Will goes to Spain...

A strange and rather wonderful experience awaits Bard buffs at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: a Shakespeare play where you've no idea how it's going to end.

OK , for Shakespeare read 'Shakespeare'. This is an intriguing 're-imagining' of the celebrated 'lost play' Cardenio, its existence a matter of historical fact, but which never made it in to 1623 First Folio edition of the 'complete works', seemingly lost for ever.

Fast forward to 1727 and the premiere of The Double Falsehood, a crowd-pleaser from long-forgotten playwright Lewis Theobald, who (savvy marketer) claimed his work was based on original manuscripts of Cardenio (in his possession), a collaboration between Jacobean giants John Fletcher and William Shakespeare.

Oh and - add another name - the plot is drawn from Cervantes' Don Quixote, which Shakespeare could have read in Thomas Shelton's 1612 translation.

Scholars seem to agree that Theobald's text has stylistic echoes of both Shakespeare and Fletcher.

Still with me? I know, you'd be forgiven for guessing that the show on offer in Stratford must be a dryer-than-dust experiment in academic re-construction.

Wrong.

Wisely acknowledging the impossibility of recreating the 'play behind the play', director Greg Doran has approached Theobald's text with a light touch and with an imagination drenched in years of Bard-related empathy as both an actor and a director.

The result is a play that stands robustly on its own feet, providing a richly entertaining evening.

Doran and his production team clearly relish the opportunities of the Spanish setting, wreathing the action in luscious chiaroscuro and wafting it along on clouds of incense, intercut with languorous guitar music.

Good news, too, for Bardphobics: the plot is an easy-to-follow tale of love and friendship betrayed. The villain of the piece being the outrageously dreadful Don Fernando, all posturing, posing and perfect pectorals. The eponymous hero is one of his three victims.

What with nuns, a fiesta, a spunky cross-dressing heroine, the old abduction-via-coffin ruse, full-on flamenco (plus a wee bit of auto-flagellation), this is a show with something for everyone, performed with panache by a Rolls Royce cast.

For me, the ending raised some worrying questions - as to the forgiveness granted to the truly appalling Fernando.

That said, a must-see and a terrific opening to the RSC's 50th anniversary season.

Olé!
And here's what the DT's Charles Spencer had to say.

Bard intent

Continuing his (frankly unmethodical) attempt to identify 'his' sponsored brick-in-the-wall of the renewed Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Mr Gnome was more than a little thrilled to encounter Malika Booker, the RSC's poet in residence.


Billeted in the Victorian reading room adjacent to the Swan auditorium, Ms Booker invites visitors to recall vivid memories from their experiences of the Stratford theatres: sights, textures, scents, emotions, highs, lows, drama and tedium.

All of which will be grist to her poetic mill over the months ahead.

Of course, this was as Pavlovian Kennomeat to Mr G's human companion who lost no time in reliving his first RST show way back in August 1967: All's Well That Ends Well, with a cast that included the extremely young Helen Mirren.

Wise Ms Booker limited him to the space of a medium-sized PostIt.

Mr Gnome wishes Malika great success.

(Ms Booker was not expecting Mr G's appearance. Consequently he considers her perfect choice of hat colour as particularly auspicious.)

Coming home...

Mr Gnome shamelessly flaunts his invitation to one of many top-notch events celebrating the opening of the transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Closed for over three years, the riverside complex has been massively re-shaped and upgraded. Sources suggest that the gigantic project is coming in on time and on budget. No mean feat.

Better still, the buzz hints that the new spaces (public and performance) will outstrip all expectations.

On a dolphin's back

To London for a day out including a small Bard-related treat.

I've been reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and wallowing quietly in its sumptuous, seductive, shimmering dream world - simultaneously earthy and sublime.

In a vain attempt to keep the brain cells alert, I'm committing a few of the purpler passages to memory.

As the train chugged down to Marylebone, I was bashing one of of Oberon's Act 1 speeches into my head:

My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb'rest 

Since once I sat upon a promontory, 

And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath

That the rude sea grew civil at her song

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres

To hear the sea-maid's music.

