The Festival of Arden

As You Like It, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford, 24 May 2013

A dark stage was strewn with very dead leaves. Looming at the back was a dense set of upright wooden beams reminiscent of a foreboding forest. Two sombrely-clad figures appeared. Orlando (Alex Waldmann), in dark trousers and a hoodie, began sweeping the leaves with a wide-headed broom, while Adam (David Fielder) wheeled the barrow into which the plant detritus was collected.

As the last of the leaves was deposited into the barrow, Orlando sat, lit a cigarette and launched into his opening speech, complaining about his brother’s neglect of his upbringing (1.1).

Oliver (Luke Norris) appeared behind them in a smart dark suit. Despite his haughtiness, he was neither cruel nor excessively arrogant. He came across like someone who had merely taken advantage of an opportunity to enrich himself at his brother’s expense. This made his subsequent conversion to goodness more believable and allowed Duke Frederick to assume the mantle of the principal, unrivalled villain.

In his anger Orlando punched Oliver, who cried “What, boy!” in surprise. The fight escalated until Orlando straddled Oliver with his hand round his throat.

After this tense beginning a note of humour was struck when Oliver called for Dennis (Daniel Easton), and his comically obsequious servant announced that Charles was waiting to speak with him.

Charles (Mark Holgate) exposited the news about Duke Senior fleeing to the Forest of Arden and Oliver encouraged him not to spare Orlando in the forthcoming wrestling tournament.

A group of women dressed in formal evening gowns assembled in a corner upstage and stood in a rigid formation. They began a series of slow, synchronised moves under the intimidating gaze of male overseers. This was dancing, but with all the joy sucked out. They occasionally clicked their fingers and tossed their heads, but the stiffness and formality of their movements made them robotic rather than exotic.

This joyless dance showed how the new Duke’s court was a place of emotional as well as physical grimness. Touchstone (Nicholas Tennant), in his vest, clown’s makeup and red nose, attempted briefly to mock the dancers, but he soon gave up his fitful rebellion.

Rosalind (Pippa Nixon) and Celia (Joanna Horton) broke out of the formation and came forward (1.2). Celia asked Rosalind to be merry and when Rosalind replied that she showed “more mirth than I am mistress of”, she pointed at the sad women behind them. Rosalind’s suggestion that they should make sport by falling in love looked like desperate escapism and an unlikely outcome given their circumstances.

Touchstone made his first proper appearance. His joke about honour and pancakes showed him to be a rebel against the new dour order at court because he did not take its formality seriously.

Celia’s “For since the little wit that fools have was silenced” hinted at another sinister aspect of the new order imposed by Duke Frederick, the debilitating effects of which had already been visualised.

Madame La Belle (Karen Archer) told the two friends about the wrestling. The sparky, witty exchange that ensued between them provided a foretaste of the glee that would subsequently flourish once Rosalind and Celia had been exiled from the court.

As a crowd gathered to watch the match, boards were taken up from the stage platform to reveal a wrestling pit beneath.

Our first look at Duke Frederick (John Stahl) showed him to be burly and sinister, with a deep voice and unsmiling demeanour: just the person to drain all the joy out of the entire dukedom.

Orlando stood on the other side of the pit from Rosalind and Celia, facing upstage in his hoodie until called by La Belle. He spoke with Rosalind in front of the pit and they seemed charmed with each other, but not overly so.

Orlando knelt in the pit as Touchstone blindfolded and poured water over his head. Charles then began his assault and repeatedly overwhelmed him. Orlando seemed on the verge of total defeat by his much stronger opponent until Rosalind crouched at the edge of the pit and enthused “O excellent young man!” Orlando replied disbelievingly with an extra-textual “Really?”

But Rosalind’s encouragement had a transforming effect on Orlando’s performance. Energised by her words, Orlando charged at Charles, punching and beating him into submission to the point that others had to prevent him from slamming the defeated wrestler’s head against the ground.

Duke Frederick exuded brooding menace when expressing his displeasure at victor Orlando’s parentage.

After lingering upstage right for a while, Rosalind and Celia returned to thank Orlando. Rosalind put her pendant necklace around Orlando’s neck. As they conversed, Duke Frederick appeared upstage and observed their complicit chat from a distance. The dark duke now had proof of Rosalind’s disloyalty.

Orlando held the pendant at the end of the necklace towards Rosalind as he tried to utter a meaningful reply, but his tongue had weights on it.

La Belle, acting in response to the duke’s newly-stoked fury, warned Orlando to leave the court. She also informed him that the “smaller” of the two women was the Duke’s daughter. Orlando’s departing “But heavenly Rosalind!” was said looking at his beloved as Rosalind’s entry for the next scene overlapped with his exit.

In keeping with the sombreness of the court atmosphere, Rosalind’s admission that her lack of words was “for my child’s father” did not come as a joyous outburst about Orlando but as a complaint about being unattached.

Their ensuing lively and jovial wordplay was comprehensively crushed by the Duke’s scornful ultimatum to Rosalind to leave the court on pain of death. The threat was very believable, particularly when the Duke gave vent to his fury, throwing Rosalind into the pit as he told Celia that she was a fool for standing by her cousin. Although Rosalind had defended herself with spirit, the Duke’s violence showed him intractable to logic and decency.

They decided to flee. Rosalind plumped for a male disguise and the name Ganymede, and when Celia half-heartedly suggested the alias Aliena, Rosalind backed her up with an extra-textual “No, it’s good!”

In another scene overlap, Rosalind stopped and stared at her estranged father Duke Senior (Cliff Burnett) as he appeared (2.1). A subtle lighting change made the tight array of beams appear like dense forest.

Duke Senior had long grey hair, but his skinny jeans and relaxed, casual demeanour pointed to a youthful spirit. He and his fellows carried hunting rifles with which they intended to “kill us venison”.

Having seen the depressing nature of the usurping Duke Frederick’s “envious court”, it was understandable that these refugees considered suffering “the icy fang” of the winter wind less problematic.

The 1^st Lord (Samuel Taylor) launched into an energetic impression of Jaques, including his Welsh accent.

Displeasure

The stage became dark again as Duke Frederick bellowed his displeasure at Rosalind and Celia’s flight (2.2). A very nervous Hisperia (Rosie Hilal) stood by as the Duke was told how she had overheard the cousins’ praise of Orlando. The Duke angrily ordered that Oliver be brought to him.

Still in the darkness of the court, Adam warned Orlando that his brother planned to burn down his lodging (2.3). Adam showed a small tin in which he had saved money for his old age, but which he now wanted to use to fund their flight. The rattle of coins in the meagre container evoked paradoxically the grandeur of Adam’s gesture.

Adam’s description of his sensible, non-profligate youth was very moving. It now enabled him to enjoy a “lusty winter, frosty but kindly”, which he demonstrated by carrying Orlando’s rucksack.

The main shift to the world of the forest was marked by a transformative ceremony.

Corin (Robin Soans) entered the downstage pit and, Prospero-like, drew a circle around himself in the dirt with his shepherd’s staff. The creation of this magic circle made the beam forest fold to one side as the upstage revolve on which some of the beams stood began to turn. The effect was to create an open space where before had stood an impenetrable wall.

We saw Rosalind in her man’s disguise of trousers, short hair and rucksack, together with Touchstone (2.4). Celia lagged far behind offstage with the sound of clanging cooking pots announcing her approach. Rosalind said she should “comfort the weaker vessel” at which point Celia finally appeared, completely overloaded with equipment on her back, and collapsed.

Rosalind stood in the pit to announce they were in the Forest of Arden. Touchstone was actually happy to be there and his delivery of “the more fool I” transformed his gripe into a positive vote in favour of the new location.

Rosalind’s response to seeing Silvius (Michael Grady-Hall) complain to Corin about his unrequited love for Phoebe was slightly too enthusiastic. Instead of pining like Silvius, her “Alas, poor shepherd…” verged on the pantomimic. This abrupt change of style might have been intended to distinguish the forest from the court, but the difference felt too pronounced.

Touchstone provided a note of earthy humour, pausing before saying he had broke “… my sword…” to introduce a bawdy connotation into the description of his wooing of Jane Smile.

Celia was starving hungry and Rosalind prepared to seek help from Corin. She pushed some socks down her trousers to plump out her groin, while the others placed Touchstone’s hat on her head, which being too big, came right down over her eyes.

Striking a mannish pose and adopting a strained style of speech without deepening her tone, she struck up a conversation with the shepherd. She repeated her reference to Celia “…and faints for succour” until Celia took the hint and swooned dramatically to conform with Rosalind’s description of her.

Celia, like Rosalind, was convinced that a rustic mode of speech was required to get on Corin’s side, so her “I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it” was a strangulated approximation of the local dialect. Not wanting to let the side down, Touchstone also jabbered incoherently.

They left to buy the sheepcote as the exiles entered (2.5). Amiens (Chris Jared) played guitar and sang Laura Marling’s adaptation of Under the Greenwood Tree, accompanied by another guitarist.

Jaques (Oliver Ryan) teased Amiens about his singing, in an accent less obviously Welsh than that of his imitator in 2.1. Rather than exude melancholy, this Jaques was more otherworldly, to the extent that his occasional skyward glances made it seem he was on the lookout for the ship that would return him to his home planet.

After another Amiens song, Jaques handed him the words to one of his own composing. Amiens took the paper and sat in a circle with his fellow musicians upstage as they concentrated on rendering this new tune correctly.

Jaques pointed with his finger in a wide sweep taking in the audience when explaining that “Ducdame” was “a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle”.

Adam and Orlando had found their way to the forest (2.6). Adam collapsed in the pit, fainting with hunger. Cradling his loyal manservant, Orlando discovered that his water bottle was empty, which heightened his resolve to seek out food, carrying Adam along rather than leaving him behind.

Jaques was enthused after his meeting with Touchstone, relishing his memory of the experience by lying on his back in the pit (2.7).

Oliver Ryan’s Jaques was very distinctive but not show-stoppingly magnetic as Forbes Masson’s Jaques had been in the RSC’s 2009 production. This helped to keep the production’s focus on Pippa Nixon’s Rosalind.

Orlando surprised the foresters at sword-point and demanded food. This wish granted, he went to fetch Adam while Jaques spoke of the seven ages of man.

Jaques took his hat and cradled it when referring to the infant, then imitated the “whining schoolboy”, before pointing at two of his fellow foresters as the lover and the soldier. He used his hat to represent the “fair round belly” of the justice “with good capon lined” and gestured at his trousers for the pantaloon, trailing off into his gloomy conclusion about “second childishness and mere oblivion”.

Orlando returned with Adam, and Amiens launched into a Laura Marling update of “Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind” accompanied by a band wheeled in on a cart far upstage left.

Orlando sat motionless as the song played, but must have spoken about his situation and been overheard by the Duke in order for the latter to comment on Orlando being Sir Rowland’s son.

The action returned briefly to the court where Duke Frederick loomed threateningly over Oliver, who had been brought to his knees in the pit, finally banishing him and ordering the seizure of all his property (3.1).

Orlando appeared in a knitted hat with earflaps, and carrying an accordion as he attempted to compose a song (3.2). “Rosaline… if I could make you mine… I’d walk the line… no…”, he concluded as his composition went astray.

After another go, rhyming “high tower” and “power”, he launched into the text’s “Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love” sticking sheets of writing onto the few beams that remained to represent the forest.

He urged himself to “Run, run” and carve Rosalind’s name on every tree, and left the stage just as a figure we would later discover was Hymen, appeared in the shadows with a stag’s head atop his own. At this point the interval came.

Interval

At the start of the second half the raised area and sunken pit in front of the revolve had been removed and ash spread over the entire stage.

Corin and Touchstone sat in silence for some time, before Touchstone held forth on the tediousness of a shepherd’s life.

Rosalind, now in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, read the verse she had found. Touchstone’s mockery extended to kneeling in front of the cross-dressed woman and staring at her crotch to emphasise “must find love’s prick…”

Rosalind’s retort referenced the “medlar”, a fruit whose bawdy connotations she brought out by placing two fingers in front of her mouth in a V-shape and licking with her tongue. She also described the medlar as “the earliest fruit in the cunt-try [country]”.

Celia, whose forest attire included a skirt/leggings combination and Zooey Deschanel glasses, read out the verse she had found, prompting the band to strike up. She launched into a slightly histrionic rendition running about the stage and standing on the drinks fridge.

