Cry God for Harry, but mostly for great theatre

This might be the time to suggest we borrow from the Bard and ‘cry God for Harry, England and the Michael Grandage Company!’

It’s a long time since I’ve been to the theatre to see a Shakespeare play that I don’t know. In the case of Henry V, I haven’t even seen the Olivier or Branagh film versions all the way through.

In such a circumstance, you have to be on your toes as a member of the audience.

This version of the play has been edited to keep it to just three hours (plus interval), but it doesn’t suffer as a result.

I’m not going to detail the plot – suffice it to say that the action takes place before, during and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) in the Hundred Years’ War as Hal, now king, invades and defeats France and gains the hand of the French king’s daughter, Katherine.

It has been interpreted in various ways – both as a jingoistic celebration of military might, but the antithesis of that too.

That, in itself, is one of the strengths of Shakespeare’s writing – that it is not an obviously black and white affair.

But it’s equally worth remembering, of the history plays alone, that writers still had to be careful what they had their characters say.

To give you an idea, in 1605, George Chapman, Ben Johnson and John Marston penned the satire Eastwood Hoe, which so offended James I with its anti-Scottish content (they took the piss out of his accent), that Johnson and Chapman were jailed for a time, although Marston escaped arrest.

In this production, we begin with the Chorus appearing to address the audience, dressed in jeans and a designer t-shirt with the Union flag on it. The Chorus too concludes the entire piece and we seem to be being reminded of present wars.

The intended message is not laid in stone, but it is a subtle way of connecting past and present, and of making the audience aware that the consequences of wars past were just the same as of wars present.

Henry himself ranges from being principled to being brutal: he is neither simplistically 'civilised' nor 'uncivilised', but both, depending on circumstance.

The scene where he woos Katherine is very funny, as we see him fumble for words and a gentleness that is appropriate to the situation.

As so often in Shakespeare, there is a scene where we see some of the ordinary soldiers. In this case, when Henry disguises himself to wander around the camp on the eve of battle.

It’s been noted in more than a few analyses that such characters, though mostly unnamed, are often drawn in remarkable detail and with great sympathy – suggesting that the Bard himself knew such serving men in his own time as a soldier.

Here, the scene accentuates Henry’s own loneliness and isolation – or perhaps more widely, the loneliness and isolation of leadership.

It’s also a play that is pretty much a roll call of famous phrases – “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” might trigger reminders the title of a drama set in WWII, and that's just one.

If the “cry God for Harry” speech feels slightly rushed upon us because of the editing, then the St Crispin’s speech is spine-tingling goosebumpy – and that’s precisely what you go to the theatre for.

Christopher Oram’s set is simple – and totally true to the Chrosus’s opening speech of the play, when it talks of “within this wooden O”.

The performances are universally fine, but particular mentions go to Ashley Zhangzha as Chorus, James Laurenson as Exeter, Ron Cook as Pistol, Noma Dumezweni as both Mistress Quickley and Alice, and Jessie Buckley as Katherine.

Jude Law as the eponymous king – the big draw, of course – really is excellent.

He ranges from courtly gesture to embarrassed wooing to looking quite at home with a bloody big sword – and all with apparent ease.

There’s not much time left to see this, but if you can – go.

And at the end of a 12-month period in which we just happen to have, with no planning, seen the entire first Grandage season, I deeply hope that there will be more.

And for the record:

Privates on Parade ***

Peter and Alice *****

The Cripple of Inishmaan ****

A Midsummer Night’s Dream ***

Henry V *****

This is the mainstream – and we want more please, Mr Grandage!

The Michael Grandage Company

Memories of several Bottoms

Sheridan Smith, David Walliams and fairies

On Friday evening, I trotted along to London’s West End down to see David Walliams’s Bottom.

Yes, yes – I know. I know it’s been done before, but apart from one tweet, not by me. So I’m afraid that you, dear readers, have to put up with it being done here.

The fourth production in the inaugural season of the Michael Grandage Company sees A Midsummer Night’s Dream playing to packed houses in the West End – and the main reason for all the bottoms on seats is less that it’s the Bard and more the star casting.

Walliams has been cast as Bottom, while Sheridan Smith takes on the traditional dual roles of Titania and Hippolyta.