Scrumptious or what?

Anyway, I reach Town. Tube to Charing Cross and up the stairs to the exit in Trafalgar Square, still mumbling my lines. And what meets my gaze as I emerge into the sunshine?

A mermaid on a dolphin's back.

Spooky?

Ish. Do admit.

Good times, Bard times...

Absent from the blogosphere for far too long, Mr Gnome returns to boost up his 'home team' - the splendidly tip-top Royal Shakespeare Company.


Pens mightier than Mr G's have reviewed the current crop of productions. Once again, the Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer displays an almost spooky ability to channel Mr Gnome's reactions to each new offering on the stage of the Courtyard Theatre. With exceptions.

So with the stage taken care of, Mr Gnome turns his attention to that essential adjunct to any theatre - the cafe.

The Courtyard Theatre cafe, housed in the barn-like structure to the left of the main foyer, gains several robust hurrahs on Mr Gnome's scale of customer satisfaction.

This efficiently run eatery would deserve to be a top-notch Stratford attraction - even if it was not grafted on to an internationally celebrated theatre company.

Friendly, unpretentious and offering great value for money, the Courtyard cafe's relaxed ambience (free newspapers) is enhanced by the cheerful, attentive and thoughtful staff.

Mr Gnome owns up to having a bit of  a 'thing' for the coronation chicken baked potato with salad.

Not really a 'celeb spotter' himself, Mr Gnome readily acknowledges that this is a top venue for a bit of classical star gazing. Varied luminaries have wafted into his field of vision in recent months: Frances Barber, Bette Bourne and Sir Donald Sinden (puffing on cig at an outside table).

Added value?

For a resume of RSC-related blog posts, please click here.

Setting a Bard example

No stranger to the commendation 'You're a brick', Mr Gnome has impulsively turned metaphor to reality by sponsoring a 'brick in the wall' of the transformed Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

To be frank, Mr G's action is motivated by equal measures of charity and exasperation.

For months he's been overhearing my frequently repeated statement: 'I must get around to making a donation to the RST's Transformation project.'

Justifiably piqued by human procrastination, Mr G has taken matters into his own small but capable hands - and, voila, a brick has been laid, and a rather charming certificate issued.

And, shamed by a gnome, I have finally done the right thing and sponsored a brick on my own behalf, requesting that it be dedicated to Dom Gregory Miller, about whom more later...

Open house

A Bard time was had by all today at the splendid RSC Open Day jamboree at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Visitors not in the know may have needed shock treatment, given the on-street prevalence of so many men, women and children suffering from hideous facial scarring - and all of them smiling contentedly. Casualties (bottom right) were all, of course, courtesy of the RSC makeup department.

In past years, the town has been awash with thespian Sirs and Dames participating in the Open Day's dizzying array of activities - everything from scholarly text sessions to revelatory exposures of the intimate ministrations of the Company's small army of backstage dressers.

But this time, canny RSC executive director Vikki Heywood (top left) managed to pull off a truly star-trumping coup de theatre.

She welcomed visitors, for the very first time, to a privileged glimpse of what's going on within the Royal Shakespeare Theatre itself, currently undergoing a massive three-year transformation project.

So today I was able to stand on what will be the Company's main stage (top right) and view the auditorium that has replaced the vast 1930s theatre where I've seen dozens of performances since my first RSC show in, ahem, 1967.

And it looks to me as if Ms Heywood and her team are well on their way to making good their promise of creating a major 'theatre space' that will be simultaneously epic and intimate. The acting area is vast, but it is encompassed on three sides by a three-level 'audience space' in which everyone is remarkably close to the action.

I'm excited.

It'll be a while before the players are able to tread the renewed boards: the contractors are due to hand over the building to the Company in July 2010.

Middle row shows friendly architect Alasdair McKenzie (right) and Tim Court (project manager) on site to answer questions.

Bottom left: Open Day ended with the company director Greg Doran ruffing up the partcipants in the annual Great Shakespeare Quiz.

