And I Find It Kinda Funny, I Find It Kinda Sad...

These days, it's not often that non-Shakespearean Jacobean plays get performed. When they do, it's almost always Marlowe or Jonson, and it's rarer still that said performances will be good. It's incredibly exciting, then, that Sean Foley's and Phil Porter's adaptation of Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, currently showing at The Swan, turned out to be one of the most thoroughly enjoyable productions I have ever seen.

A Mad World, My Masters revels gleefully in its sexuality, in it's casual, almost careless breaking of laws, reversing of morals and shattering of taboos. It delights in its gratification of desires - not only sexual, but financial, social and even vengeful: one of Middleton's greatest strokes of genius in Mad World is the play within his play, which sees a grumpy policeman/guard symbolically tied up and forced to be part of the fun. Elsewhere, Mr Shortrod Harebrain (here renamed Mr Littledick) unwittingly colludes in his wife's adultery, speaking a language laden with unintended innuendo. This is a laugh-out loud hilarious show, brimming with the same kind of subversive energy that made The Rocky Horror Show an instant cult classic. By developing its own perverse kind of logic, it seems to insist that anything is possible by taking us in directions at once both unexpected and yet strangely fitting. 

Following a similar pattern to Shakespeare's Much Ado, it's the unlikeliest couple who seem, by the end of the play, to be the most well-suited: though duped and coerced into their relationship, nobleman Dick Follywit and common prostitute Frank Gullman (Truly Kidman here) spend most of the play proving themselves to be more than a match for each other - they're the only characters who can effectively and independently navigate their way through the intricate and slippery structure of the world they inhabit. This they do by acting, sliding smoothly from role to role, moving between different social classes and circles, and even, in one instance, swapping genders. It's rather appropriate, then, that we begin to see where things are headed when Dick dresses up as Frank/Truly. Despite never having met her, he does a good enough job of "playing her" to hoodwink her clients: since she herself is an actress of sorts, it's the very stageyness and blatant artifice of his performance that makes it a convincing one. It's also apt that Frank/Truly, who spends most of the play gratifying the desires of others, should first realise and express her own longings and feelings when watching Dick perform in "The Slip".

In bringing the play to a contemporary audience, Foley and Porter could hardly have chosen a better setting than 1950s Soho: seedy, satirical and glamorous in equal measures, full of acting, sex and people from all walks of life, this is a place and point in time which has acquired an almost mythic status. The location was brilliantly realised through Alice Power's incredible designs, from Truly's luxuriant four-poster bed and Sir Bounteous' elaborate mansion with its apparently bottomless safe, to Penitent Brothel's dingy bachelor pad and the shabby, street-corner café where everyone seems to meet. The music, too, was convincingly of its time, and in terms of quality was probably the best in any RSC production I've yet seen. In particular, singer Linda John-Pierre was phenomenal - I'd honestly have gone along purely to see her. I was even pretty impressed by how well the cast coped with their singing parts.

The acting was practically faultless all round. Ian Redford made a brilliant Sir Bounteous, his greed and lechery matched by Ishia Bennison as Mrs Kidman, Truly's mother and pimp. Richard Durden and Steffan Rhodri were magnificent as aged butler, Spunky, and the hapless Mr Littledick, both with immaculate comic timing. However, the show was ultimately and quite rightly stolen by Sarah Ridgeway, starring as a truly ingenious Truly, every bit as shifty, sly and shocking as the Soho setting itself.

I may well have to see this one again.

"Lenten entertainment": the RSC's Hamlet

It's been a while since Greg Hicks' last RSC production - clearly he's been busy Hollywooding around lately in the likes of Snow White and the Huntsman. This Spring, however, saw him resurrected as the ghost of Old Hamlet and his murderous brother, Claudius. It was a very welcome return - however short a time, it's definitely been long enough for me to miss his talents.

As Hicks' "cousin and son", Jonathan Slinger took up the play's title role with great energy and vivacity. At times, his madness did verge on being a little too extreme for my liking - this was an exceptionally loud rendition of both Hamlet (the character) and Hamlet (the play), featuring all manner of bangs and explosions (which, I fear, very nearly induced a heart attack in the poor woman sat beside me). The tone of Slinger's performance was made to match this, and sometimes risked disregarding his character's own advice:

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Overall, however, these heightened mood swings and exaggerated instability actually made for a highly accessible Hamlet, whose every emotional and intellectual turnaround was laid brutally bare to the audience.

Perhaps my favourite performance in this play came from Alex Waldmann as Horatio: a magnificently subtle performance from a highly skilled young actor. Last year, I saw Waldmann in a new play at the RSC, A Soldier in Every Son. Though that play's pedestrian dialogue completely failed to do justice to the abilities of any of its actors, Waldmann's talent even then couldn't pass unnoticed. Seeing him now in a much more interesting role served to confirm my initial feeling, that we can expect great things of him. I'll be very surprised indeed if we don't see see him crop up in some glossy TV drama very soon.

Unfortunately less impressive was Pippa Nixon as the long-suffering Ophelia. I did feel this role was for her a vast improvement on that of Lady Anne in Richard III, which saw her rather awkwardly upstaged by the fantastic Jonjo O'Neill in all of their scenes together. Here, at least, she displayed a little more passion. But ultimately, she still seemed unable to meet the demands made of her in a production determined to bring her character into centre stage and much closer to the audience - sometimes literally. I must be fair and take my hat off to Nixon that she was able to sustain her deathly stillness, mere inches from the faces of front-row audience members, for the entirety of the play's final act - though quite why this was required of her at all remained largely unclear. Overall, though, one couldn't help but wonder why she'd been chosen for the part over the considerably more compelling and charismatic Natalie Klamar, who was sadly wasted on the few bit parts she was given.