The former brings the pulling power of Little Britain to the production, and has been directed to camp up the part for all he’s worth.

Smith brings with her the success of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, plus stints on the Royle Family and Jonathan Creek, and has been directed in such a way that you wouldn’t know about that televisual CV unless you recognised her name or checked out the programme.

My own first Dream was way back in September 1976 at the Bolton Octagon, when a seat in the gallery cost just 50p – the ticket is still pasted into an old scrapbook.

It had been our introduction to Shakespeare a year earlier at school (when I’d read Bottom in class) and this was the first live production of a play by the Bard that I’d seen.

Then in April 1979, it was the Fairfield High School for Girls annual production (tickets 60p – there’s inflation for you), with me donning something like a sackcloth costume as Peter Quince; a performance that the local paper described as being “acted with authority”.

Actually, what I remember most was being able to say “bloody” twice in a speech – in front of the headmistress.

It was the one performance my maternal grandmother ever saw me in, and she and my mother decided that I had a likeness to one of my mother’s brothers. I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.

But back to that Octagon production. Wilfred Harrison, who was also joint director, played Bottom. The notes in that scrapbook only mention his performance, but although this is an ensemble piece, the Mechanicals are what grabs the attention of most audiences, precisely because of the timeless comedy.

In 1991, for instance, Roy Hudd’s Bottom is just about the only thing I remember of a production at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre – apart from the less-than-brilliant weather.

When it's not raining, it’s a play that is superbly suited to outside staging.

In 1987, the Duke’s Playhouse in Lancaster staged its first promenade production in the city’s Williamson Park, around and including the Ashton Memorial as a backdrop.

Andy Serkis as Lysander in Lancaster. Puck to the left

That Dream, with a cast that included, as Lysander, Andy Serkis – now best known as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films – was utterly magical.

Of the ones I’ve seen, it remains my favourite production. The lovers were strongly done even if the Mechanicals didn’t make a major impression in the memory bank: Puck was the stand-out, although unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the actor who played him in full faun get up.

But back to the here and now, and Michael Grandage’s new production.

It’s played at F1 pace – just two hours for the whole play to unwind – and that has some benefits and some pitfalls.

Some of the languorous sense of the poetry is lost by charging at it like this – I was mightily relieved when Puck’s closing speech was allowed its necessary time – but it also works well in particular places, not least in the chaotic row between the four lovers in the forest as Oberon and Puck looks on.

Indeed, what Grandage and his company have done is remove any reverential attitude and emphasised the play’s physical comedy – the majority of which is quite clearly there in the text.

And they also haven’t ducked the point that it’s largely not about lurve, but sex – certainly in terms of Titania and Bottom.

Elizabethan audiences would have known, for instance, that an ass had a large penis, so Bottom’s transformation into just such an animal, combined with Titania’s awakening under the spell, is quite clearly about lust.*

Just imagine what would happen if all those bored schoolchildren being introduced to Shakespeare via this play were told that it was about sex?

Anyway, this is very good fun.

And more than that, it was thoroughly enjoyed by an audience that included a great many people who clearly don’t go to the theatre often – and most certainly not for Shakespeare.

The production has had some brief moments of song and dance inserted – and some snippets of pop classics – and where used, they work.

Gavin Fowler as Puck

While the mechanicals are camper than the proverbial row of tents, the fairies are a group of crusty hippies with a bit of edge.

And the lovers are far less insipid and boring than they can be.

Of the cast, Smith was excellent – all husky voice and powerful allure.

Walliams gets to nick the show – there’s more ham on display than in a Spanish deli, and anyone older than a teen will wonder if they’re seeing the reincarnation of Frankie Howerd at one point in particular – but again, in the context of this kind of production, it works.

Of the rest of a good ensemble, special mentions for Gavin Fowler as Puck – he moves superbly – Katherine Kingsley as a fabulously feisty Helena and Pádraic Delaney as Oberon/Theseus.

Christopher Oram’s sets work well, as do his costumes. In particular, I liked Puck’s trousers, which tallied with the attire of the rest of the fairies, but, in the side fringe, just hinted at a faun’s furry legs.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable romp – more Carry On than delicate rom-com – but it’s about time that the Dream got this sort of shake-it-up treatment to rescue it from any perception of it being fey, rather infantile and ‘safe’.

