Measure for Measure

I reviewed Measure for Measure at the Old Fitz as part of the Sydney Shakespeare Festival. Check out what I thought here at Australian Stage.

King Lear

I reviewed King Lear (Sydney Shakespeare Festival) over at Australian Stage. Check out my thoughts here.

Hamlet

I reviewed Hamlet (for the third time this year!) at Belvoir St. And it was absolutely incredible. You can read what I thought here at Australian Stage.

(And if you want to know what I thought of my first two Hamlets this year, here you go: Hamlet, A History and Kupenga Kwa Hamlet.)

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Michael Grandage Company) runs at the Noel Coward Theatre on the West End from September 7 – November 16 2013. By William Shakespeare, directed by Michael Grandage.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is arguably Shakespeare’s fluffiest play. It’s insubstantial, like fairy floss – glimmering gossamer strung together by a thin plot and some good jokes. The Michael Grandage Company’s production of this at the Noel Coward Theatre on the West End beautifully realises the play’s dreamlike qualities. The scenes with the fairies are gorgeous. But I can’t help wondering whether the way they’ve treated the human characters exposes some darknesses that maybe should be left uncovered.

We all know the plot. The bit I’m especially interested in here is the quartet of four human lovers, Hermia (Susannah Fielding), Helena (Katherine Kingsley), Lysander (Sam Swainsbury), and Demetrius (Stefano Braschi). Lysander loves Hermia. Hermia loves Lysander. But Demetrius also loves Hermia (and has her father’s blessing to marry her), despite the fact that he’s basically being stalked by another woman, Helena. There’s some wacky shenanigans in the woods on a midsummer’s night where Demetrius and Lysander find them both magically compelled to love Helena, leaving Hermia totally bereft, but then eventually Lysander is cured and everyone pairs up and lives happily ever after blissful monogamy. Right? Right.

The bit that worries me isn’t so much that Demetrius is forced to love Helena, his personality essentially changed, and no one really seems to care. (I mean, obviously this is problematic, but treating this text too seriously will leave you in a world of pain.) The problem I have is the way that this particular production seems to equate love and sex. It starts off with Helena. In her pursuit of Demetrius, she tears a lot of her clothes off, as well as many of his, totally against his will. Similarly, when Lysander falls in love with Helena, he starts stripping, and spends nearly half the show with an undone belt buckle. And then, depending on who is in love with whom at that present moment, everyone chases each other round the stage like Pan chasing nymphs. With scary Pan-level aggression.

Basically, it’s really, really rapey, and the fact that it’s played for laughs makes me deeply uncomfortable.

Love and sex are not, I would contend, the same thing in this play. Sure, this is a “sexy” play, an aspect often emphasised in performance, but the portrayal of love in this play is, I would argue, more about idealisation than sexualisation. The one overt sexual overture we have is when Lysander wants to sleep beside Hermia in the wood. She turns him down pretty firmly and he takes it without much sulking. This is a couple in love. Why, then, would the love-juice turn them into sex maniacs? I’d argue that it’s not only disquieting, but not a particularly sophisticated reading of the text either, even if it does lead to some moments of slapstick humour.

What this production does do well, however, are the fairies. The fact that they’re continually smoking spliffs and getting high made me laugh – in many ways, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a drug trip of a play, as well as being preoccupied with the use of “magical” potions itself. Sheridan Smith is lovely as Titania, and her scenes with David Walliams’ Bottom are fabulous. Gavin Fowler as Puck is wonderfully impish, and the whole chorus of fairies are gossamer as could be desired. And the show belongs, undoubtedly, to Pádraic Delaney as Oberon, who prowls around the stage with a wonderfully sexy mixture of menace, magic, and mischief. He’s like Richard Armitage playing a David Bowie-esque Goblin King, and it totally works.

And of course, I should mention the show’s celebrity factor. David Walliams is very funny as Bottom. The way he plays his utter self-righteousness and narcissism is pinpoint accurate, and the scene at the end where the Mechanicals do their play? Screamingly funny.