There were some interesting, if not all entirely successful, things done with Ophelia in this production. The first unusual choice was dressing her up like a student. Along with the play's setting - in what looked like a school gymnasium, with its wooden chairs and balance benches, and Horatio's similar garb, this helped to make Ophelia blend in better with Hamlet and his friends, seeming to elevate her to their status by making her, too, a scholar. This was also the first production of Hamlet I've seen where the "Get thee to a nunnery" bit seemed to be genuinely about her and their relationship - he did seem angry that she'd blown him off with no explanation, rather than just making her the victim of his frustration with her father and his uncle. Yet, for some reason this didn't hold out. Later, as Hamlet watches Ophelia being laid in her grave - typically a fairly emotional moment, in which Hamlet seems genuinely aggreived and remorseful about his earlier behaviour - he instead came across as cold and distant, jumping into the grave only out of a desire to compete with Laertes. I can't be sure if either or both were deliberate choices or just the impressions that I happened to come away with, but if it's the former, then it was certainly an odd way round of doing things, portraying a wholly erratic Hamlet, rather lacking in the supposed method behind his madness. Perhaps more problematic than this, however, was Ophelia's (lack of) relationship with her father. Undeniably, Robin Soans made a great Polonius, but Ophelia neither seemed to be bitter, over-controlled and abused by him in the usual way, nor, if you were looking for a more unusual interpretation, to have much in the way of loving or amicable feelings towards him. This had the effect of making her eventual madness seem bizarrely inexplicable, unless you assume that she's more upset about the fact that Hamlet killed someone than that her father has been killed.

For all its problems though, this was an extremely well-directed Hamlet, with a lightning-fast pace that never once flagged, despite the show's going on for over three and a half hours. Actors entered for the next scene before the current one was ended, shifting us along and, like the ghost, constantly driving us onwards and reminding us that there must be further action. This was a very kinetic Hamlet - people were always moving and doing, except during monologues, where everything seemed to sharply and suddenly stop, including the audience. I had a young girl sitting behind me who was quite chattery-whispery for much of the show, but even she seemed to feel the weight of these extended mental excursions, falling utterly silent whenever the characters spoke alone. Time flew past us at the same time as it slipped through the ever procrastinating Hamlet's hands - a fact we were reminded of right from the start by the skulls around the edges of the stage. Later, the gymnasium's floorboards would be lifted and carried away by soldiers, revealing the graves that had been all along concealed beneath the actors' feet, ready and waiting to swallow them up. "If it be not now, yet it will come..."

Much of the set was brilliantly designed in this way. The flourescent tubes that framed the stage, eerily lighting up whenever the ghost appeared, were amazing, as were the strange sound effects that accompanied their ethereal glow. However, as interesting and convincing as it all looked, the school sports hall appearance - used, presumably to emphasise the director's interest in fencing and swordfighting in Hamlet - added very little, in the end, to our understanding of the play. I didn't really understand the deal with all the fencing gear constantly shoved in our faces, and I know that this is a feeling that other reviewers have shared. Sure, duelling was a significant thing in Shakespeare's time, and there's nothing inherently wrong with either the essay in the programme describing it, nor the take on the play itself. But it did feel rather like a molehill had been made into a mountain, and the whole thing was somewhat distracting from more important and exciting elements of the play.

Nevertheless, this was overall a thoroughly enjoyable Hamlet - clear, bold, full of spectacle, and perfect for RSC newcomers. 

It is a heretic that makes the fire, / Not she who burns in't.

Seeing The Winter's Tale is always quite an experience: it's a play every bit as mad and magical as you could reasonably expect from lines like, "A sad tale's best for winter: I have one / Of sprites and goblins", and the infamous "Exit pursued by a bear." Perhaps unfortunately, the current RSC Tale team have opted to dispense with said bear (unless you count a passing mention supposed to occur after the event), rather than trying to get around the gnarly problem of how to represent it. Still, there's certainly magic enough in't - this is a really beautiful production, with wonderful costumes, sets and acting. As ever, the reawakening of Hermione was the plays most magical moment: there are, after all, few scenes in Shakespeare more spectacular than this. It's a wonderfully weird scene, and the fact that actresses manage to pull it off at all will, I'm sure, never cease to amaze.

As the programme tells us in some detail, The Winter's Tale is (especially by Renaissance standards) a fascinatingly gynocentric play: the three characters with whom we have the greatest sympathy are all women. That's not to say that all the men are as petty and over-indulged as Leontes or Polixenes: both of Paulina's husbands (Antigonus and Camillo) must naturally prove themselves worthy of her affections, which we can see are far from easy to win. But in the end, it's Paulina herself who steals the show, saving the day with some incredibly bold stunts. It's not difficult to see why a play like this would appeal to a female director, and Lucy Bailey in general does a great job.

