A fan letter to the actors in Macbeth

Hey guys,

Thanks for this. Like you were good. Really good. I could quite happily go through the entire cast and tell each of you exactly why I loved you. As it was, I've limited myself to a little bit about a few characters. The sycophancy that follows fairly accurately represents my excitement at leaving - the sort of buzz I felt after seeing Jekyll and Hyde. 

Kicking off with the real Jim Jelly, showing us his leading man, and he showed it. That's right. Underlined, bold AND italics. Profesh like. This Macbeth fed on power and love: this was not a Macbeth motivated by fate but motivated by an idea planted in his head and from the moment he was crowned Thane of Cawdor, a fire lit in his eye that you felt would have to be torn from him. Tim managed to hold the entire narrative together, this was less about the actions of the play than the journey of a man once he takes the first step. It wasn't a flawless performance, there were small moments that needed a more complex approach, for example, the guilt or worry was briefly lost in monologues from time to time but when it counted, when Macbeth was facing Macduff, tearing down Lady Macbeth, he came through. Spectacularly so.

Saffia Sage. Lady Macbeth. Claire Underwood. Robin Wright. Not a comparison made lightly but the elegance that Saffia brought to this performance made the decline all the more believable. The measured approach to her switch from controlling to losing control was only noticeable when it had happened; a joyous realisation as you look back through the play and notice all the things she did in the play leading to that moment. This M/LM didn't necessarily have the sexual relationship that many contemporary ones do (aside from THAT black dress - or was it gold?). But a mutual lust for power created a dynamic that left both parties equal and all the more captivating. 

(Note: the scenes between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as LM convinces M to kill the king and as M rips into LM for showing weakness were glorious)

I'm not usually prone to fan-girling. But I think I might have to make an exception for Jamie Bowman. Having only seen him in Road before this, it seems odd to be jumping to this conclusion so early in our short (yet oh-so-creepy) interactions. This guy though. This Macduff. Having seen Ray Fearon's Macduff (http://tinyurl.com/olgdvla) I was quietly confident that this would be okay at best. Instead I was blown away. The way he portrayed Macduff's torn frame of mind as he mourns his wife and prepares to lead an attack on Macbeth; the cracking of the voice that broke the floodgates. It seems impertinent not to mention James Esler's Malcolm at this point: the scene between those two arguably stole the production. Watching Malcolm frantically try to stem the verbal bloodflow that was gushing from Macduff was heartbreaking. Watching Esler's eyes were the key to his performance, his physicality betraying nothing but the pause between lines as he communicated through eye contact were superb. Between the two of them, they kept their end of the seesaw aloft as Tim did his.

Andy Bewley's Banquo, while alive, was a delicate piece of acting; something about him felt off from the beginning. To me, it seems you often get Banquos that are good friend and lose faith but seeing Banquo as an independent, right from the off, felt right in the context. He felt less like a pawn caught up in Macbeth's plan and more as a castle, waiting for his moment to be brought in the game, yet never getting his chance.

In the rest of the cast, there were excellent performances throughout. Despite a rather short scene, Georgie's Lady Macduff established herself first in a great moment with Macduff and Venetia Cook's Porter then, in her main scene, gave us a quiet performance before being given a criminally short time to react to her child's death before her own quickly followed. The aforementioned Venetia managed to bring light to this dark production, without resorting to cheap physical gags, and her monologue was a welcome relief before the revelations that followed. Josh Welch and Hollie Whelan's Lennox and Ross gave us a grounding in a play that usually has a far larger cast during the 'banquet' scenes. Similarly, the assuredness of Toby King's Duncan gave good reason for Macbeth's guilt.

For me, this was easily the best cast I've seen in a production at York. You all know exactly what you're doing and feed effortlessly off each other, each bringing energy and inventiveness. The play could have been performed on a bare stage, with everyone in all-black; or in full Shakespearean costume; or just in my front room (that offer still stands, just let me know) and I would have left as excited and enthusiastic as I left on Friday night. Unreal.