At various points during these forest scenes, people would go to this drinks fridge and retrieve cans.

When Celia told Rosalind that Orlando was the author of the verses, she panicked at her disguise and began to strip, slipping off her braces and dropping her trousers to reveal the sock padding in her pants, as Celia hastily tried to hoist the trousers back up again.

Rosalind wanted to know more, so Celia asked her to take note “with good observance”, pointed with the two fingers of one hand at her own eyes and then extended them towards Rosalind, accompanying this gesture with an extra-textual “watch!” Celia then stood next to Rosalind and pointed at the downstage beam representing the tree under which she had found Orlando.

As with almost all performances of this play, Rosalind’s “…I am a woman. When I think, I must speak” amused the audience greatly.

The pair hid from Orlando and Jaques behind a stage left beam when the two men entered. But they could not help but react to what Orlando said.

Orlando confirmed that Rosalind was his love’s name, causing the two women to squee out loud. Rosalind reached out with her hand when Orlando defended her name, and had to be pulled back by Celia. Finally, when Orlando said that Rosalind was “Just as high as my heart” they both aww-ed at the cuteness of his expression.

Jaques placed his thumb and forefinger together and spied through the circle they formed when suggesting Orlando conned goldsmiths’ wives out of rings.

Once Jaques had left, Rosalind became determined to speak to Orlando. She adjusted her crotch and took a can from the fridge before addressing him “like a saucy lackey”.

Orlando appreciated her ready wit, shared a joint with her and fixed her with a contented smile. They hit it off instantly despite Rosalind’s disguise, which demonstrated that Orlando found her personality intrinsically attractive.

Orlando mentioned Rosalind’s overly-refined accent. This perturbed Rosalind, who had to hastily devise the story about her uncle teaching her to speak. But its delivery was strained.

Her insecurity in her disguise became noticeable when she took Orlando downstage, her hand on his shoulder, and pointed back at Celia, saying “I thank God I am not a woman” in a clumsy attempt at male bonding.

Rosalind said that Orlando had none of the marks of a man in love and bobbed around him pointing out his deficiencies, plucking his hat off complaining that he was “point-device” in his “accoutrements”.

She took another opportunity to bond with Orlando, pointing at Celia to comment on “one of the points in which women still give the lie to their consciences.”

Rosalind asked Orlando if he was responsible for the love verses strewn about the forest. He confessed that he was, and unpacked yet more pieces of paper from several pockets. Sheet followed sheet in a comical moment showing the excess of verse he still had about him.

Rosalind moved away from him, casting a doubtful glance back as she asked “But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?” It was a beautiful moment, showing the concern and insecurity behind Rosalind’s brave ‘performance’ as Ganymede.

Proclaiming love to be “merely a madness”, Rosalind said she would cure Orlando of this sickness by her impetuous response to his wooing. This, of course, required him to address ‘Ganymede’ as Rosalind. Orlando willingly agreed to do so, much to Rosalind’s delight.

Audrey the goatherd (Rosie Hilal again) wore sheepskin boots, a short skirt and a midriff-baring top. A utility belt hung from her waist in which she stored the tools of her trade (3.3).

Her conversation with Touchstone was spied on by Jaques, who hid behind a series of beams, effecting a token disguise by holding up two fronds.

Touchstone took a can from the fridge before telling Audrey that he hoped she was feigning like a poet when she said she was honest. He then knelt before her and attempted unsuccessfully to prize off her top and skirt.

Realising that he would have to go the honourable route, he got down on one knee and tried to utter the words “I will marry thee”. But this was so against his nature that it took an age before he could pronounce the words comprehensibly, mouthing a series of approximations to the key phrase before spitting it out properly.

Audrey was jubilant and ran off, leaving Touchstone to start on his speech about cuckolds. The actor broke out of character for a while and asked a man in the audience how long he had been married. Graham, for it was he, replied that he could not remember, but his wife would know. This caused great amusement, more perhaps than the adlibbing actor had planned. He said that he would now get back on text “for my own safety”. Touchstone then included Graham’s name in his speech, using it to replace the references or allusions in the text to a married man.

Audrey returned in a bridal veil and carrying a bouquet in time for the entry of Sir Oliver Martext (Dave Fishley), a magnificent spliff-toting Rastafarian, who insisted that someone should give Audrey away.

Jaques came forward but immediately set about dissuading Touchstone from marrying in this fashion. Sir Oliver concluded that none of them would “flout me out of my calling”, with the word “calling” clearly referring to the huge spliff that he bent backwards to draw on sending clouds of smoke into the air.

Orlando had not turned up at the promised time, so Celia sat and commiserated by holding hands with Rosalind, who was now wearing a waistcoat over a white vest (3.4).

An excited Corin told them of the approach of Silvius and Phoebe. Phoebe (Natalie Klamar) lambasted Silvius in an odd rural accent (3.5). Natalie Klamar delivered a focused and well-paced performance of Phoebe’s lengthy demolition of Silvius’s accusation that she was his executioner.

Rosalind came forward to castigate Phoebe, a chiding that the shepherdess willingly received. She ran her hands through her hair behind her head as she tangled with Ganymede’s eyes, making her attraction very plain.

Rosalind and Celia made a quick exit after telling Silvius where to find them.

Phoebe declared how much she was in love and told Silvius she needed him for an errand.

Describing Ganymede as “a peevish boy”, Phoebe launched into a lengthy conversation with herself, tussling back and forth between his good and bad points. She sat on the fridge and proceeded to bounce up and down, screwing up her eyes as she lingered over Ganymede’s physicality. Her rhythmic gyrations on the fridge became increasingly orgasmic as she inwardly fantasised. She concluded by asking Silvius to take a letter to the youth.

Object

After Rosalind’s mockery of Jaques, comparing him to a post, we soon saw that Rosalind was anything but a motionless object (4.1).

Jaques flounced off when Orlando approached, drawing full attention to the young man’s changed appearance. Rosalind must have had a profound effect on him when she had described the marks of a true lover, because Orlando had returned having reworked his appearance to conform in every detail to what a true lover should look like.

He had grown a straggly beard, his shoes were untied and his clothes characterised by the “careless desolation” of Rosalind’s idealised description. He also had half of Rosalind’s name written up each arm and had brought her a bouquet of flowers.

But Rosalind was annoyed at his tardiness and prowled around him with an agile dexterity. Overly excited as she described herself as “your Rosalind”, she sat behind Celia who corrected her enthusiasm by referring to the ‘real’ Rosalind “of a better leer than you”.

Rosalind bounded to her feet again, taking off her waistcoat to stand in just trousers and vest, leaning forward in a semi-crouch with her hands on her thighs and her rear sticking out. This was a combative posture, suggesting that Orlando was now engaged in another wrestling bout of a different nature. She continued to lean forward, jigging up and down as she challenged Orlando “Come, woo me, woo me…”

Orlando rushed forward aggressively, exclaiming “I would kiss before I spoke”. Rosalind immediately saw the problem of his enthusiastic response to her in her male disguise. She turned away from his advances saying “Nay…” and moved aside from Orlando before pulling at her fake crotch bulge to ensure it was visible and prominent. This restatement of her masculine disguise spoke of her puzzlement as to why Orlando was so forward with another male, something that perhaps gave her momentary doubts about his masculinity.

Notwithstanding these uncertainties, from that moment on Rosalind was more tactile towards Orlando as if acceding to his desire for greater physical intimacy.

Rosalind said she would not have Orlando, eliciting his dramatic “I die”. She lectured him about Troilus and Leander and how they had not died for love, and Orlando obediently sat leaning against the downstage beam to take notes.

Reverting to “a more coming-on disposition”, Rosalind got Celia to preside over a mock wedding. The bouquet that Orlando had brought became Rosalind’s bridal bouquet as the pair knelt and faced each other with Celia standing over them.

Rosalind asked Orlando how long he would have her. Answer came as he climbed on top of her saying “for ever and a day”. Once again Rosalind was uncomfortable with his readiness to be so physical with ‘Ganymede’. As he pinned her to the ground, his body between her thighs, she cried “No, no Orlando…” and extricated herself from his clutches. This time Orlando realised he had gone too far. He stood up and in deep embarrassment tried to conceal his arousal.

Rosalind bounced around in front of Orlando acting out the various ways that she would torment him once they were married.

Orlando left to dine with the Duke, allowing Rosalind to profess to Celia how much she was in love. Celia said she would sleep and exited, leaving Rosalind on stage to sing a song by torchlight. This sequence replaced scene 4.2. As she sang, female torch bearers entered and circled her, creating a very magical setting that foreshadowed the play’s conclusion.

Having Rosalind on stage at this point worked well, because when Celia reappeared, Rosalind was the first to speak in 4.3. It was as if the song had marked her dreaming the intervening two hours.

Orlando had not returned, but they were soon occupied by the letter from Phoebe that Silvius had brought to Rosalind. Silvius discovered to his chagrin that the letter was not a caustic chiding.

Oliver appeared through the forest wearing yellow waterproofs, and with a map and compass round his neck. He cheerily introduced himself, which was entirely credible, given that he had not been initially characterised as a cruel monster. This facilitated his present transformation into a good guy.

Celia approached Oliver and gave him directions to the sheepcote, pointing to its location on his map. He recognised the pair, reading out the description of them he had been given, presumably by Orlando, from a scrap of paper.

Oliver showed Rosalind the bloody napkin sent to her by Orlando, which he had stored behind the clear plastic of his map case. He recounted the story of how Orlando had found and rescued his brother in the forest, leaving to the end the great reveal that he was that brother.

Oliver explained how Orlando had used the napkin to bind the wound caused by the lioness’ bite, extracting it from the case and presenting it to Rosalind, who promptly fainted backwards.

Rosalind recovered consciousness, but was groggy and pleaded plaintively “I would I were at home”. She was helped to her feet by Oliver, but there was no indication that he had felt anything womanly about her body.

Rosalind flipped between confident assertion of her disguise and fatigued whining, as if giving up on the pretence. Oliver said she lacked a man’s heart, to which she replied by pleading “I do so, I confess it”, reaching out to him as if this admission would bring an end to her troubles.

But she then began overcompensating for her frailty by claiming to have counterfeited. She maintained this until Oliver said she should counterfeit to be a man, at which point she almost collapsed again, saying “So I do… I should have been a woman by right”, until Celia pulled her upright once more.

Audrey was very unhappy about the failed wedding (5.1). William (Mark Holgate again), a big man with a simple soul, arrived clutching a small, long-stemmed flower which he hoped to present to her. Touchstone dispatched him, telling him not to bother Audrey and issued a sequence of threats accompanied by drum beats. Far from being annoyed with Touchstone, Audrey had stood and watched all this admiringly and was now very impressed with him.

Orlando was surprised that his brother had fallen in love so quickly with Aliena. Oliver continued to cement his nice-guy persona by exclaiming “I love Aliena” with a joyous flourish. Orlando had his arm in a real bandage, indicating that Oliver’s story was correct and not a poetic subterfuge to impress Rosalind.

Rosalind asked Orlando if his brother had told him how she had counterfeited. Because Oliver had not seen through Rosalind’s disguise when helping her to her feet, Orlando’s “Ay, and greater wonders than that” clearly referred to Oliver’s love for Aliena and was not played as a winking hint to Rosalind that she had been rumbled.

Rosalind picked up on this and developed the theme, describing how the couple were in “the very wrath of love”. His brother’s joy was clearly making Orlando suffer, as he said how bitter it was to “look into happiness through another man’s eyes”.

Substitute

Rosalind asked him if she would no longer be an acceptable substitute for his Rosalind.

Orlando said “I can live no longer by thinking” and slowly offered his hand for her to shake. The shake done, Orlando turned and walked away from Rosalind, presumably never to return.

Orlando’s intended departure after his sad farewell to Rosalind became a very tense moment, as the entire future of their relationship hung in the balance. Instead of rushing towards an inevitable happy end, the play entered into a moment of crisis, reaching a crucial turning point in what was now an edgy drama. Rosalind had to draw something out of the bag to win Orlando back.

Rosalind’s next speech was received in pin-drop silence. She called to Orlando just as he disappeared, promising to “weary you then no longer with idle talking”. The nervous tension of the moment expressed itself in the way she rambled confusedly, desperately thinking on her feet in the face of the potential catastrophe of losing Orlando.

All this could be seen in the disconnectedness of her speech: “I speak not this that you should bear a good opinion of my knowledge… Neither do I labour for a greater esteem than may in some little measure draw a belief from you, to do yourself good and not to grace me.”

