'King John', RSC Swan Theatre, 4th November 2019

King John

4^thNovember 2019, The Swan Theatre

I had quite the obsession with Elinor of Aquitaine when I was younger. I think it started with Jean Plaidy whose ‘Eleanor’ was quite a romantic figure. Then I read everything I could get my hands on.  What was it that appealed about this She-Wolf?  I think it was the ballsiness; the ability to turn any situation to her advantage.  Your first husband, the King of France, no longer wants you so you make a bee-line for the King of England despite his being ten years your junior.  Then you only go and outlive him and all the while showing your mettle as a woman producing a dynasty that went onto dominate the monarchies of most of Europe.

So I knew the history but I did not know Shakespeare’s rarely performed King John.  Just as well, perhaps, because if I had been particularly fond of the play I might have been upset to find that in this current performance, John was being played by a female actor.  She was not playing the role as a woman, per se, in that her name had not been feminized or the text changed to imply a change of gender, as was the case in the recent production of Taming of the Shrew.  But neither was there an attempt to disguise her true sex.  I can’t say what this added to the play and neither does anyone try to justify it in the programme.  Having never seen the play before, I will hazard that it took nothing away from the text either.  Not least because Rosie Sheehy, playing John, has such a beguiling stage presence and a cat-like elegance of movement but also because ‘King John’, for me, was not much about King John.

John was Elinor’s youngest son.  Although his mother is in many of the play’s scenes, she is given relatively few lines to speak.  Presumably Shakespeare felt that history had said enough about Elinor.  The character for me who steals the play, both on paper and in this superb production, is Constance, Geoffrey’s widow.  She believes that her son Arthur, Duke of Brittany, has the superior claim to the throne of England.  Certainly, if we understand primogeniture correctly then she is right.  It is not just a desire for power that ignites Constance’s maternal indignation but her desperation seems to stem from her awareness that whilst John conquers England and Normandy, her son will not be safe.  Ethan Phillips, who played Arthur so touchingly, begs of his mother, “I do beseech you, madam, be content.” But Constance cannot be content because she understands what the other characters do not, that her son’s life must be at risk.  If ‘King John’ were to be given a subtitle, as with so many of Shakespeare’s plays, it could perhaps be, ‘Look what I started’.  As with Macbeth, who does not fully realise the consequences when he first entertains the idea of killing King Duncan, so King John does not realise fully the consequences of declaring war on France over his claim to the English throne. The voice of reason is spoken by ‘mad’ Constance who in this performance was played so effectively by Charlotte Randle. The whole production was given a mid-century gangster movie feel.  And Randle’s Constance was the perfect gangster widow, a moll, a Kray’s cast off, she would have looked at home behind the bar of the Queen Vic.  And from this unlikely Cockney queen came one of the most moving soliloquys, I’m prepared to say, of all Shakespeare:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,

I could give better comfort than you do.

I will not keep this form upon my head,

When there is such disorder in my wit.

O Lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!

Randle’s Constance tore at her hair as she delivers this to the unsympathetic King of France and eventually convinces him of her sanity. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I watched and I would return again just for that scene.  I tried to think when it was that I was last so moved watching Shakespeare and I concluded that it was when I last saw Richard III in that very same theatre.  There are many parallels between the two plays.  Not least, that Shakespeare gives the most honest and heart-rending speeches to women.  I refer to the scene where Queen Margaret and Queen Elizabeth mourn their dead sons. Dead sons was something that Shakespeare knew about only too well.

So you could go and see this performance for just that scene. However, there is much else to recommend it.  The music was something between Mike Myers and the Godfather and the cast sporadically broke out in formation dancing, as if in a 1960s spoof spy film.  This sounds unlikely, I know but was tremendously effective at exerting the influence of each side of the war.  It also showcased how well actors move, this being an important facet of their skills set.  It was fun and dramatic and culminated in a food fight at the wedding of the Dauphin and Blanche that ended as no food fight should ever end, with bloodshed.

This play has intrigued me and I would love to see another interpretation of it.  The RSC has sent me happily to the text and I’ve read it a couple of times and wonder, given this fascinating time of history where powerful women abound, why it is not performed more often?