Personally I felt there was a slight problem with pacing: for me, the first half felt a lot longer than the second. One of the things I found most annoying about some of the scenes in Sicilia was their tendency towards melodrama. I'll accept that this is probably a problem inherent in the text itself, and not an easy one to get around. Yet, funnily enough, it wasn't really an issue in what are probably the play's most naturally melodramatic moments, such as Leontes' railing and threats to kill everyone who disagrees with him, and Hermione's desperate speech at her sham of a trial. In fact, it was only noticeable when there was less going on onstage - it was most striking when the rest of the cast were called on to respond to pieces of news. Most of all, I didn't like all the silly shrieking and screaming of the other ladies at court whenever a kind of "mass horror" reaction was required. Not only did it feel too much like this was just a way of filling a space and giving those other cast members something to do, but it also crossed the line into ridiculousness, damaging our suspension of disbelief. The only other thing that bothered me slightly about the play was that there didn't really seem to be any consensus on the particular nothern accent that was being aimed at: Perdita sounded quite different and distinct from her adopted family. This may well be because some of the accents were natural and others weren't - I don't know how hard some of them had to work at it - but it's not the first time I've been left wondering whether, in the end, a dialect coach can really teach people very much. The only real way to pick up an accent, I think, is to go to a place and listen to the locals - you do it then almost without trying. But that's a minor quibble, really. It's also worth mentioning that I saw the show very early in it's run, so there's a big possibility that things will still change and improve a lot yet.

On the other hand, there was plenty to like - even love - about this production. I loved the joyousness of the dancing and revelry, and the recasting of the Young Shepherd and his squabbling admirers as holidaymaking chavs. Their singalong with Autolycus was laugh-out-loud funny, his bawdy humour translated into end-of-the-pier style comedy. I'll admit I had been hoping for a slightly stronger musical presence, since I knew about Jon Boden's involvement beforehand, and I'm a massive fan of his, but I suppose it wouldn't have done for the music to take over from the action. The use of costume throughout the second half was brilliant: even as things began to get more serious, once Perdita and Florizel had run away, we were permitted the light relief of the two of them appearing at the Sicilian Court, him with a coat over his morris dancing gear and her with a dress tucked into men's pantaloons and a scarf over her face in an attempt to seem more "Eastern". In comparison to the first half, the second seemed to fly by - I could happily have watched more! As usual, too, the design was fantastic, and I was especially impressed by Leontes' ivory tower-cum-desolate lighthouse.

In terms of acting, Rakie Ayola, Emma Noakes and Tara Fitzgerald positively sparkled as, respectively, Paulina, Perdita and Hermione, and Jo-Stone Fewings made a great job of a far from desirable part. He managed to bring real pathos and powerful emotional shifts to the role, moving convincingly from fury to despair to utter joy at his wife's return. As a character, Leontes shows himself up as such a shallow and callous character early on in the play, that for any actor playing him to then go on and win our sympathies in this way is really no mean feat. Others that I felt stood out were Duncan Wisbey as Antigonus, Nick Holder as the Young Shepherd, and Pearce Quigley as everyone's favourite, Autolycus. I'd actually seen Quigley not too long ago in a Shakespeare's Globe production of Doctor Faustus, so was thrilled as soon as I saw him come on stage: his comic timing is immaculate.

Overall then, a lovely play, just perfect for chasing away those wintry post-Christmas blues.

Nothing and Everything All at Once

When I first spotted the adverts for the RSC's current production of Much Ado About Nothing featuring Meera Syal, it was one of those rare moments when you feel as if you couldn't think of anyone more perfect for a role. As far as live performance is concerned, I think the only comparable occasion for me was seeing David Tennant as Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost. In both cases, the combination of actor and part was every bit as hilarious as you could hope. As Beatrice, Syal's wit sparkled. Paul Bhattacharjee matched her comic timing and cleverness as Benedick, and the interplay and chemistry between them was endlessly entertaining.

Elsewhere, some of the more commonly sidelined characters were really given a chance to shine. Hero, perhaps one of the least desirable roles in Shakespeare, was given much more of a personality - she seemed a bit of a party girl. Although she was ultimately willing to submit to a man about whom she knew very little, she did spend the final few days before her marriage having fun on her own terms, partying hard with her cousin Beatrice, her maid Margaret (here transformed into an uber-chav with a bright pink frilly Jordan-esque dress for the wedding) and even the Prince. Amara Khan did a great job of transforming this passive character into a much more active presence. I recognised the actress from an episode of Doctor Who ("The God Complex") that I'd recently rewatched, and it occurred to me then what a great companion she would have made: something like Martha Jones, except with a much more interesting backstory. Like Martha, Khan's character was a doctor, but unlike Martha, she was revealed to have had a troubled past with many childhood demons to work through. As an actress, I also felt that her performance was a lot more compelling than Freema Agyeman's. Perhaps it could still happen - actors are known for returning to Doctor Who. In any case, Amara Khan is definitely one to watch.

My absolute favourite character in this production, however, was Dogberry. Simon Nagra proved to be hilarious even before the play actually began. As the audience entered, Dogberry was already busy greeting the members of his watch by pulling them along by their ears and telling the audience off about mobile phones and ipads. He also announced the end of the interval to all the "gentlemans and ladies". We've been quoting his "kuh-naves" here ever since we left the theatre.