This is a really, really watchable production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The aesthetic – that playful, sexy magic it possesses – is certainly realised. I just really wish a little more consideration had been put into the way “love” and “sex” were figured, particularly when it came to the humans. Maybe it would mean a few moments of physical comedy were lost, but when the alternative is a river of disquiet pulsing below the surface? I’d suggest that’s a worthy trade.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet (Impulse Theatre) runs at the King St Theatre from July 29 – August 24. By William Shakespeare, directed by Stephen Wallace.

There’s a certain cadence that actors take with Shakespeare when they don’t quite understand what they’re saying. It goes like this: fast-fast-super-fast-slow-BUT-LOUD-BECAUSE-THIS-BIT-IS-IMPORTANT-speedy-speedy-laugh-fast-slow-loud-pause-LOUD. Often it is accompanied by a pelvic thrust or some other crude joke, because the memo has been got that Shakespeare has dirty bits.

I would like to be clear that a) this doesn’t happen all the time in Impulse Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet, although it certainly does occur a lot of the time, and b) it’s not necessarily the actors’ fault when it does happen. Iambic pentameter has a rhythm that will catch you, and that cadence I outlined above is the way it seems to trap modern readers. Where the problem lies in this production is in the direction. There are a lot of issues in this show, and I think this is where most of them stem from.

This production is set during the 2005 Cronulla riots. (It should be noted that this is not the first production of Romeo and Juliet to use this setting – Bell Shakespeare did it in 2006. Similarly, it was not that good.) The Capulets are Muslim Lebanese, while the Montagues are white Australian, several wearing racist shirts (“no Lebs”) and/or Australian flags. Against this racially and religiously charged backdrop, Romeo and Juliet fall in love.

There are the ingredients for a good show in this production. The context gives a very clear motivation for the animosity between the Montagues and the Capulets, although the production doesn’t really do more than pay it lip service. It is certainly difficult to explicate a show’s setting without actually changing the text, but here? It very much felt like there were costumes and not much else. It didn’t feel like the implications of the setting were adequately thought through. This extended from some overarching problems, to more basic logical ones – for example, given that her identity was clearly telegraphed by her costume, how did Romeo not realise Juliet was a Capulet until she told him? why did Juliet’s parents send her to the friar to be shrived, considering that is a deeply Christian ritual? The way the script was interpreted might have made sense on the surface, but as soon as you began to penetrate a little deeper, problems appear. It needed a much stronger dramaturgical hand.

Similarly, the show needed a much tighter cut. There were long scenes where I found myself completely bored. Shakespeare’s script includes scenes specifically written for an audience with a limited view of the stage, who needed to be told what was going on because they could not see it. These should be the first scenes to be cut in a modern interpretation, and probably not the last. At more than two and a half hours long, this production drags. It needs to be at least half an hour shorter if it is to really pack a punch and engage audiences. Again, this is a problem with direction: a clearer vision would have made for a better cut, as well as more effective interpretation.

There are clearly some talented actors in Romeo and Juliet, even if this production does not show their talents to their fullest effect. As Romeo and Juliet, Dan Webber and Rainee Lyleson did not have especially good chemistry, but worked well individually. I especially enjoyed Lyleson’s interpretation of Juliet, which highlighted her youth and impetuosity. It was a good performance, and with tighter direction, it could have been a great one: a problem which extends to the entire show.

The other issue I want to mention is the lighting. I don’t normally really notice the technical aspects of shows unless they are either a) spectacular, or b) distractingly bad. Sadly, this show fell into the latter category. The lights changing every three lines, as well as the constant reversion to blackout between scenes, was distracting and unnecessary. A little restraint would have gone a long way here.

This is a principle that could have applied to the whole show. Romeo and Juliet felt like the lights: constantly shifting, unfocused, and changing for no apparent reason at all. I felt like it was a show that did not have a grasp on itself. It didn’t understand what it was saying. The elements for a good show were there, but it needed a much clearer vision, and a much firmer hand. It’s not the worst production of Romeo and Juliet I’ve seen this year (that honour belongs to this show), but this is not really a compliment. Shakespeare should not drag like this, nor should it seem this ill-thought out. With some stronger dramaturgy and direction, this might have been excellent, but sadly, it falls far short of this mark.

By Any Other Name

By Any Other Name runs at the Sidetrack Theatre in Marrickville from May 22 – June 1. By William Shakespeare, devised and directed by Tristan Carey and Samantha Cunningham.

