The Canterville Ghost, English National Ballet, Sadler’s Wells – Saturday 10th March 2007

Well, it was a game try – but it really didn’t come off. There were lots of things I didn’t like about this production – and judging by the rather lukewarm applause at the end, the majority of the audience at Sadler’s Wells didn’t really go for it either.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed this more had I been able to see more of it. The lighting was SO dim that a lot of the visual jokes (particularly in the dinner table scene) just failed to register. The action was also obscured by the heavy use of stage smoke, which hung around in the auditorium throughout the performance and coloured everything with the type of blue haze which I only usually see hanging about the flat when Clive has had the oven on too high. It obviously failed to register with the costume designer that, on a black-floored stage with a black backdrop and dingy lighting, characters dressed completely in black become essentially invisible.

Tom Baker’s rather overblown narration sat very uneasily on the production – if you need narration to explain a ballet to its audience, then there is obviously something very wrong with the ballet itself. What narration there was seemed rather pointless, in fact, particularly when it was duplicating the action on the stage (for example, in the dinner table scene, a large picture frame hangs over the table, in which the “back story” of the murder of the Ghost’s wife is acted out. This is also played out in classic ballet mime by the housekeeper at the same time, so what is going on should be quite easily understood by anyone. But ENB have obviously decided that the scene needs narration as well. Result: complete overkill).

Neither did I quite see the point of framing the whole set with Edwardian theatre boxes – were we supposed to infer that we were not actually watching a story unfold, but a theatrical presentation of a story?

The trouble with this adaptation is that I really didn’t care about the characters and what happened to them. Most of the horrible Otis family are mere cardboard cut outs – even the ghastly twins were just played for laughs. What could have been a touching side-plot about the romance between the housekeeper and the butler was shoe-horned into a short pas de deux, and then forgotten. We are meant to identify with the bookish Virginia, but a pair of wire framed glasses does not a simpering ingénue make. And why would she fall for Cecil, played as a P. G. Wodehouse twit, when the alternative is immortality with a glamorous and sexy ghost? And was there some point being made by having Mrs. Otis double as Lady de Canterville? In essence, all it meant was that Mrs. Otis wasn’t present at the family dinner table. As an essentially non-dancing role, Lady de Canterville could have been played by one of the female corps de ballet.

There were a few nice touches – the splitting of the back wall showing the descent to Hell, the ancestral portraits, through which their faces protruded like those old comedy seaside photographs, being carried by the ghosts themselves, and the skull being used as a football by the twins in the final scene, but it really was a very lukewarm evening out. Not so much Canterville as Can’tBeBothered.

The Man of Mode – National Theatre, Friday 9th March 2007

Oh dear, I thought. Another of these Restoration so-called “Comedies”. Another one “wittily updated” to make it seem more “relevant”. I was planning to secrete a paperback in my trouser pocket or paint open eyes on the lenses of my glasses and nod off behind them. But what a revelation. The play was originally set in 17th century London – a place “obsessed with having it all, a place where young people are driven to have the latest clothes, the latest gossip and each other’s bodies” – just like London today, which is where this production is very firmly placed. With its sly (and not so sly) digs at pretentious gallery openings, society florists, daft fashions, the cult of “celebrity” and smarmy, manipulative City boys shagging anything with a pulse, it could have been written yesterday. So well was the production thought out that the modern anachronisms really didn’t jar at all. I had been a bit worried that the plot device of the arranged marriage might be rather shoe-horned in, but in this production the two families are Indian, which of course is up-to-date as you can get with all the current hoohaa in the press. There were (apparently) a few updates from the original text, but I doubt if anyone would have noticed unless you were a real Restoration Comedy Freak. I liked the device of using text messages rather than the handwritten notes being passed from one character to another, and the part where Sir Foppington’s unwittingly hysterical performance on the piano was captured on mobile phones – you just KNOW that its going to hit the Internet within 30 minutes.