I thought that the setting worked wonderfully. Not only the stage, but the whole of the Courtyard theatre was beautifully decorated, transformed into a sunny and, in the foyer at least, noisy, Indian city. It has occurred to me before that certain of Shakespeare's plays - Romeo and Juliet, for example - might work very well in a contemporary fundamentalist Islamic setting. This play, however, explored the possibilities of an Asian setting for some of Shakespeare's work without getting into the kind of religio-politics that most westerners would probably expect from such a modernisation. Instead of a culture clinging to a dogmatic religious conservatism, we catch a glimpse instead of a nation in transition, a culture in which, as Jyotsna G. Singh explains in the programme, the roles of women and of marriage are changing and transforming where the very new and modern clashes with the very old. As in Romeo and Juliet, we see in Much Ado a conflict between generations, between the old and the young - but if the youth in Much Ado are not so rebellious as in Romeo and Juliet, neither are the older folks quite so strict or stuffy.

It's really fascinating to see the issues of women's rights and women's roles addressed from such a perspective. Here we have a middle ground between the relative freedom enjoyed by women in contemporary secular Britain, and the oppression suffered by those in strict religious communities. The result is something strange, where no one quite seems to know their proper roles - what they should be doing, what they ought to be worrying about - and those who come out best - that is, Beatrice and Benedick - are those apparently least concerned with their reputation, with issues of should and should not except on clear moral grounds, when a particular course of action causes hurt to another.

At a time when violence against Asians in the US is growing in response to terrorist activities, it's also exciting and important to be given insights like this into cultures that are often misreprestented and portrayed and understood in such a limited way in the west. So undiscerning are America's angry mob today that numerous Sikhs, Hindus and others (yes, even Christians) have suffered violence and abuse at their hands as well as Muslims, the intended targets of the attacks - though, as Nitsuh Abebe points out here, it essentially matters little - all discriminatory violence of this sort stems from ignorance and stupidity, and is unacceptable regardless of whom it affects. Most incredible of all, perhaps, is the comment at the end of the article above in which someone says that they were once told to "Go back to Africa you Indian". Given the ridiculousness of the statement in the first place, it's perhaps unsurprising that the target of this was neither African nor Indian. When so many white westerners can conceive of the world in such simplistic terms - where everything and everyone non-white and non-western might as well be the same - it's refreshing to see the complexities and intricacies of other cultures explored in any sort of high-profile way.

All serious notes aside, however, this was a thoroughly enjoyable and very very clever production that I'd recommend to anyone - Shakespeare buff or not. It was great to read that some of the actors involved - all of whom were brilliant - had reckoned that they couldn't "do Shakespeare", but that doing this play had changed their minds. Lets hope it changes the minds of a few new theatre-goers too!

A Modern Comedy of Errors

Much as I've enjoyed the last few plays I've seen at the RST, after the serious and slightly unsettling tone I've become accustomed to, it was nice to see something a bit more light-hearted and easy-going in The Comedy of Errors on Wednesday. Despite the fact that neither pair of twins looked anything like each other, the entire audience was quite willing to suspend its disbelief, partly because (as I discussed in my Julius Caesar review earlier), that's the nature of the theatre, but also partly because of the strength of the actors and their comic timing. There's an entertaining little interview in the programme with Bruce Mackinnon and Felix Hayes, who played the two Dromios, where the actors explain how they were partly selected because of the similarities in their acting styles, and additionally how they watched each other and tried to shape their own expressions and postures to each others'.

Although there's something quintessentially Renaissance about the early capitalism of this play, I really loved the decision to update it. Amir Nizar Zuabi's take on Shakespeare's work saw Antipholus of Ephesus as a kind of geezer/wide-boy type, permitting an interpretation of the “credit”, which Daniel Vitkus discusses extensively in his article in the programme, as something like “street-cred”. It fitted perfectly: the central image of the chain was easily translated into a wonderfully tacky bit of “bling” that Antipholus had bought either (it's never made quite clear) for his wife or for his favourite whore.

There's something to be said for the timing of this commentary on the merchant-capitalist world at the moment, whether or not the production team and ensemble were fully aware of it. The financial “credit” system, just beginning to take off when Shakespeare wrote this play, has now reached epidemic proportions, leading to the “global financial crisis” or “world recession” that has somehow been allowed to happen. The illogic of a situation where everyone owes money to someone and nobody actually has any never ceases to astound me. Although, as Vitkus notes, the play never thoroughly resolves its credit issues or pays off all its debts, it's made quite clear that, as long as the two Antipholuses pay what they're supposed to, everyone else will be okay: i.e. someone always has the money and the power to solve financial problems. In the case of global economic politics today, however, things have become so complicated that its not even really clear who owes whom any more, and there don't seem to be any simple ways of resolving the issue. I don't know how this can be the case but, hey, I'm told it is, and I gave up on Maths after I finished my GCSEs, so I probably wouldn't understand it even if someone gave me a legitimate explanation. This is about as much as I can get my head around. The way I see it, all the real stuff that's happening now is far more farcical and ridiculous than anything the mind of Shakespeare could invent.

Vitkus explains that the seventeenth century was the exact period when the word “credit” began to be associated more with money than with morals. Prior to this, it had principally referred to a person's personal or moral worth. Such a reading of the word still lingers in certain linguistic contexts today – something can be “to a person's credit”, or we can “credit someone with something”. Even film “credits” retain something of this, though that's at least in part bound up with the now more common monetary interpretation. I found this particularly interesting because already in Shakespeare's time we can see hints of where our society was headed – and where its found itself now. Today, one's economic situation is seen by many as the be all and end all. Fame and fortune are what we are encouraged to aspire to, what we are taught to channel our hopes and ambitions towards, leaving other such potential goals as strong moral character, compassion, good citizenship, responsible parenting, or even creative innovation relatively unregarded. This is why we see people willing to air all their personal problems in public, just to get themselves on national television, and people willing to be watched 24/7 by strangers or to make fools of themselves on reality shows. It's why people sell their stories to the tabloids, and it's even behind much of what happened in the London riots. One's status is now based almost solely on what one has, rather than what one does and, for all his own status as a self-made man - entirely the product of the new capitalist economy - The Comedy of Errors nevertheless suggests that this economy was something Shakespeare was more than capable of criticising.

