. I didn't understand what they were saying and bits of it still don't make any sense. But at least you can constructively put your problems with the situation into words. That's a start. Just be happy that this version is a trim two and a half hours and you hadn't been handed the big cahoona.

So...

Sometimes a production is about the space within which it’s presented and sometimes that’s because of directorial choice and sometimes not. As part of the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival, the Lodestar Theatre Company have inhabited the Concert Room at the St George’s Hall, an opulent neo-classical gem which looks like the interior of the Titanic and has hosted concerts and theatrical performance since the main hall was built in the 1830s. BBC Liverpool has a 360 degree panorama of the room as viewed from the stage and here’s an article about the 2007 restoration project. I’ve been to meetings here before and always wondered how a theatre director would utilise it.

Aesthetically it’s a palace so director Max Rubin and Designer Nadia Tahiri have decided to set their Hamlet in an actual palace, with thrones on the main stage and a red carpet spilling over the edge and into the stalls were they’d boldly removed the chairs, the audience watching from the very edges. The room already has a grand piano and glorious chandelier and in this Elsinore they became the trappings of wealth, emphasising the aristocracy of the family, making us interlopers on a crumbling legacy, which is also reflected in the choice of 1930s costumes, a period which saw the last gasp of the old fashioned class structure, when old wealth still outweighed new (this was reflected also in the cuts which tossed out Fortinbras choosing to focus completely on the domestic drama).

Rubin took full advantage of this arena; after a prologue showing Elsinore in happier times, the room was plunged into darkness for the battlement scene Horatio and Co providing their own key lighting using torches. With the audience distracted, Liam Tobin’s Hamlet Snr presumably slipped into at the back so that when he suddenly ‘appeared’ bathed in spotlight it was a genuinely surprising flash, aided by the abject horror in Horatio’s eyes. When the Ghost emerged again later before his still living son, his resonant voice eerily filled the room from all angles (Tobin the only actor to enjoy mic support). When Hamlet spoke against this from his own location, the impression was positively supernatural.

The extra performance area also made sense of The Mousetrap, which on the few occasions I’ve seen the play in the theatre has looked a bit clumsy. Here, the family were placed just a row ahead of the audience and together we watched the action of the play up on stage, with Hamlet between us and the players offering his commentary placing us briefly within the world of the play, supporting players in the drama. From the back that did mean that we didn’t quite see the moment of Claudius’s realisation that he’s been exposed, but his ensuing anger (perfectly rendered by Renny Kruplinkski) and Hamlet’s relief more than made up for it, the exploits frozen at just this moment for the interval, picking up where we left off twenty-minutes later.

This choice of staging clearly had its benefits but with the performance occurring half in a proscenium arch and half in the round, whenever a scene was set completely on the back stage it tended to feel a bit remote and that barrier seemed to continue when the action spilled into the front area, with the actors rarely relating directly to the audience, speeches sent towards the floor or ceiling rather than directly at us. The play really came alive when Polonius passed his asides to us during Fishmonger and during To Be Or Not To Be when Hamlet fixed me with his eyes, and I would have liked to have seen more of that.

Outside of the director's control is that the concert room is essentially an echo chamber which might sound beautiful in concerts but as we I discovered works against lucid theatre. As a couple of the reviews have eluded to depending upon where you were sitting the re-verb tended to muffle quite a lot of the verse. This was particularly obvious from my position directly opposite the space -- when the actors had their backs turned and shouting towards the stage, their words disappearing through the window onto the plateau and car park outside.

Yet despite these potential impediments there was still much to enjoy. Stephen Fletcher took full advantage of the flexibility Hamlet offers, presenting us initially with a broken soul whose fatherly visitation motivates him to action, relishing the process of entrapping his uncle until his actions cause the deaths of Laertes immediate family at which point he obviously realised that this was not a winnable situation. He was well matched by Tom Latham’s Horatio whose expressive face balanced between abject horror and quiet resignation throughout, the barometer gauging the emotional pressure of the court.

