EleanorTurney.co.uk

I can’t recall as perfect a night in the theatre as the one we spent in the Courtyard last night. We were as transfixed as the little girl in front of us, although we perhaps got slightly more out of Tim Minchin’s witty lyrics and Dennis Kelly’s sharp script. With Minchin’s characteristic irreverence and sheer comic genius, the songs all zip along, packed with more syllables per line than should be strictly possible. Kelly’s script does Dahl’s original story justice while keeping the pace swift and the action highly satisfying.

Rob Howell’s simple but effective alphabet-themed design is charming in the best sense of the word, and gave the strong cast (guided by the expert hand of Director Matthew Warchus) ample room to play. The stage became classroom or playground seamlessly, and gave the energetic choreography (Peter Darling) room to dazzle. The stunts (SPOILER ALERT) were convincing and slick. Watching Bertie Carvel’s monstrous Miss Trunchbull swing a child (Lara Weaver) round by her plaits was horrifying, and made the child in front of us climb onto her Dad’s lap. Wise move.

The children in the cast were amazingly professional, and could teach the adult cast a thing or two about diction. Kerry Ingram, who played Matilda the night we saw it, was superlative – an impressively accomplished singer, actress and dancer at eleven years old. With the success of the whole show resting on her tiny shoulders, Ingram pulls off the role with aplomb. She is touching, plucky and highly entertaining, with excellent comic timing and a powerful set of lungs. The other child actors are great, too, and form a tight ensemble. Kuan Frye, who played Bruce, has a truly incredible voice, and an electric stage presence. Tiny Shivum Gupta was adorable as Eric, and all the children made Carvel’s huge, menacing Miss Trunchbull look even larger and scarier.

Carvel also provides a delightful contrast to Lauren Ward’s angelic Miss Honey, who is the kind of teacher that every child wishes they could have. Her scene with the ballroom-dancing Mrs Wormwood (Josie Walker) is priceless, and superbly choreographed. Walker, a vision in platinum curls and pink fishnets, is a monstrous mother. She nicely balanced being one of the villains of the piece (and Kelly does not shy away from the emotional abuse heaped on Matilda’s head by her parents) with providing comic relief – while staying the right side of pantomimic. Mr Wormwood (Paul Kaye) was great too, and he managed to have an even bigger personality than his stunningly awful lime green check suit.

If there are quibbles, then they are small ones: the addition of Matilda’s story-telling, while an effective dramatic device and a neat way to advance the story, doesn’t quite work plot-wise, and the denouement is glossed over for this reason. Matilda’s ‘super-powers’ aren’t really explored as fully as they could be, which lessens their impact. However, as I say, these are minor complaints in what was otherwise a wholly successful and enjoyable evening.

It was delightful to see so many excited children in the theatre, and it is a testament to the script, direction, cast and crew that the theatre was silent apart from frequent bursts of laughter. It takes a remarkable show to keep such a mixed age-range captivated, and this is it.

David Farr has found a nice balance between comedy, drama and pathos here, in this, one of Shakespeare’s oddest plays. Dead children, courtiers being eaten by bears, the insane jealousy of the king and a dead queen may not be the most obvious subjects for a comedy, but the happy ending ensures that this stays the right side of happy-ever-after, despite the unpleasant happenings of the first half. As the paranoid Leontes, Greg Hicks is tremendous: a small man, bent by jealous delusions and his over-active imagination, he is nonetheless tyrannical and immoveable in his passions. He is, however, never a match for Noma Dumezweni’s statuesque and calm Paulina. It is clear who wears the trousers at court, even though she is outnumbered 10-1 by men. Kelly Hunter’s queen Hermione avoids hysteria in the face of extreme provocation, and her quiet dignity gives the character an air of martyrdom that she wears lightly.

The court itself is well-constructed, with Jon Bausor’s brilliant, book-lined set managing to be both claustrophobic and too spacious. Outside the court, in the wilds of Bohemia, the set works less well: the book motif is continued for reasons I cannot fathom, to the point of leafing the wobbly trees with pages. Samantha Young is a charming Perdita, charting the progress from shepherdess to princess with admirable aplomb. Her prince, Florizel (Tunji Kasim), grows from a cocky young man into an heir that any king would be proud to have.