I can’t say I was particularly excited by the premise for By Any Other Name. In this reworking of Romeo and Juliet, all the Capulets are women and all the Montagues men, with homosexual relationships the norm in their world. The relationship of Romeo (Jasper Garner-Gore) and Juliet (Sophia Scarpellino) is thus doubly taboo: not only are their families enemies, but their sexual attraction to each other is perverse. I'm not especially intrigued by the notion of heterosexual desire as incredibly transgressive, but I tried to go in with an open mind. I think there’s a lot of interesting work that can be done with queer readings of Shakespeare and other Renaissance plays, so while I didn’t have high hopes for this particular conceit, I was more than prepared to give it a chance.

Sadly, it does not work at all. Not even a little bit, despite the solid efforts of some clearly talented actors (especially Clementine Mills as Tybalt, who is sadly underused).

The biggest problem is its dramaturgical laziness. If you’re going to go with this all-Montagues-are-men/all-Capulets-are-women thing, you’ve got to a) commit to it, and b) really, really think through the implications. Although Shakespeare’s text has been significantly modified, with large chunks cut out or replaced with original dialogue, one thing that has not been changed is the pronouns. Considering that the play was based on the idea that the genders stick together and there’s a battle of the sexes thing going on, I found this a very curious choice. It not only de-emphasised this gender divide, but it confused it, raising questions which it never even attempted to answer. (This is not to say that changing the pronouns would have fixed the problem - far from it - but they certainly contributed to the confusion.) These questions should have been fundamental to the play, and yet I feel like they were glossed over. What did it mean to be a man in this world? What did it mean to be a woman? How is it that Paris (a woman) could ask for Juliet’s hand in marriage and have that granted by Juliet’s father (a woman), while Juliet and her mother (both women) had no say in it? How was power constructed and bestowed? This could have been a really interesting way to consider the differences between sex and gender, or to highlight questions of gender and performativity, but these opportunities were missed.  The world of the play was really not sufficiently established.

The all-male-Montagues/all-female-Capulets conceit also meant that some of the actions in the play took on new, very loaded connotations, and these really were not adequately explored. For example, Romeo kills two people in the show –Tybalt and Paris. Normally, these characters are men, which makes sense when located in a culture of male violence. In this version, they were both women, and Romeo’s murder of them created a stark contrast to his loving and tender relationship with Juliet. Tybalt’s death in particular is highly stylised man-on-woman violence: Tybalt has just violently stabbed Mercutio, but Romeo, without a knife to hand, beats her to death with his bare hands. Her pleas for her life are distinctly feminine and deeply discomforting. The implications of this could be fascinating – is Romeo’s violence against women a way of lashing out, considering his own transgressive attraction to one? – but they are never explored. Not at all. It felt like no thought at all had been given to any of the implications of this new world order beyond the fact that it made Romeo and Juliet’s love all the more forbidden. And even this notion was not adequately explained – all references to Romeo’s former love, Rosaline, are kept in, complete with female pronouns. Considering that there’s a large chunk of original dialogue added in the early section of the play where Benvolio professes his queer-and-thus-socially-acceptable love to Romeo, you’d think the fact that Romeo was already in love with a girl would be something that got addressed. But nope. Likewise, in the director’s note, the directors/devisors make much mention of the current hot button issue of marriage equality. Surely, in this world where being straight is so unacceptable, it would be nearly impossible for Romeo and Juliet to get married...? But the fact that their marriage looked so unlike the other marriages of their world got no mention, despite a few homilies on marriage being delivered in the original dialogue.