But the highlight in this production, at least for me, was the first appearance of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern played by Richard Kelly and Simon Hedger, confidentally standing at the edge of the stage. Hamlet seemed genuinely pleased to see them, and we were too because with they confident humour proceeded to steal not just this moment but all of the scenes in which they appeared to the point that the eventual news of their offing off-stage was a genuinely tragic moment. There’s a good reason for this: as well as Hamlet, in September Lodestar will be offering a production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is Dead at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre featuring the same cast.

So whereas in most stage productions, R & G are offered by actors doubling up servants roles or even the gravediggers which can lead them to being a bit bland, Kelly and Hedger have properly rehearsed their roles and boasted a clearer than usual idea of who these men are, which is reflected in their performance, sharing the looks and glances of fellow journeyman as the story spins on around them outside of their control, the Stoppard version of the characters transplanted back into Shakespeare. It works very well and certainly a good advert for their further theatrical adventures.

Click here for more information about the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival. They also have a production blog.

links for 2009-08-18

  • Sorry about yet another Guardian link, but this has Neil Hannon talking about All Saints, considering the brilliance of Black Coffee. It's too short to offer a quote but consider it. Neil Hannon, All Saints fan. Sadly he doesn't offer an opinion of Studio One, one of the best forgotten pop records of recent years.

  • Somehow I managed to entirely miss this event. Grrr. Anyway, here are the results. I think my favourites are the silliest, the lamb and banana next to the lambanana for example.

  • "I will not be devastated if I miss news of Joe Gideon and the Shark's new single."

  • Fascinating approach to making user content viewable by the BBC for automatic linking and pulling into their web pages. It means your stuff is seen by a wider public and makes their pages look prettier. Essentially you tag your photos or blog posts or whatever with a given programme's PID code. Yeah, one of those.

  • And I thought I held grudges.

when I've slept

Theatre Saw Hamlet at St George's Hall tonight, part of the Liverpool Shakespeare Festival. I'll post a review tomorrow when I've slept, but just for now:

Who’s in it from Doctor Who?

Ian Hayles as Polonius



Was in Big Finish's No Man's Land as Lance-Corporal Burridge and UNIT: Snakehead as Kevin.

rare housekeeping

Museums This is one of my rare housekeeping posts. Now that the summer is drawing to close (oh it is, you know it is, look out of the window) I think it’s about time I got on with my other slightly dormant project of visiting all of places listed in Edward Morris’s Public Art Collection In North-West England. Looking over the places I’ve written about so far, I was surprised to see how close I am to completion. Here is a reproduction of the contents page with links added to the galleries or museums I’ve already been to:

Accrington - Haworth Art Gallery
Altrincham - Dunham Massey
Birkenhead - Williamson Art Gallery and Museum
Blackburn - Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
Blackpool - Grundy Art Gallery
Bolton - Bolton Museum, Art Gallery and Aquarium
Burnley - Towneley Hall Art Gallery and Museums
Bury - Bury Art Gallery and Museum
Carlisle - Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery
Chester - Grosvenor Museum
Coniston - Brantwood and Ruskin Museum
Grasmere - Wordsworth and Grasmere Museum
Kendal - Abbot Hall Art Gallery
Knutsford - Tabley House and Tatton Park
Lancaster - Lancaster City Museum and Ruskin Library, Lancaster University
Liverpool - Walker Art Gallery, Sudley House, Tate Liverpool, University of Liverpool Art Gallery and The Oratory
Macclesfield - West Park Museum
Manchester - Manchester City Art Gallery and Whitworth Art Gallery
Oldham - Oldham Art Gallery and Museum
Port Sunlight - Lady Lever Art Gallery
Preston - Harris Museum and Art Gallery
Rawtenstall - Rossendale Museum
Rochdale - Rochdale Art Gallery
Runcorn - Norton Priory Museum
Salford - Salford Museum and Art Gallery and The Lowry
Southport - Atkinson Art Gallery
Stalybridge - Astley Cheetham Art Gallery
Stockport - Stockport War Memorial and Art Gallery
Warrington - Warrington Museum and Art Gallery
Wigan - The History Shop

Well, technically I have already been to couple of those, but it was years ago, before the project began and I’d like to go back for a refresher. Also, in theory I haven't seen Blackpool or Stalybridge since one was closed for refurbishment and the other rarely has its collection on show. By my count I have sixteen left to go. How the hell do I get to Norton Priory?