As You Like It, RST, Monday 25th March 2019

As You Like It, RST

Monday, 25th March 2019

It's expensive to go to the theatre.  So when you see those offers for cheap tickets, you jump at them.  But then, it's Monday and you need to iron a pile of school uniform and you can't think why you thought it was a good idea to go out in the cold to watch a Shakespearean comedy, of all things.  I recently read an interview with Roddy Doyle who said that the last Shakespearean comedy that he saw was As You Like It, about thirty years ago, which confirmed what he had always suspected, that he hates Shakespeare's comedies.  And he's never been since.

I sort of concur.  My favourite Shakespeare play is probably Richard III or a good Macbeth.  Some blood, anyway.  But hey ho, it was to be a sit down and a glass of wine so shouldn't grumble.  And if you'll see my last review, I think you'd agree that it is far better to visit the theatre with low expectations because in this case, As You Like It was a sunny slice of joy.  

Humour is what the RSC does best at the moment and perhaps it's more accessible for all the tourists.  At the forefront of the comic ensemble is Emily Johnstone.  She played Amiens in the first half and Le Beau in the second half.  As Amiens she did a wonderful turn as 'PA to a Duke', constantly falling off her high heels and fawning over the wrestlers with what must be a natural talent for comic timing.  The wrestling match itself was brilliantly done, the use of stage space constantly changing and rotating.  And then as Amiens, Johnstone showed herself to also be the owner of a beautifully melodic voice.  In my opinion, she was the star of the show.  But they were on the whole a young cast and had many talents between them.  Lucy Phelps, as Rosalind, was also quite brilliant; especially when she plays Rosalind, playing Ganymede, pretending to be Rosalind (only in Shakespeare!!) and she was hiding in the audience whilst calling to Orlando.  It all seemed wonderfully fresh and impromptu as she conspired with the audience.

When the characters go off into the forrest there was some theatrical magic as the actors seemed to come out of character and many stage hands appeared to transform the setting.  This clever hiatus signalled to the audience that characters were now playing different roles and echoed Jacques' famous speech that "All the world's a stage".  From this point, it would be worth pointing out that As You Like It promises/threatens some audience participation.  Maybe don't sit in the stalls if this kind of thing frightens you.  No fear for us up in our cheap seats in the Gods.  But there were plenty who did want to join in which generated much hilarity and applause.  Audience participation is always a good way of including the audience in the performance so that that particular piece of theatre can truly be said to be unique; no two audiences being the same.

At the end, the Goddess Hymen appears to bless and restore order through matrimony.  Hymen was an enormous puppet, designed perhaps to look a bit like Mother Nature but instead reminding me of a White Walker in Game of Thrones.  All the same, it was visually epic and rounded things off with a climax as well as the traditional resolution.

I felt that it was a Monday night well-spent and I almost thought, particularly with reference to the first half, that I could go and see it again.  And that is quite an accolade for one of Shakespeare's comedies!

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew, Royal Shakespeare Theatre

8th March, 2019

On this International Women’s Day I took my two eldest daughters to see Taming of the Shrew at the RST in Stratford.  Interesting choice for IWD you may say but obviously I had no idea of the auspicious day when I booked the tickets.  Such forward planning is sadly not my style.  

The girls didn’t know the play and I was excited for them to see it.  It’s a problematic play in many ways, the clue being in the title.  Ultimately the shrew is tamed.  But the entertainment is in Katherine’s defiance.  Arguably, she is the greatest Shakespearean female with some of the greatest lines: “I see a woman may be made a fool/If she had not a spirit to resist.”

Ahh, “a spirit to resist.”  And this is where the entertainment lies; just watch her resist!  I think I speak for most theatre-goers when I say, “We forgive you, Mr Shakespeare, for ending the play in the manner you did.”  I like to think that, of course, within the confines of the day, he had to have the shrew tamed both for the sake of conventional comedic resolution but also so that fifty percent of his audience were not shocked and disgusted out of ever visiting the theatre again.

All this was pacing around in my head when I bought the programme and discovered that such sacrilege was about to occur that I instantly wished I’d chosen a different play.  What a shame that the first time my girls were to see this play, the wonderful Katherine was to be played by a man.  Even worse, all the roles had been swapped and we were being transported to a sixteenth century matriarchy.  I explained to my girls what was going to happen.  They cared not a jot, having no prior knowledge or affection for the play.  And so, we perched on our stools and awaited the performance, me telling myself firmly to open my mind.  

