Maine events

Inveterate traveller Mr Gnome is in the north-eastern corner of the United States visiting the (comfortably small) community of Camden, Maine.

He's rapidly falling under the spell of this ultra-charming small town, vividly coming to life with the arrival of a very late (to Mr G) spring.

Camden, a former mill town, is now a summer resort: yachty and boaty. But with plenty of pottering pleasures for landlubbers.

Mr G is particularly impressed by the splendour of the Camden Public Library (top right), a vibrant witness to our American cousins' passion for 'open access' to high-quality educational opportunities for all. The top-floor reading room is as sumptuously appointed as a London club. And why not?

Unhappy couple

'Well, it rattles along, doesn't it?' remarks an elderly audience member at intermission. 

And it does: Michael Boyd's extraordinary, compelling and iconoclastic new production of Macbeth (Shakespeare's shortest play) opens the renewed Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.

But if this is an express train, Bill the Bard has us bound headlong for Hell, as Boyd and his cast take us on a harrowing journey into the darkest regions of the human heart.

Boyd's boldest stroke is to re-imagine the 'supernatural solicitings' that so famously awaken Macbeth's dormant yearnings for ever greater status and power. To do so he (shockingly?) cuts some of the most famous scenes in the play, presenting the three 'witches' as (I'm guessing) they have never been seen before. Purists may have palpitations.

Not that the original production in the early 1600s was without its dangers: a play about the murder of a Scottish king, performed before King James I, newly arrived from Scotland to succeed the childless Elizabeth I. 

And whether you're a monarch or the man or woman on the bus, 'succession' is crucial to the well-being of everyone in the kingdom - our hopes often resting on the vulnerable shoulders of a child. And Shakespeare's on-stage children rarely see a happy ending: most die. As did his only son, Hamnet, aged 11 in 1596.

This play has more children and babies (seen and unseen) than in any of the other tragedies, their experience casting a grisly light on the consequences of the Macbeths' terrible betrayals. And it's Boyd's development of this theme that makes this show so disturbing, amply fulfilling the spirit of the text - if not the letter. 

Fine work from Jonathan Slinger and Aislin Mcguckin as the Macbeths, disintegrating before our eyes. Massive hurrahs for lighting designer Jean Kalman and composer Tom Armstrong. Designer Tom Piper sets the action in a vast space reminiscent of a crumbling, desecrated cathedral. (The new auditorium triumphantly fulfils the promise of being able to combine epic with intimate.)

The vast back wall holds a silent clue to Boyd's vision for the play: between the shattered stained glass and statuary the eye picks out a shallow space that once held the sacred building's focal point: but the cross has been removed.

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

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.

Spooky

Ever ready to acknowledge a kindred spirit, Mr Gnome relished a brief but uplifting encounter with Chris Samuel at the recent Community Choirs Festival.

Check Chris's website for a glimpse of his mission to awaken people to the life-enhancing joys and benefits of singing in groups - just for the fun of it.

A brisk glance through his CV reveals the aspect of Chris that most intrigues Mr Gnome.

Chris is a Spooky Man.

That's to say he is a booster, enthusiast, evangelist and, indeed, part-time member of The Spooky Men's Chorale, the incomparable Australian a capella musical phenomenon.

Sparing with his use of the word 'unique',  Mr Gnome has no hesitation in applying it to this quirky, gifted, subversive and massively entertaining ensemble.

Be warned, the Spooky Men will be performing around the UK in summer 2011. More details on their website.

Meanwhile, immerse yourself in spookiness via the men's Youtube compilation.

On song

Eager as always to endorse all that that's low-cost, life-enhancing and spirit-lifting, Mr Gnome has relished a full-on day of sensational singing at the annual midlands Community Choirs Festival held in Stratford-upon-Avon today.

Choir festival? Doesn't that mean cut-throat competition, purse-lipped adjudicators, plucky losers and ecstatic victors?

Er, no. Community choirs are based on the conviction that if you can walk you can dance, and if you can talk you can sing. Simple as that. Consequently, the experience of being a member of such a group is non-competitive, totally inclusive, unthreatening, weirdly joyful and surprisingly addictive.

Today's bash brought together some 500 singers from near (Warwick) and far ('Hello Abergavenny!') 

Coached by a glamorous quartet of vocal virtuosos (lower half of picture), we bopped through a Carol King classic, made contact with our inner primitives via some gutsy Australian stomping - and soared skywards with a South African freedom song.

The day closed with each of the 22 choirs performing a pre-prepared song to the assembled company.

Impartial to a fault, Mr Gnome relished every note - but confesses to a particular enthusiasm for Songlines (pictured), the Warwick/Leamingtion-based ensemble led with incomparable panache by Bruce Knight (extreme right).

The wild-west get-ups were chosen to enhance their party piece: Johnny Mercer's 1930s classic 'Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande.'  

Mr G's suggestion for an encore? How about 'Gnome on the Range'?

Seeded player

Millions of sunflower seeds. But they're not sunflower seeds. Each is made of porcelain, and is hand-painted. No two, claims the artist, are identical. 

At first glance, a vision of overwhelming uniformity. Closer acquaintance reveals diversity. Hmm. No wonder Mr Gnome was eager to experience the latest 'installation' sited in the vast Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern art gallery.

Creator Ai Weiwei's original intention was that visitors should walk about on the 'seeds'. However, the clouds of porcelain dust released by such activity was deemed a health hazard and, days after opening,  the installation was roped off from the public.

No such worries, of course, for Mr Gnome who, as always, relished the opportunity to 'get stuck in'.

By the way, there was absolutely nothing surreptitious about this gnome/art interface. Details on request.

Loads more info at the Tate Modern website.

Not Bard at all

Mr Gnome's kind friends and associates have been urging him to catch the new animated film Gnomeo and Juliet. Bard plus gnomes - surely a shoo-in for Mr G's approval?


Last night he succumbed to pressure and attended a screening.

His verdict?

Mt Gnome confidently asserts that this is the finest example of its, er, genre that he has ever seen.

The genre in question being: 'Shakespeare "adaptation" featuring a cast of computer-animated garden ornaments'.

A veteran of 'special category' Shakespeare-related movies, Mr Gnome is pondering quite where to place this chirpy effort in his pantheon of semi-Shakespearean silliness.

Probably a long way below the glorious pinnacle of the never-to-be-bettered loopy sublimity of this 1964 version of Antony and Cleopatra.