I found By Any Other Name incredibly frustrating because there are such fascinating opportunities for queer readings of Shakespeare and it passed them by completely. Arguably, the Renaissance play is inherently a queer text: we must remember that when originally performed, all the roles would have been played by male actors, thus queering the already taboo love of Romeo and Juliet. We could apply the work of theorists like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – her work on love triangles as exposing homosocial desire, for example. There could be fascinating theatrical readings of the homosocial bonds between Romeo and Paris, and, perhaps more particularly, Romeo and Mercutio. But these intriguing possibilities are all passed by. Let’s take Mercutio (Annie Schofield) as an example. In this production, she is female, but she is firmly aligned with the all-male Montagues. She’s given a large chunk of dialogue where she talks about how she basically rapes gay men and turns them straight... despite the fact her best mates are a bunch of gay boys. For what effect...? I don’t know. (This rant ends with her flashing her vagina at the terrified Montague boys. My theatre date and I both turned to each other and mouthed, “I’m Old Gregg!”) Then the violence between her and Tybalt is overtly sexualised – they kiss, and they fight. For what effect...? None that I could see. Perhaps Mercutio, existing outside the Montague/Capulet dynamic, was supposed to be pansexual? But then what effect did that have on her relationships? What implications did her gender identity have on her bond with Romeo? Not that many, as far as I could tell.

There are so many interesting directions that a queer reading of this play could go in, but none are in evidence here. It seems to be a random assortment of thoughts thrown together with no cohesion or thought. The original dialogue is intrusive and at odds with the rest of the show: it’s not only linguistically awkward, but thematically awkward. Characters launch into bizarre sermons at the drop of a hat for no apparent reason. Additionally, the cut of Shakespeare’s script is very strange – there were some very odd choices made about which bits to keep and which to cut. Several speeches from Shakespeare’s original were kept in that are really functionally unnecessary to the modern audience – speeches like the Friar’s, post Juliet’s death, which were intended to explain to the peasants in the audience what had happened, as it would have been very difficult for most of them to see the stage properly from their vantage. It made the play drag a lot – at nearly three hours, it’s way too long. About a quarter of the opening night audience left at interval, and I didn’t blame them.

There are some elements I did find interesting which could have been further developed. For example, in the balcony scene, most of Romeo and Juliet’s dialogue is replaced by the lyrics to love songs – among them, What’s Love Got To Do With It, Eternal Flame, and I Don’t Want To Miss AThing. I thought this had the potential to be a fascinating comment on the ubiquity of love – a kind of literal manifestation of the idea that “I love you” is always a quotation – but it’s never really explored again. Perhaps the reason that By Any Other Name lacked cohesion and did not seem to have any underpinning thought was because it was trying to do too much. The show really would have benefited from a far more focused approach.

One thing I can say I loved about the show was the Prince’s pants, though I’m not sure why they were quite so sparkly. I also quite liked Dino Dimitriades' set, which was stylish and functional. Unfortunately, I had reservations about pretty much every other aspect of the show. There’s so much potential in queer readings of Shakespeare, but it is not realised here: this is a mishmash of ideas about love, marriage, and sexual orientation that maybe aspires to be bricolage, but ends up simply being a mess.

(Also, why did everyone have a pet rock? I get that there was that speech about pebbles added on at the end, but... why?)

Richard III

Richard III runs at the Genesian Theatre from March 9 – April 20 2013. By William Shakespeare, directed by Gary Dooley.

 

Genesian Theatre Company’s production of Richard III is an entertaining, if perhaps unadventurous, take on Shakespeare’s play. It is at its best when it embraces its own theatricality – these moments are fleeting, but when they occur, they are truly memorable.

 

Director Gary Dooley has set his Richard III in 1940s England, a time when (as in the historical period that the real Richard and co lived) the nation was rebuilding after a long and intense war. This is not a historically accurate 1940s, just as Richard is not a historically accurate Richard: it is a dream of the 1940s, evoking the uncertainties of the postwar world. Can there ever really be peace? The threat is no longer coming from an enemy, an othered outsider: instead, it comes from within the royal family itself. Roger Gimblett plays Richard like Scar from The Lion King, prowling about the stage as best as he can with his cane (this Richard has lost the use of one arm, presumably in the battles that occurred before the beginning of his play). He relishes his scheming, delighting in his own Machiavellian cleverness. This works very well in the first half of the play, but it means that his crisis of confidence in the second half seems very sudden. Richard’s unravelling is quite abrupt. It is well dramatised and theatrically engaging, but it was a very sharp twist in a character who apparently revelled in his own amorality.