Who’s in it from Doctor Who?

Theatre Not until I was on the tube back to Euston from As You Like It at The Globe did I remember my other reason for visiting – to see the set of the Doctor Who episode, The Shakespeare Code. With that in mind and to modify a feature from one of my favourite movie blogs:

Who’s in it from Doctor Who?

Trevor Martin as Adam



Was Second Time Lord from The War Games and The Doctor in Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday

I have a theory that every production of everything has a Doctor Who connection somewhere. Let's find out shall we?

the deep blue sky

Ice Cream

London I spent last Tuesday in a very giddy mood. I didn’t think anything could be more exciting than the plinth experience but then I was finally standing in Shakespeare’s Globe (mark 3) looking up at the deep blue sky through the roof waiting for their latest production of As You Like It and realised that in fact, whilst it was fun to be part of Antony Gormley’s art project, looking at that empty stage awaiting actors was as close as I’ll ever come to sitting on the touchline of the baseball diamond in Field of Dreams, or being a distant Liverpool fan visiting Anfield, a Beatles nut at the Cavern Club, an Elvis aficionado at Gracelands. I was teary at the Royal Shakespeare Company because I was submerged in theatrical history. The Globe is like actually stepping into history (albeit with a concrete flooring). It’s a dreamland.

I decided to dedicate my final day to the Globe, knowing that I'd want to take my time. For a change. If you do ever decide to visit, I’d certainly recommend you take the morning tour before the show. Over about three quarters of an hour the chronology of the theatre is explained, that the timbers were originally part of The Theatre theatre (yes, indeed) until problems with a lease agreement led them to be shipped across the Thames and turned into the first Globe in 1599. Which then burnt to the ground during the third performance of Henry VIII (misfiring cannon) in 1613. Rebuilt the following year it continued to be a going concern until the 1640s when the Puritans took a dislike to theatre I general and shut it down, that building falling to demolition in 1644. There’s plenty more to hear, that’s just the bare bones. Just enough time for photographs.

Tour

The present structure is a product of a twenty year campaign by Sam Wanamaker, who sadly died before it was completed and opened in 1997. During the tour, there is plenty of time to become acclimatised to the shape of the interior, and if like me you’re planning to become a groundling a chance to see the stage from other perspectives. The space is smaller than I was expecting, more intimate, though logically it has to be for the words of the actors to project and bounce of the roof and walls and back into the space. The other surprise was how sound from the edges could be isolated within their relate enclosures – the tours begin every fifteen minutes and at one point at least four different groups were at different stages of presentation but the voice of the guide was perfectly lucid. It's a beautiful building with its painting ceilings and fixtures, as colourful in its own way as Westminster Cathedral, the images just as symbol suggesting the stage teeters between heaven and hell.

A tour ticket also allows admittance to the education centre and exhibition, which adds extra detail to the information relayed on the tour using artefacts related to the original playhouse. One good choice is the recreation of other contemporary theatres in miniature, including Blackfriars, a space I’m not as familiar with as I’d like (perhaps someone will rebuild that too someday!) which underscores how plays were very much written to take advantages of the available spaces and how they have to be adapted to fill a proscenium arch, a television studio, a film soundstage. The exhibition also demonstrates that as well as being a historical recreation, the Globe is a living theatre with guides to the rehearsal process, musicians and costume making with examples from past productions and a rather sparkly recreation of Elizabeth I’s dress from the Armada Portrait which was worn by Jane Lapotaire at the Gala opening. What a night that must have been.