Perhaps we can all learn a little something from the perfect brotherhood and selflessness of the two Dromios in their encounter at the end of the play. Although this pair of underling twins never (unlike at least one of their masters, and their masters' father) actively wished to seek each other out, it's nonetheless easy to believe that their new-found friendship and fraternity will be the play's most long-lasting. Neither father nor mother to the children made any decent attempt to seek out their lost children. Moreover, as Vitkus suggests, both Antipholuses seem liable to end up at odds with each other: Shakespeare spends far more of the play setting them up as rivals than as friends. Antipholus of Syracuse has too well enjoyed the high-life lived by his climbing capitalist brother to readily give it up, yet neither does Antipholus of Ephesus seem likely to relinquish his role as top dog, or even to readily share it with another. Only the Dromios, then, seem finally to recognise the greater value of love, friendship and equality, leaving the stage “like brother and brother....hand in hand, not one before another.” Despite, or perhaps because of, their lack of ambition in the way of money and status, then, we might see these two as the play's most truly “creditable” characters. At several points during the play, Dromio of Syracuse is given large amounts of money by his superiors but, in spite of the accusations levelled against him and his brother, neither of them, we feel sure, would ever dream of theft or dishonesty. Instead, these characters live to please, remain unassuming and self-deprecating, and are, finally, ready to open their hearts to new friendships.

A Shakespeare in Every Playwright...

Last night we popped over to Stratford-Upon-Avon because we'd been offered a £5 deal on tickets for a new play at the Swan, A Soldier in Every Son On the whole, I like to be supportive of new writers' work, and I know that there are some fabulous and very under-appreciated playwrights out there. That said, anywhere other than the Royal Court in London, which seems to always get the best of the best in new writing, seeing new plays can be a bit of a hit and miss experience. The last time I saw something by a playwright I'd never heard of before in Stratford, it was breathtaking. That was Helen Edmundson's The Heresy Of Love. We'd got a similar deal on these tickets (they often do this for early, pre-press night performances, which are harder to fill up), and, much like last night, I didn't really know what to expect. I was absolutely blown away and came out of the theatre alternately weeping at the story's devastating ending, and raving about the production as a whole. It wasn't long after that that Edmundson's name cropped up again when I went to see her adaptation of Swallows and Amazons at the Belgrade in Coventry, which was similarly impressive if rather different in tone. Discounting the regular non-Shakespeare Christmas productions they have on in the RSC theatres, however (all of which I've seen – The Arabian Nights, Matilda and The Heart of Robin Hood - have been brilliant), the last original play I'd seen before that was Nathalia Vorozhbit's The Grain Store, which I didn't really enjoy at all (although that was more a question of taste than of quality).

To be fair to A Soldier in Every Son, there was a lot to enjoy about it, as there is with pretty much every RSC show. The design was beautiful, the make-up and costumes particularly spectacular. The acting, too, was exemplary. There were some familiar faces: several members of the brilliant cast from Richard III  (which I saw back in May), including Brian Ferguson, who's definitely one to watch, and Iain Batchelor, who, good as he is, now seems a bit wrong to me in any role other than that of Henry VII. You'd be hard pushed to find a more perfect bit of casting in anything – looking at him, I could swear he secretly is a Tudor. There were also some new people who impressed me, particularly Alex Waldmann, who stole the show as both Prince Ixtlixochitl, and later his son, Nezahualcoyot. In fact, the actors worked so hard and performed so well, that I did honestly feel for them during the rather half-hearted applause at the end of the show.

Where it fell down, I felt, was not in the acting or direction, but rather in the script. Often, the work that script-writers do isn't particularly well-recognised – still less so on screen than on the stage – and can be seen to be of secondary importance to the success or failure of a show overall. Unfortunately, however, the proof to the contrary is in the production: where one or two weaker actors can easily be overshadowed by other, better ones, if a script's not quite up to scratch, even if it's more or less “okay”, it always reflects badly on everyone. I couldn't say for certain what went wrong with this one. Since the playwright is actually Mexican, what we saw was, of course, an English version of his play, which may or may not reflect the original writer's choices and intentions. The story worked well enough, I guess. It's not quite to my taste, that Henry VI-esque circularity with battle after battle after battle, but even then you can get away with it with a few big personalities. Shakespeare had his Gloucester (later Richard III) and his Margaret. I'm not quite sure whom A Soldier in Every Son had (again, I stress, no fault of the actors'). More bothersome than that, however, was the standard of the dialogue, which not only clunked along in general, but also seemed constantly unsure of its register. At times, it was clearly aiming for the kind of heightened language that Shakespearean play-goers are accustomed to. It wasn't verse, but in these particular moments, it was going for big, stand-out and formal-speech-worthy words. For me, it never quite made it there. There was no great linguistic flair, no sparkling originality. It all felt rather tired and familiar. So much for the higher register. The rest of the time, it was even more frustrating. Most of the dialogue slouched along in a much more banal and hackneyed fashion. Even the most important characters spoke in a purely functional and ordinary way, with bouts of excessive swearing being used to extract cheap laughs from the audience. Don't get me wrong, I'm not someone who has a problem with expletives in general – but if you're going to use them, do it sparingly and creatively. And you'd do well to remember that, even in a relatively modern setting, it is possible to come up with some pretty epic insults without using any swearing at all. But it was more than that. Any writer worth their salt knows that, even when you want to give the impression of people talking like ordinary people, you don't actually, write dialogue the way people would speak in everyday life. It has to be better than that, much more condensed. Real people talk rubbish. They say things that are boring, mundane, repetitive, and often leading nowhere. If you try to get people doing that in a production, everything will seem to take forever and just be interminably dull. In a script, even the simplest and most ordinary-sounding lines need to be well-crafted – inventive, but to the point. Watch an episode of anything half-decent on TV and try to imagine yourself and your friends and family speaking to each other like the characters do. It doesn't happen. Of course, in a production that makes some attempts at more poetic language, the really obvious, pedestrian exchanges stick out even more than they would otherwise, and still more so in the mouths of particular characters in certain settings.