Jolly folly

Born plain Mary Mackay in Glasgow, the writer Marie Corelli was, in terms of sales and celebrity, the Jilly Cooper of the Edwardian book trade.

In her later years she settled at Mason Croft in Church Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, where she relished the role of the grandest of local grandes dames.

As befitted a life of such dizzying upward mobility, Corelli had constructed in her graden this charming folly, where, ensconced above the elm trees, she could muse and pen her next bestseller.

Possibly less idyllic when viewed from point of view of the servant who had to climb the stairs in all weathers to clean the grate and re-fill the coal scuttle.

Ever hospitable, Madame Corelli hosted parties on the Avon aboard her gondola, imported from Venice.

Bringing a Venetian gondola to Warwickshire betokens a certain level of style.

Madame Corelli went a step further - and imported the gondolier as well.

And that, for me , equals chutzpah.

1609 + 400 = 2009 + 14/154

The dodgy mathematical statement above is inspired by the fact that BBC Radio 3 is today celebrating Sonnet Day, in recognition of the 400th anniversary of the publication of William Shakespeare's immortal collection of 154 fourteen-line poems.

During the course of today the station's output has been interspersed by readings of a varied selection (fourteen, natch) of the Bard's extraordinary reflections on love, loss, life, death - the whole big thing, in fact.

The reader is that tip-top, and very brainy, thesp Sir Ian McKellen.

Mr Gnome approves - and not only because he happens to be roughly the same height as a sonnet in a standard print setup.

So much so that he has issued a challenge to the Human Being (aka moi) to do a little more than to download these texts and recordings on to his computer.

Given that a poem is the only work of art that one can store on one's personal in-brain hard drive - the memory - I've decided to memorise all of the sonnets chosen for today's readings. And I've set myself the target of doing so by the end of 2009.

Fear not, one has no intention of inflicting impromptu readings on one's nearest and dearest - or on total strangers, for that matter.

To be truthful, I have a teensy bit of start on myself - somehow or other I already have Sonnets 18, 29, 60 and 116 under my belt. So, ten sonnets and 140 lines to go....

Romans in the gloaming

To Stratford for the second public performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company's new production of William Shakespeare's ever-popular toga-tearer Julius Caesar.

As we enter the auditorium two mud-and-blood-encrusted actors are on stage, exhaustedly stalking each other with the occasional grunt-and-grapple engagement. Then, as the play begins, one pins his rival to the floor and despatches him - with a bite to the neck. Nice.

The show is all of a piece with this initial image. Director Lucy Bailey and her design team conjure up a far-from sunny ancient Italy, where an elegant civilisation seems constantly on the brink of bloody anarchy.

The action is accompanied by a high-volume percussive soundtrack and a series of huge projected images, sadly not clearly visible from our side of the thrust stage.

That fine actor Greg Hicks, in the title role, brilliantly suggests the blinkered self-admiration that has fuelled the seemingly so-reasonable conspiracy hatched by the cool-headed Cassius (excellent John Mackay) and his fellow plotters.

Caesar's line 'Let me have men about me that are fat ... Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much' will probably get laughs. Next to the spectral Hicks, the slender Mackay looks positively chubby.

I guess the play's most challenging role is that of the thoughtful, troubled Brutus (Sam Troughton, above), whose journey charts the terrifying consequences of a decision to do a bad thing for a good reason.

As Mark Antony, the well-fleshed Darren D'Silva, seizes his 'Friends, Romans and countrymen' opportunity with relish, the fickle populace duly u-turning in response to his rhetoric.

With luck, the director will rethink the distracting repertoire of stylised jerk-and-twitch movements assigned to the Roman citizenry.

Criticisms? Shouty moments (plenty of these) are punctuated by occasional passages where one wants to call, 'Speak up, lads.' With luck, these variations in dynamics will even out as the performers settle in to their roles.

Bard, birtrhday and bunny

To Stratford-upon-Avon on a breezy blue Saturday for the celebrations of William Shakespeare's 445th birthday.