Lots of love,
James 

DOUBLE TAKE: La Dispute and Les Acteurs

DOUBLE TAKE

La Dispute and Les Acteurs

Once, in the court of TFTV, a dispute began between a prince and his love (you decide who is who). To settle the argument, they reared a group of students over a period of two years, taught them methods and practitioners and then split them into two. The argument? Could they make a hilarious comedy. One group, they gave a story that mirrored their own, La Dispute, the other, they gave a story that mirrored the actors journey, Les Acteurs. The students toiled with the stories - their strange language, the characters, the setting - and over time they steeled themselves to present the sum of their problems on the grandest stage of them all, La Scenic. 

                                                                      *******

TFTV's Third Years are back, this time on the same bill. As everyone has probably seen from social media, one play, La Dispute, contains a prince manipulating four orphans - two girls, two boys - to see if a specific gender is more likely to cheat than the other. The second, Les Acteurs, contains a comedy within a comedy where characters trick each other to their own ends, but in a far more harmless way than it sounds.

The plays themselves seem evenly written but the difference boils down to what has been added to them. There are flashes of brilliance in both: the dancing bow at the end of Les Acteurs; the Notary's entrance; the jumping companionship in La Dispute; the hand kissing throughout La Dispute. But the overall problem with these plays is a lack of fun. The audience was having a great time but the actors themselves seemed too fixed in the play itself. Yes, an assessed piece of work; yes, the first night; yes, nerves. But what I wanted to see was actors mirroring the pieces themselves; most characters spend a lot of time enjoying themselves but I never believed the actors were having fun. 

Several times in La Dispute, for example, I missed lines because actors were trying to talk over the audience laughing. In Les Acteurs, nobody seemed aware that what they were saying was funny: it was like the Devil Wears Prada with Kristen Stewart instead of Emily Blunt. This will, hopefully, improve now the first night has gone and now the groups are getting good feedback, they will be more confident in the performances so they can trust in what they have and begin to enjoy these plays. 

This sense of fun affects almost all the aspects. None of the actors are missing the beats or misjudging their character wildly but the actors who stand out are invariably the ones who seem to be having the most fun on stage, to me anyway - Jason Ryall, Symone Thompson, Emily Thane, Joe Winstone. The sets are lovely and inventive but there is no fun to them; Anna Mawn has deliberately not made the structure perfect but you can see the foundations of it, it doesn't feel like it quite fits the atmosphere. The see-through material of Becky Dryden-Jones makes the entrances visible but generally seems unused in the production, the concept of something being visible to audience but invisible to characters generally being ignored.

The music in both productions (Becky Robinson and Martha Godfrey, respectively) is sparse but well-timed and used to good effect. Similarly, the lighting does a solid job in illuminating the stage and setting the tone for the scenes (Katie Wilkinson and George Killick). For La Dispute, director Rosie O'Sullivan does a very good job of focusing the action whilst reminding us of the hierarchy on stage - keeping the Prince and Hermiane up top, watching over the orphans but also Mesrou and Carise. In Les Acteurs, James Dixon keeps the pace quick and the play never seems to stall but I wonder whether more could have been done to help the actors in terms of props or larger set pieces, just to give them more options, particularly in the rehearsal for the comedy play. 

These are good productions, definitely the funniest of the performances I've seen at TFTV, and confidence will only raise the standard. In a busy week for theatre, the Third Years more than hold their own.

Jekyll and Hyde - Theatre Mill

Jekyll and Hyde - Theatre Mill

Four/Five

*spoiler alert throughout*

"?£%£$£!£$%$£%$^^^&&***%@" - James Ralph, 2015

I think that quote clearly shows the general reaction to Theatre Mill's latest production. It is a beautifully measured production that every now and again allows it to take a punch at the audience, mainly at the end of each half. What it does brilliantly is be stylish without really throwing it at you (I wish Uncle Vanya would take note) and keep you invested in the big scene changes that can threaten to lead you into tedious oblivion.

Assuming that people don't know the story of Jekyll and Hyde (as I didn't) the play centres around a narrator (the solid Adam Elm) Gabriel's meeting with the eponymous Dr Jekyll (the incredible James Weaver). Dr Jekyll LOVES an invention, especially when it pushes the boundaries of the science surrounding the human psyche. Unfortunately, you can only kill so many rats in Victorian England (who knew? Gino D'acampo isn't the only one getting in trouble) and so he is forced to find other experiments - eventually himself. In the meantime, he's starting to fancy his best mate's wife, Eleanor (the multi-role-ing Viktoria Kay) and increasingly worry his best mate, Hastings (David Chafer). Eventually people start to realise that the monster Hyde is actually Jekyll (a twist that frankly I never saw coming) and Hyde's knack for killing people becomes a bit much. 