Tom Hardy was fantastic as the slimy, manipulative Doriant. His “body acting” was incredible to watch – whether he had been taught this or was inherent is difficult to tell. He has a great body anyway, and used it to underscore practically everything he said and every move he made – in the very natural way that those blessed with great bodies do in real life. A lascivious comment would be accompanied with a slight flick of the hips, a knockback paired with a subtle squaring of the shoulders or flexing of the biceps; you were aware at all times of his body language without having to see the body underneath his suit –although having seen him in his Calvins, I would quite happily let him kick me out of bed, but only so that he could do me on the floor. I also thought it was fantastic the way he made the most out of his lips, which have that touch of Michael Portillo about them. In fact, at the point when he was smarming Indira Joshi’s wonderful Lady Woodvill, I was convinced that Portillo was who he was imitating.

Excellent though he was, Hardy had to enter into a fiercely competitive two-horse race to take the acting honours whenever Rory Kinnear (Sir Fopling Flutter) appeared on stage. It was literally neck and neck all the way, and I think that Kinnear may well have won by a nose. He was brilliant –funny, charming and quite unwittingly pathetic (in the real sense of the word as well as the accepted sense). What made him so fab was that he played the role as if he was truly unaware that his uber-fashionable designer clothes were, in fact, making him look like mutton dressed as lamb – a male version of Edina Monsoon. For the first 10 minutes or so, I had problems with his performance, thinking that he was playing it too much in the style of a large, cuddly version of James Dreyfuss, but he soon won me over – and if he would ever like to come clubbing with me, then he’d be very welcome!

I wasn’t quite so impressed with some of the ladies on stage – Abby Ford made a very scraggy, colourless, practically emaciated Emilia and I really didn’t think that a stud like Doriant would have gone for that type (unless for her money, of course). Nancy Carroll’s Mrs. Loveit didn’t really come off either – but then I must admit that I was prejudiced because she looked like someone I used to work for and didn’t really like a great deal. Penny Ryder gave a good account of Pert – rather like a poor man’s Felicity Kendall.

Costumes were excellent – lots of thought obviously given to shoes – although Abby Ford looked like a bag of rags tied in the middle with string most of the time. Loved Hardy’s beautifully cut suit, which enhanced the sexy body beneath with great style. And Kinnear’s first costume was one I would be happy to wear myself (minus the tassels and fringing, of course). Great dancing as well all the way through, terrifically choreographed.

A great night out – and made all the better by the fact that I fully expected to loathe the whole thing.

The Tempest, Novello Theatre, 22nd February 2007

I would like to start this entry by thanking the man sitting in front of me for bobbing up and down and shifting in his seat constantly, ensuring that most of the stage was hidden by his fat head. I would also like to sincerely thank the large party of students for rattling notebooks, clicking pens, eating, drinking, playing with their mobile phones, rummaging through their bags and discussing the action loudly throughout the entire play.

The opening scene of this was brilliantly realised. Rather than showing the usual deck of the beleaguered sailing ship, what we got was a claustrophobic radio room below deck, glimpsed through a cut cloth, which began by displaying a ship’s radio on which a storm warning was being broadcast. The radio vanished to be replaced by grainy, crashing waves – the speaker of the radio became the porthole through which the audience saw the crew, vomiting, panicking and struggling to control the ship. For this was no ordinary tropical island shipwreck, but a wreck foundering on some windswept, ice-floe strewn arctic coast. Nice idea, I thought, but it did rather make a mockery of the play’s pastoral imagery – “Come unto these yellow sands”, for instance, rather goes for nothing when its being sung on an iceberg, as does "Where the bee sucks, there suck I" - cue for sniggers from the puerile students behind me. Apart from the interior of Prospero’s hut, this was the only set we got, which was a disappointment as, if every scene is played on the same set, it does rather spoil the idea of the dislocation of the various stranded parties washed up at different places around the island. And I failed to understand why, after the interval, the peak of the iceberg was decorated by Prospero’s hut (upside down, no less). Maybe the director was making a “Wizard of Oz” reference? You tell me. I did like the idea of a “screen wipe” between scenes – a curtain with a whirling blizzard projected on it sweeping across the stage as if to clear away all traces of the humans marooned on the island.