Delegates from a selection of London embassies (some excitingly costumed) join theatre luminaries, local dignitaries, academics and troupes of local schoolchildren for a cheerful round-the-town parade.

Most wear a sprigs of rosemary ('that's for remembrance') and carry a posies of spring flowers, which are laid on the grave in the chancel of Holy Trinity Church - the end of the procession.

The atmosphere is celebratory, good-humoured and far from po-faced. Very English, I guess.

Later, I saw the brand-new production of As You Like It in the Courtyard Theatre.

Perhaps the show's most memorable effect came during the interval, expressive of the rustic themes of daily life in the Forest of Arden.

As the audience returned for the second half, Corin the shepherd was busily occupied skinning and butchering a freshly caught rabbit. The creature had been pre-gutted.

I felt this chimed with the production, which had suffered a few cuts of its own: some very familar chunks of the text were missing.

Fortunately, the 'Seven Ages' speech ('All the world's a stage') was spared the chop, and was performed brilliantly by the fine actor Forbes Masson (top centre).

Here's Charles Spencer's review from the Daily Telegraph.

Good Will ambassador

Ever ready to boost the Bard, Mr Gnome is abandoning himself to a few days of Shakespearean shenanigans.

Today, St George's Day, is Will's 445th birthday - and the 493rd anniversary of his death. (Both dates are rough guesses based on the records of his baptsim and funeral.)

Here's a very blond Kenneth Branagh doing v well with possibly the most famous of the Bard's 'best bits'....

The Winter's Tale

Can one have too much of a good thing?

The new RSC production of Shakespeare's strange and entrancing The Winter's Tale was not my first experience of the play. I've seen at least half a dozen varied stagings over the years, stretching back to the celebrated 1969 show in which Judi Dench played both the wronged queen Hermione and her 'lost' daughter Perdita.

Then, only just over two years ago, there was Dominic Cooke's daring staging in the tiny Swan Theatre, with actors and audience sharing the performance space, creating a sense of truth and immediacy, and reducing many to tears during the extraordinary twenty minutes at the end of the play.

For this production, director David Farr and his design team have had a 'big idea'. The play opens in the chilly court of King Leontes, the stage dominated by two towering, packed, bookcases. Hmm. Symbolism?

The first half of the play is almost unbearably tragic. Taken by a bolt-from-the-blue fit of jealousy, uptight Leontes (Greg Hicks) is convinced his hugely pregnant wife Hermione (Kelly Hunter) is about to give birth to the child of his best friend.

Cue a grotesque 'trial' in which the wronged wife nobly defends herself, dressed in the bloodied nightgown of her recent delivery. As the news arrives of the unexpected death of her and Leontes' first child, she falls to the ground, presumably dead.

Meanwhile, at Leontes' orders, the newborn child is being conveyed out of the kingdom and abandoned, prior to rescue by, you've guessed, a kindly shepherd.

Not surprisingly, these seemingly chaotic events take place against the background of a massive storm. At its height, the bookcases tilt giddily forward, spilling all their contents onto the stage as a violent gust of wind deposits a few reams of printed papers among the scattered volumes.

A thrillingly huge bear, made entirely of flapping sheets of paper, emerges for the unlucky baby-carrier to 'exit pursued by'. Are we getting the metaphor?

A twenty-minute interval zooms us forward by sixteen years - to the pastoral scenes in which we follow the story of Perdita, the 'lost' princess. The booky theme continues with paper trees and, most memorably, in the 'exploded book' costumes of the very rude sheepshearing dancers.

It's hard to gauge if the director intends all of the consequences of having so much paper under foot - and frequently stuck to foot. Funny at times, but I felt for the actors in the sublime final scene, speaking the verse to the accompaniment of A4 scrunching beneath shoe.

And yet, thanks to the clear, heartfelt performances of the actors, the 'concepty' staging didn't over-distract. And once again the magical, epiphanic final scene delivered its message of grace and truth with power and breath-stopping beauty.

Here's Michael Billington's review in The Guardian and, from the Telegraph, Charles Spencer's.