Finally, just to note that we considered ourselves lucky in finding – and being able to get a table without booking – Piazza, an Italian restaurant that almost backs onto the theatre.

An independent amid the mass of chains in the vicinity, it did a very pleasant pomodoro (according to The Other Half) and a very nice diavola pizza for me – excellent, doughy base, with fresh tomato sauce, spiced minced beef, red onions, pepperoni, mozzarella and green jalapeños to get the endorphins flowing.

Really not pricy for London, with very pleasant service. That’s one to remember.

* For which insight I thank Jill Betjeman of Lancaster.

Go on, go on, go on ...

Attending a performance of The Cripple of Inishmaan on Friday was, in many ways, one of the odder evenings in the theatrical part of my life.

A brief background note is worth making here: after years of going to the theatre very regularly for reviewing purposes - sometimes three or even four times a week - I became a lapsed theatregoer.

It wasn’t deliberate, but happened – largely because of a lack of money and also because of a lack of being used to planning evenings out and actually booking tickets.

In recent years, we’ve made an effort to start going ... well, if not ‘regularly’, then at least a few times a year.

We had seen this third play in this inaugural Michael Grandage Company season listed and thought it looked interesting, but equally thought that, for reasons of it starring Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe, we’d not get near tickets for all the fan girls.

As it happened, we were wrong and, because I’m automatically on the company emailing list now, having previously seen both Privates on Parade and the absolutely wonderful Peter and Alice, I received an email a couple of weeks ago telling me that tickets were still available.

We snapped up a pair.

First, the audience did include a large number of girls. As we left, The Other Half even spotted several pf them heading to the stage door with roses in hand.

But what a great way to get people to go to the theatre.

Anyway, back to the play – or most pertinantly, a play that I had no prior knowledge of.

I imagined that it was quite old – it’s set in the 1930s – and on the surface, is full of Irish stereotypes. There were times I wondered whether I was watching The Quiet Man meets Father Ted.

Yet this is a play from 1997, by Martin McDonagh, who also wrote and directed the wonderful film, In Bruges. And in many ways, this gives you a platform from which to understand this play and help you get past a sense that you're seeing Maureen O'Hara meet Pauline McLynn.

The central idea is that a film crew from Hollywood arrives in a small Irish community that struggles against the elements, to film a documentary (based on fact).

The villagers react in differing ways, but ‘Cripple’ Billy, a 17-year-old orphan with a somewhat mysterious past, who’s only pastime is staring at cows, at once sees the falseness of the celluloid hopes, but also the chance to escape his mind-numbing existence.

What McDonagh has done is to create a very funny play that leaves you with a number of questions about the nature of home and expectations, the stories that we all tell and construct around ourselves (the stereotypes are a crucial part of this) and the importance of storytelling in human experience.

It is delightfully done, and the very fact of how you personally react to the stereotypes – do you recognise them as such, how then do you react to them etc – are important elements in the questions that the writer asks about how we all react to stories and how we all portray ourselves.

As to the cast – well, it’s an excellent ensemble performance.

But special mentions to Sarah Greene as Helen and Pat Shortt as Johnnypateenmike.

And then we come to young Master Radcliffe.

If one had any worries that one would be watching Harry Potter, they disappear the moment he arrives on stage.

This is a remarkably talented young actor – perhaps far more so than many might expect. The team decided that his Billy’s disability is cerebral palsy, and Radcliffe shows enormous physical discipline in maintaining his character’s condition.

Where McDonagh doesn’t opt for easy stereotype is in his writing of Billy – this is no disabled archetype (a welcome point in these Atos times), and Radcliffe’s understated but emotionally powerful performance is exemplary.

There are no sloppy excuses for genuine depth of character – and this is why, in very large part, the play works in spite of so many apparent stereotypes.

Radcliffe is a very bright young talent – and a joy to watch.

It is an excellent evening out – and one that, perhaps unexpectedly, leaves the audience with a tantalising series of questions to muse on later.

There is a brutality about the play, but also great warmth and, ultimately, real humanity, without it ever having plunged into mawkish sentimentality – see In Bruges.

So if you get the chance – well, go on, go on, go on: you know you want to.

And if you don't, watch out for this company, because one really hopes that will be more than a one-season wonder.