Month: May 2020

Twelfth Night at the National Theatre
First off let me say how amazing it is to see these productions from our home at such a time as this. It’s a gift to all of us. That being said, it shouldn’t shut down our ability to voice our opinion on the work, and stretch our ability to look at the work with a critical eye.

The latest in the broadcast series is Twelfth Night directed by Simon Godwin featuring Tasmin Greig as Malvolia. Godwin’s is a mixed gendered cast that works very well. There are no difficulties in believing the characters in that regard. The design, set in a late 70’s motif, is impeccabile. In almost all of Shakespeare’s work we have a delineation of status, e.g. royals versus servants or mechanicals. So we usually get two forms of humor, one more sophisticated and one more broad. In some works the grand behave as badly as the servants through some device or other. Godwin clearly has pitched the work very broadly, almost everything is a joke. Here lies the problem, in doing so, we lose any real tension or stakes in the work. Olivia, in act one, has practically no status. Certain conventions to show this with some form of retinue, or how others defer to her, is lost. Her behavior towards Cesario/Viola becomes slapstick almost from the start. However, she gains her status back in act two.

The biggest problem I have is the sexual/romantic tension in the work, especially as it crosses gender lines. No one bats an eye when Malvolia is smitten with Olivia. I’m fine with that. On the other hand, Orsino and Cesario/Viola are constantly played for laughs. One of the biggest tensions in the work is between Cesario and Orsino. Orsino is clearly falling in love with what appears to him is a boy, a device Shakespeare often uses. Yes there is humor in it for us who are in on the secret but there is also a true longing and something more there: a pathos, and the tension of what is perceived as a transgression, something possibly forbidden.

The one whose intentions are the clearest in this production is Antonio, the sea captain, who is clearly and unabashedly in love with Sebastian. When he follows Sebastian to Illyria and tells him to meet him at the Elephant, an inn ( a location we never see in the text) it is a gay bar complete with a drag act wich is bewilldering. It makes no sense and is incongruous with the sexuality in the rest of the play. Sebastian’s intentions towards Antonio are never really clear in this production.

Godwin, the director, has cut the relationship between Maria and Sir Toby in an interesting way. All the early references to Maria being in love with Toby have been cut so in the end when she agrees to marry him it’s out of the blue. Specifically her scene with Feste the fool where the fool calls her out on her feelings. We have seen no special affection on Maria’s part throughout the work. Both performances are exceptional but again we lack longing here on Maria’s part and thus we have missed an opportunity to pull us closer to this character and her choices.

Malvolia, played remarkably and flawlessly by Tasmin Greig, gave us what we were missing from the rest of the work: humor and pathos. Clearly the director was seduced by the character, and the actor. Malvolia is a key to the story but not the central plot line. This production was the Malvolia show including her mounting the stairs into the rain as the last image we see which, although beautiful, made no real sense to the rest of the work.

As the play concludes and Viola and Sebastian are reunited, we see Olivia is not as smitten with Sebastian or her part of the bargain, the fervor in which she pursued Cesario/Viola seems to have evaporated. Directorially it is a strong choice. Orsino on his last line passionately kisses Sebastian. We assume it is because he thinks it is Viola, again a strong choice, and if we hadn’t played everything for a laugh this would have given us all a little pause.

Overall I enjoyed the production, and if you haven’t seen it I recommend you take it in. I didn’t agree with many of the director’s choices; they seemed at odds with themselves and the script at times but for the most part a beautiful work.

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Frankenstien at the National Theatre
Adapted by Nick Dear, Directed by Danny Boyle, design by Mark Tildesley.
The production features Benedict Cumberbatch, and Jonny Lee Miller splitting the role of Creature and Frankenstien in rep.
When you see the production you will understand why they don’t play the role of the creature nightly the physical demands are huge.
The visuals of the production are as always from the National Theatre impeccable with a canopy of bulbs and lamps that reaches out into the audience as well as the warm glow of the cottage of De Lancy the blind scholar . The idea of light and transparency is used throughout the work very well as a theme that builds the world the characters inhabit.

When adapting a work of literature to the stage certain allowances are made, how a length of time is represented, which subplots to keep, which to let go of and so forth. Nick Dear has given us a superficial swipe at a very rich novel. The play itself stands as engaging and entertaining but not compelling.It is a wild ride that misses the mark of the text. The rape of Elizabeth is no where in the book and has no place in the play. The question of who is the real monster, humanity, and longing are touched on but not flushed out.
The play tells the story through the creature’s experience,we do not get the growth of his intellect and the deeper longing within him. We see Frankestien for a nano second in the beginning and then not till much later. I understand that this is from the creature’s perspective but the first encounter with his maker could have and should have been flushed out a little.

The physicality of the work, Cumbebatch as the creature gives us an amazing athletic performance, consistent but lacking any moment of real stillness to allow us into the character to empathise it’s all on one level, here I think Boyle should have stepped in. The opening sequences of the creature experiencing the world verges very closely on self indulgence, and the random dream sequence took us nowhere.
Frankestien was missing some larger passions that encompass his loss, the death of his little brother devastates him in the book, and he is passionately in love with Elizabeth. Neither read in this interpretation.
The play is a masterful physical experience, and a good first attempt at mining what is a brilliant work of literature. A work that is nuanced and full of passion and longing. The play is a step closer to telling us this story that has been widely and weirdly misrepresented in film.
This was my second viewing of the work and I was less seduced by it than the first encounter. I think it is a smooth production, well crafted and acted, certainly worth watching, but lacks an emotional arc that would have drawn me in and connected me to the story.

That book you meant to read is still on your shelf.

E.M. Forester is considered to be a quintessential author of his time, who captured the struggle and the character of the Edwardian period of England. His life span was long, from 1879 to 1970. His books and short stories continue to inspire and engage.
His circle of friends and colleagues included Christopher Isherwood, the poets, Auden and Seigfried Sassoon, Irish author Forrest Reid, and the composer Benjamin Britten to name a few.

Some little known facts: he was a conscientious objector during WWI, declined a knighthood, wrote a couple of short stories that would be considered Science Fiction, and was nominated 16 times for the Nobel prize in literature. What Forester is best at is the conflict within his characters striving to fulfill their hopes and coming up against Edwadian hypocrisy.

This week I’m recommending two of his works. The first is Howards End.
So much of what Forester writes about, especially in this book, resonates with today’s views on nature, industrialism, greed, and the devouring machine of a capitalistic society. The book pits three specific groups against each other: the materialistic vs the bohemian artist, vs the working poor. No matter how modern we claim to be we still have the vestiges of a ridiculous social order distorting our lives.

The second book is Maurice. Published posthumously, this was written directly following Howards End around 1914. The book circulated amongst his closest friends but did not see the public eye until after his passing, along with a collection of short stories titled The Life to Come. Here are Forester’s own words on the novel:
“Happiness is the keynote. I tried to create a character who was completely unlike myself or what I supposed myself to be: Someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentaly torpid, not a bad businessman, and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him.”

For those unaware, Forester was a homosexual all his life. Having a queer perspective allowed him to see the pathos and longing of his generation with a different and perhaps clearer eye. If you’re looking for a film version to go along with his works, none have matched the team of Merchant and Ivory for their understanding of the spectacle, and the humanity of his work.

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