This production relies a little too heavily on the contrasts between the yokels and the courtiers for its comedy, concentrating more on the young shepherd’s (Gruffudd Glyn) accent than the delicate relationships between father and son, father and adopted daughter, and the class divides that prevent James Gales’s old shepherd being heard by the court. I was at a loss to explain to my French companion why “the English” find giant phalluses so funny – and why the country-folk felt the need to dance around in masks waving them about. That aside, the production had plenty of poignant moments, too, notably the final scene where family is reconciled and Hermione is reunited with her penitant husband. The fairy-tale happy ending is coloured by the death of the young prince early in the play, but remains redemptive enough to leave the audience feeling buoyant.

As ever, though, the bear was the star of the show.

Othello, Warwick Arts Centre, 31/01/09

This production was so keen to emphasise the racism of the play that, in some places, it lost sight of the rest of the text. Director Kathryn Hunter was sitting in front of me scribbling away for the whole performance, so perhaps it will pick up – I hope it just had teething problems. It certainly had problems.
Patrice Naiambana’s (Othello) accent was all over the place, the ensemble work was sloppy, and it was self-indulgently long despite some hefty cuts. Emilia’s wonderful speech denouncing men was cut so short that it lost all of its power, an odd decision given that Desdemona was not a fragile, subservient little thing. In fact, Natalia Tena in her RSC debut was fantastic, and held her own on a big, spare set despite her frail physique.

I liked the set, with its two movable arches that came together and moved apart to become a Venetian bridge, a balcony, barracks, ships. Although the manoeuvring could have done with more rehearsal as the stage hands were a distraction, it was visually very effective. Less effective were the smaller props, screens used to make walls, waves, doorways, which were reminiscent of an A-level drama production. The murder scene, and the billowing sheets and dream-sequence, also belonged in an school production rather than being worthy of the RSC. What could have been a very powerful image, the small figure of Desdemona in a sea of white sheets, was made rather silly by the decision to have the sheets billow and ripple.

Musically, the show was excellent, with a lovely mix of styles performed live on stage by a wonderful group of musicians. The mix of very specifically African music with English was interesting, and made the point about racial difference far more effectively than any of the more blatant, visual ideas. The soldiers’ barracks on Cyprus hosts a black-and-white minstrels type cabaret, complete with golliwog and grotesque white doll used to represent Desdemona. However, the obvious respect that the soldiers have for their commander was at odds with the blatant disrespect shown to him in private, and Hunter did not explore this duplicity further. This brought the idea of race right to the forefront of the drama, and then rather than run with, Hunter just abandoned it, so that it obscured rather than revealing.

Michael Gould’s Iago has been praised elsewhere, but I thought him pantomimic. The way he leered and plotted, it was unbelievable that Othello and others could continue to call him “honest Iago”. For the deceit to work, the actor must convey two sides to the character’s personality, and it should have been clear to everyone that Iago was hell-bent on destroying Othello. That said, Naiambana’s Othello was strong on nobility and militarism, weak on emotion. While his love for Desdemona was well portrayed, the character was flat, and his fit was almost comically bad. Marcello Magni’s Roderigo was foolish and petulant, and although he hammed it up rather too much for my taste, he got a lot of laughs, and provided a nice contrast to Gould’s alternately dour and camp Iago.

For such a fine actor, Hunter has made some odd decisions and failed to bring the best out of her performers. Bring on Lenny Henry in April.

Twelfth Night, Wyndham’s Theatre, 12th Jan 2009

Derek Jacobi’s mincing, malevolent Malvolio was a constant malign presence behind the wooden slats of the set. The bare wooden boards of the stage and dappled lighting gave the place a breezy, summery feel. It put one in the mood for light comedy. While there were plenty of jokes, mainly in the form of Guy Henry and Ron Cook’s superb Little’n’Large pairing as Andrew and Toby (respectively), Grandage’s production had a darker side. Jacobi got perhaps more laughs than he deserved through the audience’s sheer delight at seeing him in the flesh, but it was when he howled like a wounded animal, trapped beneath the suddenly dark and claustrophobic stage that he shone. Credit is due to the Lighting Designer that they managed to make such an airy space shrink to a depressing, tomb-like prison for the beleaguered Malvolio.