Matriarchy is an odd but satisfying concept, I suppose.  Not what the feminist aims for, obviously, being so wedded to equality as we are but a nice day dream all the same.  Except, even in day dreams I’m a pragmatist.  What would a matriarchy be founded on?  The patriarchy, of course, exists for one reason and one reason alone: Men are bigger and stronger than women.  And for all the pay inequality, silencing and burkas it's worth remembering that still, today, an average of 137 women, across the world, are killed by men everyday.  There’s the patriarchy.

In the programme for this performance, Jami Rogers writes:

‘Some audience members may find it uncomfortable to watch a female Petruchio wielding power over a male Katherine, but perhaps some will also ask why – when audiences have happily flocked to see a male Petruchio’s treatment of a female Katherine – it is unacceptable if the tables are turned?’

Well, Jami, it’s unacceptable because it doesn’t work.  And you’re wrong that audiences ‘happily flocked’ to see Katherine beaten and bullied by Petruchio.  We flocked to see the guile and spirit and sheer witty brilliance of Katherine in the face of inevitable domination.  The scenes where Claire Price, quite brilliant as Petruchia, physically abuses the male Katherine were simply turned into farce.  The audience roared and indeed they were quite funny.  Funny because it’s all so improbable.  My girls looked thoroughly perplexed.  My eldest struggled not to walk out.  Afterwards, she said, “It’s a horrible play!”  But I tried to explain, “If only you could have heard Katherine’s words spoken by a woman, seen a woman square up to Petruchio, you’d have been incredibly moved.”  Not this time though.  

I do want to try and suspend my disbelief for a moment and comment on the good because there was still much to praise.  All the cast gave their absolute all but Emily Johnstone as Lucentia and Laura Elsworthy as Trania were particularly successful at harnessing the humour of their parts.  How Sophie Stanton as Gremia, managed to hover in her enormous gown so successfully, as if propelled by wheels, was a source of fascination and hysteria to all.  The music, a sort of Renaissance rock, was also effective at enhancing an environment based around mad dating rituals and hidden identities

I suppose, at this precise moment in time, such an interpretation seems pressing and contemporary.  Jami Rogers refers to characters being ‘gender-swapped’ but let’s be clear, the sex of the actors was swapped; nothing to do with gender.  And what the RSC hoped would be subversive actually bordered on offensive.  Womankind has a history and that history is often one of repression and enslavement.  It cannot so easily be handed to men, either in drama or in any other way you might care to imagine.

Tamburlaine - RSC, Swan Theatre

Tamburlaine

Christopher Marlowe

Friday 29^thSeptember 2018

The Swan is Stratford’s little gem of a theatre.  The Arts and Craftsy wooden interior makes you feel like you’re in a cosy log cabin. Because it’s the intimacy that makes a real difference from a dramatic point of view.  You can see the ejaculations of spit from wherever you sit. But for Tamburlaine and all that bloody saliva, we were just one row back from the front.

Tamburlaine is very bloody.  Marlowe was writing at a time, over 400 years ago, when the audience had a hearty appetite for bloodshed; if conquering was to be done properly, there had to be blood. Nowadays, it poses some problems; to keep portraying gruesome deaths relentlessly on stage without them becoming commonplace or hammy is tricky.  And in practical terms it makes a mess.  Gregory Doran and Catherine Mallyon, artistic and executive directors respectively, tackled the bloodshed with subtle innovation.  Characters were painted, carefully, with the fake blood solution.  This had the effect of implying strategy to the deaths and yet also creating a shocking tableau.  Loud percussion added effectively to the drama of the whole piece.  A crashing gong heralded much of the fighting onstage. When the virgins were murdered, it happened behind a screen that showed only the blood, splattered on said screen in a mafia-style assassination.  At the end of the first half, the killing reached peak bloodshed.  Zenocrate, Tamburlaine’s wife, wearing a white gown trails her costume in the blood on the floor and cradles the dying King of Arabia, getting herself further contaminated with the blood.  The blood on her white dress was disturbing.  As the lights went down and part one came to an end, the elderly lady next to me and I discussed the possibility that the actress (Rosy McEwen) might have to have a new white dress for each performance. Or perhaps the paint came out easily when it was washed.  Hmmmm…

“I don’t think they do it very often.  Tamburlaine,” said my elderly neighbour, “Probably because of the blood.”