None of the rest of the play really delivered the promise of the opening scene. Projection was, more or less across the board, risible. What is going on at the RSC these days? Very few of the predominately young cast had any idea of how to make their voices reach the back of the balcony. Even the great Patrick Stewart (gasp!) was barely audible for the first half hour. Given that this scene details Prospero’s “back story” and his reasons for creating the tempest and bringing the ship to the island in the first place, it may well have made it very hard going for those not familiar with the play. Mariah Gale, as Miranda (here played as some kind of bouncy Eskimo Nell ingénue), just couldn’t be heard full stop. Craig Gazey, as Trinculo, was perfectly audible – but I’d far rather he hadn’t been, because he was bloody awful, with absolutely no idea of how to put a character across without going into stereotyped mugging and waving his hands around like a demented windmill. Still, having read his tiny biography in the programme, its not surprising, him having only ever appeared in three other plays and The Bill. What’s the point of putting such an inexperienced actor in such a large role? And did the director think “Oh, need people to laugh at this character. Rather than make him give his lines in an amusing way, it would be much easier to get an actor with a regional accent. Always good for a laugh, someone from Swansea”? Much better had the part been played by James Hayes (giving an authoritative Gonzalo but really rather wasted). I did like the idea of little frying pans being used as extemporised snowshoes.

The director’s conception of Ariel was totally bizarre. His height and gauntness pointed up with a dark grey floor length, high collared coat and with pale make up heightened at all times by an ice white spotlight trained on his shaved head, Julian Bleach was only missing the long claws and pointy teeth to be a dead spit of Nosferato, creeping about the stage like some arctic Uriah Heap. The only point when he assumed a believable “angry spirit” was during the “You are three men of sin” speech – mind you, having him burst out of the belly of a dead seal, with scary Freddy Kruger-like skeletal wings was a brilliant piece of theatrical invention. If only we could have heard what the rest of the cast on stage were muttering about at this point, it would have been the best scene in the show – not difficult, given that many of the scenes were played sooooooo slowly, with lots of long pauses, that I began to wonder if this was an adaptation by Pinter.

John Light gave an odd portrayal of Caliban –playing the role with all the savagery of a sausage, and if you can’t imagine a savage sausage, that’s because sausages are not known for their inherent savagery. He seemed to me more bemused than savage. Given the setting, why not portray him as an Eskimo? Or was the director worried that this might be construed as implying that Eskimos (sorry, the indigenous Inuit peoples of the Arctic Circle) are savages?

The great Patrick Stewart (yes, Prospero-Luc Picard himself) seemed rather adrift from the rest of the cast, and indeed the play itself, most of the time, looking and sounding out of place among a young and inexperienced cast, like a thoroughbred horse surrounded by glue-factory fodder. Mind you, like the great Judi, some people are just so interesting that you can happily watch them doing nothing and still find it absorbing. Clive did wonder in the interval whether he has it written into all his contracts that he has to get his tits out in every production. Odd that, given the importance of Prospero’s staff, Stewart was only given it to hold in the very last scene. And the fantastic, strange hooded coat he wore for his first entrance should have been used far more.

Very odd idea getting rid of the masque and replacing it with some kind of Inuit marriage ceremony, apparently conducted by three Fiji Islanders who appeared out of Miranda’s bunk (cue plenty of nudge nudge wink wink comments from the students in the row behind). Still, this was an odd production altogether, one which never really fulfilled the promise of the opening scene in the hold of the ship. In essence, this was a play full of good new ideas, utterly ruined by the inexperience of most of the cast. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more had Shakespeare’s play not come with added sound effects and background noise supplied by those effing students.

The Sound of Music – London Palladium, Tuesday 26th December 2006

TRAINEE NUN, SEA CAPTAIN AND SEVEN KIDS ABDUCTED BY ALIEN SPACECRAFT!