Very Bard puns

Tip-top gift today from a kindly Secret Santa - this wee coaster uses a design by cheery punster Simon Drew.

We hooted at the liberties taken with WS's titles.

Have you got them all yet?

R and J

As Uncle Matthew (in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love) remarked after a long-ago performance of Romeo and Juliet: 'It was all that damn padre's fault....'

Unlike Uncle Matthew, I wasn't gulping back sobs at the end of the RSC's latest outing of the star-cross'd lovers. But I was in full sympathy with him regarding the dodgy plot device that brings on the play's tragic denouement.

R and J end up dead, not because of some deeply ingrained flaws in themselves or those around them - but because Friar Lawrence's postal service goes to pot. If only his message had got through, Romeo would have known that Juliet wasn't really dead - and all the hideous hoo-ha of the final scene could have been averted.

Neil Bartlett's production is striking to look at, done out mainly in black and white, with a 1950s film-noir feel to it.

There's a hint of minimalism as well. The lovers are denied a balcony for that so-famous scene. I felt a teensy bit short-changed. With the characters on the same level, the scene falls a bit, er, flat.

Loads of stylish choreography to the violence and sword-play, setting up a sense of a male-dominated culture, where love and tenderness have little chance of flourishing among so much mindless devotion to macho codes of honour.

The young actors playing the eponymous lovers are fresh, ardent and touchingly vulnerable. Top marks for diction as well.

But, oh dear, how everyone shouts. If you like a lot of acting for your money, this show offers terrific value. Histrionics aplenty. Arms are waved, documents abused, chests beaten, foreheads slapped, railings walloped. A wildly hysterical Friar Lawrence leads the way, redefining the notion of 'OTT'. Oh brother!

If only the director had asked his actors to calm down just a wee bit. Subtlety was in short supply. For me, it's always a bad sign when I 'm yearning for an actor to deliver a few lines of verse simply using his or her voice. Give those hands a rest!

Mind you, I think any director who is brave enough to take on this difficult play deserves a medal.

In my opinion few of the Bard's shows are are more difficult to present convincingly. Next to Romeo and Juliet, King Lear is a piece of cake.

Love's Labour's Lost

Shakey's wordy, playful comedy doesn't make the journey from page to stage all that often. From the evidence of the recent RSC production, that's a definite shame.

The bachelor King of Navarre decides to forswear hunting, feasting and female company to pursue three years of studious self-improvement. And being a Royal, he's easily able to 'persuade' his three attendant lords to sign up to the palace penance fest.

Before the ink is dry on the parchment, along comes a delegation comprising the young Princess of France and her attendant ladies. How many? Go on, guess.

Masculine resolution dissolves as the king and his lords are pierced by Cupid's darts, while resolutely attempting to hide their lovesickness and broken promises from one another.

Meanwhile a fantastical Spanish aristocrat, an ancient schoolmaster and country clod poll offer sidleights on the dizzying ups and downs of love and lust.

Director Greg Doran dusts off the play, dresses his cast in sumptuous Elizabethan costume and delivers a production that's fast-paced, funny and, at times, surprisingly affecting.

All eyes, of course, on David Tennant as the wry, keen-witted Lord Berowne. And he doesn't disappoint, speaking the complex verse with clarity and warmth, making it seem fresh-minted. He has a stand-up's rapport with his audience -and is very funny.

Only weakness, for me, is the decision to cast a young woman (instead of a boy) as Moth, the pert pageboy. The actress is tiny, but not in the least boyish. Halfway through my companion and I realize simultaneously the nature of the problem - it's all a bit Janette Krankie.

In its closing moments, the play takes a sudden, daring turn from comedy to near-tragedy. Doran manages the gear-change with aplomb.

And the final melancholy image of a single owl swooping eerily over the audience - a touch of true theatre magic.

Stage by stage

I'm keeping a record of the massive building project that is transforming the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Most of the original Victorian building was destroyed by fire in the 1920s.

It was followed by Elisabeth Scott's Odeon-style building which butted on to what was left of the original fabric at the western end - you can see a fair chunk of the original building to the right of the top picture.