She might have had a point but I think it’s more likely that the extensive cast causes added difficulties. Apart from Jude Owusu’s Tamburlaine and a couple of his henchmen, all the actors were playing at least two parts, often three.  In part two (where much of the blood had been scrubbed away) there is pretty much a whole new cast of characters so doubling up parts is the only way to avoid an enormous ensemble.  However, it does get a little confusing.

            “I thought he was dead,” Said my neighbour as Mark Hadfield returned to the stage in a new guise.  But the cast was up to the many parts required of them and to worry too much about the intricacies of the play misses the point.  Mark Hadfield was particularly good in his varying roles as he gave distinctive yet different portrayals in each. As the defeated Mycetes he was narcissistic and juvenile, a Trumpian fool who broke down in tantrums whenever his advisors tried to tell him the unpalatable truth.  And of course, he was so easily overthrown by the ambitious and ruthless Tamburlaine; a far more dangerous prospect to fill the void.

Jude Owusu, displaying incredible stamina as the role requires, was impressive in the lead, appearing as an unstoppable force of nature until the end when Tamburlaine realises the magnitude of his task is unachievable and dies with a solemn lament.  Indeed, to sum up Tamburlaine would go something like this: The pursuit of power becomes the power of pursuit and ultimately the crown, all those many conquered crowns, is hollow.  Tamburlaine’s dying wish is that the woman whom he conquered, his widow Zenocrates, be placed beside him in death. It’s a long play but the final scene, a climactic anti-climax in tone, is eerily touching. 

Hecuba, Swan Theatre, 19th September 2015

Hecuba by Marina Carr

Swan Theatre, 19^th September 2015

 

Hecuba had 18 children.  She wasn’t reduced by this; in fact her power as Queen of Troy was much enhanced by being the matriarch of a swelling dynasty.  I think about this as I wedge my belly into my high seat in the gallery.  It’s comfortable enough if I don’t move.  But unfortunately I have left my phone switched on in my handbag on the floor below my dangling feet.  I flip up my seat and climb onto the bars in front and wonder how to get down to my bag without putting my head in the lap of the lady next to me.  I manage to hook it up to me with my foot somehow but then, when I try and pull down my seat to sit on again, I do actually get wedged.  My mother shoves and pulls a bit and I am soon winched back up onto my seat.  Where I must remain for an hour and fifty minutes because there is to be no interval in this performance.  I think this is a modern parable about being pregnant.  I am a modern day Euripides!

The action begins.  Or rather, Hecuba, seated in her throne, the only piece of scenery on the stage throughout, begins to recount her version of events.  This is how the play is structured throughout.  Even though characters are on stage together, they are all recounting what happened as if separated by their own ‘stories’.  You might think the constant “he said”/”she said” would become annoying but in fact it gives a wonderful restraint to the play which could so quickly become an unfathomable blood bath.  Only in certain scenes do we seem to catch up with the drama and the recounting is replaced with direct drama, as when Polyxena is sacrificed.

The drama of this scene is almost overwhelming.  Carr’s script ensures that we understand the awfulness of Hecuba’s torture; she can endure but only just.  Over and over she asks how she can be living through such brutality and inhumanity.  Although death has existed from the moment the play opened, Polyxena is the first character to die on stage.  Agamemnon has to slit her throat twice and still she doesn’t die.  We are told she is finished off by a final stab into the heart.  It’s unbearable to watch.  Carr’s great challenge in re-working Euripides’ drama was to make a shocking and blood-thirsty play both shocking and blood-thirsty.  It is all too easy for audiences to switch off their emotions when assaulted with so much carnage and brutality, especially in an age where our contemporary dramas are comparatively so subtle.  Carr ensures that her play is relevant throughout.  Little Polydorus, played by the beguiling Luca Saraceni-Gunner, whose end is near tells Agamemnon that killing for the sake of killing is inhumane; even animals don’t do that.  And Hecuba herself states that this is not war, for war has rules; they are trying to wipe us out, this is genocide.  Contemporary echoes cannot be ignored.  By the end, everyone is mad and blind to the point of any of it.  The throne gets dragged round the stage, no one sure whose its rightful owner is.