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear oh dear……..

Its as hard writing a balanced review of a show that you’ve felt bitterly disappointed with as it is to write one about one you’ve thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, its harder, because I just don’t know where to start.

Lloyd Webber’s much-hyped production is neither fish nor fowl. He states in the programme that he wasn’t interested in staging a copy of the film, but wanted to resurrect the original stage production – and then proceeds to put elements of the film into it. Numbers are moved around, added in from the film, taken out, nods to the film are made where they are not needed, where nods from the film are needed they are missed out……

I really don’t know where all the money thrown at this production went. It certainly wasn’t in the scenery. The show opens with Maria apparently being seen from above as she lays on her mountainside – unfortunately in the same “window” of the stage cloth which for a couple of minutes has held a figure of the Madonna and Child in Glory as the stage slowly fills with singing nuns. Fade out Madonna, fade in Maria. Unfortunately, this juxtaposition achieves nothing but making Maria look like she is spreadeagled on the cross. Up goes the cloth, to reveal that she is actually lying on a huge green and grey flying saucer which revolves in the air and tilts forward and turns into a mountain to run up and down. Is Maria a friendly alien in the mould of ET, we wonder? Cut to the Abbey, where Mother Abbess’s chair and desk seem to be standing in the corridor – well, perhaps she had the decorators in. Maria’s cell then makes a brief and pointless appearance – space is obviously tight at Nonberg Abbey because she appears to be sharing it with two other nuns. Well, why else are there three beds? Then to the Villa Von Trapp, which flies in piecemeal and assembles itself in front of Maria’s eyes – but not the exterior, as one would expect, but the interior. And what a cheap and nasty interior it is – an ice blue semicircular ballroom, devoid of furniture, with a flimsy, one-person-wide gantry staircase running up one wall. This set is used far too much, even though it lacks visual impact to start with and doesn’t gain any with repetition. For the garden set, the house splits into two quarter circles and heads off to huddle in the two upstage corners – why??? And two extremely naff, viridian green topiary hedges do not a garden make. These aren’t even those plastic hedges which try to pass themselves off as the real thing – these look like they are foam rubber over a wooden frame. A drinks trolley (never used), two large rattan loungers (never used) and three rather tired looking garden chairs “complete” the set, which just sits there and PLEADS for the much-loved Seahorse Gates which appear in the film. As a backdrop for most of this we get magenta skies and candy-floss pink mountains looking like piles of whipped cream. Another bit of the Abbey appears briefly, followed by the ballroom, followed by the garden, followed by the ballroom….a brief visit to the concert hall (rather more effective, but I swear that those swastikas were round the wrong way) and then the flying saucer lands again (this time vaguely disguised as the Abbey cemetery) giving Maria, the Captain and the kids something to cower under briefly until they all climb up on it and it takes off to carry them over the mountains to freedom, Maria appearing at the highest edge of the disc in a burst of light just as the chorus swells into “….’til you find……..YOUR…… DREAM!” If this isn’t a nod to the TV show “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” I don’t know what it is.

Neither was the money spent on choreography – or, more precisely, the Production team completely failed to get value for whatever amount they paid. Arlene Phillips should be bullwhipped for such (frankly) piss poor work. How the woman has the nerve to bollock off contestants on “Strictly Come Dancing” and then offer such a crock of shit herself is beyond me. The dance break in “Sixteen, Going on Seventeen” was completely and utterly wasted – the entire audience was gagging for the show’s first big dance number and never got it. Instead, Arlene went for “natural” – and “natural” just don’t work, girl, when there are 20 people in the orchestra pit working their nuts off pumping out high octane dance music. Mind you, Rolf spent the entire number obviously far too concerned with the broomstick shoved up his arse to bother about doing any dancing. The Viennese Waltz was just PITIFUL. You need sweep, you need elegance, you need the stage filled with lovely costumes – and you need more than 8 bloody bars of it! Another great opportunity for spectacle just flushed down the pan.