There are some wonderful moments in this production. The slow-mo fighting, timed to perfection, ending the first half on black out as Hyde leaps forward to savage his random victim left the entire audience stunned, just looking at each other. It is the type of moment that you rarely get, particularly in the regional theatre I've encountered (especially when I'm the youngest person in the audience by at least 10 years). Similarly, the end of the play, as Gabriel opens the bag of Dr Jekyll's notes and the blinding light of knowledge encompasses him as the delighted face of Hyde looms closer and closer to him and as he looks into his face, shocked, BOOM the play ends. 

All of this is made possible by some very fine performances. James Weaver as Jekyll/Hyde is unreal, his physicality twisting and turning and every now and again making you question if the same actor is actually playing them both. Similarly, David Chafer does a brilliant job with his different characters, I didn't for example realise that he was playing the butler Poole until halfway through. 

Becs Andrews' set was cleverly designed, the glo-in-the-dark equations on the crates, the hanging lights that could be attached to lampposts instantly to give a sense of location. The lighting and music by Andy Pilliner is the most vital production element, the sneaking, creeping music sometimes telling you what will happen, sometimes giving nothing away; the lighting keeping you in suspense but also framing each scene instantly. 

If more theatre like this existed, maybe there would be more theatre fans in York. 

Jezebel - Drama Barn

Jezebel - Drama Barn

Four/Five

Well, just as On Ego storms into TFTV, DramaSoc comes up with its own brilliant three-hander, warming another cold Friday night in the Barn. Jezebel is a bitingly funny comedy about an unconventional couple who stumble into each other's arms and fall in love. We see their problems and their solutions and ultimately their resolution. It is hard to give anything away for fear of ruining the jokes that the plot brings along.

The start sets up all the things that are brilliant about this production, however. We hear (separately) the lead couple Alan (Sam Zak) and Robin (Britt Borkan) break up with multiple partners for increasingly awkward reasons - "where I am...in my life right now...I'm just not looking to get married...to you". This then smoothly transitions into their double-entendre laced first meeting and a quick succession of dates that lead to the realisation that the magic has gone. This is followed by a quick solution - they need to spice up the sex life by trying new and wild things. This idea eventually results in meeting Jezebel (Anna Mawn) who is muddling through life as best she can, despite the heartbreak of her recent break-up with a convict. 

If you fancy the theatrical equivalent of New Girl with a hint of Charlie Brooker's wit (and maybe some of his dark comedy), then this is the play for you. Rarely have I been forced to laugh so far after a joke because it has been delivered so quickly and subtly (cough *table tennis*). The actors work as a seamless unit, each of them locked into their character and the play, and the night flew by. The only criticism is that the unnecessary interval stalled the second Act and had to work hard to get the audience back after that break. All credit to director Polly Jordan, she has created a production that knows its strengths and plays to them; the transitions between the scenes are simple and effective throughout. 

Jezebel is the funniest thing I've seen in the Drama Barn since I've been here, you'd be a fool to miss it. I don't know what has happened in York this week but with Smoke of Home down in London, On Ego in the Black Box and Jezebel in the Barn, the university is proving that it deserves a far wider audience than it is getting. 

On Ego - a recommendation

On Ego - TFTV

Every now and again, you get to see a play that feels like a whole thing. On Ego was the first time I've seen this at the University of York. There's no point in breaking it down and ranking or judging the various elements that make it theatre, you just have to let yourself watch it. But there is something within this piece that makes you leave feeling very different from when you walked in.

I think it is the way that the production takes something big and scary and makes it seem accessible; it gives the audience an entry point into a subject that we all know everything and nothing about. From the opening monologue to the closing image, everything that happens works towards the premise of the play: who, or what, are we?

I don't feel any closer to an answer, except that maybe my 'ego' has moved from my chest to my head and this play really did give me the first good headache I've had in a while. I felt both empty and alive. There was no cliched "LIVE LIFE TO THE FULL" or "YOU ONLY HAVE ONE LIFE", just that niggling thought, who am I? 