Groundlings

Having already been inside as part of the tour and enjoyed the first woosh through the doors into the space, I was surprised to find that I was still equally thrilled as I ran in, along with the other groundlings, just before the show, grabbing a space on the edge of the stage. Perhaps it was turning around and seeing a nearly full theatre, the stalls and floor as they should be, crowded to the rafters, a sea of grins. The multitude seemed to be a mix of tourists and locals, a range of accent and languages, splashing together. A Spanish family installed themselves behind me, the father giving his kids a running commentary throughout the first half and cracking jokes, presumably on the assumption that he was bettering anything the playwright was offering. But unlike most theatres, this is to be expected; no one stood to attention in Shakespeare’s day and that the atmosphere which is being engendered here. To work, the Globe has to be noisy.

And it was. How we laughed. As You Like It is (surprisingly) a play I’m not that familiar with. Jaques speech “All The World’s A Stage” was the first Shakespeare I studied at school, but somehow with the exception of the cob-webby Argo audio production (which I heard on vinyl in the early nineties) and the BBC Shakespeare production with Helen Mirren, this was my first proper visit to the forest of Arden. That was to the good, because instead of simply trying judge whether this was a good version of the play, I was more involved in trying to follow the plot which is exactly how to experience a play in the Globe, allowing the actors, so close and often speaking from the stage and stalls and back of the yard to talk directly to you, to become involved in their story because you’re hearing much of this language for the first time.

Stage

So brilliant was the ensuing production that my feet, throbbing from walking about for two days, seemed to stop hurting, or perhaps it's that I just stopped caring. About the only fly in the ointment (phrase which I thought was Shakespeare but turns out to be Biblical) was the process of standing. After finding my speck, I took off my shoes and stood on my jump, but by the end I was in bare feet. Also, because I have the bowels of an Labrador puppy, I had to nip out some time during the first half, when you have to go, you have to go. And sadly I went during “All The World’s A Stage…” it seems, which didn’t stop me spending some of the ensuing time wondering if I’d missed it have long since forgotten I’d gone to the toilet. Always half a perfect world. As with most things in fact, attending alone can be difficult to navigate. Luckily I was next to some people who didn’t mind keeping an eye on my stuff whilst I nipped outside to buy that ice cream. Is this the Globe as theatrical Woodstuck, a temporary community watching out for one another.

The proximity of the players to the audience means that they’re speaking directly to us and reacting to sounds from the audience and the environment. Typically, the clown, on this occasion Dominic Rowan’s Touchstone, was best at this, reacting to odd murmurs and physically chiding the audience when they didn’t laugh at his jokes, a natural comedian. But at no time did this seem forced; we didn’t feel like we were laughing because we were meant to (which often happens) but because this was genuinely funny. In the Globe’s souvenir brochures, actors line up to talk about how they relish acting within the space because they have this connection with the audience, a connection which is lost in a typical theatre were the rest of the auditorium is hidden in darkness. Often the characters would plead with us for understanding, emotionally charged which must be electric during the major tragic soliloquies. That suspension of disbelief is continued in our acceptance that all this is occurring in a forest, even though the only evidence we have of that is the words of the actors and columns wrapped in brown material to suggest tree trunks.

The best moments are the careless love between the gender disguised Rosalind and Orlando, in which she’s testing his resolve by making him believe that he’s pretending to woe a man when in fact he’s wooing the very woman he’s in love with. As played by Sophie Duval and Jack Laskey, these has elements of screwball comedy as Duval threw Laskey’s oaths back in his face, the actor’s gregarious approaches suggesting that he come from the same mould as Ed Tudorpole, Callum Blue and David Tennant. Though the theatre was noisy in the first half, during these scenes the Globe fell silent and hung one every word; even my Spanish commentator stopped intoning. That’s the magic of the place. By making an expectation of noise, makes these moments even more remarkable, that our suspension of disbelief is so total that it could be just us and Laura Rogers’s adorable Cecilia witnessing and reacting to the unfolding scene. This is one of those occasions when I don’t simply have the memory of what I saw, but also of how I felt. There aren’t many theatre productions that I can say that about.