Orlando turned and approached Rosalind as she explained that she was a magician and could arrange for him to marry Rosalind the next day.

Phoebe, with Silvius trailing behind her, complained that Rosalind had read out the letter she had sent. This led into Silvius’s description of “what ‘tis to love”.

Rosalind’s repeated “And I for no woman” was addressed first to Phoebe and then to Orlando, expressing discouragement and encouragement in equal measure. Silvius and Phoebe ended up lying on the ground facing each other, continuing to tattle while Rosalind asked Orlando “Who do you speak to ‘why blame you me to love you?’” Orlando referred to the absent Rosalind, holding up the pendant he was still wearing, which as Rosalind’s gift, was the nearest thing he had to her.

Rosalind gave her instructions to the lovers to meet her again tomorrow, promising them various sorts of contentment.

Touchstone and Audrey met two of the Duke’s pages (Samuel Taylor & Karen Archer again), which turned into a song and dance centred on a new version of It Was a Lover and His Lass (5.3). The band played and the pair danced round each other while the revolve was decked out with strings of lights and other paraphernalia in preparation for the wedding. Paper lanterns descended to provide illumination.

Duke Senior and Orlando remarked how Rosalind was strangely familiar (5.4). Lines 5-25, the reappearance of Rosalind with her renewed promises to the lovers, were cut. Thus the initial conversation between the Duke and Orlando continued uninterrupted with Senior saying that the “shepherd boy” reminded him of his daughter while Orlando thought he was her brother.

Touchstone carried Audrey onstage on his back via the stage left walkway. In a nice touch, Audrey was now wearing a clown’s nose like Touchstone’s, symbolising her affinity with him.

The extended sequence about the seven degrees of the lie was cut. This has always looked like filler to allow the actor playing Rosalind to change into her wedding dress. But because this production included scene 5.3 and cut Rosalind’s re-entry at the start of this scene, there was plenty of time for Pippa Nixon to change and Touchstone’s quirky discourse was omitted.

However, when Touchstone gestured at Audrey and remarked on this “poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will”, William, who was definitely willing to take Audrey, lunged forward aggressively and had to be restrained. This demonstration of the unhappy consequences of William’s rejection introduced a dark undercurrent that would later be developed by Jaques.

Rosalind and Celia, now wearing simple white dresses, walked slowly together hand in hand accompanied by Hymen (Robin Soams again)  in his stag’s head costume. They parted hands as they approached a central beam and passed either side of it, possibly symbolising the downgrading of their childhood friendship in the face of their impending marriages.

Hymen reunited the Duke with his daughter. Rosalind embraced Orlando, who kissed her as he declared “… you are my Rosalind”. He took the pendant necklace from his neck and replaced it around Rosalind’s neck from whence it had originally come.

Phoebe realised she was not going to marry Ganymede. Hymen reined in the confusion and handed out four sets of his eponymous blue bands that the kneeling couples then used to bind their hands together. He addressed each couple in turn, the pair in question rising from their crouched position when mentioned.

Once the brief ceremony was finished there was general whooping and celebration, which was interrupted by the arrival of Jaques de Boys (Chris Jared again) with news of Duke Frederick’s conversion to goodness.

The Duke’s intention that everyone should fall into “rustic revelry” was delayed by Jaques departing to seek out Frederick. Not a fan of “dancing measures”, he breezed off the downstage left walkway. Rosalind offered him her bridal bouquet, which he paused to take with him. Thus was Jaques’ undercutting of the marriage festivities itself undercut by his own acceptance of Rosalind’s gift – perhaps signifying that he would be the next to be married?

A jig was danced at the end with all the couples joining in. Eventually, though, the central couple of Rosalind and Orlando were left by themselves. He held her aloft; they smooched and collapsed into the earthy ground as water rained down on them as if at a festival. They kissed and got themselves muddy in the joyous abandon of young love fulfilled.

The wrestling pit of the court where once Orlando had fought for his life was now supplanted by a muddy field of festival fun in which Orlando and Rosalind celebrated life.

Rosalind rose from the mire to deliver the epilogue, at the end of which the audience bade her farewell with great applause.

Unusually for a production of this play, Pippa Nixon received a solo curtain call in recognition of her portrayal of Rosalind.

Conclusions

Under Maria Åberg’s capable direction, the imagining of the Forest of Arden as a contemporary music festival worked very well. An association was made between the escapist freedom enjoyed by urban dwellers camping in fields, leaving their cares behind them to frolic in mud and listen to music, and the forest within the play that serves as a refuge from the crushing conformity of Duke Frederick’s court.

But the principal reason for the success of the production was Pippa Nixon’s outstanding performance as Rosalind. The abiding memory of her stage presence was its mixture of tenderness and freneticism. Her last minute rescue of her relationship with Orlando made her almost a heroic figure. All of which meant that her solo curtain call was thoroughly deserved.

Hamlet the Dane

Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford, 6 April 2013

The play was set within a fencing hall with the piste marked down the centre of the thrust stage. A raised platform at the rear contained a large Danish flag in one corner and a desk in the other. Foils hung from the wall of this office. A pitched roof with its skylights and fluorescent tubes hung above, and to the stage right side was a door with glass panels in its top half. A Latin inscription “mens sana in corpore sano” overlooked the whole.

A figure loitered briefly behind the door, removing a securing chain before entering and revealing himself to be Jonathan Slinger’s Hamlet in his dark mourning suit and glasses. He leant forward with his head in his hands, clearly distressed. After composing himself, he picked up a lath sword and moved to the piste where he began a fencing manoeuvre.

He fought his way down the piste against an imaginary opponent. As he reached the end, the sound of clashing foils was briefly heard. Hamlet turned back and uttered the play’s first line “Who’s there?”

The sound of swords was an echo returning back in time from the final fencing bout. The answer to Hamlet’s question was that his future, his fate and his destiny were calling him.

The watch appeared via side entrances and, becoming aware of their presence, Hamlet slipped away to sit in darkness at the front of the stage writing in a notebook. Behind him the first scene played out, beginning with Barnardo (Dave Fishley) and Francisco (Mark Holgate) on the Elsinore battlements (1.1).

The Ghost (Greg Hicks) appeared on the stage right walkway dressed in fencing whites, which made little sense of Horatio’s (Alex Waldmann) comment that it was wearing the same armour in which the king had fought the Norwegians. At this point the production’s conceit clashed with the text.

Some men in welders’ outfits came through the door and out the stage left exit, prompting Marcellus’ (Samuel Taylor) question about Denmark’s war preparations. Horatio’s answer, in which he referred to “landless resolutes”, was interrupted by the reappearance of the Ghost on the stage left side. Marcellus took a sword hanging from the wall, but the Ghost withdrew and reappeared at various entrances before finally disappearing.

Hamlet rose from his seated position as the court entered for 1.2. The others all wore black fencing masks and moved in slow, formal dance steps as they collected around the besuited Claudius (Greg Hicks again).

The king looked lean and wiry, a physical condition that gave his insistent firm manner a kind of low-level hectoring aggression. This undercurrent of potential violence was pacified by the obedience that his manner engendered in those around him.

His new wife Gertrude (Charlotte Cornwell) had something fusty and matronly about her, which suggested that Claudius was more interested in the throne than in her.

Claudius dispatched the ambassadors, Voltemand (David Fielder) and Cornelia (Natalie Klamar), to Norway.

Our first sight of Polonius (Robin Soans) hinted that, either by accident or design, he was similar in demeanour and tone to Claudius.

Hamlet stood and watched from downstage left so that his first line “A little more than kin, and less than kind” was spoken upstage to a distant Claudius. Hamlet was mildly dismissive but not wracked by anger or melancholy.

Hamlet’s deliberations on “seems” were slow and methodical. In fact he paused before saying “seems” a second time as if loathed to utter the word, but there was also a hint of suppressed rage and passion lurking just below the surface.

Claudius’s extended response seemed intent on wearing down Hamlet’s resistance and culminated in offering him a drink, holding the glass as if beckoning Hamlet to take it. When Hamlet consented to obey his mother, Claudius gave him the glass. He chanted “Be as ourself in Denmark” like a drinking song, with the rest of the court joining in, to jolly Hamlet along as he drank. A loud bang caused party streamers to fill the air as confetti scattered on the ground.

It was noticeable at this point that with the fencing piste already visible from the very start and with Claudius offering Hamlet a drink, the opening scenes of the play contained echoes of its fatal conclusion. The fencing piste on which Hamlet would be injured, and a drink, indistinguishable from the one with which Claudius would try to poison him, had already been presented to us.

Hamlet soliloquised about his “too too solid flesh” as the tension within him spilled out. He seemed to have reached a point of resignation in which, beyond fury, he was scoffing at his mother’s infidelity.

Hamlet was extremely happy to see Horatio and hugged him warmly. But the fervent emotion of Hamlet’s welcome showed him to be deriving solace rather than unalloyed joy from the reunion. He was like a man stranded on a desert island spying the smoke trail of a passing ship.

After the hug, they both crouched on the ground as Hamlet clasped Horatio’s hands in his, not wanting to let go even as the conversation continued.

Horatio broached the subject of the Ghost, and Hamlet’s questions in response flashed out rapidly and instantly as if he had turned his laser-sharp intellect onto a matter which had now fully gripped his attention. Within milliseconds of new data about his father’s ghost becoming available, he had formulated and delivered a fresh question designed to elucidate the next vital detail.

After the others had left, Hamlet vowed to see the Ghost for himself. Immediately afterwards, Ophelia (Pippa Nixon) appeared through the side door. She had short dark hair, wore a sensible skirt and an Icelandic pattern pullover, and was carrying a large pile of books.

On seeing Hamlet she let the book pile fall to the ground with a crash at her feet and ran over to him. They embraced and kissed warmly. Hamlet saw Laertes approach from the stage left side and quickly left so that the action of 1.3 could commence.

Laertes (Luke Norris) said that his “necessaries” were all stowed away, which suggested that the pile of books carried by the sensibly dressed Ophelia were her own.

A number of Icelandic pullovers, Horatio wore one two occasionally, introduced an element of localised naturalism into the production. This implied though that the Danish court had a preference for Icelandic rather than Faroese knitwear.

Laertes had just witnessed the ending of his sister’s tryst with Hamlet, which proved excellent grounds for his warnings to her about him.

Ophelia countered Laertes’ conditional statement “Then if he says he loves you…” with an emphatic extra-textual “He does, he does”.

Polonius lectured Laertes and again proved nimble-witted rather than sluggish and buffoonish. When he turned his attention to Ophelia, she meekly accepted his counsel.

Hamlet and friends encroached upon Ophelia and Polonius as they entered for 1.4. The sound of Claudius’s partying filtered through the door, prompting Hamlet’s sarcasm about this custom.

The Ghost appeared and walked across the front of the stage from stage left to right. Hamlet addressed it quizzically. The Ghost began to leave via the stage right walkway and beckoned Hamlet to follow. Horatio and Marcellus’ attempts at restraint caused Hamlet to take a foil from the wall and threaten them with it before he followed the Ghost off.

Grief

Hamlet appeared shortly afterwards from the stage right upstage entrance and the Ghost began to speak to him. The Ghost had taken off his mask, so that Hamlet could see it was his father. When the mysterious figure confirmed his identity, Hamlet reached out his hand to touch his father. His line “O God!” was replaced by a gut-wrenching moan, an inarticulate outpouring of grief and deep emotion that seemed more appropriate to this passionate and emotional Hamlet than a well-articulated phrase.

When Hamlet made contact with his father’s body it was as if an electric shock had passed between them. The touch became a grasp as Hamlet was consumed by the desire to know more. While reports about the Ghost had been intellectually analysed, this actual contact produced upheavals in Hamlet’s heart that drove his outward behaviour.

The stage brightened as the Ghost said he could scent the morning air, which hurried him to his concluding story about his murder by Claudius. He asked Hamlet to remember him by offering his fencing mask, which Hamlet accepted in astonishment.

Hamlet followed the Ghost to the stage left exit, so that when Hamlet was left alone he fell back onto a bench at the side from which he had to raise himself, requesting that his sinews “bear me stiffly up”.

He seized his notebook to record his father’s words. His reference “At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark” saw him point to the ground, thereby emphasising the naturalistic location of the play suggested by the flag, and partly by the knitwear.