I'll readily own that I'm no expert on medieval America, but I reckon I can say with some certainty that its society was one that very much stood on ceremony. People in Britain today have a lot less regard for language than they have ever had before. Not because our vocabularies are more limited, or because we're stupid, or modern, but simply because we've done away with most of the cultural formalities and status distinctions which, when put in practice, quickly become embedded in language. Other countries still have these – even countries very near to our own. In France, there are still formal and informal addresses (“vous” or “tu” where we just have “you”), though I have French-speaking friends who tell me that these are going out of fashion. Some languages, such as Japanese, have so many levels of distinction and politeness that it's very easy, as a foreigner, to accidentally insult someone. But, even here and now, where it's less important to us, we still expect certain people to speak in certain ways. You'd be surprised, for example, if dear old Queen Liz came out effing and blinding in public - remember the fuss that was kicked up back in 2007 when she got a bit huffy about sitting for her picture? And that was nothing, really. Even from politicians, we expect a certain amount of decorum, particularly when they're giving important public speeches. However the Nahuatl language is itself constructed, the best way to convey a sense of another, older and more formal culture is to manipulate conventions of the language you're actually working with. I'm not saying I expected people to be theeing and thouing and and-it-please-youing, but I'd have to say honestly that it rang a little false for me when the Tepanec ruler was calling people fucking fuckers and shouting about his potential son-in-law's bell-end in front of a room full of people. Just saying.

If these problems were endemic in the original Spanish script, it's a real shame because, as Luis Mario Moncada explains in this interview, it's a largely ignored and very under-investigated historical period. Even in Mexico, people don't really learn about their country's pre-conquistadore past, and there's very little creative literature or art set in or based around that time. Given this wealth of unmined material - which really ought to be a writer's dream - I did wonder what exactly was the point of all the Shakespeare. I mean, sure, he's the most famous historical playwright worldwide, but that doesn't mean you have to copy him to do anything worthwhile. I don't really have any issues with writers borrowing from other writers – nowadays it's necessary, of course – but, what I did find annoying were a number of scenes which were less “homage” than direct lifts from Shakespeare's texts. For example, there was one point at which Ixtlixochitl and his friend, Tochitzin, act out a little play of their own in the roles of the prince and his father. To qualify: this wasn't loosely based on Hal and Falstaff in 1 Henry IV, it was Hal and Falstaff in 1 Henry IV, and unnecessarily so. Admittedly, this scene struck me particularly since I'd been watching Part 3 of The Hollow Crown just the night before (more on that later), but it's an iconic scene, which was neither cleverly and subtly referenced, nor re-done in an interesting and original way, nor particularly significant to the plot of A Soldier in Every Son. I like the idea of comparing countries' histories, because, as I've said before, I like to think that, fundamentally, people are people wherever and whenever you go, but I'm afraid that was taking the “borrowing” a little too far to seem worthwhile.

If, on the other hand, the bulk of the problems came from the translators, then what were they doing? Going for word-perfect accuracy? That's not how you translate. Unless you're working with poetry (where, of course individual word choice and order is crucial – hence verse is more or less untranslatable), the best method is to get the gist of the story and the characters, and re-write everything from there. It will be different, it will be a new piece of work, rather than a true copy, but that's always been the case, and it's part of the fun of the process.

All said, I'd have to be fair to everyone involved and say it's worth a look, for the quality of the performance itself. It's not bad – there's certainly a lot worse out there that people pay a lot more money to see. I guess part of the problem is one of expectation. I still get very excited about RSC productions, because they're almost always dazzling. And, I'm afraid, this one just didn't quite live up to the standard set.

I see a little silhouetto of a Sin

Pride and Lust, Pride and Lust
But I cannot repent now


One of the things that really bothers me about the theatre is that, despite all efforts to open it up to wider audiences and to make plays more accessible, it still carries the baggage of privilege and pretension that were attached to it pretty much as soon as theatre moved indoors. Ironic really, when you think about the mix of people that would have attended theatres back in the Renaissance.