By the 1980s the building housed two auditoriums: the 'main house' seating roughly 1100 people - and the 450-seater Swan Theatre, housed in the horseshoe-shaped space at the back of the original building.

Last spring, the building closed for redevelopment.

• October 2007 (top): The whole of the main auditorium is removed, but Scott's facade and foyer will be retained.
• July 2008 (middle): Demolition complete - a huge cavity where stage and auditorium once were.
• September 2008: Work is well under way on the galleries that will surround the new thrust-stage performing space.

On the Avon side, the building is being stripped bak to its original 1930s aspect - and there will be a new, accessible riverside promenade.

I've been relishing performances here since August 1967.

Sad about the changes? Not at all. I've a strong feeling that the renewed building is going to be a massive success when it opens in 2010.

Read more here: Theatre transformation.

Trailer

August already?

Greeted this morning by a far-from-speedy chum, Mr G has decided to take this month at, well, a gastropod's gait.

Shakespeare mentioned snails some eleven times.

Most famously describing the schoolboy 'creeping like snail unwillingly to school'.

Tart-tongued Rosalind tells Orlando she'd rather be wooed by a snail than by him.

Why?

Because the snail comes complete with both his own house - and his destiny - horns, that dreaded, heavily freighted Shakespearean funny word.

But also very charmingly, in Venus and Adonis:

Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain,
And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to creep forth again....

Tennant takes ownership

Mr Gnome relished every moment of last night's first performance of Hamlet at Stratford's Courtyard Theatre.

So much can (and often does) go wrong when this strange, complex play makes the journey from page to stage: dodgy directorial 'concepts'; showy-offy performers; a mis-cast Prince (too old/dull/self-indulgent/bold/scared).

In short, a regular minefield of hot potatoes.

I'm pleased to report that the current production, under the direction of Gregory Doran, features none of the above.

Doran and his cast concentrate on getting the words across and telling the story - with clarity, briskness, wit and spirit. The show came in at just over three-and-a-half gripping hours, with a tip-top cliff-hanger immediately before the interval.

Played on a mostly bare stage, the production benefits from an atmospheric background of shifting reflective panels.

Doran has chosen modern dress - fine for immediacy, but, for me, at the price of connection with the 'thought world' out of which Shakespeare created the play, in which, for instance, a belief in Purgatory had as many political implications as religious.

David Tennant's Prince is, as you might expect, quirky and intense. But also mercurial, intelligent and charismatic. His grief for his father is palpable. It's a performance of terrific energy, insight and authority: fast and funny, tender and broken. No Shakespeare character comes with more boxes to tick - and Tennant checks every single one.

No danger of this being a 'star vehicle' with the in-depth casting that Doran has assembled.

Patrick Stewart doubles the roles of the Ghost and Claudius, suggesting the latter's complex inner life and occasionally hinting that, apart from his homicidal tendencies, he was probably a tip-top monarch.

I could go on.

I've seen umpteen dysfunctional Danes over the years. This is one of the best.

And thousands of young Who fans are going to turn up to see the Doctor - and will go away, I'm certain, having had a close encounter with William Shakespeare - life-changing, quite possibly.

What's not to like?

Who's the prince

Ever in the foremost forefront of the kulchural avant garde, Mr Gnome is nursing singed digits caused by possession of this year's red-hot ticket.

He's off to Stratford-upon-Avon tomorrow to spend the evening with that deeply dysfunctional Danish royal family. Yes, it's Hamlet time again.

Added piquancy because the moody prince is being played by David Tennant - aka (to half of the planet) Doctor Who.

Hence the fact that the entire run is sold out.

And as if that wasn't enough, both uncle Claudius and the ghost of Hamlet's father will embodied by RSC veteran Patrick 'Star Trek' Stewart.

The director is the gifted and usually unfussy Gregory Doran. The buzz has it that the production will be in modern dress.

Mr G's next post will bring his first impressions.

The tension is almost unbearable. I hope it lasts.