 

There are some spectacular moments in this production –spectacular in the sense of spectacle, visually and theatrically remarkable. Richard’s coronation is one of these. Rivers’ execution at the end of the first half is another (this was just plain cool – it was a great note on which to send the audience to interval!). The gas masks in the battle are fantastically creepy. Perhaps the best of these spectacular moments is Richard’s dream, where the people he have killed come back to haunt him on the night before the Battle of Bosworth Field, telling him to despair and die. This spectacle is abetted by a simple and functional set. Some set changes were a little clunky, but when the set was in place, it worked beautifully. In the dream sequence, the dead appeared behind Venetian blinds, spookily lit in green. It was genuinely eerie.

 

Unfortunately, the production does not maintain this level of dynamicism. I’m not saying that every scene needs to be a spectacle, but there were other scenes in which I found my attention drifting. These were generally scenes heavy on the political machinations. Political machinations can be fascinating – if nothing else, we have learned this from Game of Thrones – but here, some of them felt laboured, slowing down the play’s momentum. At two hours and forty minutes, this production definitely feels too long. Classic as Richard III is, I feel it would have been a better show with some judicious trimming.

 

There were some really good performances in this production –I especially want to mention Hailey McQueen’s subtle yet wrenching portrayal of Lady Anne and Elizabeth McGregor’s determined and enraged Queen Elizabeth – but the real standout for me was Patrick Magee. He shone in the smaller roles, particularly as the murderer plagued by conscience and as the triumphant Earl of Richmond. I saw someone in the audience physically fistpump when he declared that the day was won, and I understood the impulse. I’ll be interested to see what Magee does next. Perhaps the oddest casting decision was the one to have the two young princes played by mannequin-esque puppets. I understand wanting to find an alternative to child actors, but I really don’t think “puppets” was the next logical place to go. My theatre date and I both grew up watching children’s TV in the 1990s, and the first thing we said to each other in interval was, “OMG THOSE PUPPETS WERE EC FROM LIFTOFF”. (For clarity, EC was a talking, faceless, possibly omnipotent doll. He was supposed to be a benevolent character, but in reality, he came off sinister and terrifying.) The puppet princes were bizarre at best. They robbed the death of the princes of a lot of emotional impact – it’s one thing to brutally execute a couple of children, but another to dispose of a few creepy mannequins.

I felt like there was more this production could have done. It could have been bolder in its reading: it was quite a straightforward and arguably cautious production of Shakespeare’s play. However, it was very engaging and it contained some moments of real theatrical spectacle. It’s not the most out-there production of Shakespeare you’ll ever see, but it’s definitely worth watching.

 

Kupenga Kwa Hamlet

Kupenga Kwa Hamlet (Two Gents Productions) runs at Merrigong from March 5-9 2013. Also touring to Perth, Sydney and Canberra. Adapted and created by Denton Chikura, Tonderai Munyebvu, and Arne Pohlmeier. Directed by Arne Pohlmeier.

 

The stage is completely bare, apart from one small piece of fabric. Two actors enter, singing. From this nothingness, using nothing but their own abilities, they tell one of the most famous stories in the canon. Kupenga Kwa Hamlet is a wonderful piece of storytelling and an absolutely sublime piece of theatre. It is a performative triumph.

As readers of my blog will know, Hamlet and I have not been on good terms so far this year (have no idea what I’m talking about? read this). Kupenga Kwa Hamlet has totally changed my luck. This is how you approach a classic text in a new and innovative way. This is how you make an old story exciting, how you ignite its universality. This was more than a great play – this was great storytelling.

Kupenga Kwa Hamlet features only two actors, Denton Chikura and Tonderai Munyebvu. Between them, they play all the characters. This sounds confusing, and I was certainly apprehensive at first, but they pull off this Shona township version of Hamlet with such aplomb and ease that you almost forget that there are only two people on the stage. This is a perfect example of how less is more. Characters are defined by simple gestures, and there is never a single second where you are confused about who is playing whom. Claudius becomes Gertrude becomes Ophelia becomes Hamlet, and you never question it for a second. The transformations are almost magical (and occasionally, extremely funny). It is a triumph of both acting and directing. To tell a story this complex and layered with only two actors is remarkable.

