The Duchess of Malfi (Stage on Screen production from the Greenwich Theatre)

Describing a play as being “ahead of its time” can have wild implications, especially if said theatrical drama was written four hundred years ago. But watching the Greenwich Theatre’s superb production of The Duchess of Malfi, it’s possible to see that John Webster apparently throws out the usual rules of cause and effect and characterisation and as B. Ifor Evans suggests in A Short History of English Drama:

"(it is) as if life itself were governed by chance, not reason, as if human beings acted from passion rather than from consistent conduct governed by consecutive thought."

The result is a radical concoction in which antagonist becomes protagonist and the audience's sympathies shift half way through against our better judgement.

Although Webster begins Malfi with former criminal Bosola's attempt to gain a pardon and show his changed demeanour and he hangs around to offer commentary, from the moment the Duchess enters he places her front and centre and the play becomes a kind of courtly romance, in which Malfi marries her clerk for love rather than money, but as is the way with such concoctions in secret because its against the expressed wishes of her two brothers, a cardinal and a duke who are consumed with spiritual but mostly financial reasons why a second union (any union) should not take place.

When Bosola is inserted into her household to spy on their sister and uncovers the truth the action, though Webster's writing retains a skein of dark humour, turns tragedy as the misguided motivations of the brothers lead Bosola to seek revenge for what they’ve tempted him to do and the person they force him to become in order to carry out their business. Rather like Hitchcock's Psycho, as well experiencing a massive genre shift, the audience finds its allegiance shift in the direction of the man they should find most repellent, but unlike Norman Bates, Webster allows Bosola to ultimately find redemption.

As Bosola, Tim Treloar is commanding. Opening the play as a kind of unreconstructed Gene Hunt figure easily brought into the conspiracy by some easy change, as he shifts from arrogant to avenger, the sweat and tears between seem to become permanently etched on his face. He’s matched by Aislin McGuckin’s attuned aristocratic Malfi whose pre-Raphaelite gait belies a complex soul; rightly, she commands the stage, her maid and various men folk like satellites drifting about her, and it's one of the rare occasions when the loyalty seems deserved rather than conferred because of her position.

But there are few weak performances. As he did with his Mosca in Volpone, Mark Hadfield exquisitely emphasises the duplicitousness of the Cardinal to especially shocking effect when his lover is crossed in a gesture which should be a blessing but becomes the binary opposite. The cold magnetism of Tim Steed’s Ferdinand makes legible why Bosola would throw in his lot even though they’re clearly very wary of one another. Edmund Kinglsey initially seems slightly uncertain in Antonio’s skin but as the character’s masculinity increases so does the strength of his performance to the point that when he discovers his wife’s fate the effect is heartbreaking.

With simple setting and “contemporary” costuming of no fixed time frame, Elizabeth Freestone’s staging is in service to making the text as lucid as possible. Malfi’s dramatic domestic story is delivered with weighty hammer blows but unafraid to underscore the tonal shifts even taking risks by inserting some apparently humorous staging of her own, which seemed to confuse the audience who were watching during this recording; in one particularly hilarious moment comes during the dark tipping point of the story and is greeted with much nervous laughter. But that just seems to fit a play that itself is striving to innovate beyond the expectations of its time.

The Duchess of Malfi is available on dvd from Stage & Screen.

Volpone (Stage on Screen production from the Greenwich Theatre)

In the dying moments of his Volpone, Ben Jonson risks ridicule by requesting that the audience only applaud if they have enjoyed what they have just witnessed. Luckily for the cast and crew in the Greenwich Theatre for this recording of the play for Stage on Screen (who were good enough to send me a copy for review) they’re met by an appreciative audience. I’m a bit more cautious which shouldn’t reflect on the Greenwich, rather that Jonson’s satire on greed left me disenfranchised and disappointed and even more appreciative of the complexity of his King's Men colleague Shakespeare’s writing.

Jonson’s story of a repulsive aristocratic conman destabilising the lives of his equally despicable peers portrays the dark heart of humanity; from Volpone to his Iago-like dissembling servant Mosco to the Venetian gentlemen who crave his inheritance, this is a society that covets wealth above human feelings. One “VIP” is even willing to prostitute his wife Celia to Volpone in order to secure his fortune. When the central nobleman is initially brought to court, the judges are easily persuaded of his innocence by those of reputation rather than the truth, which admittedly has a certain contemporary resonance.