Horatio and Marcellus caught up with Hamlet, who began to be cheerily sarcastic with them. This being a fencing salon, Hamlet easily found a foil on which to make the others swear not to divulge what they had seen. The Ghost’s voice echoed encouragement, also causing wind to scatter papers on the upstage desk.

In line with the RSC’s edition of the text, Hamlet referred to there being “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy”.

This led into a quite camp imitation of the ways in which he did not want his friends to discuss his “antic disposition”.

Hamlet pulled Horatio back and directed his “time is out of joint” lines directly at him, not at the audience as an aside.

Polonius briefed Reynaldo (Daniel Easton) on how to spy on Laertes (2.1). As Polonius rambled on through his unnecessarily punctilious instructions, Ophelia burst in and stood silently staring at her father. This interruption became the cause of Polonius’s forgetfulness and the reason he had to pick up the thread of the conversation.

Ophelia sat quietly until Reynaldo had been dispatched, after which Polonius was free to listen to her. She spoke impulsively fired by the urgency that had driven her to burst in on him. She acted out Hamlet’s pained gestures when he had confronted her and Polonius decided to inform the king.

Rosencrantz (Oliver Ryan) and Guildenstern (Nicolas Tennant) wandered across the stage in their coats and carrying suitcases as if they had just arrived at the king’s behest (2.2). Drinks were brought for them.

At first the king was not sure which of them was which and did not address them individually. But on bidding them farewell he made an effort and got them the right way round, much to Gertrude’s satisfaction.

Polonius hurried to see the king and told him that he had found the cause of Hamlet’s madness, then ushered in the ambassadors who brought the good news of Fortinbras’ arrest. The king spoke with the ambassadors upstage, leaving Gertrude alone downstage sat on a chair looking neglected.

Ophelia was kept outside by her father and then ushered in and ordered to stand on a particular spot, receiving her cue to read from the letter Hamlet had sent. She snapped obediently into position and did as she was told.

Ophelia’s unquestioning deference meant that when Polonius told the king about his instructions to Ophelia to shun Hamlet, we understood that she had obeyed him.

As Polonius broached the outline of their further plot to “loose” Ophelia to Hamlet, the man himself entered, wearing an untied fencing outfit and mask. He sat down reading a sheet of paper and Polonius was left to deal with him alone.

Hamlet’s comical appearance made his response “words, words, words” even more funny. Further questioning prompted him to screw the paper up and throw it at Polonius when describing the slanders it contained.

Hamlet was jovially sarcastic, particularly when he walked backwards like a crab.

Polonius left in disgust clearing the way for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet greeted them and engaged in some bawdy play, simulating sex with Guildenstern who had spread his legs to indicate how he was one of Fortune’s “privates”.

Hamlet’s initial jollity soon gave way to suspicious questioning of their motives for visiting him. He referred to the “rights of our fellowship” and bared his forearm, as did the others, to reveal tattoos that witnessed some kind of pact between them.

Talking of having lost all his mirth, Hamlet’s reference to “this most excellent canopy” took on a comical note when he gestured upwards at the suspended roof. The drollery of his earlier appearance in the fencing suit indicated that he was not completely consumed by melancholy.

Hamlet’s philosophical observations did not hang like dense clouds of thought in the air, but seemed more to be exercises in rhetoric designed to convince others of his profundity. This was the conundrum: he had reason to be sad, but we also knew he was trying to affect sadness, so which was his real self?

Hamlet was genuinely interested in the news that the players had arrived and the production kept in his question as to why they were travelling, but without the boys’ company references.

Hamlet and companions sat on a bench and pretended to be engaged in conversation so they could make fun of mock Polonius. They formed a tight-knit little gang reminiscent of what must have been their previous closeness.

Hamlet stood to mock Polonius with his remarks about Roscius and Jephthah and then greeted the players. He congratulated a female player on being “nearer to heaven”, but without the final “by the altitude of a chopine”. Without the final part, Hamlet seemed not be commenting on an increase in height but an increase in age and proximity to death.

Hamlet launched into the Aeneas speech until it was picked up expertly by the First Player (Cliff Burnet).

Left alone after the impromptu performance, Hamlet half-laughed at himself, drawing out a long guttural moan of self accusation as he described himself as a rogue and peasant slave.

His admiring description of the player’s skill displayed much of the passion that he claimed he was unable to transform into action.

He spoke “John-a-dreams” slowly and affected a shambling gait with the self-deprecating implication that he was stupid.

His question to the audience “Am I coward?” did not provoke any response, though his subsequent lines were delivered as if he had in fact been directly accused. He foamed with growing anger at his supposed critics, descending into an overwrought display, the stupidity of which he suddenly became aware of, declaring himself to be “an ass”.

He hit upon his plan, but one he must have formulated earlier as he had previously told the players about the lines he wanted inserting into Gonzago.

Claudius and his court entered and gathered round Hamlet as he explained how he would use the play to trap the king, so that when he said “the play’s the thing” the cast were stood around like actors waiting for their cue, Hamlet’s final line in the scene.

As Hamlet departed, the king spoke with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who had been unable to fathom Hamlet’s troubles (3.1). Ophelia sat behind them on the raised stage staring at the ground beneath her dangling feet, obviously unhappy at the part she was expected to play in the plan.

The king and Polonius hid behind the glass panel door, while Ophelia sat on the stage right bench with her box of reminiscences and the book given to her by Polonius.

Antic

As he approached, Hamlet could be heard offstage singing Happiness by Ken Dodd, a completely incongruous song in terms of the speech that followed, but one that perhaps fitted his desire to appear antic to others.

After the first few lines of the song, he caught sight of Ophelia and sat down at the edge of the platform and launched into the iconic soliloquy. This lurch into seriousness caught Ophelia’s attention, but even here Hamlet applied a lightness of touch. He lay on his side when expressing his desire for sleep, as if he found the concept of the “sleep of death” somehow amusing.

His sudden shift from a song of joy into a melancholic disquisition did not ring true and undermined the sentiments of his soliloquy. This was a good way of subverting what has become an all-too familiar speech.

He was sat on what would later become the stage for the players, and this was very much a conscious performance for the benefit of Ophelia, who was present throughout. His only genuinely heartfelt sentiment was his reference to her right at the end when he approached Ophelia, talking of her “orizons”.

Ophelia rose and thrust her box of remembrances at Hamlet. He took a letter from the box and made blah-blah noises as he contemptuously pretended to read its soppy contents. He ditched the box on the ground, informing her “I never gave you aught”. Screwing one of the papers into a ball he threw it at her face.

His mood flipped into aggression, telling her to get to a nunnery while ringing a large hand bell. He moved upstage to ask where her father was, but without there being any real indication that Polonius was spying on them. This was perhaps Hamlet’s instincts informing him.

He smeared Ophelia’s face with dirt taken from beyond the stage blocks, complaining of women’s “paintings”. He completed her humiliation by stripping off her pullover and skirt, leaving her vulnerably semi-clad. He also cut off some of her hair with a small knife.

Polonius and later the king re-entered. Ophelia borrowed her father’s jacket and told him (not in soliloquy) about Hamlet’s great overthrown mind and began collecting up the scattered contents of the box.

Claudius was clearly ruffled by the threat to himself posed by this aggression, and had already decided to send Hamlet to England.

At first the players ignored Hamlet as tried to begin his talk on acting (3.2). He repeated “Speak the speech…” several times to no avail before finally ringing a bell to secure their attention. He stood on a bench by the stage left doorway to give his lesson, illustratively sawing his hands.

Referring disparagingly to the groundlings “capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise”, he looked to the people in the RST stalls immediately in front of him on the stage left side of the thrust, a joke which the whole audience seemed to appreciate.

As the court gathered for the performance, Hamlet instructed Horatio to observe Claudius and handed him a Polaroid camera with which to capture the hoped-for guilty look.

When Claudius entered he was wearing a fencing mask, possibly that belonging to Hamlet’s father. It was removed from his face just before he and Gertrude reached the bench that had been set aside in front of the raised stage. The others sat at the sides to watch, while Hamlet remained downstage.

Confident that events were under his control, Hamlet was boldly sarcastic and disrespectful to Claudius and Polonius.

In a great piece of realistic staging, Hamlet’s approaches to Ophelia and joking attempt to sit by her were indignantly rebuffed. After all, at their last encounter he had insulted and humiliated her. Reconciliation at this point would have seemed bizarre.

The dumb show was played out on the stage, from which the desk had now been removed, with a red curtain at its sides. The Player King and Queen (Cliff Burnett & Karen Archer) embraced in period costume, with the King wearing an oversized paper crown that towered upwards.

The poisoner appeared with a large phallic baguette dangling from his waist and gestured his covetousness of the queen and also of the castle on the painted backdrop. The gentle music of this scene changed to heavy metal as a figure in black modern dress with a skull pattern on her top entered to represent ‘poison’. She sat on the Player King’s chest to symbolise his murder.

After the poisoning the Player Queen tore apart a cob loaf, which she had thus far clasped to her bosom symbolising her heart, at which point the poisoner raised the phallic baguette in front of him and moved to embrace her.

The prologue was spoken in a vaguely Japanese style before the curtain opened to reveal the Player King and Queen sat on a sofa. Hamlet became ever more excited in his comments as the play reached the key theme of remarriage.

The flirtatious exchange between Hamlet and Ophelia with its references to “groaning” was cut.

The poisoner wore a suit identical to that of Claudius. He killed the Player King in imitation of Claudius’s crime, causing the king to rise from the bench in anger. He called for some light, to which Horatio responded by flashing the Polaroid camera in his face to capture his expression.

As Claudius stormed away and the guards arrested and led away the players, Hamlet and Horatio took to the stage. Hamlet, illuminating his face from below with a table lamp, sang the ditty about the “stricken deer” as Horatio snapped him with the camera. The interval came as the lights went out on the scene.

The second half began with Hamlet and Horatio continuing their conversation until they were interrupted by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who told Hamlet that his mother had sent for him. Hamlet stood on the bench and twisted his feet from side to side creeping up and down it in a muted victory dance.

Hamlet was now effusive and jokingly reassured Rosencrantz that he still loved him “by these pickers and stealers”, talking to him as if he were a baby. But when Horatio brought the recorders, Hamlet became vitriolic in his denunciation of Guildenstern, standing close and speaking “though you fret me you cannot play upon me” directly into his face.

He turned instantly on Polonius, switching his full attention to him and completely forgetting Guildenstern, in order to play his cloud-watching game with the old man.

However, that done, he had calmed down enough to talk in soliloquy about how he would not harm his mother.

The king instructed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to escort Hamlet to England, and they received a wad of notes in payment for their work (3.3). Polonius announced his intention to listen in on Hamlet’s conversation with Gertrude, after which Claudius had a few moments alone.

Greg Hicks clasped his hands in front of him and physically wilted from the strident, confident man he had so far presented, as his Claudius bemoaned the rankness of his offence.

Hamlet walked across the back and glanced sideways when he spied the king. He took a foil and approached the kneeling figure. Pointing the foil directly at Claudius’s head, Hamlet considered striking him before realising that this would be “hire and salary, not revenge”. He brought the foil close to his chest before vowing to kill Claudius at a more opportune time.

Polonius hid behind the half-drawn curtain on the raised stage as Gertrude prepared to receive her son (3.4). Hamlet appeared with a bouquet of flowers. His mother sat on the sofa (brought down from the Mousetrap stage during the post-performance chaos) roughly stage left. Hamlet positioned himself on the bench stage right to ask “what’s the matter?”

Their bitter exchange riled Hamlet into something approaching anger. Responding to Gertrude’s threat “I’ll set those to you that can speak”, Hamlet took a sword from the wall and pointed it at Gertrude, prompting her fearful cries. This caused Polonius to shout for help and Hamlet responded rapidly by dashing towards him. Hamlet tore the curtain down on top of the unseen figure and stuck his sword straight through his bulk. The curtain was unwrapped to show the dead Polonius sat in a chair.

Approaching his mother again, Hamlet took the recently snapped Polaroid of Claudius and a photo of his father from his pocket to show her this “counterfeit presentment of two brothers”.

Hamlet tore off the sheet covering the sofa when complaining of Gertrude living “in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed”, the item serving as a convenient approximation to bed sheets.

Hamlet was transformed and transfixed when his father’s Ghost appeared again upstage left, which perhaps helped him to be kinder to his mother, hugging her as he tried to convince her to cool her affection for Claudius.

