This week I read in the paper something we audiences have been thinking for a while. A quote from the Observer’s theatre critic Susannah Clapp (always thought that was an awesome surname for a theatre critic) who says the Royal Shakespeare Company is “No longer unassailable as the prime interpreters of Shakespeare”.
And it’s true. If I want to see high-energy, brilliantly interpreted Shakespeare I go to see Propeller. If I wanted authentic, faithful productions I’d go to Bristol’s Tobacco Factory. If I could stump up the cash and wanted to see a celebrity with a careful setting and a great atmosphere I’d head to the Donmar or the Old Vic (Yeah I know, cheaper tickets are available, has anyone actually got their hands on them and still been able to see the stage?) I don’t think of the National for Shakespeare but if there is one on I’ll go because I have never knowingly regretted a trip to the NT.
But the RSC? Thinking about it I do tend to go to RSC productions because they are doing a play I want to see, not because they are the RSC. And they know what they are doing, no question. But I love the RSC best when they take risks and can invest in new ideas. I will love them forever and ever for giving us Matilda. And Oh Lies at Latitude Festival in 2008.
I’m thinking this about the RSC now because they have this week named Gregory Doran as their new artistic director. And I’m a bit nervous that they might take fewer risks from now on with their Shakespeare interpretation.
I need more innovative Shakespeare performances than the two a year we get from Propeller, which I tend to binge on by seeing both in one day, like a weightwatcher given a box of crème eggs, leaving me with a brilliantly happy feeling of being replete, tinged with regret that it’s a long wait until next year.
Doran’s Hamlet with David Tennant was brilliant. Even though, after a fruitless 6 hours in a phone queue on the day the tickets went on sale, I had to wait and watch it on TV. I could watch it again and again. But it wasn’t offering me anything new.
This week I went to see the RSC’s Taming of the Shrew. I liked the production a lot and it had ideas I hadn’t seen before, the set was a huge bed which meant the violence was safe, and therefore funny, and the sexual tension between Kate and Petruchio was palpable. The rough and tumble showed that Propeller do not have the monopoly on physically energetic Shakespeare.
But yesterday was Propeller binge day and after a glorious double bill of A Winter’s Tale and Henry V I realised that I still found these productions stronger.
I think it’s Propeller’s speed that makes their comedies brilliant. When I’m watching one of Shakespeares comedies I always get a sort of malaise about 20 minutes before the end when I realise all we’re heading for now is the reveal, the dullest and most inevitable part of the play when the other characters find out the deception or device that we’ve been laughing at all along. I felt this in Taming of the Shrew when, after an entertaining couple of hours of shouting and hitting and pissing and fibbing the time drew near when Petruchio spends a tedious and slightly uncomfortable scene showing everyone how tame Kate has become. Yawn.
Propeller understand that you have to rattle through the dull bits. They will slow down for the jokes and the great bits of poetry and then dispense with the reveal, as they did in A Winter’s Tale, with the closest the stage can get to a montage, reeling off the exposition at speed, dressed up with some illustrative tableaux. And that’s what I want when I’m watching it. There’s no need to revere Shakespeare’s words to the point of tedium.
So The Taming of the Shrew is hilarious, clever and well worth going to see, but I would have shaved 20 minutes off it. I hope that Doran will inject some Propeller like bravery to the RSC and get them roughing the plays about a bit, throwing in extra lines like “Take it away, saxophone sheep” when necessary.
Or maybe Propeller can only do this because they are not the RSC? They warn you with their name; they rattle off Shakespeare at whirring speed. Maybe the RSC audiences are not ready for so much deviation from what you expect of a Shakespeare play.
God I love Propeller, do we really have to wait another year?
In the interests of not sounding like a Propeller groupie yet again, there are weaknesses in The Winter’s Tale and Henry V. I am allowed to rave because this is a blog and not a review but I want to prove that I can look at my favourite companies objectively. And I didn’t think this year’s double bill was as strong as last year’s.
A Winter’s Tale was a great production but it’s just not a good play is it? Even Propeller can’t make the end of A Winter’s Tale satisfying, it is ridiculous. I’m going to rewrite it one day and have the bear kill everyone off, or at least that bastard Leontes. Argh that bloody scene with the statue coming back to life where no one says anything remotely approaching what you would actually say in that circumstance and just go on and on about how THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT EVIL WITCHCRAFT BY THE WAY proving that this ending did not work for a superstitious Elizabethan audience either. A Winter’s Tale is an interesting insight into Shakespeare’s experimentation with theatrical and literary convention, but it an experiment which fails. It does nothing you could not do 100 times better with a double bill of Othello and A Comedy of Errors. And yes, that would be an incongruous double bill but not as incongruous as merging them into the same play and pretending that’s acceptable if you go on about Apollo a few times.
Henry V is a much better play even if the hero worship of Henry doesn’t make as much sense to a modern audience. Propeller conjured up the atmosphere of war so effectively that the pleas in the text for us to use our imagination sounded like they were fishing for compliments. I was surprised at how much from this play was relevant, the questions of accountability for the man leading other men into war to die were particularly poignant, I suddenly thought of Iraq and felt a bit sick. The only aspect of this production I felt was less than successful was the way in battle a punch to the boxing gym punch bags on the side of the stage translated to a punch to a man on the floor. The separation of the violence from the victim, while expertly executed, didn’t fit in with how well conjured everything else was and I felt the device was introduced to the play too late and took me out of the action which I had been absorbed in. The music was brilliant though. And the French scenes were hilarious and... OK I won’t start gushing again.
So yes, go and see all three of these productions, please! And let us keep an eagle eye on Doran’s impact on the RSC when he takes over in 2014.
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