A Mad World My Masters
Swan Theatre, 29th July
2013
I finally
got round to watching Burton and Taylor the
other day. A nice chance to see the
chameleon-like Dominic West doing a fabulous Richard Burton. But I was taken by a particular scene where
he is chastising his ex-wife, Elizabeth Taylor (played by Helena Bonham-Carter
not doing quite enough not to be Helena Bonham-Carter) for smooching with the
audience. As they perform in Noel Coward’s
Private Lives, bringing more reality
than performance to the play, Liz winks at one of the audience members when he
shouts something sleazy to her. Burton’s
criticism is that the audience is confusing fact and fiction and she is aiding
and abetting them in this interpretation.
It seems to me that this attitude demonstrates a brief blip in the
history of theatre. One from which we
are perhaps only just recovering. Ask
any artist to define the difference between fact and fiction, truth and art,
and they will be flummoxed. The artist
does not see that a polarity exists and nor, perhaps, should we.
So it was
that husband and I greeted an unknown play, A
Mad World My Masters by Thomas Middleton, written in 1605. There is only really one word that springs to
mind when trying to define the play and that would be bawdy. I think the RSC has had great fun with
it. As they usually try and extract any
opportunity for slap-stick in the Shakespearean comedies, Middleton’s play is a
glorious find. And this performance is
genuinely funny.
We had seats
right at the front which was a treat or a trial depending on how you view such
things. Being seven months pregnant I
think exempts one from being dragged into the play’s more raucous humour
although I did worry that I ran the risk of having cast members land on me
during some of the fight scenes. As the
audience filed in a waitress in 1950s Bunny Girl costume made conversation with
various members on the front row which felt at once against the rules and
thrilling. It set the scene perfectly
for a play that seemed to evolve according to the atmosphere within the
theatre. As the rest of the cast came on
stage in what was set to look like a 1950s Jazz club, we in the front row were
handed drinks (ginger ale, ‘non-alcoholic’ the waitress assured me, looking at
my bump) which we all viewed sceptically to begin with, assuming them to be
props and not ‘real’ but we soon got used to the level of audience involvement
as cast members made little asides to we members of the audience.
We were not
to miss anything and this was guaranteed very early on in the conception of
this performance. The director Sean
Foley is evangelical about his decision to change some of the play’s language
and to cut large chunks of it that he felt were inaccessible. I’m with him on this. What is important, in staging a play that is
over four hundred years old, is that an audience is still able to appreciate
the essence of the play. If the language
is inaccessible then the jokes will be too.
Foley claims that what is left is 97% Middleton and that’s good enough
for me.
The play and
its humour are exceptionally fast paced.
Always referred to as a ‘city comedy’ this pace reflects the changing
faces of the modern city. I say ‘modern’
because it is the nature of urban environments, not set on a groove of seasonal
and agricultural pattern, that they are always charting new territory. So, Jacobean London has many similarities
with 1950s Soho, where sex and money remain the unshakable obsessions. I will not relay to you the plot as its
intricacies are fairly typical of the period, i.e.: disguise, deception, men
dressing as women, a play within a play and a resolution of sorts at the end. However, the journey is pure pleasure,
executed by some of our best talent.
John Hopkins
plays the conniving Penitent Brothel.
His voice should be the voice of every male actor, his projection and
diction are rich and clear, his face places him as a Mafioso. However, took me a while to realise that he’s
the chap from Midsomer Murders so he’s made a successful escape there. Sarah Ridgeway was exemplary as the whore
Truly Kidman, a character who always has the upper hand in a pleasing nod to seventeenth
century feminism. She was Barbara
Windsor in every ‘Carry On’ that ever was.
She was alternatively saucy and kittenish and was responsible for
furthering both of the strands of the plot.
She looks very young to take on such a big part with such aplomb and
make it look so effortless. Finally, may
I say how nice it was to see Ciaran Owens on the RSC stage? For those five of you who read my reviews you
might remember my commending his performance in Our Country’s Good back at the beginning of the year. He had only a small part in this play, as a
suitor of Truly Kidman but he was comfortable and convincing and I’m glad that
the RSC has got a hold of him.
For such an
old play it felt genuinely fresh. Older
members of the audience could not contain their hysteria (at one point someone
was stretchered out of the balcony seats which may or may not have been due to
one too many references to erectile dysfunction!) however, as I am of a
miserable bent I found it more entertaining than laugh-out-loud funny. But how entertaining! I would thoroughly recommend it especially to
those of you who are tiring of the more juvenile Shakespearean humour.