This is a self-consciously theatrical production, the story of Hamlet effectively framed by the township style. Chikura and Monyebvu frequently break the fourth wall and offer commentary on the proceedings to the audience. This is not something I'm a a fan of normally, because I think a lot of people try to pull off this pseudo-Brechtian device without a good reason for it. This was not the case here. Kupenga Kwa Hamlet playfully engages with the performative layers of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and uses them to create an exhilaratingly new and alive piece of theatre. The house lights were left up for the whole performance. I actually thought this was a technical error at first, but soon realised my mistake. We, the audience, were part of the performance. I’m not talking audience participation so much (though there is a little bit of that), but audience inclusion. This is township style theatre, and we were the township. The show was being performed to a specific audience, and that audience was us. Despite the cavernous size of the IMB theatre, this show felt intimate, because the audience was part of it.

This is perhaps also why the story of Hamlet, so often told, felt so fresh and exciting. It was already a little unfamiliar: it uses the text from the first quarto (sometimes called the bad quarto), in which Polonius is called Corambis and many of the famous speeches are a little different. Kupenga Kwa Hamlet is a distillation of Hamlet rather than a faithful performance of it, but this serves more to make it accessible than to press some particular reading or agenda. The story emerges in the simplest things. In gestures, in expressions, in the most basic interactions between two actors, this complex play is performed, and performed brilliantly.

There is a certain celebratory feel about this show. I certainly felt like celebrating after I had seen it, because it is one of the clearest, most innovative, and most alive productions of Shakespeare I have ever seen. This is how you tell a story. This is how you make theatre – simply, honestly. It’s funny without being ridiculous, sad without being melodramatic, theatrical without being self-indulgent. The directing is incisive and clever, the acting inspired. It’s an affectionate rendition of a famous play, and its brilliance lies in its unapologetic simplicity. I absolutely adored it and if you have even the hint of an opportunity, you should see it.

Hamlet: A History

Hamlet: A History runs at the Phoenix Theatre in Coniston from February 8-23.

So I didn’t go to see Hamlet: A History intending to write a review of it, but OH MY GOD I need to talk about it. This is one of the most bizarre, ridiculous, self-indulgent interpretations of Shakespeare I have ever seen. I probably still wouldn’t have reviewed it, but then I saw in the blurb on the Phoenix Theatre’s website that they’re tailoring this production for Year 12 students studying Hamlet for the HSC, and that gave me serious side eye. If I was a Year 12 student, then this would probably be the most unhelpful production I could see EVER.

Let’s start with the adaptation. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it is experimental. It doesn’t work. At all. I’m a grad student in English lit and I'm trained as a Renaissance scholar - so, basically, I know Hamlet back to front, inside out, upside down, any direction you’d like to name - and I was confused, so I shudder to think how any school students who see this production are doing. Shakespeare’s text has been dismembered. All the pieces have been mixed up with excerpts from speeches from famous orators (seriously – there’s a bit where they take Barack Obama’s speech on the death of Osama bin Laden, bleep out the names and voiceover in names from Hamlet), incredibly pointless movement sequences, multimedia, and original filler dialogue. Then the whole thing’s been stitched back together like Frankenstein’s monster. I’m not talking Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster here, the one that monologues eloquently for 37 pages about the nature of humanity. I’m talking about the Boris Karloff monster that shambles about going, “Braaaaaaaaains! Braaaaaaaaaains!” (There is a whole bit where everyone seems to be zombies, so this is a particularly apt comparison.)

From the director’s note:

“Hamlet: A History is all about reality. Should we trust what we are seeing? Who’s [sic] reality is this? Where is the truth? Authors die, interpretations differ, times change, opinions are personalised. Can history ever be considered stationary?

...what did Hamlet want me to see? Of course Hamlet would want me to see him as this victim and hero! What if what I had seen earlier in life was created by Hamlet, for Hamlet and about Hamlet? In essence, what if this was all a fantasy, a misinterpretation of truth?”

Look, Hamlet is a lot of things, but an unreliable narrator? I don’t think so. For all the complexity of the language in Hamlet, the plot is pretty simple: Hamlet’s uncle has murdered his father and married his mother, and Hamlet is understandably pretty upset about this. He spends most of the play procrastinating and being mean to his girlfriend while he works on his convoluted plan for revenge. He has his own special brand of crazy, but outright delusion...? Not so much.

