A weekend of theatre

Last weekend my Mum visited and we embarked on our annual theatre weekend in London. The theatre weekend always involves at least one production at Shakespeare's Globe, and this year we also went to the Old Vic to see Kevin Spacey's last production as artistic director at the Old Vic, Richard III (pictured below click here and you're taken to the Evening Standard's review of the play.)

Richard III is quite a controversial play with some of the disability rights movement, seen as a cultural and artistic example of negative stereotypes about disability and disabled people. Not the earliest but one of the earliest examples of a disabled person as villain, long before Bond baddies. Self consciousness of this has lead to some interesting interpretations of Richard III recently.

My Mum and I saw Kenneth Branagh as Richard a few years back. Kenny played Richard as a tortured soul, who had turned to manipulation and murder because he is shunned by the people around him because of his impairment. You could feel sorry for Kenny's Richard on some level and see that such rejection and downright hostility had led him to become devious and resourceful.

Kevin Spacey played Richard slightly differently. You could not sympathise or forgive his Richard, and although the opening speech of the play makes it clear that Shakespeare thinks Richard's behaviour is partly to do with his disability, Spacey's Richard presented this as a kind of "so I'm disabled - get over it" speech. Here's an extract from that opening speech:

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:

But this is Shakespeare and nothing is as it seems, Richard says that he can not be a lover due to his "deformity" but he goes on to seduce the wife of one of his murder victims and persuades her to marry him!

Anyway I shan't spend any more time dissecting Shakespeare and his character's motivations. I think most people know that the play is a piece of Elizabethan propaganda, historically inaccurate in many ways. Shakespeare uses disability as a device within his play. It illustrates how the Elizabethan's viewed disability but as always in Shakespeare all is not as it seems. Just as racism is rife in the Merchant of Venice Shakespeare still manages to write the "if you prick me do I not bleed?" speech for Shylock. In Richard the III society's assumptions around disability are aired, reaffirmed and contradicted in terns. That does not mean however that the overall message about disability is a comfortable one in the play. Shakespeare is a man of his time where disability was feared and loathed in equal measure.

But away from Shakespeare himself and to Kevin Spacey and Sam Mendes' (director) interpretation of the play. It was great, I really enjoyed it. I saw shades of Gregory House in Spacey's Richard, in some mannerisms and also in the gleeful delight he took in being an evil genius. You could not sympathise with this Richard but you could enjoy watching with horror his manipulations and total lack of morals.

The supporting cast were excellent too, the direction effortless and seamless. Margaret was played as a warrior, witchy, bag lady, who took solemn pleasure in counting up her curses as they came true. Interestingly the queens did not come across as strongly as they do in some productions when they have their famous scenes together but instead came into their own when dealing with Richard directly.

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing experience!

The next day we went to see Anne Boleyn at Shakespeare's Globe. Anne Boleyn is a play by Howard Brenton, which swaps between the time of James VI Scotland as he becomes James I of England and Henry VIII. It is the story of Anne Boleyn but not quite the Elizabeth Gregory The Other Boleyn Girl story (though I heard a number of theatre goers talk about the book and the film!)

There is an interesting article here in the Guardian about Howard Brenton's inspiration for the play which is a revival this year, so successful was it last year. Like all the Howard Brenton plays I've seen it was superb, irreverent, darkly comic. tragic and thought provoking. It was acted superbly. Thomas Cromwell was delightfully scheming, King James was wonderfully idiosyncratic as the real life King apparently was. Anne herself was both steely and fragile, serious and frivolous full of the depth the historical Anne was denied for so long.

Anyway the weekend was a success - we had to travel around London by cab, because of my reduced vision at the moment. Yes, it would have been nice to have seen both plays properly ( or at least what properly means to me) but I could see enough to enjoy both immensely. I always prefer the spoken word of a play the most anyway.