IF you choose not to heed this warning and don't run to TFTV right now and queue up until someone shows up on Saturday and sells you a ticket, then you will probably miss out on that rare thing, a student piece that really is interested in bringing something new (or at least contemporary) to theatre right now. Like RIGHT NOW. I don't know what people think anymore about bundle theories or ego theories or whatever else science has decided exists BUT why not go and let yourself be shown a different way of thinking, a different avenue into yourself?

This isn't the perfect production. But On Ego tells you that you are both unique and un-unique; both here and there; simultaneously conscious and unconscious. I left having learnt something, having felt something and wanting to do something. I'd say you can't ask much more from theatre.

On Ego

Directors: Jason Ryall and Lauren Moakes
Producer: Katie Barclay
Movement Director: Amy Warren
Actors: Oliver-Patrick Henn, Yoshika Colwell, Harry Whittaker
Filming: Tom Leatherbarrow
Marketing: Rose Copland-Mann
Sound designer: Scott Hurley
Lighting: Ella Dixon

Woman in Mind - Drama Barn, York

Woman in Mind

Three/Five

Is there such a thing as too good a play? Alan Ayckbourn has certainly had a bloody good go at it. Woman in Mind is a staggering play, expertly staging a woman suffering a breakdown brought on by a blow to the head and a calamitous personal life. We watch her lose control of her own subconscious and her day-to-day life, while the play gets on with being bitingly funny. And he also manages to make the internal...external.

Is this a problem for a director? Well yes and no. It is always nice not to have to worry about the lines you are trying to bring to life. Characters that have a range of acting possibilities help too. But it is daunting in that it faces you with a big question - 'what can you bring to this play?'. Eleanor Kiff decides on stage and lights (the second in collaboration with Sam Hunt, lighting designer). She brings to life the Rose Garden in Susan's mind with giant, over-sized flowers and empty flowerpots dotted about and the lights change every time Susan's mind shifts from conscious to sub-conscious.

The problem is that these two (for ease, let's call them) "big ideas" are potentially the weakest things about this play. Firstly, Ayckbourn didn't write a play about a subconscious in which, 20 minutes in, it wasn't painfully clear who is real and who is not. Aside from the pain it causes on the eyes every time the lights change so brutally, it patronises an audience in suggesting that we might not be able to read the play well enough to understand. 

Secondly, the flowers are a lovely idea, they look great, and you sense that the wooden gate is hinting subtly to something. The problem is that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't work out what it was hinting towards. Was it the gate to subconscious? Well no, because characters haphazardly entered through there, no pattern really emerging. Or maybe it did because the gates were opened and shut a couple of times. But it didn't feel thought through, it felt random rather than by design. 

The basic plot is that an unhappy woman, Susan, hits her head and begins to imagine her life in a better way. Almost everything is the opposite - she has a daughter, instead of a disappointing son; she has a brother, rather than a sister-in-law and so on. Bill Windsor, a clumsy doctor, is the only person who tries to understand these hallucinations and in between this, Susan's son returns home from his time away in a cult and she questions her marriage to Gerald.

There are some good elements to the production that really help with the evening moving along nicely. As ever, the characters are well written but it is easy to fumble around the jokes in this play and not really hit any punchlines: no problem in this production. The characters' arcs are mapped out and everybody knows their roles. You completely understand Susan's (Clare Duffy) frustration with Lucy (Leigh Douglas) as she becomes shriller and meaner throughout the second Act. Gerald's (Will Heyes) reaction to his deteriorating relationship is funny for 90% of the time and for the other 10, purposefully sad as we are reminded of the reality of the revelations in the play.  My personal favourite was Muriel, handled superbly by Vanessa Ostick, walking a tightrope line between cartoon and plausibility, bringing life to every scene she walked into.

The other staging, a couple of chairs and some dangerously wobbly tables, is simple and gives the actors a base that stops the play being static. The sound is subtle, giving us both Susan's subconscious hearing and the sounds of reality. There are also some genuinely brilliant scenes. Watching Bill (David Bolwell) talk to Susan's imaginary daughter, Lucy, who he imagines to be 5 years old, when in reality she is 20-odd, is genius and is handled brilliantly. The same can be said of the scene in which Muriel interrupts Gerald and Susan's discussion of their sex life and provides a range of reactions to their bickering. 