Indira Varma was a beautiful, aloof Olivia, whose transformation into a 50s beauty in bathing suit and giant hat, panting with lust for Victoria Hamilton’s luckless Viola, was perhaps a little fast to be believable. But then, this is Shakespeare, where girls disguise themselves boys, the drowned are miraculously saved, and no-one has a clue about realism, anyway. Victoria Hamilton’s metamorphosis from mermaid-like beauty, plucked from the sea, into the neat, boyish page who ingratiates himself into Orsino’s (Mark Bonnar) court was rather more convincing, although still rapid. She beautifully captured Viola’s plight, torn between the difficulty she would face as a lone women if revealed as such and he desperate love for Orsino. Who is, in turn, petulantly in love with Olivia. Sigh. There was a lot of sighing, which made Samantha Spiro’s feisty and witty Maria a breath of fresh air. Using her sexuality and spunk to get ahead in life, and orchestrate the humiliation of Malvolio, she seemed fair too sensible for love, marrying for money instead.

The play tripped along nicely, despite being another 3-hr RSC extravaganza. The plain set never got boring, with an inventive use of the many entrances and exits, and a simple wind-breaker transporting the action from Court to beach was a very nice touch. The music was nicely done, too, and although Zubin Varla’s Feste was unusually melancholy, his singing voice was gorgeous. I was caught up enough in this charming production that I was genuinely pleased that the right couples ended up paired at the end, but found Jacobi’s vows of vengeance lacking in weight. He had perhaps invested too much to being a pantomime villain, which meant that his threats could be easily brushed off by the ‘goodies’. This was good, solid theatre with some bum notes and some flashes of brilliance.

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.

The free tickets scheme for under-26s launches on Monday. My colleague and I are already plotting our assault on the website, and have every intention of getting as many freebies as is humanly possible. I will be blogging on our experiences – how easy/hard it is to actually get hold of tickets, how different theatres are handling the scheme, whether what we see is any good – on the ArtsProfessional website, and as usual, would welcome comments and information on other people’s experiences, too.

I am not filled with hope at the moment, I have to say. Call me a cynic, but there’s just not enough money behind it to give away tickets without damaging theatres’ revenue. I know that makes me hypocritical for using and abusing the system, but it’s free! And I’ve only not been a student for sixth months, and free stuff makes me happy. Very happy. I’ve noticed already, though, that the Young Vic are limiting people to one booking per year (although you can book up to six tickets at a time, provided each ticket goes to a named under-26 who turns up on the night with ID), and The National’s link from the Arts Council’s website doesn’t work and its own website strangely carries no mention of it. The National, the RSC and the Young Vic all already do their own cheap ticket deals (The National’s Travelex tickets are a tenner, and available to anyone, the RSC do £5 tickets for every show on a first-come first-served basis with at least ten available on the day, and the Young Vic offer £5 to Southwark residents and £10 to students and under-26s anyway), and it will be interesting to see whether these have more or fewer takers. I hope that people who try and book a freebie and miss out will be tempted to book for a small fee anyway, but we shall see.

I’m slightly annoyed that I’ve already booked, for real money, almost everything that I want to see at participating theatres in the next few months, but I only have myself to blame. There’s some good stuff coming up at the National, and a free ticket makes the prospect of paying the train fare to London and dashing to catch the last train home again much more appealing. I’m still upset that the only venue in Cambridge that’s participating is The Junction, when everything good seems to be at the Arts Theatre, especially given that the Arts Theatre’s student/young person reductions are pitiful and never seem to apply to anything I want to see. On a tangential note, the worst culprit for student deals that I have come across is the Theatre Royal, Bath, which takes a quid off prices. A whole quid. Unsurprisingly, it is not offering freebies, either.

Hamlet, ADC Theatre, 13th January 2009.

DISCLAIMER: As you can see from this reviews page, and last play I saw was the RSC’s Hamlet. This may in a small way have set me up for disappointment with this play. I have tried to temper my judgment accordingly.

I’m a pretty open person (disagreements welcome – see what I did there?), and I have never yet walked out of a play or failed to return at the interval. There was one performance (‘Pastoral’ at the Warwick Arts Centre, since you ask) where I would have gladly legged it had I not been sitting dead centre, and this Hamlet almost rivaled that show for gratuitous nudity. Yes, that’s right folks, this was Shakespeare Done By Students, and from the word go it screamed pretention. On entering the auditorium, we were greeted by Hamlet sitting front and centre, flicking a lighter on and off. Oh dear. While I have no problem emphasising Hamlet’s emotional turmoil, this was more teenage angst than soul-destroying confusion. The set was another cause for concern before a word was spoken – a rather bizarre combination of planks, ropes, and a completely unjustified tank of water, which monopolised the stage and quickly became a distraction and inconvenience to the cast and audience. The platform of planks was, however, actually used to good effect during the show, although the ensemble uses of the props could have been more polished. The tank of water bothered me, though. Apart from some rather pompous programme notes from the director, David Brown, there was no justification for it. And, at the risk of sounding like a Maiden Aunt, there was certainly no need for Jack Monaghan’s Hamlet to strip to his itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny boxers and submerge himself during his ‘fishmonger’ conversation with director Brown’s Polonius. The ghost’s appearances were just plain bad. The text clearly states that Old Hamlet’s ghost appears looking exactly as he did when he died, in armour. To make the ghost a giant puppet, much larger than life-size, with a bare skull and rope spine, voiced by Derek Jacobi, was just ridiculous. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if you are going to mess with Shakespeare, you’ve got to have a reason beyond your own vanity.