The Globe

Shakespeare's Globe

Ice Cream

I spent last Tuesday in a very giddy mood. I didn’t think anything could be more exciting than taking part in Anthony Gormley's One & Other project but then I was finally standing in Shakespeare’s Globe (mark 3) looking up at the deep blue sky through the roof waiting for their latest production of As You Like It and realised that in fact, whilst it was fun to be part of Anthony Gormley’s art project, looking at that empty stage awaiting actors was as close as I’ll ever come to sitting on the touchline of the baseball diamond in Field of Dreams, or being a distant Liverpool fan visiting Anfield, a Beatles nut at the Cavern Club, an Elvis aficionado at Gracelands. I was teary at the Royal Shakespeare Company because I was submerged in theatrical history. The Globe is like actually stepping into history (albeit with a concrete flooring). It’s a dreamland.

I decided to dedicate my final day to the Globe, knowing that I'd want to take my time. For a change. If you do ever decide to visit, I’d certainly recommend you take the morning tour before the show. Over about three quarters of an hour the chronology of the theatre is explained, that the timbers were originally part of The Theatre theatre (yes, indeed) until problems with a lease agreement led them to be shipped across the Thames and turned into the first Globe in 1599. Which then burnt to the ground during the third performance of Henry VIII (misfiring cannon) in 1613. Rebuilt the following year it continued to be a going concern until the 1640s when the Puritans took a dislike to theatre I general and shut it down, that building falling to demolition in 1644. There’s plenty more to hear, that’s just the bare bones. Just enough time for photographs.

Tour

The present structure is a product of a twenty year campaign by Sam Wanamaker, who sadly died before it was completed and opened in 1997. During the tour, there is plenty of time to become acclimatised to the shape of the interior, and if like me you’re planning to become a groundling a chance to see the stage from other perspectives. The space is smaller than I was expecting, more intimate, though logically it has to be for the words of the actors to project and bounce of the roof and walls and back into the space. The other surprise was how sound from the edges could be isolated within their relate enclosures – the tours begin every fifteen minutes and at one point at least four different groups were at different stages of presentation but the voice of the guide was perfectly lucid. It's a beautiful building with its painting ceilings and fixtures, as colourful in its own way as Westminster Cathedral, the images just as symbol suggesting the stage teeters between heaven and hell.

A tour ticket also allows admittance to the education centre and exhibition, which adds extra detail to the information relayed on the tour using artefacts related to the original playhouse. One good choice is the recreation of other contemporary theatres in miniature, including Blackfriars, a space I’m not as familiar with as I’d like (perhaps someone will rebuild that too someday!) which underscores how plays were very much written to take advantages of the available spaces and how they have to be adapted to fill a proscenium arch, a television studio, a film soundstage. The exhibition also demonstrates that as well as being a historical recreation, the Globe is a living theatre with guides to the rehearsal process, musicians and costume making with examples from past productions and a rather sparkly recreation of Elizabeth I’s dress from the Armada Portrait which was worn by Jane Lapotaire at the Gala opening. What a night that must have been.

Groundlings

Having already been inside as part of the tour and enjoyed the first woosh through the doors into the space, I was surprised to find that I was still equally thrilled as I ran in, along with the other groundlings, just before the show, grabbing a space on the edge of the stage. Perhaps it was turning around and seeing a nearly full theatre, the stalls and floor as they should be, crowded to the rafters, a sea of grins. The multitude seemed to be a mix of tourists and locals, a range of accent and languages, splashing together. A Spanish family installed themselves behind me, the father giving his kids a running commentary throughout the first half and cracking jokes, presumably on the assumption that he was bettering anything the playwright was offering. But unlike most theatres, this is to be expected; no one stood to attention in Shakespeare’s day and that the atmosphere which is being engendered here. To work, the Globe has to be noisy.