When he was finished with Gertrude, Hamlet dragged Polonius out of the chair and sideways off the raised stage.

Threat

Gertrude was still crouched face down and sobbing when Claudius entered, giving real meaning to his “There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves” (4.1). Claudius again interpreted news of Hamlet’s rash actions as a direct threat to him. He sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find his son.

There followed a brilliantly inventive, exceedingly funny and wonderfully intuitive piece of staging.

Hamlet entered through the raised stage and descended the steps to the sofa carrying a mug of tea with the bag string draped over the lip. He sat and played with the teabag string before announcing “Safely stowed” with a self-satisfied exhalation (4.2).

Looking back at this sequence, it seemed perfectly logical that after carrying a heavy lifeless body a considerable distance around the castle, Hamlet would have needed a cuppa to unwind.

This state of relaxation informed his sarcastic answers to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s frantic questions about Polonius’s location. In the darkness it was difficult to see Polonius’s blood on his fencing suit.

He was particularly indignant at being “demanded of a sponge!” His semi-answer to their questions indicated that Polonius was “with the king”, as Hamlet indicated the King of heaven by pointing skyward. He insulted Claudius by describing him as a thing of nothing and then made his escape.

Hamlet was brought before Claudius, marching obediently but mockingly behind Guildenstern, all this still in the white fencing suit he had worn since his encounter with his father’s ghost.

He described the “convocation of worms” that were eating Polonius and outlined the fish/worm anecdote. However many times it is staged, Hamlet’s “He will stay till you come” never fails to be amusing, and this time was no exception.

At the very moment Claudius began to tell Hamlet that he was to be sent to England, Ophelia rushed silently into the room but was restrained and escorted out. But she had enough time to see Hamlet’s now fully-illuminated, blood-stained clothes. Her look of horror evidenced her realisation that Hamlet was responsible for her father’s death.

Hamlet’s response “For England!” saw him skip and twist the loose ends of his fencing suit in an imitation of Morris dancing.

Hamlet taunted Claudius by addressing him as his mother. He completed the explanation of his logic by kissing Claudius on the cheek, as he would his mother.

Claudius’s malevolent pronouncement of “the present death of Hamlet” was followed by the removal of the back wall of the raised stage to reveal a white backdrop with a single, distant tree in front of which the Norwegian army appeared (4.4).

The soldiers moved through this new upstage opening and began taking up the boards of the main stage platform to reveal dark soil underneath. Eventually a rough T shape remained with the fencing piste running the length of the stage still in place, but surrounded on all sides by dirt.

Hamlet appeared wearing a light-coloured suit for his journey and questioned the Norwegian Captain (Dave Fishley again) about his army’s mission. The “two thousand souls” line was given to the Captain.

Pondering this afterwards, Hamlet was inspired to act decisively after seeing such extensive preparations for a fight over nothing. But at the same time he displayed a hint of the quiet resignation that would characterise some of his subsequent statements.

Ophelia burst in on Gertrude and Horatio wearing a white wedding dress with a veil and clutching a bridal bouquet in front of her (4.5). She rushed excitedly to the top of the piste to ask “Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?”

This could be interpreted two ways. The wedding dress and her previously avowed love for Hamlet meant she could have been referring to the prince. But it was also possible that, as a bride waiting to be escorted to the altar, she was expecting to see her father perform that honour.

But the overriding impression was that this sequence, normally about Ophelia’s reaction to her father’s death, was here transformed into an expression of her thwarted but unabated passion for Hamlet.

She muttered “they’re not ready” as she looked at the overturned benches at the sides of the piste and set them upright. She handed her bouquet to Horatio and set out small bunches of flowers on the benches as if they were wedding guests, before reclaiming the bouquet once more. Looking up at the imagined altar, she crossed herself.

Claudius appeared and Ophelia hugged him warmly. She set off down the piste, her arm bowed out for her father to accompany her, as she sang ‘Tomorrow is St Valentine’s Day’. Once at the end, she knelt as if before the altar.

She held out her hand as if holding that of her groom and started the ‘By Gis and by Saint Charity’ song, speaking the girl’s part, then shuffled sideways and put her opposite hand out to sing the boy’s part. This was slightly incongruous as the song recounted how a lad had not fulfilled his promise to marry a maid he had bedded.

As the others commented in wonderment, Ophelia continued in a world of her own. She stood up straight and looked out into the audience as if still waiting for Hamlet to turn up, pronouncing a hopeful “We must be patient” before departing with more distracted remarks, throwing her bouquet over her shoulder. A sad-looking Gertrude picked up the bouquet and kept it.

Claudius told of the imminent arrival of Laertes from France. Just then a violent commotion could be heard outside, prompting Claudius to call for his guards. A loud noise of an outer door being broken open brought real tension, so that when Laertes and his soldiers burst in, a sense of danger existed that was not diminished by the men with guns being told to wait outside.

Laertes himself was not armed and did not direct any weapon against Claudius, but the presence of his supporters outside the door was a constant reminder that he was capable of forcing compliance with his angry demands.

Ophelia’s second appearance saw her still wearing her wedding dress and her obvious madness appalled Laertes. Ophelia hugged her brother saying “Fare you well my dove”.

After encouraging everyone to sing “a-down a-down”, she took a foil from the wall and pointed it at Claudius, causing him some momentary fear, until she dropped the sword’s point to the ground and walked in a circle trailing it behind her.

Returning to where she had started, she briefly held the sword upright close in front of her as if beginning a fencing bout. She then removed the guard from the blade tip and clasped her other hand round its now bare point, cutting into her palm until it was smeared with her blood.

She took her bloodied hand and began to daub lines of blood on people’s foreheads, proclaiming each daub to be a flower.

This staging really tore up the rule book on how to portray Ophelia. The complete reimagining of the character at this point was exhilarating to behold.

She smeared Claudius’s face, describing the mark as rue. He had to wear his with a difference, so she made an additional red mark that differentiated him from the others.

Ophelia spoke her final song rather than singing it and left the assembled company stunned, an opportunity that Claudius seized on to further assuage Laertes.

A woman messenger brought a letter from Hamlet to Horatio, which he read aloud before setting off to prepare for Hamlet’s unexpected arrival (4.6).

Claudius showed himself to be a practised liar when he told Laertes that Hamlet’s popularity was the reason he had not put him on trial for Polonius’s murder (4.7).

The calm that the success of this lie produced in Claudius was short-lived as a letter arrived from Hamlet in which he informed the king he was returning. Claudius exclaimed “From Hamlet!” with utter incredulity.

Working together and thinking quickly, the pair hit upon their twin-track plan to murder Hamlet. Claudius walked up and down as he fretted about a backup plan should the envenomed sword not work, eventually hitting on the poisoned chalice.

Gertrude interrupted them, obliging Claudius to stow Hamlet’s letter hastily away in his inside jacket pocket. Claudius’s “How now, sweet queen!” was said with hasty embarrassment and fear that their plan might be discovered.

Gertrude’s poetic description of Ophelia’s death, which realistically no one could have witnessed in such lengthy detail without coming to assistance, enraged Laertes further to Claudius’s benefit.

After discussing the forthcoming burial and joking around, the two gravediggers, the younger a female (Rosie Hilal), set about their work (5.1). The older one (David Fielder again) used a spade to shift earth at the downstage foot of the piste, uncovering skulls as Hamlet and Horatio appeared in silhouette at the back of the stage as if coming from a great distance.

Hamlet saw the first skull and commented briefly on it (lawyerly references omitted) before sitting cosy by the Gravedigger, engaging him in conversation and a battle of wits. He seemed impressed by the man’s punctilious precision. The joke about Hamlet’s madness not being noticed in England was well-received.

The production was taking a well-earned comic breather before the final onslaught.

Favour

Hamlet took Yorick’s skull and its jawbone fell to the ground, prompting his remark that it was “quite chapfallen”. He handed it to an audience member at the front of the stalls, telling them to take it to “my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come”. This had the effect of underscoring the humour in his remark, rather than its tragic bite.

Hamlet’s mind wandered onto his consideration of how Alexander might have been turned into a bung in a beer barrel, after which the funeral procession appeared in silhouette through the rear entrance, causing Hamlet and Horatio to move to the stage right side to observe.

Laertes bitterness showed in his scorn of the Priest (John Stahl) who had not given Ophelia the full ceremony. His reference to his sister told Hamlet that the funeral was that of Ophelia.

Ophelia, still in her white gown, was laid in a shallow recess in the soil at the foot of the piste, but remained visible to the audience. Gertrude stood over her to spread “sweets to the sweet”, placing on Ophelia’s grave the bouquet that she had discarded in her madness. This symbolically linked the marriage Gertrude had hoped to see between Ophelia and her son with the present funeral.

Laertes stepped down and lifted Ophelia up to embrace her lifeless form, barking out his instructions to bury him beside her under mountains of soil.

Hamlet came forward and tussled with Laertes on the piste, mocking his actions by tossing soil over himself, before storming off.

Ophelia remained in full view laid out in her grave throughout the remainder of the performance.

Hamlet recounted the full story of his escape to Horatio (5.2). He was quite relaxed and enjoyed discussing Claudius’s failed attempt to have him killed, which could be seen from his nonchalant description of the overblown language in the commission given to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and in his dismissal of his former friends “They are not near my conscience”.

Osric (Michael Grady-Hall) was a picture in his schoolboyish cap and blazer, which bore a miniature Danish flag on the breast pocket. Hamlet enjoyed making him take his cap off and then put it on again.

All was jollity until Osric mentioned that Hamlet had to “vouchsafe the answer” to the king’s wager. Hamlet’s mood seemed to change. He replied “How if I answer ‘no’?” with a muted earnestness that was completely unlike his previous quips at Osric’s expense.

Hamlet agreed to the wager and the seriousness he had lurched into with his question to Osric now informed his quiet resignation in the face of his fate.

The stage was swept in preparation for the fencing bout. Hamlet and Laertes met and were reconciled.

Hamlet had to change into a proper fencing suit, which he did in full view of everyone. The king brought a fencing mask for Hamlet. When he clapped eyes on it, the movements of everyone else on stage slowed down to emphasise the specialness of the moment: Hamlet realised that the mask was the one that his father had given to him. Once he had taken the mask, the action speeded up again to normal pace.

Laertes took one sword and pronounced it too light. Claudius took the poisoned and unbated one from the wall, which was then passed to Laertes.

Claudius stood to their left with the wine, while Gertrude was positioned to the right. They fenced up and down the piste, which had been visible since the start of the performance.

Hamlet scored his first point prompting Claudius to put the pearl into the glass, which he had to set aside when Hamlet refused it. Gertrude approached Hamlet to wipe his brow and then took the poisoned glass and drank from it despite Claudius’s protestations.

After the third pass Laertes charged at Hamlet cutting him under the right arm with the envenomed blade, causing Hamlet to drop his own foil. Osric wrestled Laertes’ sword from him, which Hamlet then snatched from Osric. Laertes and Hamlet wrestled over the sword and Laertes eventually cut his hand on the blade, thereby poisoning himself.

The queen fell to the ground and announced she had been poisoned, upon which the guards secured the doors.

The stricken Laertes collapsed in agony, blaming everything on the king. Claudius, discovering the doors locked, backed himself against the stage right side wall in terror. Hamlet approached Claudius and cut him behind the ear with the poisoned sword.

Hamlet dragged Claudius up onto the raised stage and, handing him the poisoned cup, demanded that he drink it off. Claudius paused, looked down at Hamlet, who had squatted on the ground in front of the stage, and complied.

Hamlet began to clap Claudius slowly as if this were some kind of grotesque performance. This was a direct echo of Claudius’s initial bullying of Hamlet to accept a drink and join in the wedding festivities. Claudius collapsed in pain and died too. He was soon followed by Laertes.

The presence of the dead Ophelia at the foot of the piste meant that each successive dead body was effectively adding to a formation of onstage bodies that had begun with her.

Hamlet took the royal crown from Claudius and placed it on his own head. He began to convulse as the potent poison gripped him. He slumped to the ground, but still had some strength left to prevent Horatio for drinking from the cup, which he had taken from the table.

Horatio saw the approach of Fortinbras, which prompted Hamlet to rise, remove the crown from his head and give his support to the Norwegian. He stood as he exclaimed “He has my dying voice. The rest is silence”.

He staggered down the piste. When he reached the end, he glimpsed Ophelia and a brief flash of joy traced across his face before he buckled and fell dead.