When faced with dire scenery and choreography, you look to the book to provide some interest. And this was lacking in all respects. Much of the dialogue is gruel-thin – surely some of the great bantering and verbal swordfighting which is in the film could have been flown in to help? Much of what there was in the way of lines was simply thrown away – either through lack of skill or, more probably (or so it appeared) complete lack of interest or conviction.

So, expensive performances then? Maybe, but again Lloyd Webber and his team got little value for their money in most counts. Lesley Garrett – well, how do you solve a problem like Lesley Garrett? True, the role shows off her vocal chords very well, but they’re in the wrong body and the wrong mind. The Mother Abbess should be a woman who has maturity, experience and the courage to face down the crap which life throws our way. Instead, this Mother Abbess is a jolly, apple cheeked Yorkshire Lass who doesn’t seem to have faced any problems more troubling than a few burnt Barm Cakes and the odd badly-pulled pint of John Smith’s. “I was born up in those mountains”, she says at one point. Where? Ilkley? Its amazing that for a trained classical opera singer who produces such glorious tones when singing hasn’t managed to iron out the flat Yorkshire vowels in her speaking voice. Dialogue coach for Ms. Garrett please! During the performance, while taking something from the top of a cabinet, something fell to the floor. Anyone with any sense of the dignity of this role would have left it there and gestured for Maria to pick it up for her – it wouldn’t have taken much. Instead, this Mother Abbess got down on her haunches and started scrabbling for it. Totally out of character.

Alexander Hanson wrestles manfully with the difficult role of Captain von Trapp, but just ends up looking like Action Man – all stiff and plastic. This man should be solid ice, until Maria shatters the covering round his heart so that the warmth can come flooding out – but Hanson just goes for the lukewarm puddle. Baroness Shraeder should also be an Ice Maiden – but Lauren Ward just goes for “Musical Comedy Ingenue”. Nicola Sloane manages to make something out of nothing as Frau Schmidt but Paul Kemble lays on the “creepy Nazi” with a trowel as Franz. Neil McDermott was useless as Rolf, the telegram delivery boy. He plays the role with little conviction, has no stage presence and really doesn’t know what to do with his hands. And come on, we were all expecting a Nazi blond boy – so why isn’t he one? It’s an expected stereotype that someone who joins the Hitler Youth is going to be an Aryan. Work with us, Lloyd Webber, not against us. Sophie Bould has just that bit too much of Anne Frank about her to pull Liesl off convincingly – there is no feisty little madam here, and she fails miserably to bring the dancing off either.

And Maria? The propelled-to-fame Miss Fisher? What of her? Well, she wasn’t all bad – but she wasn’t all good either. The role of Maria is a huge, important one – and Connie just hasn’t got the stage experience to pull it off. You can see her inexperience in her gawky, slightly hunched body shape as she tries to bring herself down to the level of the von Trapp children. You can see it in her slightly panicky hand movements, almost as if she is trying just that little bit too hard and cannot fully relax into her dialogue or movements but is finding her mind running over what is to come rather than what she is doing now. You can hear it in her slightly gabbled delivery sometimes – she may be whipping up a storm but there is no calm centre to this storm. She has a slight reminiscence of Joyce Grenfell in the “St. Trinians” films – bouncy, jolly and absolutely DESPERATE to please – and this desperation shows through. There should be a point in the show when the Ugly Duckling sheds its feathers and turns into the Swan Princess – but this never happens and the Ugly Duckling simply dons a wedding dress and carries on, hoping that nobody will notice she is not really a swan (Lord – that wedding dress! SO wrong! Completely and utterly in the wrong style – it should be simple, elegant and of the period, yet this one looks like a Disney Princess cast-off). Connie may become a Swan Princess with a couple of years stage experience behind her, but at the moment her raw edges are still all too apparent. Yes, she is on her way to becoming a star, but being pushed into the limelight in such a way is going to be a hindrance to her, rather than a help.