An interesting offering nonetheless, this is a solid production from Drama Soc but it lacks the flair that is needed to really take it from being a good staging of an Ayckbourn to a brilliant production. 

Alice ; Theatre in the Quarter

Alice - Theatre in the Quarter

I had mixed feelings leading up to this production. Alice in Wonderland is in my top five all-time favourite stories. So I'm biased. Both for and against a staging of it. I will love it because I love the story and I will hate it because it's not the book and never can be. So there's a conundrum before it starts. But then Stephanie Dale, Alice's writer, throws in a whole lot more to the problem. Because this isn't a production of Alice in Wonderland. This is a production about the telling of the story of Alice in Wonderland. Which is pretty brilliant actually (thus in bold AND italics).

The play opens with Lewis Carroll (Duncan MacInnes) writing a letter to a now-married Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell. Before he can finish and send it, however, a boy arrives and Carroll begins to tell the story of creating Wonderland for Alice (Anne O’Riordan); this involves him becoming the White Rabbit (an important doubling) and leading her to the world we are more familiar with. Once we drop down, we meet the characters we are used to - the Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter - plus a couple not always brought in - the Duchess and the Cook, for example.

So far, fairly standard fare for plot expectations. This is where Dale takes us off the beaten path. We crack through Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the first Act and then start on Through the Looking Glass for the second. The benefit of this is that themes come through so much more strongly for the change. Carroll's dependency on, and enjoyment of, the stories he tells overshadow Alice's participation by far and the characters begin to link, not only to Alice, but to Lewis himself. The need to tell stories and create worlds begins to show in Act II as cracks appear and everything feels a bit more grown-up than it did in Act I.

The staging, in the round, is fairly open - all the props and costumes are laid bare around the edges of the building - and it is a credit to Peter Leslie Wild's direction that you don't find anybody with their eyes wandering off the stage. The set itself (Dawn Allsopp) was brilliant, all the set pieces mirroring the actors in doubling as several items (eg chairs into ladders) and Stuart Harrison's lighting does a great job of highlighting all these. And composer Matt Baker's music does a great job throughout but is often at its best when the song comes out of the scene rather than as an aid for the transitions.

The production doesn't always hit it for me. The transitions can be confusing or feel a bit forced - the imposing of *this is Lewis telling a story* gets in the way of the appealingly bonkers logic of the story at times. I can also imagine that it's a bit grown-up at times, lacking in real out-and-out craziness, the Hatter's tea party hitting me as tame. For one, every switching of places was identical and the actors seemed to be playing to the same rhythm rather than just used to the routine. I also never felt threatened (which seems like an odd complaint) but I rarely see something where I am so close to the actors and feel so safe. There was just so much going on that I didn't think the actors would find time to engage with me, pick on me, reference me etc. Not all plays have this, of course, but a play in the round, set mainly on floor level (or thereabout), about creating worlds and leading people through stories?

I've left the actors until last through choice rather than convention. Mainly because they are the strength of this production. Of course they've got there through brilliant writing, inventive staging and direction, great music etc but still, they're top. Ann O'Riordan and Duncan MacInnes are essentially the straight characters in the play but holding together a fairly complex concept is no mean feat and they do it superbly, particularly the developments from beginning to end of the play. Quickly becoming TITQ stalwarts, Ben Tolley and David Edwards have raised their game again this year, Tolley's Duchess and Edward's White Knight the respective highlights for me. However, my standouts have to be Sophia Hatfield and Andrew Roberts-Palmer. They don't disappoint as some of the biggest characters in the story - The Queen of Hearts, the Dormouse; the Caterpillar, the Cook, Humpty Dumpty - and their ability to wildly differentiate characters, at speed, is excellent.

Generally speaking, in a actor-musician, multiroling play like this you need to have a tight knit group and Theatre in the Quarter has done very well to assemble one. The play isn't your average telling of a well-known story. It's inventive, witty and will only get better from here on.

And if at Christmas, you like to see a play with a message, I think there are several here. That nobody stays the same. That we're never too old for stories. But I think the main one is that we just need to accept everyone, including ourselves, as they are.

Oh and there are puns. There are so many puns. It's great.