But I wasn’t involved. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, which I know is a probably a reductive view of the play since they’re not supposed to be, but in general my taste is for drama in which the protagonists have dimensions and don’t quite so nakedly exist as signifiers for whatever themes the playwright is hoping to expose. Even a delicious bastard like Richard III has complex (if misguided) reasons for his reign of terror, whereas Volpone is simply a hedonistic empty vessel I was unable to connect to because Jonson refuses to allow us below the surface.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t laugh with this production, especially at the Steptoe-like chemistry between Richard Bremmer and Mark Hadfield (who played the Gravedigger in the recent RSC Hamlet), the latter bringing to the fore Mosca’s patient wait to get one over on his master. There’s also some hilarious antics of the clowns led by Conrad Westmaas, who add some bravado during the play’s darker moments. Aislin McGuckin is also worth mentioning for giving bite to the otherwise submissive Celia, making her treatment by Volpone all the more shocking.

Director Elizabeth Freestone’s blocking of the courtroom scenes is remarkable; the cast address us, with the law high at the back of the stage to offer the judgement we cannot. There are also occasion when she transports in "filmic" elements, the actors creating moments in which the action rewinds or enters slow motion. These are accentuated by OB director Chris Cowey who places cameras on the lip of the stage putting the viewer right on the front row of the audience when the various characters step into the spotlight. Cowey was formerly the producer of Top of the Pops and is very good at putting the camera in position to catch the best of the action.

I’m willing to admit that my overall reaction to the play itself might simply be because my experience of the drama in this period is skewed towards its most famous son, which is a result of a general tendency to focus on Shakespeare at the expense of his contemporaries. If the likes of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are increasingly being ignored in theatres, they’re even less present in the home market, which means that unless you have access to theatreland, it’s impossible to get a proper sense of their work, especially as it appears on stage. If nothing else, this Stage on Screen release is vital in demonstrating that Jacobean drama was as any other era and allowing us to decide whether we appreciate it. Or not.

Volpone is available on dvd from Stage & Screen.

The School for Scandal (Stage on Screen production)

Given the approach to televised classical theatre of late, it would seem that anything of note was produced in and around 1599 with nothing else of interest happening until the last twenty years. As I’ve noted before that wasn’t always the attitude and their were some impressive broadcasts of classic productions throughout the history of television. As if to redress this contemporary imbalance, Stage on Screen are recording a series of special theatre productions at the Greenwich Theatre in London and releasing them on dvd, selecting plays from across theatre history.

They seek to replicate the experience of seeing the play, which in the case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (which they've been nice enough to send me to have a look at) means including everything from the moments when the audience files in and out during the intermission to all of the bows at the end as well as the complete text of the play (or one of its versions – apparently there are several). The effect is rather like BBC Four’s experiments with the same format, the cinema projected live broadcasts of NT shows and many of the Hamlet productions I’ve reviewed for this blog, with a mix of close-ups and master shots taking in the whole stage.

The School for Scandal is a good choice for this format since it is essentially a proto-sitcom, the kind of farce that has to have been an influence on John Cleese in writing Fawlty Towers and Steven Moffat for Joking Apart. Two brothers find their morality exposed after a series of misunderstandings develop in an atmosphere of gossip and misanthopy in which reputations are broken and developed through the imaginations of an aristocratic society with little to do but mythologise. Like Sheridan’s earlier play The Rivals, hidden identities ironically lead to the revealing of emotions otherwise obscured by manners and propriety.

Stage on Screen’s approach isn’t to present a definitive version of the play; the costumes give the impression of late Eighteenth century attire but probably borrow more from the 80s new romantic reinterpretation, especially in a drinking scene which is very reminiscent of the promo for Adam Ant’s Prince Charming, which is also reflected in the mix of string and electronica on the soundtrack. The setting is a study; each scene backed by shots of old books perhaps to demonstrate how proper academic knowledge and literary fiction has given way to presumption and gossip in the atmosphere of this court.

The cast throw themselves into the text with ramshackle abandon. These are not the most complex of characters and yet in the main, even those actors wearing face paint allow the mask to drop and provide some inner depth. Jonathan Battersby and Beatrice Curnew turn the warring Sir Peter and Lady Teazle into a superb warring couple straight from a screwball comedy, him filled with a ragbag mix of disappointment and passion, her oblivious to his attentions despite their marriage license both of whom are sympathetically drawn.

Samuel Collings and Adam Redmore are such convincing brothers that at first I assumed one actor was playing both parts. Lady Sneerwell is a villain in the old sense, a kind of Iago-lite attempting to ruin lives for her own ends and Amy Rockson relishes the duplicitousness and makes such an impression in the opening scene that like a thought in the back of the mind, her presence is felt despite her absence for much of the production.

Not being otherwise too familiar with the play (in other words this is my first time), I can’t speak to how this compares to previous productions. Director Elizabeth Freestone’s approach is to offer the text at full speed challenging the audience to keep up, perhaps to give the impression, especially in the opening scenes, when character names and anecdotes are flashing about, of being at a party where you don’t know anyone and you’re expected to be entertained anyway. Slowly the pacing does recede as the story develops. The text is lucidly presented and like any period drama, more legible once you become accustomed to it.

The School of Scandal is available on dvd from Stage on Screen.