And it was. How we laughed. As You Like It is (surprisingly) a play I’m not that familiar with. Jaques speech “All The World’s A Stage” was the first Shakespeare I studied at school, but somehow with the exception of the cob-webby Argo audio production (which I heard on vinyl in the early nineties) and the BBC Shakespeare production with Helen Mirren, this was my first proper visit to the forest of Arden. That was to the good, because instead of simply trying judge whether this was a good version of the play, I was more involved in trying to follow the plot which is exactly how to experience a play in the Globe, allowing the actors, so close and often speaking from the stage and stalls and back of the yard to talk directly to you, to become involved in their story because you’re hearing much of this language for the first time. During the tour, the guide said that during their last production of Hamlet, the prince would ask someone in the yard, directly "To be or not to be?" and sometimes they would answer.

Stage

So brilliant was the ensuing production that my feet, throbbing from walking about for two days, seemed to stop hurting, or perhaps it's that I just stopped caring. About the only fly in the ointment (phrase which I thought was Shakespeare but turns out to be Biblical) was the process of standing. After finding my speck, I took off my shoes and stood on my jump, but by the end I was in bare feet. Also, because I have the bowels of an Labrador puppy, I had to nip out some time during the first half, when you have to go, you have to go. And sadly I went during “All The World’s A Stage…” it seems, which didn’t stop me spending some of the ensuing time wondering if I’d missed it have long since forgotten I’d gone to the toilet. Always half a perfect world. As with most things in fact, attending alone can be difficult to navigate. Luckily I was next to some people who didn’t mind keeping an eye on my stuff whilst I nipped outside to buy that ice cream. Is this the Globe as theatrical Woodstuck, a temporary community watching out for one another.

The proximity of the players to the audience means that they’re speaking directly to us and reacting to sounds from the audience and the environment. Typically, the clown, on this occasion Dominic Rowan’s Touchstone, was best at this, reacting to odd murmurs and physically chiding the audience when they didn’t laugh at his jokes, a natural comedian. But at no time did this seem forced; we didn’t feel like we were laughing because we were meant to (which often happens) but because this was genuinely funny. In the Globe’s souvenir brochures, actors line up to talk about how they relish acting within the space because they have this connection with the audience, a connection which is lost in a typical theatre were the rest of the auditorium is hidden in darkness. Often the characters would plead with us for understanding, emotionally charged which must be electric during the major tragic soliloquies. That suspension of disbelief is continued in our acceptance that all this is occurring in a forest, even though the only evidence we have of that is the words of the actors and columns wrapped in brown material to suggest tree trunks.

The best moments are the careless love between the gender disguised Rosalind and Orlando, in which she’s testing his resolve by making him believe that he’s pretending to woe a man when in fact he’s wooing the very woman he’s in love with. As played by Sophie Duval and Jack Laskey, these has elements of screwball comedy as Duval threw Laskey’s oaths back in his face, the actor’s gregarious approaches suggesting that he come from the same mould as Ed Tudorpole, Callum Blue and David Tennant. Though the theatre was noisy in the first half, during these scenes the Globe fell silent and hung one every word; even my Spanish commentator stopped intoning. That’s the magic of the place. By making an expectation of noise, makes these moments even more remarkable, that our suspension of disbelief is so total that it could be just us and Laura Rogers’s adorable Cecilia witnessing and reacting to the unfolding scene. This is one of those occasions when I don’t simply have the memory of what I saw, but also of how I felt. There aren’t many theatre productions that I can say that about.

The Globe

links for 2009-08-16

  • Steve Williams offers some analysis of the new channel's premiership coverage: "One of the best things about ESPN’s Premiership coverage is what they’re not doing."

  • The six-disc boxset which was released a few years ago, the later discs filled without outtakes and demos. Fabulous moments between Richard Burton and David Essex and surprisingly Anthony Quinn trying to get his chops around the Spanish Language version and being chided by the director for his mispronunciations.