 In this version? Hamlet is a patient in a mental institution. So is Ophelia. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are played by one actor, in a sort of Gollum-esque way. Claudius is the doctor who has taken over the hospital (beating out "Dr Fortinbras" for the position), and Hamlet basically invents this whole story wherein his dad has been killed. Or something. It’s hard to tell when you’re distracted by scenes where the lights suddenly go all red and half the cast pick up kitchen implements and march around pretending to be soldiers.

Basically, what this show is doing is taking the ultimate cop out – AND THEN IT WAS ALL A DREAM – and applying it to Hamlet. Why? I have no idea. As far as I could tell, it was so they could do wacky scenes where everyone is OMG so cray-cray! Or maybe it was so they could indulge in a bit of meta-ness – there’s one scene where Ruby, an original character (yes, there's an original character), comes to visit Hamlet. They talk about how when they were at uni, they studied this play. In it, there was this guy, and his uncle totally killed his dad and married his mum. It was by... Shakespeare. I WONDER WHAT IT COULD BE. (I don’t think there’s a bigger self-indulgence than being meta for no reason. Suffice to say, no reason was in evidence here.) Also, Ruby was a stripper, because Hamlet was totally lacking one of those.

Oh, and Polonius appears to be played by Facebook. Just ‘cause.

I can’t imagine what any Year 12 students who came to see this for HSC study purposes must be thinking. I can only hope they thought, “wow... that was weird,” and then went and watched the Branagh version or something. (Incidentally, excerpts from the Branagh version turn up in the “to be or not to be” multimedia sequence, in case you were wondering.) I don’t review a lot of community theatre and I wasn’t going to review this, but the fact that they’re trying to market it as a study resource is something I found profoundly irritating. There is nothing in here that would help a Year 12 student understand Hamlet better. In a best case scenario, the fact that it confused the shit out of them might make them go back to the actual text and think about it some more? (God, I hope none of them writes an essay in which Ruby the stripper turns up.)  The BUT WHAT IF IT WAS ALL IN HAMLET’S HEAD conceptual approach makes zero sense, and the stylistic elements in this show... well, some of them were very entertaining. For all the wrong reasons. I’m looking at you, weird gender-bending Hamlet/Ophelia voiceover sequence. And also you, random multimedia sequence of man screaming. And I can’t forget you, green strobe-lit dance sequence to Where’s Your Head At?. You’re burned onto my brain.

The Merchant of Venice

I reviewed the Genesian Theatre's production of The Merchant of Venice for Australian Stage - you can read the review here.

As You Like It

I reviewed As You Like It at Belvoir St for Australian Stage - go on over and check out the review here.

Julius Caesar

I reviewed Bell Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for Australian Stage - you can read the review here.

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing runs until 25 June. It plays at the Canberra Theatre Centre until 4 June and at the Melbourne Arts Centre until 25 June 2011. By William Shakespeare, directed by John Bell.
I sometimes think I have a bit of a split personality, particularly when I watch theatre. Perhaps it is the curse of the academic - I go through life seeing things on one hand as normal Jodi, and on the other hand as Jodi the Scholar, for whom everything is potential thesis material. Watching Much Ado About Nothing made me hyper-aware of this dual nature of my personality. Luckily, both Jodis really enjoyed it.

Jodi the Scholar is a PhD student who's writing a thesis on virginity and who has a particularly love of Renaissance literature, and so Much Ado is ripe with material. Although the play is obviously about Benedick (played wonderfully in this production by Toby Schmitz) and Beatrice (the excellent Blazey Best), they're not the drivers of the plot. In fact, if all you saw was the first half before interval (to the end of Act III, Scene II, ending deliciously on the word 'sequel'), you'd assume there wasn't much of a plot. Basically, there's this dude called Benedick and this chick called Beatrice, and they make out that they don't like each other but they obviously are head over heels for each other and totes have a history, and so their friends put together a plan to hook them up.

But then in the second half it all gets a bit dark.