This raised the interesting possibility that he might have died before he set off down the piste and saw Ophelia. His final walk was one after death in which he had the privilege of glimpsing his love, who would have been theatrically absent to everyone else as the fencing piste and Ophelia’s grave were naturalistically two distant locations. Or alternatively, his glimpse of Ophelia could have been a fevered vision in his mind that occurred as he was dying. Either way, in performance it was incredibly powerful.

Alarm bells rang and the sprinkler system dousing the entire stage in water as Fortinbras (Chris Jared) appeared dramatically in semi-silhouette on the raised stage after which the stage went dark and the performance ended.

Conclusions

The production focused on the characters of Hamlet and Ophelia rather than foregrounding the play’s treatment of philosophical issues. Nor was this a production aching with relevance to contemporary society.

This was evidenced by the fact that “2B” became a performance that Hamlet staged for Ophelia rather than a genuine expression of his sentiment. It thereby mockingly subverted that soliloquy’s iconic status.

Some Hamlets examine the here and now. This one looked modern, very much in the “now”, but its ostensible Danish setting prevented it from commenting on the “here”. The costumes referenced the current fashion for Nordic Noir television, cleverly avoiding obvious and very specific Faroese pullovers in favour of “lopapeysa” garments with an Icelandic yoke pattern.

With nothing much to say about the human condition, the production became a portrait of one man’s condition, Jonathan Slinger’s Hamlet.

His sheer emotionality was astonishing, making him much more than a simple vehicle for philosophical or political debate. He demonstrated a remarkable degree of passion, an appealing trait evidenced by his tactility and tone of voice.

But the production also deliberately rewrote the rulebook on how to present Ophelia, gleefully rejuvenating her character and breaching the dull limits of her standard depiction.

She popped up where not expected: having a visible tryst with her lover Hamlet, causing her father to lose train of thought and trying to speak to Hamlet before he was sent to England.

Our current understanding of insanity is different to that which framed the conception of Ophelia’s specifically female madness in the original text. With astounding boldness, the production completely updated the concept to include cutting and self harm.

As well as mourning her father, this Ophelia was insane with the desire to be married to Hamlet. The flowers she had gathered were carefully positioned like wedding guests. Instead of handing them out, as in the standard staging, she cut herself with a large blade and then smeared her own blood on people’s faces while talking of floral symbolism.

All in all, this was a production that generated lots of happiness…

King John in love

King John, Swan Stratford, 8 June 2012

The stage was covered with a greyish patterned carpet, reminiscent of a chain hotel, decorated with ugly potted plants. A wide set of steps led up to a back wall consisting of party balloons held behind a net.

Pippa Nixon’s character was an amalgam of Philip the Bastard and Hubert. In the programme she was simply called The Bastard, but given that her own name Pippa is a short form of Philippa, the female form of Philip, this review will refer to her character as Pippa.

The performance began with Pippa in her multi-coloured leggings and blue hoodie trying to play Land of Hope and Glory on a banjo (1.1). She experimented to find the right notes and then got us to join in singing. She commented on how we were doing, pointing out the talent of a group of ladies in the stage left part of the ground floor.

The tune then played out over speakers as King John crowned himself at the top of the carpeted stairs.

Chatillon was an effete Frenchman in a pastel pink suit, who brought news of the French claim to the crown of England. The modern setting meant that the King’s rebuke was deliberately given contemporary resonances with British patriotism and xenophobia.

Siobhan Redmond was glorious as Eleanor and brought her habitual relish to the part.

Robert and Pippa entered so that the King could resolve their inheritance dispute. Robert looked bookish in complete contrast to the bright, relaxed Pippa. She impishly mocked his claim, repeatedly saying there was no reason for it “except to get the land”.

Pippa accompanied l. 98 “Your tale…” with a bawdy gesture. Robert tried to make a similar gesture in return when describing his mother’s indiscretion but could only do so half-heartedly, again emphasising the difference in their characters, Pippa being the lustier.

Eleanor took a liking to Pippa and saw a resemblance in attitude between her and Richard the Lionheart. Pippa decided to forego her inheritance to follow Eleanor who validated Pippa’s warrior woman status by declaring herself “I am a soldier…” In essence, one female warrior invited another to follow her. King John knighted Pippa using a fountain pen.

Pippa’s soliloquy on posh, upmarket society was funny as she mocked the accents and pretensions of those among whom she was now moving.

Lady Faulconbridge’s motorbike could be heard offstage before she entered in her leathers.

Lewis, with leisurewear sunglasses on his head like a playboy, spoke to the boy Arthur borrowing some of the King Philip’s lines to explain the situation regarding the crown in patronising fashion with explanatory noises (2.1). Austria knelt before Arthur who forgave him for killing Richard the Lionheart.

King Philip made a grand entrance loudly proclaiming the preparations for war. Chatillon entered in the same pastel pink outfit with his suitcase to bring news of the impending English invasion.

King John and his party entered above. He showed a great deal of closeness with his mother Eleanor. When she set upon Constance he adlibbed “C’mon Mum”. Pippa was still in her leggings but now wore them with a low-cut top under a black jacket.

King Philip set out the claim that would make Arthur king of England. King John took off his crown, only to replace it again before he patronisingly offered Arthur a Kinder Egg saying “I’ll give thee more than e’er the coward hand of France can win”. This was picked up in Constance’s rebuke to Eleanor’s “grandam” comment saying that he would get in return “a plum, a cherry and a fig”.

In response, Arthur was very realistic in acting fed up at being the centre of so much fuss.

Eleanor produced a piece of paper that demonstrated Arthur could not be heir to the throne and Constance screwed it up.

Theatre

Mics were brought on stage for the siege of Angiers to enable kings to address its people. Lots of townsmen stood in the galleries and spoke in pairs. King John pointed to the crown to underline his claim. Pippa joined in at l.350 to say “now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel”. She had fun pointing out that the townspeople were standing “As in a theatre, whence they gape and point at your industrious scenes and acts of death.” She suggested that the two kings join together to attack the city.

The town chorus also spoke the words of Hubert (his other lines transferred to Pippa) suggesting the marriage between Lewis and Blanche, who stood on the steps. Lewis was not sure as his reply to “can you love this lady” was “Nay…” which initially sounded negative until followed up with the rest.

Pippa’s aside about “vile lout” Lewis fitted well with her impish female trickster characterisation.

Blanche’s first words were faltering and not understood by the others until clarified. She was bit of a blonde bimbo.

The wedding party lined up for a photo on the step. Pippa stood with a camera as they froze. Underlining her significance as a central character, she was able to freeze time and soliloquise about the “Mad world” that Commodity was able to turn away from a good war.

The wedding then took place. The mics were again used so that King John could sing I Say a Little Prayer in duet with Philip. The two kings chest bumped each other as Lewis and Blanche recreated a scene from the film Dirty Dancing to the sound of Time of My Life. King Philip had a great time and ended up taking his shirt off to reveal his vest.

Silent messengers were rebuked by distraught Constance (2.2). They wore party hats as they had just come from the wedding party to tell her of the arrangement that would disinherit Arthur.

The wedding party crashed down the stairs but stopped before reaching the ground where Constance sat and bewailed her misfortune (3.1). King Philip talked of pawning her his majesty while still in his vest.

The arrival of the female Pandulph (a Mary Portas figure) was announced with “Here comes the holy legate of the pope”. This was repeated so that everyone bowed and moved to the sides to make way for her. She was cast as party pooper. Her comment about the kings being the “anointed deputies of heaven” was sarcastic given their dishevelment, party hats and vests.

King John’s response to her question was standard piece of brash anticlericalism. Pandulph held up her ring to excommunicate King John. King Philip, realising he was being asked to start a war with a relative by marriage, pleaded for peace.

The cool and aloof Pandulph’s description of the church’s curse as “a mother’s curse” was significant, as it was delivered by a female character.

In general, this production’s use of female characters for male ones enabled it to revel in these ambiguities.

In contrast to her initial faltering speech, Blanche was very eloquent in her dilemma. She faced choosing between the two factions lined up either side of the stage, saying “Which is the side that I must go withal?”

Pippa entered down the steps with a Sainsbury’s bag from which she retrieved Austria’s severed head (3.2). Eleanor was with the captured Arthur. Hubert’s lines were given to Pippa. This meant that King John’s declaration of devoted friendship (with its mention of love) began to look like sexual attraction. He gave her a necklace as a love token. Having a woman on the receiving end of these very words gave them a different significance, in effect a sideways comment on the original text’s male intimacy. King John instructed Pippa to kill Arthur.

Constance’s grief at the loss of Arthur was excellent and passionate (3.3). But if this production was all about Pippa, then was Constance’s grief sidelined and made less significant?

Constance pulled down her hair as indicated in the text’s implied stage directions and was told by King Philip to put it up again. Her description of Arthur as “my food, my all the world” was incredibly moving.

Pandulph gave Lewis a lesson in political tactics, saying that King John would kill Arthur and thereby pave way for his own claim to the throne.

Pippa got ready with the executioner to put out Arthur’s eyes (4.1). Her line “His words do take possession of my bosom” originally spoken by Hubert, was very significant. Spoken by a female character, whose bosom was very much in evidence in her low-cut top, constantly reinforcing her femininity, these lines made her seem very female in her maternal compassion for a troubled child.

The prospect of the boy being injured was very shocking. The executioner was called and Arthur offered no resistance when being placed on the block. But the iron had gone cold.

This sequence came just after Constance’s powerful speech about her maternal care for Arthur and so could not help but be influenced by it. Pippa relented and this act of mercy looked right and in character. At this point the interval came.

Interval

The second half (4.2) began with Pippa singing “Civilian” by Wye Oak. King John recrowned himself at the top of the steps, at which point confetti snowed down from the flies, poppers popped and the dozens of latex balloons broke free and cascaded down the steps onto the stage. A neon sign “for god and england” lit up at the back.

King John put the crown on twice, either to make a point about the definitiveness of the gesture, or to signify that he was donning it for the second time.

The nobles demanded Arthur’s freedom. Pippa entered and whispered to John the lie that she had killed him. Pembroke’s line very cutting “Indeed we heard how near his death he was before the child himself felt he was sick”. King John heard of the deaths of Eleanor and Constance.

The sequence involving Peter the Prophet was cut, but Pippa did talk (as Hubert) about the “five moons” that had been seen by people foretelling bad things because of the death of Arthur.

King John argued with Pippa claiming that the murder was her idea and essentially blaming her for the problems he was experiencing. He groped and climbed on top of her asserting his dominance and also his anger. This demonstrated that their relationship was sexualised, and his “you made me do it” stance looked like classic misogyny. He claimed: “Hadst not thou been by… this murder had not come into my mind”.

Pippa was relieved to be able to tell King John that Arthur was in fact alive. She described her hand as “yet a maiden and an innocent hand”. This was another expression of male weakness conveyed in female terms that became ironic when spoken by a woman.

Arthur walked the wall of the castle, represented by the top of the steps and gradually made his way down to the bottom of the steps stage left (4.3). Another Arthur appeared at the stage right top of the steps and turned his back to the audience. When that Arthur jumped and fell down the back of the steps, the Arthur at the front collapsed a short distance onto the stage where he lay until discovered by the nobles.

Pippa entered on Hubert’s cue speaking his lines, drawing a gun in response to being threatened with a knife, saying ironically “I think my sword’s as sharp as yours”. But then she lamented Arthur’s death using Philip’s lines, such as “It is a damned and a bloody work”.

Obviously the argument between Philip and Hubert was cut. In the text, Philip comments on how easily Hubert picked Arthur up. Pippa was given a modified version of this so that she could comment on how easily she could carry him, saying “How easy do I take all England up”, continuing that speech to the end of the scene.

King John faced upstage and kneeled before Pandulph (5.1). He held his hands together in prayer with the crown slotted over the top of them. He offered it to Pandulph who took the crown and placed it on the king’s head to mark his return to the fold of the faithful.

Pippa entered with news about the Dauphin’s advances and how the nobles had turned against him when they discovered Arthur dead. King John was able to complain to Pippa directly that she had assured him Arthur was alive, rather than complain to Philip about the assurances of the absent Hubert.

Glister

When Pippa began to bolster the king saying “But wherefore do you droop?”, Why look you sad?” exhorting him to “glister like the god of war”, she resembled Lady Macbeth encouraging her husband. If she had said “Infirm of purpose” the line would have fitted exactly.