I have been accused of being overly critical in this blog when I am disappointed with what I have seen, and no doubt I have been overly critical in this particular review. But seeing this show was like being given a wonderfully wrapped box of chocolates, opening it up and finding that all your favourites are already gone and that someone else has started on the second layer. What made this show even worse was the fact that everybody else in the theatre seemed to be eating from a completely different box of chocolates. I just wanted to stand up and shout “Can’t you see? Have you all been completely blinded by the hype?” But nobody would have heard. Everyone was so desperate for the show to be a belter and for Connie to succeed (both as Connie and as Maria) that they had stuffed the chocolates in their eyes and ears and were happily standing in the road as the Sound of Music juggernaut rolled towards them with Connie Fisher at the helm, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their critical faculties were going to be crushed under its wheels. Where’s Julie Andrews when you really need her?

Little Shop of Horrors – Menier Chocolate Factory, Friday 22nd December 2006

Once in a while, as you rummage round in the rubbish, you occasionally find a pearl. Sure, it might not be a flawless one, but under the coffee grounds and the orange peel it remains an unexpected delight. In this case, the coffee grounds are the fuss and cattle-truck experience you need to go through to actually get into the theatre – herded into a small bar, you wait with about 80 other people until the staff decide to pull back the grille and start the stampede for seats. The orange peel is a major piece of miscasting - but we still have a pearl.

Maybe I should stop going to see shows I already know from the film – it gives the show an almost impossible hurdle to surmount right from the start. And it took this show an almighty struggle to clear the first fence – but once it was across, I had a really good time. This really did prove that the best things often come in small packages.

The set was simple but extremely effective and put the scenery for my Boxing Day theatre jaunt into very sharp perspective (see review for The Sound of Music) – a rough street with two simple box sets representing the florist and the dental surgery. Nice use of a small walk up balcony at one end and an entrance stoop at the other. The small orchestra were tucked away at first floor level behind a row of windows – shame they weren’t given slightly more prominence.

It was good to see the singing trio of Chiffon, Crystal and Ronette (fab voices all, and it made good sense to have two skinny black girls and a dumpy white one – on Skid Row, you get your friends wherever you can) integrated into the story rather than their being just a Greek Chorus, narrating but not touching the story. Great Mr. Mushnik from Barry James – just the right amount of exasperated and seedy Jewishness, maybe just a little too rat-like by the end. I was initially disappointed with Sheridan Smith’s Audrey (nobody can take on Ellen Green and win) as I thought she was too small-voiced (nobody can take on Ellen….) and not possessed of enough skill to hold the required accent (nobody can take…….) and general ditsiness (nobody…..) but she really revved up in Act 2 and bought a level of sentimentality to “Suddenly Semour” that I didn’t expect. Paul Keating was splendid as Seymour and reminded me at times of a very young Anthony Perkins (particularly facially) – just enough of the outsider to make him slightly creepy in his geekiness. His barely controlled body movements made his clumsiness appealing but there was enough intelligence behind the eyes to make his cleverness realistic. Mike McShane was not quite spot on as the voice of Audrey II as his accent wandered a lot, and I wonder at the necessity of his cameo in Act I – did he do this just to reassure the audience that he was actually present and that his voiceover wasn’t a recording? Inside Audrey II, Andy Heath wiggled away wonderfully – having seen him at the end, I wouldn’t mind a wriggle with him myself. Nice design of Audrey II – looked like a big Pitcher Plant). Big disappointment of the evening was Jasper Britton as Orin Scrivello – a complete failure of casting. Scrivello should be butch and sexy, with barely controlled sexuality, perversity and madness all bubbling away inside his head – the kind of man who knows he looks shit hot in a leather jacket, gets a sexual buzz out of snorting nitrous oxide and can make your head spin at the thought of a ride on his big greasy motorbike…… *cough*. (Big missed visual gag – when Scrivello is leering at the centrefold in “Pain Magazine”, he should have rubbed his groin). However, Keating is physically more the lab technician than the mad scientist and was completely unable to convince me. A big flaw in an otherwise fantastic pearl.

