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Midsummer Night’s Dream, Novello Theatre, 7th Feb 2009.

The RSC are having a more comic season following the weighty Histories cycle last year, but this series feels a lot more hit and miss. I saw seven of the eight histories (and by all accounts the one I didn’t see, Richard III, was the best), and thought them all good with some flashes of brilliance. This season, I have approached the theatre a lot more cautiously than the eager excitement I settled into the Courtyard balcony, and after a disappointing Othello the previous weekend, I was pleasantly surprised by the RSC’s Dream.
It was a hard act to follow given that the last Dream I saw was Tim Supple’s superlative Indian production, and since I pretty much know the play off by heart I was prepared to enjoy myself but not be dazzled. However, I took my French housemate as a Christmas present, and she had never seen the play before, and indeed had only seen one Shakespeare play in the theatre – the ADC’s pretentious Hamlet. She adored this production and chuckled her way through the full three hours, and reminded me of the sheer joy that theatre can, and should, bring. I love Midsummer Night’s Dream, it was the first Shakespeare I read, and I remember the animated version with a blue-haired Titania vividly. This production managed to be fresh and genuinely funny in a way that few manage.
Edward Bennett was fantastic as a buttoned-up Demetrius, whose neat composure unraveled as the spell of the woods took its toll. Natalie Walker’s Helena was a librarian-ish, cardigan-ed, much-maligned woman, and managed to be both funny and pathetic. Tom Davey’s Lysander got a laugh just by sauntering onto the stage looking cool, and he provided an excellent foil to Bennett’s up-tight Demetrius. It was unusually clear why Keith Osborn’s blustering, chauvinistic Egeus preferred Demetrius to Lysander; the latter could have passed for a stoned student. It was unclear, however, why Kathryn Drysdale’s unsympathetic and bitchy Hermia should fall for him. Her first entrance, dragged onstage by her father, and subjected to some pretty violent actions and words, immediately prompted sympathy, but her flouncing and fastidious whingeing in the woods reduced her to a spoiled child who couldn’t have what she wanted.
The changes wrought upon the unsuspecting mortals in the woods were well done, with normal civil relations beginning to disintegrate, although I felt this could have been pushed further. The bare set and creepy fairies weren’t quite enough to evoke the total confusion that the potions and mix-ups can bring. Peter De Jersey’s slightly insipid Oberon was not as dominant or scary as I would have liked, and Andrea Harris’s feisty yet maternal Titania was a far more commanding presence. One wondered why Mark Hadfield’s excellent, mischievous Puck had not defected to the fairy Queen. The star of this show was, predictably, Joe Dixon’s Bottom. And, indeed, all the rest of him. (Bad joke). He was ribald, over-confident, and touchingly naïve, and the shambolic Pyramus and Thisbe had some wonderful visual touches that enhanced the text.
I was not totally convinced by the punk-esque fairies or the stark set, but the strength of this production lay in its warmth and the exuberant enjoyment of the cast.

Hamlet, Novello, 3rd January 2009.

There must have been a touch of magic or hocus-pocus about this production, it was almost inhumanly good. Tennant leant a supernatural energy to a uniformly superlative cast. Hats (without rabbits) off to Greg Doran for coaxing such fine performances from such a talented group of actors. January 3rd was Tennant’s first performance in London, his return to the stage after back surgery before Christmas. When we bought our tickets on the morning, the RSC were still advertising Ed Bennett as Hamlet, and just before the house lights went down, the Producer announced Tennant’s return, to wild applause. After an initial tug of the heartstrings that Bennett had been effectively demoted to Laertes, the sheer brilliance of the production blew away any residual hard feelings. Bennett was a measured and intelligent Laertes, and it is fair to say that he seemed so comfortable in that role that it was hard to imagine him as Hamlet.

Tennant, however, took that role and made it his own in a way that no understudy, however talented, could hope to emulate. His Hamlet was all nervous energy and pent-up grief, constantly teetering on the edge of mental breakdown. He has a gift uncommon amongst Shakespearean actors, especially in the RSC, of making the words fresh. Often with such well-known plays, you get the feeling that the audience are either mouthing along, or zoned out ready to tune back in when they hear ‘to be or not be’. With Tennant’s mercurial, twitchy Prince, the idea that he did not know what he was going to say next was beautifully captured, and he kept almost four hours of Shakespeare tripping along at a speed that made the evening fly by.

The simple mirrored set (backdrop and floor were both reflective) emphasised the dualities in the play, and the turmoil of Hamlet’s desires for inner peace and for revenge. His schizophrenic manias and intense calms gave his performance dramatic weight, and he played superbly off Patrick Stewart’s grave, disdainful and thoroughly unpleasant Claudius and Penny Downie’s fraught and highly-strung Gertrude. The bedroom scene was particularly striking, with Hamlet alternating between a desperate little boy and a manic, sexual, violent young man on the edge of madness. The death of Polonius (Oliver Ford Davies) was spectacularly simple: a single gunshot and a myriad of cracks appeared across the mirrored set. How’d they do that? Magic.