This underscored again how easily male-to-male dialogue could be recast as the words of wife to husband.

Lewis and Salisbury were getting ready for battle, with Salisbury saying how difficult he found it to take arms against his own people (5.2). Blanche was still milling around in her wedding dress under a jacket.

Pandulph appeared on the stage left walkway to declare peace. She demanded that the war preparations be wound up by symbolically wafted them away with a sweep of her wrist. Lewis was still keen on war with England.

Pippa entered at the top of the steps and delivered a big, boastful speech from there about the power and might of King John. Lewis said that she could “outscold us”: the use of a term related to scolding, usually applied to women, was telling when applied to Pippa.

The final scene in the production (5.3-5.6) saw King John looking ill. Messengers appeared in the galleries swapping news. It began with Pippa using one of Hubert’s lines and pointing her gun from the gallery saying: “Who’s there? Speak, ho! Speak quickly, or I shoot” then continuing as Philip saying “Show me the very wound of this ill news: I am no woman, I’ll not swoon at it.” Having Pippa state that she was not a woman produced yet another flash of recognition that the production was again playing with its gender categories.

Others around the galleries responded using Hubert’s words to bring the news of King John’s poisoning. We saw the injured Melun in one of the galleries near the stage.

Down on the stage King John crumpled and started dancing to “Beggin’” by Frankie Valli with its line “Just can’t make it all alone”. The neon sign now had letters missing from it, another indication of decay.

Constance and Arthur entered, mocked King John and then exited after which the king howled in pain. His son Prince Henry asked “How fare’s your majesty?” His reply paused after its first word “Poisoned…” the bareness of which elicited a laugh from the audience.

He was supported by the Prince, but it was Pippa who became his chief comforter. She howled and sat hugging him as he died. Her “Art thou gone so?” merged into her final speech “O, let us pay… rest but true!”

The sense that we were watching the end of a love affair undercut the blood and guts patriotism of the play’s final sentiment about England fearing nothing if it remained true to itself, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Conclusions

Taking the characters of Philip and Hubert and merging them into a new female character had the effect of recasting the play as a love story with some scenes echoing the dialogue between the Macbeths. This was quite a neat solution to the problem of finding a new angle on quite a dry, early Shakespeare history play.

Pippa was the first character to appear, she was the only one who had the ability to stop time and address us in soliloquy. It was her passion over the dead king that closed the play.

But this came at a price. If Pippa was the new centre of the play then that tended to downgrade the significance of the other characters particularly Constance.

The love story was entertaining and the way the production joked with its own gender references was amusing. But this undermined any commentary the play might have contained on the contemporary relevance of its portrayal of England’s relationship with the rest of the world, which seemed to be one of its ambitions given the modern dress staging.

The eternal sunshine of the spotless Richard

Richard III, Swan Theatre Stratford, 20 April 2012

It was not just his puckish quiff of hair, Irish accent and winning smile that made Jonjo O’Neill’s Richard III immensely likeable during his rise to power. There was also his attempt to live in an eternal present where the past did not matter.

A simple mistake, like killing someone’s relative, could be quickly recompensed by offering to marry them. He could murder a wife once she was surplus to requirements and then seek to procure another by similar intrigue.

This Richard’s happy but murderous ambition and strangely optimistic outlook were positive and forward-looking in comparison with the grimness of his dour relatives, themselves mostly murderers, who were in thrall to the past and their grievances.

The performance opened on a brief and uncharacteristic reversal of the underlying situation, with the king and others returning from battle to be greeted by their loving wives and children. This was something from which the unmarried, childless Richard was excluded. He smiled painfully, setting the tone for the self-loathing of his opening soliloquy.

But Richard was not downcast by his plight. His first word “Now” and its subsequent repetitions, underlined his preoccupation with the present and his schemes to alter the future to his liking.

The impish force of his personality gave the impression that England under this Richard would be a bloody mess, but at least it would not be dull.

The grey metal folding doors at back of the set and a floor of the same colour, captured the blandness of the court and its insecure melancholy into which Richard erupted.

His deformities were understated so that no hint of physical grotesqueness was conveyed by his slight limp and insignificant hunch. And he was not a figure of darkness upsetting a righteous and orderly establishment.

King Edward (Mark Jax) sat on his throne and received a bouquet of flowers from Richard, which he proceeded to give quite openly to Mistress Shore (Susie Trayling), who stood to his immediate left, in full view of Queen Elizabeth (Siobhan Redmond) positioned to his right.

The Duchess of York (Sandra Duncan) was prim and proper with a fixed expression as if chewing on the proverbial wasp. The thin and brittle Lady Anne (Pippa Nixon) suffered from a feverishness of mind which caused her first to submit to Richard’s wooing and subsequently to regret her weakness.

Even Richard’s most willing assistant, Buckingham (Brian Ferguson), was a besuited Scot with a constrained, stiff manner, making their alliance an unlikely pairing.

The only character that seemed to rise above all this was Margaret (Paola Dionisotti). After an unconvincing first appearance dramatically spotlit and framed in an archway, she gradually revealed herself to be a kind of ninja figure.

With her combat boots, black clothes, a sleeveless top revealing her toned arms, and with a physical litheness that allowed her to squat on the ground and then stretch up again, she exuded toughness and confidence. No wonder, then, that Queen Elizabeth began to look up to her.

Margaret stamped her foot on the ground as she issued each of her curses on Richard, a gesture which he repeated when turning the curses back on her by completing her “thou detested-“ with “Margaret”.

Richard continued to be a source of fun. There were laughs in the scene where he was presented as a holy man, in an attempt to trick the mayor of London in supporting him, based on the transparent fiction of the image being projected.

It was also difficult not to smile when Richard rejected Anne’s hand and insisted that Buckingham escort him up the steps to his high throne, after which he turned to face the audience and grinned in self-satisfaction at his accomplishment.

But sour notes had already begun to tarnish the jollity.

Rivers and Grey were executed by having ropes looped around their necks which were then pulled tight with a man tugging on each end.

The rough play between Richard and the young Duke of York culminated with the boy being held in an arm lock as Richard pretended to throttle him. But Buckingham’s wagging finger advised Richard to calm down, as he was clearly relishing the game to the point of risking real harm.

The actual murder of Edward’s children could not secure his position, and with his followers falling away and battle with Richmond (Iain Batchelor) impending, Richard’s dream sequence was immensely harrowing.

The speeches by the ghosts were rearranged so that they all appeared and cursed Richard first, mobbing and attacking him. Then they gathered to praise and support Richmond, crowning him and bearing him aloft, before marching right over the prone Richard, who wailed in fear.

The past was coming back to haunt Richard in many ways. When the day of battle arrived, the king and his forces formed a line facing the audience and advanced stamping their feet rhythmically in way directly reminiscent of Margaret’s stamping curses.

During the battle Prince Edward suddenly appeared and ran between Richmond and Richard. This intervention did not secure Richmond with any advantage at first, but after a brief battle, the challenger killed Richard by strangling him on the ground in an arm lock identical to that previously used against the young Duke.

After trying to live in an eternal present, Richard was eventually undone by those who could not forget.

Hippolyta’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Royal Shakespeare Theatre Stratford, 17 September 2011

The stage was dressed as an industrial unit with a roller door to the rear and a metal staircase with landing on the left. A sofa stood stage left and a café table with two chairs were placed downstage right. An armchair stood upstage right.

The sound of running water could be heard offstage before the start of the performance. During this time, some audience members accidentally wandered onto the main stage to investigate the origin of the sound.

Characters entered in dribs and drabs. Two punky looking women played cards at the café table, while a woman in a fur coat sat alone on the sofa. She stared out disconsolately towards the audience, lost in her own thoughts.

This was very reminiscent of the start of the RSC’s Merchant of Venice in which Scott Handy’s Antonio had done a similar thing in the Las Vegas casino.

We were meant to understand that Pippa Nixon’s Hippolyta was unhappy. Those familiar with recent Merchant could well have expected her first words to have been “In sooth, I know not why I am so sad”.

Smoke started to emerge from a trap door downstage. Alex Hassell’s Demetrius went to investigate, opened the door and wafted the smoke away. Soon a team of repair men, the mechanicals, arrived via the roller door and descended the trap with tools and a length of air duct.

The industrial unit took on the air of a seedy nightclub as besuited doormen shuffled and looked nervous as if expecting the arrival of someone important. Demetrius stood in position and polished a shoe on the back of his trouser leg.

Theseus entered. He wore a suit, but the ponytail and rough accent marked him out as a shifty criminal.

All this detail made it perfectly plain that the production was not going to be another twee, sylvan version of the play. Hippolyta was deliberately portrayed as discontented in order to create an interesting twist.

Theseus complained about the time remaining until the wedding. Hippolyta contradicted him, but was evidently not relishing the prospect of becoming his bride. Theseus talked about wedding her “in another key” and showed her expensive presents including jewellery. She was again unimpressed. He tried to caress her but she spurned him.

Egeus brought in Hermia (Matti Houghton), who was soon joined by Lysander and Demetrius. Helena (Lucy Briggs-Owen) stood on the landing observing events.

Foppish

Hermia looked a little like Maxine Peake. She had her hair short and wore a combination of heavy boots with a pinafore dress. Helena was the complete opposite with her designer outfits and vague, foppish upper class accent.

Egeus produced the knacks and trifles with which Lysander had allegedly won Hermia away from Demetrius. There was an undercurrent of humour in his paternal officiousness.

Demetrius and Lysander stood downstage facing Theseus and sparred with each other over Hermia.

After confirming the death ultimatum to Hermia, Theseus led the others out. As he passed Hippolyta, he asked her “What cheer my love?” whereupon she spat at him. As Benedick might have said, “This looks not like a nuptial”. As Theseus and his party left, Helena descended the stairs and crossed the stage to exit in pursuit of Demetrius.

Hermia and Lysander planned to run away. The sentiment underlying their conversation here seemed too fey and flighty for the grim urban setting. Hermia, in particular, did not look like the kind of girl to ponder wistfully on the vagaries of love. Her line about the vows that men have broke, sounded too plaintiff for her wiry character. But this was a minor flaw in the mood of the piece that did not spoil the whole.

When Helena complained about Demetrius ignoring her, she came across as dippy, vague and insecure. Her neat white coat and well-groomed appearance meant that she seemed an alien in this louche demi-monde. After they had formed their various plans, the young people exited and someone turned the lights out leaving it in darkness.

At the start of the next scene (1.2) the repair men came out of the trap door into the dark room and set about making arrangements for their play using their torches for lighting. They messed around in the dark, scaring each other, until one of them turned the light switch back on.

Marc Wooton was indisposed that evening and the performance lost nothing from Bottom being played by his understudy, the excellent Felix Hayes, whom I had last seen as a mechanical in the Tobacco Factory’s Dream.

Bottom’s boastful attention-seeking attempt to take on all the parts in the play was fun to watch. He used a piece of air duct to represent the lion’s mane when roaring. Flute protested about playing Thisbe and paused saying “I have a beard… coming”: the hasty correction indicated that his obviously bare chin had made his initial statement untenable.

When Quince handed round the parts, most of the mechanicals got a thin wad of paper, but Bottom got a thick one, emphasising the size of his part. They made much of the “hold, or cut bowstrings” phrase, turning it into the motto of their group.

Forest

At the start of act two the set changed to represent the forest. The door rolled up to reveal cut-out trees. The women who had previously hung around the club entered through the hatch hissing like cats. When they tended on Hippolyta, sat in an armchair stage right, it became obvious that they were fairies of the forest.

The fairies responded to Puck (another understudy, Lanre Malaolu) as the multiple voices of one fairy character.

In a crucial sequence, they took off Hippolyta’s coat and dressed her as Titania. This onstage costume change indicated that the characters were linked, indeed one and the same person in different settings. Puck was now holding a broom, which had previously been part of warehouse club set.

Analogous with the Hippolyta/Titania doubling, Oberon was played by the same actor as Theseus. When the king of fairies entered, we could see that he was basically Theseus with his ponytail down and with a more regal sounding voice. However, unlike Hippolyta/Titania, there was no explicit transformation between the characters.

Titania rose to encounter him. Her voice and demeanour were also different, exuding an air of serenity and power.

At this moment the forest sequence began to look like poor, downtrodden Hippolyta’s wish-fulfilment fantasy in which she had become the equal of her husband. We were looking at an alternative world made specially for Hippolyta in which Theseus/Oberon was a familiar feature but not a fellow adventurer. And, of course, fantasies lack real substance and the world is unchanged when they end.