  • Useful discussion on how Pocket Books failed to capitalise on the release of the new Star Trek film by cutting back on the Prime universe TOS Novels and only releasing a novelisation. I should note I haven't read a Trek novel since the mid-nineties, but to my mind it would be like BBC Books not bothering with nuWho books and keeping the old line going.

Shakespeare's Churches

Saint Andew By The Wardrobe, London

When he was working in London, William Shakespeare mostly worshipped at just two churches because of their proximity to his theatres and whilst I was in London last week, I made a point of visiting both of them. The more famous is Southwark Cathedral which was just a short walk from the Globe Theatre, or as the church was known then, St. Saviours. The present building has been repaired and reconstructed a few times since the 16th century, the nave having been replaced at least twice, which means, like the best medieval churches, the history of the place is held within the fabric of its structure.

The church had an uneasy connection with local actors; though it was the place were the company worshipped (their names appearing on the parish registers and many would be buried within its walls) the chaplains would denounce the theatre from the pulpit. These days, it’s this connection which is the main tourist feature, and Shakespeare is commemorated by a monument in the south aisle, above which is a stained glass window depicting scenes from the plays including a very resolute Hamlet. There’s also a plaque offering thanks to Sam Wanamaker, whose determination led to the Globe reconstruction just down the Thames.

When Shakespeare and company decamped to Blackfriars Theatre (set up in a monastry), their church became St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. Its curious name derives from a house purchased by Edward III in 1361 which he used as the storehouse for his accoutrements, the “Royal Wardrobe”. That original church, the one Shakespeare would have known (and the wardrobe) were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The shell of what exists now was one of the fifty-one baroque churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren in its wake, the interior a 1950s reconstruction after the original was gutted during the Blitz (in 1940).

Off the main road, hardly sign-posted, it’s not an easy place to find; by then Leo, or the person with the sense of direction, had gone home, and I took a few false turns and was given directions to the wrong church before I gave in and caught a taxi with a driver who only had a vague notion. As you can see from the photograph, it’s a forbidding place, the kind of gloomy edifice you’d expect to see an Ingmar Bergman film when the main character (played by Max Von Sydow) is falling out of love with God and is clamouring for answers but finds none. Look at this crucifix which is in the grounds. I can’t imagine you’d find much comfort here:

Crucifix at Saint Andew By The Wardrobe, London

But them I’m not a religious person, and I know that people visit churches for different reasons. Perhaps the interior is different; though the church is closed during August, I was able to glance inside a bit, and saw some rather jolly wood panelling and the impression that as with many baroque churches, there is more than initially meets the eye. Like Westminster Cathedral, this could be another of London's secrets waiting to be rediscovered.
Imogen Carter on the current prevalence of the floating body as an artistic motif. "Step aside Prince Hamlet … it's Ophelia's turn to have a fashion moment. Shakespeare's aggrieved maiden met a soggy end but now, from theatre to art, the floating body as an artistic motif is once again in vogue."

played by Max Von Sydow

Saint Andew By The Wardrobe, London

London My friend Leonie is a very tolerant person. She’d have to be, since she knows me, the kind of person who walks all the way to Westminster Abbey, looks at the crowds, looks at the entrance charge, and still slightly off kilter from the plinth experience and a complete wuss suggests that perhaps we don’t go in. This wasn't the way I wanted to finally see Elizabeth I's tomb. If she was annoyed with me, she didn’t show it. Instead she suggested we have a look at Westminster Cathedral instead and didn’t seem too surprised when I said that thought they were the same building.

I did, I really did, I'm that ignorant. I thought Westminster Cathedral was another name for Westminster Abbey, just as the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool is often referred to as Liverpool Cathedral and the Metropolitan goes by the name of Paddy’s Wigman. I’m happy to have been put right. But I am pleased to see that the Cathedral’s own website describes the creation as “one of the greatest secrets of London” – it’s own obscurity a tourism selling point.