The Greeks are played by black actors. This contrast of white women versus black men is tribal and effective.  As their king, Ray Fearon as Agamemnon, is incredibly powerful.  His

voice is rich and authoritative but Derbhle Crotty and her Irish venom is an ample match for him.  Their repartee is compelling and sexually charged.  In fact, I can’t tell you how good it is.  If Carr’s script gives words an extraordinary power then Erica Whyman, as director, has had unbelievable vision in bringing these actors together in the way she does.  Who would think that a subtle black humour could work in such a play?  And yet, with madness comes laughter.  The relief for the audience in those moments of humour was palpable; a light shone in the darkness.  When Agamemnon has been forced to sacrifice Polyxena in order to appease his men, who believe that a sacrifice will bring them the wind they need to sail home, he looks to the sky and notes in exasperation, “of course there is no fucking wind!” 

At the end of the play Polymestor stumbles on stage and tells Hecuba how a gang of Agamemnon’s men has gouged out his eyes and killed his two young sons.  Of course, in Euripides’ version, it is Hecuba herself who is responsible for these atrocities in revenge for Polymestor’s part in Polydorus’s murder.  Carr is quite right to give an alternative view.  Euripides wrote his drama some 700 years after the fall of Troy.  It seems certain that someone like Hecuba existed but the rest is myth.  I am happy to have been introduced to this particular Greek classic through a twentieth century lens.  Authenticity is not lost; arguably, it is gained.

Death of a Salesman, RST Stratford-upon-Avon, 11/04/15

Death of a Salesman

RST Stratford-upon-Avon, 11^th April 2015

 

It’s been a while.  Over eighteen months.  Not since going to the theatre but since having the brain cells to write about it.  Having a baby causes life to accelerate and leap, all at the same time as enduring nights that last forever!  But anyway, I’m older and I know it.  This altered perception of time makes Arthur Miller’s play even more poignant; for what is the point of art if we cannot say, “I know this, it is me”?

 

Gregory Doran calls Death of a Salesman ‘the greatest American play of the 20^th century’ and it is.  The themes are so universal that it is up there with Shakespeare for enduring appeal.  After all, the American Dream is now everybody’s dream, to some extent.  And so it is hard to get it too wrong.  The play is immaculate.  You can close your eyes and listen and the words just lodge themselves inside the skull and reverberate.

 

Still, better say something about the RSC’s current production or there’s not much point in this:  It’s excellent!  The scenery was clever and well up to the job of this play’s challenging layering of past and present.  A canvas of large tenement blocks created an oppressive back-drop to the Lomans’ house which was effective.  Equally, lighting was used to good effect in the scenes set in the past; the golden haze seeming to imply a ‘rose-tint’.

 

However, casting was where real genius was evident.  The smaller parts were as well cast as the main parts, with Sarah Parks as The Woman being particularly notable.  As Willy’s often drunk, stocking-greedy mistress she very nearly stole the show.  Alex Hassell as Biff embodies perfectly the golden boy of high school sporting achievement as well as being able to convince as a washed-up has-been, drifting from one labouring job to the next.  In the interval, I overheard one woman dub Hassell, “a fine specimen”.  Yes, quite.  And Sam Marks as Happy was equally fitting, being physically smaller than Biff but with all the energy that his older brother has lost.  Harriet Walter as Linda conveyed all the tenderness that the part requires.  Indeed, it was her words that had the most impact.  When she demanded of her sons that ‘attention must be paid’ to her husband, the pain of the situation was hard to bear. 

 

It is a painful play.  At the centre of the pain is, of course, Willy Loman; in this performance played by Antony Sher.  I don’t want to criticise the great man, but…. Firstly, his accent was odd.  In the opening scene this did jar.  His ‘Brooklyn’ was laboured and slurred all at the same time.  This had the effect of making him seem a little mad, which of course he is.  Or rather, he is slowly going mad.  And this was slightly the point as well; because Sher begins with quite an exaggerated performance he does not really have anywhere to go as the play moves towards its inevitable anti-climax.  For this reason, I found the first half much more compelling than the second.  However, I should add that my husband, who has somehow managed to get to thirty-six without encountering the play, thought the second half was more gripping so perhaps I’m being unfair.  Sher certainly does justice to the changeability in Willy.  He was at once ridiculous and pitiable whilst also managing a very real aggression that seemed to make him grow in stature.  And you stop noticing the funny accent after the first scene!

A Mad World My Masters, The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

A Mad World My Masters

Swan Theatre, 29^th 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.