Ford Davies as Polonius was fantastic – a dangerously influential windbag whose own children were impatiently tolerant of his long-windedness. He was also very comic, and indeed Doran had brought the comedy out of the whole play. There were several laugh-out-loud moments, not what one expects from such a great tragedy. In fact, the humour was a stroke of genius, as it contrasted so strongly with the waste of life at the end, and it was perfectly judged to avoid farce. Sam Alexander and Tom Davey (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, respectively) were a superb double act, their comic potential enhanced by the stark difference in their heights – a real Little’n’Large pairing. Mariah Gale’s Ophelia was, again, beautifully, judged. She wrung every drop from an underwritten part, and given that the vast majority of her character’s development takes place off stage (sane in one scene, totally barmy by her next entrance) she brought a depth that the role often lacks, She also played madness well – this was one Ophelia that could not be written off a silly love-struck or grief-stricken girl – you felt as though she had the troubles of the world on her shoulders and after a short time the weight was too much to bear and she broke. The relationship between Bennett’s Laertes and Gale’s Ophelia was also a nice touch, and gave a depth to his murderous grief and rage.

I actually cannot fault this production. It was clear that the whole cast were delighted to have Tennant back – there was a feeling of settling back into a more familiar groove, but without any of the dullness or lack of energy that that suggests. Tennant’s wild energy and wit kept the whole cast on their toes, and there must have been magic in the air to make four hours fly by so fast. If Doran keeps conjuring performances like this, tickets will sell out faster than you can say “rabbits”.

Tim Walker in the Telegraph has written one of the most objectionably snobbish pieces I have read about the theatre in a long time. This may have something to do with the fact that I tend to avoid the Telegraph like the plague, but still. (You can read his piece here if you are of a masochistic bent, but choice quotes from it will appear below). He claims that Tennant’s casting as Hamlet was a blatant piece of ‘celebrity casting’. Fair enough, Tennant is a celebrity. The point that Walker resolutely misses is that the reason Tennant was cast as The Doctor is that he is a very good actor. Hence his casting as Hamlet. The RSC want good actors, Tennant is a good actor. In fact, his Hamlet was the best I have ever seen, and one of the best shows overall that I’ve seen in a long time. The fact that people wanted to see the play purely because ‘Dr. Who’ was in it shows a smallness of mind on their part, but good for the RSC for sticking to their ‘no refund’ policy in support of their well-rehearsed understudies. Ed Bennett was, by all accounts, very good, if lacking the exuberance and speed of Tennant’s Prince.

Walker suggests that “theatre managers, when they pick a major television celebrity to appear in a play, draw people into their establishments who are likely not enjoy the experience”. This implies that it is impossible to enjoy both Dr. Who and Shakespeare. Nice work, Tim. Keep the television-watching riff-raff out of theatres. He continues that Dr. Who fans in the theatre “didn’t get so much as a “sorry” from the man [Director Greg Doran], or, indeed, any prospect of a refund”, but why should they? The RSC has a well-established understudy policy, and it is commendable that the cast were well rehearsed enough for Ed Bennett to step into such big shoes at such short notice. I went to see Hamlet on the 3rd of January, and when we bought tickets at 10a.m posters were up all around the box office saying that due to back injury, David Tennant had had to pull out, and it then listed the three undrstudies who moved up accoridngly (Hamlet’s, Laertes’s and Guildenstern’s). Nevertheless, I was excited and pleased to be able to get tickets so easily. When The Producer came on stage just before the house lights went down, and annopunced that Tennant was back, the whole place went crazy. While feeling suitably smug that we were able to move into plum seats that had been ostracised by people wanting to see Tennant (I presume, maybe they had Noro…), I also felt really quite sorry for Ed Bennett, waiting backstage and hearing the screams of joy that he would no longer be the Prince. I would have liked to have seen him play Hamlet, but he was a superb Laertes, and good luck to him.

The most objectionable part of Walker’s article was his assertion that: “Doran seemed to expect these people, not one of them a natural theatregoer so far as I could see, to sit through almost four hours of Shakespeare without so much as a glimpse of their hero”. By “these people” he means Dr. Who fans, but I’d like to know exactly he means by “not one of them a natural theatregoer as far as I could see”? How can he possibly tell? What does a ‘natural theatregoer’ look like? White, middle-class, well-dressed? I’m white and middle class but I went in jeans and borrowed gloves. Would I pass Walker’s narrow-minded and rather bigoted test to be seen as a ‘natural’? Now, I would argue that almost four hours of Shakespeare is a treat devoutly to be wished, especially if you have managed to sneak into comfy, dress circle seats, but I can understand that not everyone agrees with me. Fine. That does not make them any less of a ‘natural’ theatregoer – you don’t know what you like until you try it. Technially speaking, I am a ‘natural’ oper-goer, in that I’m from a middle-class background, have the money to afford the occasional ticket and have training in classical music. However, I’d rather see Shakespeare any day. I wonder if Walker’s antenae could detect that? The problem here is that, unfortunately, “as far as I could see” in Walker’s case, is not terribly far.