Benedick's mate Claudio and Beatrice's cousin Hero are engaged – Claudio saw her, thought she was a bit of all right, and she (and, moreover, her father) was down with it - and it all seems hunky dory. But then Claudio, through a convoluted series of events involving what is played in this production as the mafia, gets it into his head that Hero isn't a virgin, and the plot really kicks off. And instead of taking her aside and going, 'hey, Hero, so I heard this crazy rumour, how about we have a discussion here,' Claudio decides to humiliate her at the altar. Because a woman who's deflowered is a woman who's worthless.

I have written a lot about the commodification of virginity in Renaissance literature - I'm presenting a paper on it in Canada next week - and we have a perfect example of it here. Jodi the Scholar, watching this, was all, I should put more Much Ado in my conference paper. Claudio finds a deflowered Hero not only worthless, but loathsome. And Hero's father Leonato isn't far behind - he screams at his daughter not to open her eyes when he thinks that she's been deflowered. The only one who immediately comes to Hero's defence is Beatrice, who manages to convince Benedick that she's right.

This obviously sits uneasily with the modern audience - both the nature of Claudio and Hero's engagement and the fetishisation of Hero's virginity. John Bell has dealt with this unease in a subtle way, I think... there is something very petty and a bit poisonous about the bromance between Don Pedro and Claudio, and when Leonato tells them that they have essentially killed his daughter, they are sorry, but yet somehow nonchalant about the whole thing. Don Pedro, Claudio and Benedick are a group of three friends who like to joke around together, bros, a sort of Shakespearean Ted/Marshall/Barney How I Met Your Mother trio, and the Bell production really emphasises this, but the Hero incident really does reveal their true colours - Benedick cares enough to stay behind and see that Hero is all right, and then (after coercion from Beatrice) cares enough to challenge Claudio to a duel. And then at the second wedding, when Claudio is to marry the veiled girl (who really is Hero, but which he doesn't know yet), Bell has kept in an often cut line - Claudio says he will marry her even if she is an Ethiop. There was an awkward silence all around the theatre when he said this as everyone realised he really is an enormous douchelord.

However, Much Ado really is a romcom. The plot may focus on Claudio and Hero, whose eventual union leaves the modern audience with an immense sense of unease, but we all know that Benedick and Beatrice, the real focus, will be much happier... even though they'll fight like cats and dogs. There's a concept I remember reading about in my life as Jodi the Scholar called the erotics of talk which I think plays into the difference between the two relationships - Hero/Claudio is based on Claudio thinking Hero is hot. Beatrice and Benedick is based on wit and dialogue - an erotic connection through conversation. And all audiences - Renaissance and modern - are led to believe this is the superior one.

Right. Jodi the Scholar is going to stop wanking on and on about random academic concepts and start talking about the actual show now. Normal Jodi is in the house. And she loved it.

The show stealer was clearly Toby Schmitz's hair - that fifties coiffe he affects at one stage is HILARIOUS - but Schmitz himself was outstanding. At first, his very Australian accent was a little jarring, but after a few lines it seemed perfectly natural. This was an example of excellent, EXCELLENT casting - Schmitz wore this role like a glove. He embraced the awkwardness and the embarrassment and the reluctance to admit change that is at the core of Benedick, and it was awesome. He's not afraid of silence on stage, and some of his funniest moments were silent - or at the least non-verbal, where he made incoherent noises of protest. And the scene where he's under the pool table listening to Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato talk... priceless.

I really cannot speak highly enough of Schmitz's performance in this role. The only criticism I have is that he did overshadow a lot of the other characters - even Beatrice. Blazey Best was an excellent Beatrice, but with material which is not quite as awesome as Benedick's and such a great performance opposite her, I think it was a little hard for her to live up to. All this said, she really was good. She and Schmitz were a bit adorable together. Okay, a lot.

Bell held off on having Benedick and Beatrice kiss right until the very end and I think that was a great directorial choice. The awkwardness between them when they've admitted that they love each other but they're not quite together yet was just perfect. A lot of versions have Benedick and Beatrice being a little too couple-y too early, and this one didn't fall into that trap. The moment at the end when they read the (saucy) sonnets that each has written about the other was just fantastic theatre.

Jodi the Scholar and normal Jodi both loved this production. I highly, highly recommend it. And seriously - check Toby Schmitz's hair. There's a double meaning in it. Somewhere.