Coram Boy – National Theatre, 20th December 2006

Well, I don’t know what I was expecting – but this wasn’t it! In retrospect, I think I was expecting a fairly “Dickensian” type play about a long lost, golden haired orphan suffering all sorts of misery until, 10 minutes before the final curtain, being saved from the orphanage by his hitherto unrecognised parents. What I got was a dark, brooding “18th century” story of infanticide, betrayal, child slavery, corruption, greed and lust – with a bit of kiddy-fiddling thrown in for good measure. Everything you wanted for Christmas - and all set to the music of Handel, ye gods.

Its difficult to write a balanced review of something which has left one gasping for breath with its sweep – rather like I would have about the National’s “His Dark Materials” a couple of years back – another wonderful NT production based on a book for young adults. I can only say that authors are obviously producing far, far better stuff for teenagers these days than anything I ever got. The one failing of the production is really the fault of the original story in that the second act is somewhat over-reliant on “lucky co-incidences” but then I suppose that Georgian literature of the time is very similar.

Among an incredibly strong cast, Abby Ford gave such a credible portrayal of the young Alexander Ashbrook that, for most of the first act, I was sure I was watching a 15 year old boy. William Scott-Mason was totally convincing as a brutish Sir William. Justine Mitchell took a while to get into her stride but, in the second half as her character reaches womanhood, gave a very touching performance. Perhaps it’s a mark of Tim McMullan’s skill that I failed to recognise him in Act 2 as the same character as in Act 1 – he changed both physically and vocally from a dark, swaggering, sweaty monster to a slightly effeminate and mincing one – both equally dangerous in their way. There was perhaps slightly too much of Connie Booth about Ruth Gemmell’s physical appearance of Mrs Lynch for comfort, but she made a rip-roaring vilanness when the text got darker – just the type of classic, doublecrossing sidekick that a villan should watch his back around. Nicholas Tizzard was very effective as a slightly grumpy Handel – just how I always imagined Handel would have been in real life – and his last lines, effectively drawing a knife of reality through the butter of sentimentality in the closing scene were delivered with devastating comic timing.

Some great staging – I particularly liked the dramatic“underwater” scene at the height of Act 2 – and found myself wondering why the particular effect had never been used in “Twelfth Night” or “The Tempest”. It was – quite frankly – smashing. I will pass comment (please feel free to roll your eyes here) that the flowers used to decorate the Ashbrook’s ball were completely wrong for the period. It would have been slightly more convincing had the harpsichord used in the Ashbrook’s drawing room not been the same one as that in the children’s playhouse, nor had it reappeared in the drawing room after being smashed in the playhouse, or had Lady Ashbrook appeared in just the one costume all the way through. But, nitpicking aside. This was great. It was intelligent enough to make me think, funny enough to make me laugh, moving enough to make the woman in the next seat cry, and it even made Clive announce that he wanted to read the book. And if there’s higher praise than that, I don’t know what it is.

Much Ado About Nothing – Novello Theatre Friday 8th December 2006

I think I once read a book called “The Land of Lost Opportunity”. This production could have been wonderful, but was completely botched by the director and cast, and I don’t recall ever being quite so unmoved by a production of a Shakespeare play (although I have walked out of a couple).