"Serious" theatre-goers, critics and reviewers continue to look rather snobbishly down their noses at the world of television, and as a result, actors who have achieved fame and prominence in that medium will tend to be regarded with suspicion. "We'll have none of that muck here, thank you. We want proper actors." Those who have suffered the most, as far as I can tell, from the taint of what is referred to as "stunt casting", are, for some reason, those actors who have played major roles in Doctor Who. And it's important that they're major ones, mind - I've seen plenty of more minor Who characters perform in all sorts of RSC productions without comment.

Back in 2008, when David Tennant took on the roles of both Berowne in  Love's Labours Lost and, more famously, Hamlet, in plays shown at The Courtyard in Stratford, old-school theatre buffs complained loudly to anyone who was interested, and many more who weren't, about how ridiculous it was that "Doctor Who" had been allowed to play one of the Bard's greatest characters, how it was all about the theatres making money. More fool them, however, because in pretending to know/care more about "real" theatre than the rest of us plebs, they only exposed their own deep ignorance. Tennant, as people who genuinely do care about theatre will know, actually made his name on Shakespearean acting. Long before "Ten" was even a twinkle in Russell T. Davies's eye, David Tennant was very much what exclusive, élitist idiots would deem a "proper" actor.

Of course, I wouldn't wish to dispute the assertion that the reputation and fanbase Tennant garnered from Who brought a lot of people out to the theatre who wouldn't otherwise have had the slightest interest in Shakespeare - a fact manifest by the fact that that awful, awful chip shop on the corner nearest the theatres kept a big Dalek stuck up in the window for most of the season. Unlike some, however, I don't actually see this as a bad thing (attracting bigger audiences, I mean - poor quality chippies cashing in on tourists is always a bad thing). In fact, bloody well done, I'd say, and I hope the RSC gained a few more regular punters from the "stunt". Had either production actually been a bad one, some of the sceptics' whining might almost have been justified. As it was, while Hamlet had a few flaws, they were a truly fine couple of shows, and L.L.L. was near-perfect. In my opinion, Tennant more than proved he could hack it - which is not to say that he hadn't already done so several years previously.

Having taken on the role of Mephistopheles in Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus at the Globe, Arthur Darvill has suffered a similar critical bashing. Now I must confess here, that before I'd seen the play myself, I did find it quite difficult to imagine lovely Rory as a demonic prince of darkness, rushing to steal away scholarly souls (though he might well have won a few students' hearts already). Nevertheless, I had no reservations whatsoever, no prejudices, and determined to go and see the production before I came to any conclusions about it. In fact, more than anything, I was excited. If he's brilliant as Rory, why not as someone else? That is kind of what acting's all about, after all, and I think it's high-time audiences and reviewers put a bit more faith in established actors to do their jobs properly. If they've been successful, the assumption should surely be that there's probably a good reason for it. Unfortunately, while genuinely good actors get slammed for crossing media boundaries, often far less interesting performers will be lauded because they suit certain people's ideas of what theatre should be. Surprise, surprise, Darvill, in my opinion, was probably the best thing about the Globe's Faustus, yet the reviews I've read so far have been almost unanimously scathing, describing him as "woefully miscast", etc...

Overall, I'd have to say that Dr Faustus wasn't nearly as impressive a production as any of the aforementioned (including the version of Romeo & Juliet with Gale, which was carried very well by an excellent Sam Troughton as Romeo - spot the Who connection there). Having said that, the friends that I saw the show with all seemed to love it, so perhaps part of the problem is just that I've been spoilt with high-quality RSC productions (by far the best of the best) since childhood. There were, to be fair, plenty of things about it that I liked. Wagner was generally entertaining (though perhaps not quite as clever and witty as I remembered from reading the play), and Faustus looked convincingly scholarly, even if he didn't quite come across as a genius. Spectacle was a strong point, with most of the demons being impressive to look at, though unfortunately this didn't extend to the Prince of Hell himself, whose get up, complete with silly beard, wasn't remotely scary, but rather ridiculous, as was also noted by this Guardian reviewer. The pageant of Sins looked terrific, though the fart jokes went on a little too long, and the dragons on which Faustus and Mephistopheles fly to Rome were simply stunning. And, though it was fairly irrelevant to the story, I did thoroughly enjoy the post-epilogue devils' sing-and-dance along. It was good fun, at least.

I couldn't, however, in all honesty, say that the production was well-directed - which is where the RSC almost always wins out. At times, it was struggling to stay interesting, and I do think that the main reason for this was the initial decision taken to work from the far-inferior B version of the text. It is possible that I'm slightly biased, having studied the A-text at A-level, but then, I did read both at the time, and re-read them more recently as part of my degree course, and I'm absolutely convinced that however you do it, there's no way that poor censored B can live up to the religious, philosophical and ethical challenges, the subtleties and ambiguities, or even the poetry of A. Choosing B first of all means missing out on some of the best lines and imagery, outside of Shakespeare, in the history of British theatre:

See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ -
Ah, rend not my heart for the naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him - O spare me, Lucifer! (Sc13: 72-5)

And later:

O God, if thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ransomed me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain (Sc13: 91-3)

It's difficult to imagine anyone in more turmoil, begging for mercy alternately from his supposed Saviour, who fails to be there for him, and from his persecutor, who also fails to answer him. Whether you choose to read it as the demented railings of a madman, or a genuine metaphysical crisis, this is pretty powerful stuff. The only reason, as far as I can see, for cutting it, is the word "Christ" not making it past the Renaissance censors. Similarly disappointing alterations and additions occur throughout. The important thing to take away from A is that Faustus is not a bad man. He never hurts anyone - his only real sin is the initial act of "conjuring" and "abjur[ing] the scriptures" - and he is condemned, following Christian logic, to eternal torture merely for the sake of a few silly games and party tricks. We are, as an audience, meant to like him, meant to root for him, right down to his topical digs at Catholics and Spaniards, and not least because of his heavily autobiographical  elements, at least in the Prologue:

Now is he born, his parents base of stock,
[...]
Of riper years to Wittenberg he went
[...]
So soon he profits in divinity,
The fruitfull plot of scholarism graced,
That shortly he was graced with doctor's name (Prologue: 11-7)

My emphasis is on the ironic use of "graced" here, grace being a gift from God, and the subtle implication thus that God's "gifts" can lead us to damnation. Like Faustus, Marlowe was born to poor, working class parents, but raised himself to a higher station through his studies, attending one of the most famous universities of his time (and ours). It takes guts to cast yourself as a damned man - or at least, it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - but Marlowe was, pretty much, the archetypal "rebel":

Not marching now in fields of Thrasimene,
Where Mars did mate the Carthaginians,
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love,
In courts of kings where state is overturned,
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds,
Intends our muse to vaunt his heavenly verse (Prologue: 1-6)

In other words, "You know all those things you think plays are meant to be? Well, this isn't any of them." Dr Faustus is, at its best, essentially Marlowe's long-winded way of sticking up two fingers at both strict religious dogma and established theatrical conventions - which were, interestingly, interrelated. Faustus himself was arguably the first complex character to appear on stage in Britain. Prior to that, there were clowns, and there were the sorts of two-dimensional allegorical figures found in Medieval morality plays. It is then, absolutely essential to Marlowe's purpose that we sympathise with Faustus.

In the B-text, however, Faustus is shown to torture, and finally kill, Benvolio (who incidentally remains unnamed in A), the man to whom he had earlier given horns for mocking him, along with two of his friends from the Emperor's court. Towards the end of the play, too, hoardes of angry people seek out Faustus at the court of the Duke and Duchess, in order to get revenge for his wrongs to them, whilst in A, he seems to be almost universally liked and favoured. Finally, B adds an extra scene at the end, in which the scholars find Faustus' limbs all torn asunder, just to make it quite clear that Faustus has definitely died in extreme pain and been carried off to a horrible, endless afterlife. It also adds extended moralising speeches from both the Devil and the Angel, occurring before Faustus' own monologue. A, on the other hand, is open-ended enough for readers and audiences to interpret things their own way. Faustus may or may not be dead, he may or may not be in Hell, and all the devils and spirits he speaks to may or may not be figments of his imagination. This is most apparent when Faustus cries out to his fellow scholars,

Look, comes he not, comes he not?

To which they reply:

What means Faustus?

and

Belike he is grown into some sickness, by being over-solitary. (Sc13: 4-8)

One of Matthew Dunster's worse decisions in the Globe production was to ruin this ambiguity by having Lucifer and his devils enter at this point, so that the audience can see them as clearly as can Faustus. Further, and which is not in either version of the text, Mephistopheles is privy to Faustus' whole monologue, interrupting him sometimes and moving around on stage, distracting us and ruining the sense of urgency, desperation and, above all, isolation. That pissed me off.

Other than making a few unnecessary, unwanted appearances, however, as I said above, Arthur Darvill was great. I loved his short-temperedness, his sarcastic attitude, and even the sense of anger and real distress he conveyed whenever Faustus questioned him on God. Best of all, he seemed to really get the point of how hopelessly and sadly ridiculous the whole thing was.

My least favourite parts of the production were the more puerile of the comedy scenes, some of which do exist in both texts, though there are a lot more in B. In fact you might reasonably argue that B is the dumbed-down version, edited in much the same patronising way as British stories and shows are for American TV and in Hollywood. Some of the "clown" scenes aren't bad, usually when they're working as parodies of the main narrative, but some of them are. Faustus is kind of funny, in an intelligent, deeply ironic way that demands a lot of thinking from its audience, so I'd argue that it shouldn't need lots of rubbish jokes to hold people's attention. What it definitely didn't need was for Dunster to stick in his own rubbish jokes as well, like the orgy that Faustus apparently participates in with the Duke and pregnant Duchess, and his lifting the lady's skirts to retrieve the grapes she craves, brought from a "distant count-ry". I bet he thought he was clever. Trouble is, the only people who'd have got it would have known that it was stolen from elsewhere...

There was a bit too much of all that for my liking, and not enough attention paid to the significance, to the power of the actual story, or to the brilliance of the lines themselves. I know that the Globe is a touristy place, and as such attracts non-artsy, non-literary, and even non-intelligent people, but I still couldn't help but find the whole thing just a tad patronising, and, at times, just boring. I enjoyed the more spectacular elements, but it felt to me as though they were the only elements that the production team thought their audience capable of enjoying. All the cleverest bits were either cut or so obscured and unemphatic that you could barely notice them. I don't think that they were trying to scare, shock or challenge us, despite the fact that, even now, the story of Dr Faustus is a pretty troubling one. What they were trying too hard to do was to amuse us, and quite often, it ended up feeling a bit like listening to a twelve-year-old boy who thinks he's funny. Perhaps, much like the reviewers ought to have more faith in actors, the directors need to give their audiences a bit more due credit.

Quotations taken from the New Mermaids edition of Christopher Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus', edited by Roma Gill (London: A&C Black, 2002).