Bold and confident, Pippa Nixon’s portrayal of Titania was one of the best performances I have ever seen. Her delivery of the “forgeries of jealousy” line was particularly striking.

She demonstrated the story of the pregnant Indian woman using one of her fairies, who walked across the stage under a lattice light. A series of fake changelings deceived Oberon, who chased after each in turn finding them to be just bundles of clothes with no child inside.

After Titania and her fairies exited, Oberon instructed Puck to fetch the special flower. Puck put a girdle “round about” the earth using the Q1 version of the phrase.

Demetrius entered pursued by Helena. Oberon drew back next to some fairies who were standing by the cut-out trees in the doorway, waving their arms to look like trees as a form of stylised camouflage.

Spaniel

Helena’s gauche, posh gawkiness began to turn unstable. She got down on all fours like a spaniel to illustrate her devotion to Demetrius. But her beloved merely sat on the back of the sofa, took off a shoe, showed it to her as if playing with a dog and then cast it to one side, gesturing at her to fetch it.

She duly obliged. Helena crawled over to where it had fallen, picked it up in her mouth and brought it back to him. This occurred just in time for Demetrius to tell her “You do impeach your modesty too much”, which in context became a funny line.

Helena ran after Demetrius and as she passed by Oberon, he gestured with his hand and held her motionless, promising her that their roles would be reversed and she would eventually flee from Demetrius.

Puck brought in the flower. Oberon dispatched him to find the Athenian lover and apply the magic juice of the flower in his eyes.

Titania descended on a sofa (2.2) and was attended by fairies. Oberon placed the flower juice in her eyes as she slept. She was then hoisted up into the air.

Lysander and Hermia bedded down for the night having become exhausted. She had brought a sleeping bag and a toothbrush, which she used while giving Lysander the brush-off, telling him to settle further away from her.

Puck thought he had found the right Athenian and put juice in Lysander’s eyes, who helpfully rose up to facilitate the juicing.

Helena’s pursuit of Demetrius through the forest was staged using some stylised slow movements. They each clambered in slow-motion past fairies who acted as obstacles to their smooth progress.

She looked dishevelled with her hair frazzled. Her clothes were torn, tattered and smeared with mud as a result of the obstacles. This was quite a change from her previous tidy and finely dressed appearance.

After a brief exchange of words with Helena, Demetrius ran off and Helena broke down completely in her “ugly as a bear speech”. She sobbed and grizzled and shrieked in a brilliant tableau of a woman completely at the end of her tether. She spied Lysander and woke him in the hope he could be of help.

Helena’s wide-eyed look of complete shock in the face of Lysander’s effusive declarations of love was made funnier by the young man being completely oblivious to her muddied, bruised body and tattered hair. The staging here was perhaps one of the best realisations of the absurdity of this situation I have seen.

Lysander adopted a kind of Mr Loverman flirting with her, which again looked totally out of place. He danced suggestively and sang some of his lines, so that the inherent rhythm and rhyme of the text’s verse became tuneful.

Helena ran off with Lysander pursuing. Hermia woke from her disturbed dream and realised that her beloved had gone.

Salami

The mechanicals rehearsed their play (3.1) and Bottom, who had brought along a salami for his lunch, indulged in some incredible overacting. His sonorous voice boomed out as he bestrode the stage. He also indicated the finger gesture that Wall had to make to represent the cranny through which Pyramus and Thisbe were to meet. Flute had his hat pulled down firmly over his head.

Quince encouraged Flute to raise the pitch of his voice when acting as Thisbe. He did not get the point a first until Quince stuffed his top out to make him look female, after which he talked in an excessively high-pitched voice.

Puck’s transformation of Bottom saw him return with a hair piece made to look like ears, as if it were a natural extension of own hair; tin cans on the end of his hands for hooves and a salami swinging from his groin area. This looked brilliant, though possibly not what the teachers in charge of a party of schoolchildren were expecting.

The other mechanicals ran off leaving Bottom to sing. Titania’s sofa bower descended from above. She awoke and fell in love with him. As she knelt before Bottom and felt at his feet/hooves, her gaze descended to his salami on the word “beautiful”.

Her “Out of this wood do not desire to go” was both languorous and commanding. This also hinted at the wish-fulfilment dream quality of the forest sequences. A procession of the fairies led the group off the stage, with the changeling in a low-slung pram, after which came the interval.

Interval

The second half began with scene 3.2. Puck reported to Oberon on Titania’s enchantment with Bottom. Demetrius and Hermia appeared on the stage right walkway. She was now also bedraggled and mucky. Hermia railed at Demetrius, suspecting that he had killed Lysander. She stormed off leaving Demetrius to lie down on the sofa.

Oberon’s “What hast thou done?” got a big laugh, possibly because of the extreme understatement of the question in relation to the chaos unleashed.

Puck was sarcastic with his “Look how I go”s but Oberon chased him away so that Puck’s line about being swifter than a Tartar’s bow was said in panic as he ran off.

In an attempt to rectify the situation, Oberon put juice in Demetrius’ eyes, who helpfully sat up on the sofa to facilitate the dosing, then sank back down again. Here, as often in the production, chairs were flown in and suspended just above those being enchanted.

Helena tried to rebuff the pursuing Lysander but she fell back over the sofa onto Demetrius waking him up and causing him to fall in love with her.

An instant rivalry emerged between Demetrius and Lysander, who alternated between expressing devotion to Helena and mildly slapping each other. Demetrius adopted a kung fu posture when saying “lest to thy peril thou aby it dear” just before Hermia entered on stage right walkway.

Helena began to look even more saucer-eyed in amazement at what she now thought was a three-person conspiracy. Her unkempt appearance was now accentuated by foot dragging due to a broken heel. Helena began to argue with Hermia and during this time the men variously nodded in agreement with everything bad that Helena said about Hermia and otherwise doted on her.

At one point both just lounged around and looked in adoration at their beloved, each with a hand on their cheek, creating a simple but very pleasing image of their supernaturally induced affections. At another, their rivalry erupted into a pillow fight.

Hermia clung to Lysander’s leg as he tried to walk off the stage left walkway. She then railed against Helena who retaliated by calling Hermia a puppet. The enraged Hermia flew at Helena as the others tried to restrain her, eventually pinning her still struggling body down on the sofa.

Chaos

Demetrius punched the air in triumph when Helena said that she still had “a foolish heart” for him. The chaos ended with Helena running off on her long legs.

Oberon instructed Puck to lead the men astray and make them tired so that they would sleep. Chairs descended to create a forest of furniture through which lovers wended their way.

Puck arranged that each of the lovers collapsed and slept on a chair downstage. The other chairs were then cleared out of the way. The four chairs on which the lovers were slouched rose up. They clung to them until they stood upright, after which the chairs continued to rise beyond their reach. With the chairs gone, the young men and women collapsed into their respective couples, falling back to the ground in a neat cuddle puddle. Puck finished the job by juicing Lysander properly.

The armchair bower was flown in (4.1) so that Titania and Bottom could make themselves comfy and fall asleep. Oberon reversed the spell on her, while Puck simply removed the hair piece from Bottom’s head.

There followed what the production called the Transformation Dance. Oberon and Titania celebrated their reconciliation with a close dance in which they gradually dressed themselves and each other as Theseus and Hippolyta.

A striking component of this dance was a series of movements in which Titania bent over touching one foot with her hands, extending the other leg into the air. This allowed Oberon to place a shoe on each of her feet in turn. Their clothes were taken from the nearby sofa.

At this point it was not clear whether the end of the dream would just deposit Hippolyta back into her original world, making the dream a brief but happy escape from reality. But the reconciliation endured and the transformation affected both her and Theseus, implying that all of this had been much more than just a dream inside her head. The real world beyond the fantasy had been affected.

With the transformation complete they stood on stage as Theseus and Hippolyta. All the incongruous references to hounds were cut. The lovers woke up, and Demetrius stuttered slightly when trying to explain the night’s events.

Given the continuation of the dream’s effect in the waking world, Demetrius’ question as to whether the lovers were still dreaming seemed very pertinent.

Bonky

Bottom awoke and brought out the bawdy overtones of his speech describing “what I had”. Before settling on Bottom’s Dream as the title for the ballad about his adventures, he also suggested Donkey Bonky and Ass Matic, the first of which would have been an excellent alternative title for the play.

A brief scene followed (4.2) saw Bottom reunited with his fellow mechanicals. They went off to prepare play. When Flute said that a paramour was a thing of naught, he gestured with his hands, lewdly indicating an O shape.

The beginning of act five saw another interesting moment illuminating the relationship between the play’s dream world and its real world. Hippolyta said how strange the lovers’ account of their night in the forest sounded. Theseus dismissed it as madness.

Hippolyta, however, tellingly gave more credence to the reality of what they had related. Her speech was perfectly fitted to someone who had somehow shared in the dream, seen its reality and wanted to hint at the fact that it had some substance:

Hippolyta:

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy’s images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable.

Pippa Nixon spoke this speech as if her character possessed more knowledge than she was letting on, enhancing the feeling that Hippolyta had indeed experienced the world of Titania.

The actor playing Puck reappeared as Philostrate and read out the list of entertainments through a mic with Theseus replying to the suggestions.

The couples took up positions: Demetrius and Hermia lay on the stage right walkway, Theseus and Hippolyta likewise at the bottom of the centre stage steps, while Helena and Lysander rested on the stage left walkway.

The mechanicals’ stage was brought in through the roller door. It consisted of a narrow platform with a rudimentary curtain pulled across it. All their props and stage equipment had been improvised from work materials.

Trumpet

Snug blew on a primitive trumpet interrupting Quince’s prologue. Quince got annoyed and slapped him with the papers of his prepared speech scattering them on ground. In his panic he tried to remember the speech and this was the origin of the errors in his badly punctuated recitation.

As Quince introduced the characters, the actors trotted up and down and rotated in a circle so that we could see each of them in turn.

Pyramus wore armour made out of dustbin lids. Thisbe sported a wig and the bare framework of a dress. Man in the moon had a torch, a twig and a dog whose body was the extendable scissor arm of a shaving mirror on wheels. Lion’s mane consisted of wallpaper paste brushes arranged in a circle around his head. Wall dressed in grey with no actual wall-like features.

In the prologue, Pyramus and Thisbe each used a dagger to stab themselves in turn, but inadvertently hit Wall, who was standing behind them, in the stomach.

Wall came forward and extended his hands in front him making a scissor shape with his fingers to represent the two ends of the cranny through the masonry. Pyramus did some excellent sonorous overacting. He and Thisbe tried to get close to each other, but Wall fought to separate them by moving his hands, and by extension the wall surfaces, until they were far apart.

The couple eventually overcame this obstacle and kissed each other. The male mechanical actors reacted in shock at what they had done, but despite this were later revealed behind the curtain kissing each other enthusiastically.

Lion’s footsteps were marked by clip-clop noises. He played along with this by tapping his feet in a rhythm, so that the coconuts played a tune. Moonshine had problems getting his dog to behave and sit up straight, causing him to adjust it manually. He became frustrated at the comments from wedding party.

Pyramus overacted gloriously and died. After her multiple adieus, Thisbe collapsed dead with her face on Pyramus’ groin. The Bergomask dance involved two mechanicals Quo dancing with loud music, which fused the lights. This obliged them to go down the hatch in order to solve the problem, which got them neatly off stage to make room for Oberon and Puck’s finale to the play.

The enchantment of the house saw the theatre galleries lit with UV lights to match the stage lighting. The uniform illumination of stage and auditorium really made the theatre feel like one building, one of the key ambitions of the RST’s new thrust stage configuration. Confetti was thrown down from the upper galleries to create a magic atmosphere.

Puck’s concluding speech was very well spoken and paced and produced big rounds of applause.

Conclusions

It is good to see bold experiments work, and this particular take on the play worked very well.

Making the forest sequence a dream experienced by Hippolyta, but one which transformed her and the surrounding world, made for a very satisfying result.

The great thing about this production was that just where you thought the play would break by being wrenched into a new shape, the text would in places surprisingly accommodate the precise reading that was being mapped onto it.

I had wanted to see the production again in Stratford, but it had more or less sold out. So I’m now pinning my hopes on a London transfer. The staging did not involve too much complication and trickery, which means it could work well at the Roundhouse.