The problem with a student production is necessarily going to be the youth of the cast – although he was really very good, Patrick Warner’s Claudius struggled to bring the weight and power that the role demands due to his fresh face, and a good director would have taught him that it is possible to be angry or forceful without shouting. I found the decision not to dress Gertrude, Claudius or Polonius ‘old’ rather odd (in fact, all of the costumes were bland to the point of irritation), and it made the idea that Gertrude (Catriona Cahill) could be Hamlet’s mother or that Polonius could be Ophelia’s (Kate O’Connor) father risible. The relationship between Polonius and his children was poorly developed, which meant that Laertes’ (Joey Batey) impotent rage at his father’s death was melodramatic rather than moving.

I must concede though, that despite being tempted to flee during the interval, my companion was entranced – confused, but entranced – and the second half showed a marked improvement. The pace picked up, Monaghan suddenly found a compelling energy that had been absent in the first half, and Ophelia’s death in the tank went some way towards justifying its constant presence. Kate O’Connor’s (Ophelia) extreme youth helped her play the part, and she, unusually, played madness better than sanity. The ghost’s disastrous physical embodiment in the first half was happily forgotten, as Derek Jacobi’s thundering voice echoed “remember” around the auditorium, and there was a real freshness and excitement, as though no-one, including Hamlet, knew what he would do next.

Overall, though, I am still irritated when I think back on this production. Brown fell into the common trap of being besotted by ‘difference’ and the need to make this production his own, sadly in this case at the expense of quality. By all means, do Shakespeare in Russian with an all-male cast (Twelfth Night, Cheek by Jowl), but it’s got to be good, and it’s got to be justified. There was no textual explanation for Brown’s decisions that I could hear, particularly the choice to cast Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Katy Bulmer and Helen Parker) as sexual, simpering women. I would dearly love to know the rationale behind the decision to have Hamlet partially blind them both in gruesome detail for their betrayal, too. That said, the gravedigger scene was very funny, the tank was used effectively in the second half, and the death scene was genuinely moving. It’s not his fault, but the fact that Horatio (Jacob Shephard) sounds exactly like Peter Serafinowicz in Black Books was quite distracting. Although this production redeemed itself somewhat in the second half, it was a confused mixture of fanciful ideas that failed to resonate with the actual play.

In the interests of balance, a review that is “all lovey and gushing” can be found here.

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.

I’ve been hankering to see the RSC’s Hamlet since it before it launched in Stratford, and my wonderful friend J took me for my birthday. Originally, this plan meant queuing from hideous o’clock in the morning to get 16-25 tickets, but due to many foolish people returning their tickets because they wanted to see The Doctor not Hamlet, we breezed up at 10 and got two resticted view seats for a fiver – which we upgraded to front row of the dress circle during the interval because there were spare seats. This is a almost more a tragedy than was played out so superbly on stage, especially as the 3^rd of Jan when we saw it was actually the night of Tennant’s triumphant return (see the reviews section).

I kind of understand the impulse to go and see something purely because it has a celebrity in it – it would be hypocritical to claim total ignorance given that I currently have tickets for Twelfth Night with Derek Jacobi as Malvolio and Madame de Sade with Judy Dench – but there has to be more reason to want to go and see something. I paid a silly amount of money for tickets to Twelfth Night and Madame de Sade mainly because I think they’re going to be very very good, and a brilliant show is one of the things that makes me happiest.  The famous names are an added bonus – they are famous for a reason, after all – but I won’t be sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the first glimpse of Jacobi or Dench, and I’m going to see new plays and Cambridge student theatre, too. It’s the whole ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ philosophy, don’t judge a play by its celebrity, judge it by the whole cast and production – after you’ve seen it not before!