Casting was pretty dire. I thought Tamsin Craig made a good effort (for a non-Shakespearian actress) at Beatrice (she was apparently cast because of her “comedy actress” status) but she obviously couldn’t make up her mind whether she was playing it as Holly Golightly or Rizzo from “Grease”. Putting her in shades for her first scene really didn’t help the character establish herself – much of this first scene (the “baiting” of Benedick) should be played with the eyes as well as the dialogue. Morven Christie was DIRE as Hero – both her diction and projection were appalling and most of her dialogue was either inaudible, incomprehensible or both as a result. Heck – she’s playing Juliet later in the season – there’s one to miss if you can. Adam Rayner was similarly dire as Claudio – no passion, no courtliness and no perceptible passage of thought behind the eyes. OK, Claudio is one of those dreadful “Ferdinand” roles (the kind which, in opera or operetta would be played by the principal tenor) in which little is really required other than the ability to deliver the lines correctly and look pretty. The role is a mould, and it would have been good to see an actor break out of it! The singer Yvette Rochester-Dougan made an unlikely Balthasar and I can’t really say that the setting of “Sigh no more, Ladies” passed any kind of muster. OK, you force me – it was grim. And, for a production set in Cuba (nice opportunity for the RSC to showcase some of its ethnic actors), why were she and Don Pedro the only non-white inhabitants? Or were we supposed to assume that Leonardo and all his family were members of the colonial elite? Even the members of the local Watch were white to a man.

Which brings me nicely on to Bette Bourne, who struggled with what is probably Shakey’s unfunniest “comedy” role. I’ve often sat and watched some poor bastard playing Dogberry desperately flogging his lines in order to try and raise a laugh, and even an actor of Bourne’s calibre made it very heavy going. It must be very trying for gay actors to be constantly given gay roles (poor James Dreyfuss, for instance) but Bourne would have been far funnier and far more watchable if the director had decided whether he should play the role as Arthur or Martha. In this case, Martha would have been funnier – Bourne is a master of camp timing and comic putdowns – but Bourne inhabited this “on the fence” role very uneasily. Sexuality wasn’t explicit, but there was a suggestion of a relationship with Verges and some vague caressing of the Muscle Boy Watch Member – so, was he or wasn’t he? It would have been fun to see Dogberry being true to himself amidst all the macho posturing by the other male characters – this is, after all, a play about facades and masks, some of which we use in order to hide from others, some of which we use in order to hide from ourselves.

The only real acting credits go to Jonny Weir in the thankless role of Don John. This character is a minor one and it is never adequately explained why he does what he does (he’s just “All purpose evil Shakespearean disaffected with his lot in life and therefore out to get revenge on absolutely anyone who appears vaguely happy” I suppose). But at least you could hear what he was saying. With such a good voice, why wasn’t he playing Benedick?

Ah, Benedick. Sorry, but Branagh was much better (but Joseph Wilson did look shaggable wearing that beard).

The one set (a “Messinan/Cuban Courtyard”) looked pretty enough to begin with but became rather tiring when used for the entire production without change. Very little, if any use was made of the balcony which was a shame as there might well have been some good comic possibilities in using it. Good use was made of the Vespa – but a) why were its wheels mounted on boxes and b) why on earth was it on the set for the entirety of the first half? Could not one of the characters have arrived on it, parked it and then perhaps driven off on it again? And that bloody potted plant – surely the director could have come up with some better way of having Benedick eavesdrop in the garden scene? Behind you love! There’s a balcony! I saw the Renaissance Theatre Company do “Twelfth Night” once in which the “box tree” was a decorated Christmas tree. And the “hiding behind” this was just as contrived, stupid and irritating as in this production. OK, OK, suspension of disbelief is sometimes necessary, but this was just plain boring.

And what a strange ending! “Ado” is like “Dream” – needs ending with a good, jolly dance with which to shake away all the traces of the unpleasantness which has gone before. But in this production, the dance died away and Don Pedro was left marooned in a cold white spotlight. Bizarre. Points will be given to any of my readers able to explain this.

Actually, its just come to me that the story I referred to at the beginning is actually the title of a chapter in Agatha Christie’s autobiography and should be “The Land of Lost Content”. But this is still pertinent to this review, and in fact fits it rather better, because as I made my way home along a cold and windy Strand that evening, I was pretty discontent myself.

There are no actual deaths in “Ado”. The only death which occurred in this production was that of the production itself – a long, slow, painfully drawn out affair, which I observed taking place during 3¾ hours in an overheated theatre while watching second and third rate actors and a poor director murdering one of Shakepeare’s best loved plays.