Westminster Cathedral is a smaller version of how I’d always imagined the Metropolitan Cathedral would have turned out, especially if you compare the brick finish of architect John Francis Bentley’s building with the completed crypt of Lutyan’s scheme for Liverpool. It has the same high, mysterious ceilings, the many chapels leading out from the nave, the unexpected impression of a wealth of interior space, eschewing of gothic architecture in favour of something rather more Byzantine.

The first thing which draws your eyes is that ceiling; in the main body of the church these are simple, undecorated domes, black with what I presume to be soot, shadowed in such a way that in places it’s almost like looking into the unknown. Everywhere else, in those chapels, are mosaics, dozens of them depicting bible stories and other Catholic iconography, a visual feast. We’d stumbled into lunchtime mass, so we couldn’t have a decent look around for fear of disturbing anyone, but the impression is awe-inspiring, no matter how long you spend there.

When he was working in London, William Shakespeare mostly worshipped at just two churches because of their proximity to his theatres. The more famous is Southwark Cathedral which was just a short walk from the Globe Theatre, or as the church was known then, St. Saviours. The present building has been repaired and reconstructed a few times since the 16th century, the nave having been replaced at least twice, which means, like the best medieval churches, the history of the place is held within the fabric of its structure.

The church had an uneasy connection with local actors; though it was the place were the company worshipped (their names appearing on the parish registers and many would be buried within its walls) the chaplains would denounce the theatre from the pulpit. These days, it’s this connection which is the main tourist feature, and Shakespeare is commemorated by a monument in the south aisle, above which is a stained glass window depicting scenes from the plays including a very resolute Hamlet. There’s also a plaque offering thanks to Sam Wanamaker, whose determination led to the Globe reconstruction just down the Thames.

When Shakespeare and company decamped to Blackfriars Theatre (set up in a monastry), their church became St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe. Its curious name derives from a house purchased by Edward III in 1361 which he used as the storehouse for his accoutrements, the “Royal Wardrobe”. That original church, the one Shakespeare would have known (and the wardrobe) were destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The shell of what exists now was one of the fifty-one baroque churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren in its wake, the interior a 1950s reconstruction after the original was gutted during the Blitz (in 1940).

Off the main road, hardly sign-posted, it’s not an easy place to find; by then Leo, or the person with the sense of direction, had gone home, and I took a few false turns and was given directions to the wrong church before I gave in and caught a taxi with a driver who only had a vague notion. As you can see from the photograph, it’s a forbidding place, the kind of gloomy edifice you’d expect to see an Ingmar Bergman film when the main character (played by Max Von Sydow) is falling out of love with God and is clamouring for answers but finds none. Look at this crucifix which is in the grounds. I can’t imagine you’d find much comfort here:

Crucifix at Saint Andew By The Wardrobe, London

But them I’m not a religious person, and I know that people visit churches for different reasons. Perhaps the interior is different; though the church is closed during August, I was able to glance inside a bit, and saw some rather jolly wood panelling and the impression that as with many baroque churches, there is more than initially meets the eye. Like Westminster Cathedral, this could be another of London's secrets waiting to be rediscovered.

links for 2009-08-15

  • Beautiful piece by Ringwald about John Hughes in which she deploys a recent conversation with Anthony Michael Hall to talk about he feelings about the director's death comparing their relationship with that between Trauffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud. One of the tragedies of Hughes's death is that we'll not now see rumoured sequel to The Breakfast Club which revisits the characters two decade later.


  • The poster makes this look like a hyperlink film (or multi-stranded drama as the Radio Times has it). I was generally quite bored by knocked up but this at least sounds fairly interesting, especially since Queenan thinks it will flop. Interesting films tend to flop. Look at Ishtar or Man In The Moon.

  • Every episode of the BBC News channel's review slot since mid 2006, mostly with Mark Kermode (sometimes with Andrew Collins and Angie Errigo now and then). Worth watching to see the reaction of the various news people who've been put in front of him to be shouted at.